Dazzled, page 10
part #5 of Charlie Cooper Mystery Series
Marge sat down beside her to see what Celeste had pulled up. “It does look pretty crowded,” she agreed. “That makes me feel better—not good, but better.”
“No matter where it is, nothing guarantees that they won’t pull out a gun,” I said. “I hate it when people start shooting at us.” This was really scaring me, and I didn’t like this plan. But then again, I wasn’t in a position to argue. For now, the bad guys had the upper hand.
“You’re absolutely right,” Celeste said, stuffing her phone back in her purse. “They probably already thought we wouldn’t show up if they had picked a secluded place, which means they still intend to hurt us, even with the crowd. It’s never a safe thing to plan a meeting with the devil, even in a nice place filled with happy tourists.” She took a long, deep sigh. “Do we want to do this, girls?”
I’d learned a little bit in my line of work about the bad things that can happen when you deal with thugs. Bad guys much prefer that any witnesses who can link them to a crime go poof and disappear. They know how to make that happen. A little voice inside me screamed, Danger, danger, Charlie! But another voice insisted that it might be best to go ahead and give the creeps exactly what they wanted. Bad guys don’t like witnesses, but they also don’t like people who won’t give back their shiny jewels. Sometimes a girl can’t win.
“I wish there was some way to give them back the package and still be a little sneaky,” I said, thinking hard. “If we give it back, then we can only hope they’ll get off our tail. Isn’t there some way we can trick them—make them think they’ve won when they really haven’t?”
“I would love that,” Marge said. “But how can we do that?”
We all thought for a moment.
“We can’t fake them out, put something else inside the pouch besides the zillion-dollar jewels,” I said. “You know they’re gonna look. Then if we weren’t dead already, we’d be super-duper, call-the-undertaker dead if we pulled a move like that.”
“So would Nayeem,” Marge said. “No, we can’t pull a switcheroo.”
“Here’s what we can do, though,” Celeste decided after we all had thought some more. “I vote that we take this meeting, that we show up at the fountain, and have Nayeem wait close by in his car, close enough to watch us but far away enough that the bad guys don’t catch on that he came with us. Then if they start to hurt us, kidnap us, or whatever, Nayeem can call for help.”
“I’m liking that!” Marge said. “We could tell him to call the cops—even if everything goes smooth,” she continued. “That way, they’ll get caught, and whoever owns the diamonds will get their diamonds back. These guys would be locked up, and we’d at least be safe.”
“I’m not sure Nayeem will even do it,” I said doubtfully. “He looked a little freaked.”
“I kind of hate to ask him,” Marge agreed, “but what can you do?”
“Let’s head off to the apartment,” Celeste said, standing up. “We’ve kept Nayeem waiting long enough. Here’s hoping we’ll find some information that will help. I really want to know who that dead girl was. And how she was involved in all of this.”
“I hope she was not some random tourist who found some diamonds taped up underneath her bed,” I said.
“Oh my gosh!” Marge said. “Along with a piece of paper that led her to the address.”
My heart pounded at the thought.
“Oh, you two hush,” Celeste said. “I’m sure that’s not the case.” She picked up her purse. “Maybe we’ll see something that will be a lead and help us figure out what the heck is going on. Let’s go; let’s solve this baby and get on with our trip.”
Five minutes later, I was in the back seat of Nayeem’s car as he expertly navigated the busy Vegas streets. Every now and then, I caught a glimpse of our driver’s frightened eyes in the rearview mirror, and my heart broke a little. On the way to our destination, we filled him in about the plan we had devised, leaving out, of course, any details that he didn’t have to know, like what kind of stuff would be delivered and how we came to have it in the first place.
“We need your help, Nayeem,” Celeste said, “but you can stay locked up in your car until it’s done.”
“When you see that we’ve made contact at this Fountain Square, that’s when we need you to act,” Marge told him from the back seat. “Once you see him show up, we need you to call the cops. I mean he or they. We don’t know how many there are exactly.”
“After that, Nayeem, keep a close eye on these guys—follow them or whatever,” I leaned up to say. “It’s important not to lose them. We can’t let them get away.”
Our driver looked alarmed, as if we had asked him to turn into an astronaut and fly up to the moon. “I am just an Uber driver!” His voice grew high-pitched with fear. “I am not the FBI. I get you to your destination, on time and cheerfully, and all of that. I do not solve crimes. I am a peaceful person. Please, this is not my job.”
“We’re so sorry, Nayeem,” Marge said sympathetically. “When it comes to awful customers, we know we must be the worst. We really don’t want to get you involved, but we need to fix this fast, because here’s the thing: even if they get their stuff, they could still try to hurt us—and I really hate to say it, but they could hurt you, Nayeem. You saw that awful note.”
“Nayeem did nothing to these people,” he said. “This is very, very bad.”
“We know that,” Celeste said. “But we really need your help. Will you help us?”
The three of us held our breath. After a long pause, Nayeem sighed.
“I guess I have to try,” he said.
“Thank you, Nayeem, thank you!” I said.
He was breathing hard. “I will try to think good thoughts,” he said, “good thoughts about the future when I am no longer Uber driver. One day Nayeem will be designer. No one will say, ‘Nayeem, put down that lovely lamp, please, and chase bad guys down the road before they blow us up—kaboom.’ I will think of color, lines, and fabrics—fabrics in deep blues and soft yellows. Yes, that is what I’ll do.”
“We owe you one,” Marge said.
We arrived at the apartment, and Nayeem parked his car at the corner, close enough to watch us, but not right there at the door—or I guess I should say the hole where a door should be. Needless to say, the front door of the building was still missing. I suspected it had been a while since any handyman had stepped foot in the place.
“I will wait right here,” Nayeem said. He hesitated. “Be very, very careful. Please. Do not take someone’s coffee. Do not do anything that will cause someone that I don’t know to be very, very angry with me.”
I got the heebie-jeebies just walking up the crumbling steps and entering the place, which still smelled like someone’s rancid meal from several days before. We kept a close eye all around us as we climbed the narrow stairs to the nightmarish unit four on the accursed second floor.
Somewhere up above us, we heard a door slam hard. Celeste and I both shrieked, and Marge almost fell back against me, causing me to stumble.
“Careful, Marge!” I whispered.
“Okay, let’s all just calm down,” Celeste said, breathing hard. “Are we such scaredy-cats that we jump out of our skins because someone went in or out a door?”
“Yes.”
“Definitely.”
Marge and I spoke at the same time.
It did seem rather silly, but the last people I saw there were not people I hoped to see again walking toward me down these halls.
When we arrived at unit four, the door was covered in yellow crime-scene tape, which was good to see. It felt good to know the cops had at least been there to look around, although they were missing a lot of crucial information that could help them solve the case. And we were to blame for that. Urgh. Sometimes I wondered how we get ourselves in these kinds of situations.
We knocked on the door—and thankfully—no one answered. What would we have done if they had answered? I had no idea. It seemed, as usual, we hadn’t planned ahead.
Very carefully, Celeste turned the knob and found the door unlocked. She glanced at Marge then dropped her eyes to the large, flowered purse that was always resting against Marge’s hips. I’d been to enough crime scenes with these two to know what Celeste was asking: Did you bring the gloves?
Marge understood as well, but she shook her head and shrugged. “Don’t give me that look,” she said defensively, keeping her voice to a whisper. “Aren’t you the one who laughed at me for bringing too much stuff, which I absolutely didn’t, by the way? I brought cute clothes and a good camera. I packed very carefully. I packed for shows and fancy restaurants, not for breaking and entering.” She frowned at the dingy door. “I kind of thought this trip would be a break from that.”
“Doesn’t matter, anyway,” I said in a low voice. “Our fingerprints are in the place already from the last time we were here, and Celeste already touched the doorknob, which is the first place they might check. Although, we’re not in the database, so how would they know it’s us?” Still, I would much prefer my fingerprints not be all over a…well, you know, murder scene. I would add that to the list of worries that could wake me up in the middle of the night. That list was getting way too long.
We headed inside to find that things looked basically the same as they had before. Nothing looked amiss in the narrow hallway that led to the largest room. Everything looked normal when I glanced to the left and right at the two rooms on either side. We headed to the main room, where the gray couch and coffee table were in the same places as before. Nothing seemed to have been moved—except of course, the body (yes, I really checked).
With my heart in my throat, listening intently for every little sound, we looked carefully around each room for anything that could contain a hint about who the bad guys were or who they had killed and why. We ended our search in the room where the men had been when we first heard their voices on that terrifying day. The room was dusty and sparsely furnished with a small bed and a nightstand. There was a tiny closet, which stood empty. Perhaps the cops had taken whatever clothes had once been there.
“Let’s check underneath the bed,” Marge said, “then let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”
As I bent down to look, it occurred to me that the last time I checked underneath a bed, a whole nightmarish chain of awful had begun.
I straightened up. “Would someone else look please?” I asked. “I’m having flashbacks here.”
Just when Marge began to walk toward the bed, we heard something. Someone was jiggling the doorknob at the entrance of the unit.
We stared at each other with wide eyes. We were frozen into place, each of us scared to move. Coming back to this place, I decided, could have been the worst plan we’d ever made.
I had a sinking feeling it might be the last one too.
Chapter Nine
At least we weren’t standing by the door when he, she or they walked in. We still had time to hide. They hadn’t figured out they had some “visitors” yet.
Unfortunately, the entrance door—so far away—was our only way of getting out of there. That meant we were stuck. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it might split my chest wide open and explode.
I glanced behind me out the window. There was no convenient fire escape for people dumb enough to get trapped in some apartment with a creep. Plan A was a bust. I pondered a leap two stories down, but there was too much space between the place where I was standing and the cold, hard concrete. I would not be flinging my body out the window.
Marge looked meaningfully at the closet, and I nodded. It was the only way. It was a little small for three people, but between dead and crowded in, I’d take crowded any day. Quickly, we squeezed into the tiny space, and I closed the double doors. At least there were no clothes to brush against our faces. More room for the three of us, less reason for the thug, or thugs, to come looking for a fresh shirt or a pair of shoes.
I tried not to think about the gap between the doors. It wasn’t just a small gap. If we didn’t want to be seen, we couldn’t move a muscle if they came into the room. We’d have to be quiet too. Let no one get the hiccups, I begged the universe. Nobody cough or sneeze. Of course the sudden realization that I couldn’t cough, made my throat feel really scratchy.
I tried to distract myself by listening to see if they were coming closer. We heard the sound of heavy footsteps moving back and forth. There were male and female voices. From the sound of it, they were gathered in the living room. Why can’t they just go out and play? It’s a pretty day. It’s Vegas.
We could hear pieces of their conversation but not all of it: “second walk-through”…”cameras”…”I want everything on film”…”the lab guys, they’re all on it”…”talked to every neighbor in the building.”
I caught Celeste’s eye. She must be thinking the same thing: these weren’t crooks that we were listening to. We were stuck in here with the cops.
Fabulous.
I cringed at the word walk-through. Unless they were inept, a walk-through meant searching the closet too. I could feel a headache coming on. We were about to have to do a whole lot of explaining. This would be uncomfortable.
We could hear the click of cameras, and one of the men, it sounded like, was talking on his phone.
“I could use some cooler weather,” the female told the other man. “At least it’s not supposed to rain. We were thinking we might do a hike sometime this weekend.”
“Just do your job and go,” Marge said testily. “My legs are getting numb.”
I was startled by her voice.
Celeste touched her arm to shush her, careful not to make a sound.
I was just about to tell Marge to be quiet, when we heard footsteps coming closer. I gulped, as the footsteps now seemed to be in the room with us. I was afraid to breathe. Surely, they would check the closet any moment, and what would we say then? I had no idea. I was too scared to think. My throat felt even scratchier. Did these people ever dust? My nose began to itch. Don’t sneeze, don’t sneeze, don’t sneeze.
There was more picture-taking and some more talk of hikes. “White Owl Canyon’s really nice,” I heard the woman say.
“That what’s I hear,” her partner said.
“We should go there,” Marge mouthed. At least she had the sense not to yell the words out loud.
Peering through the gap between the doors, I watched the officers move. Although it freaked me out, that gap at least let some oxygen into our crowded space. Marge’s hair was in my eyes and tickling my cheek. Celeste was close enough that I was afraid at any moment she’d step hard on my toe, and I’d have to guard against an involuntary “Ow!” To make things even more unbearably horrendous, the sharp pain in my ankle had come back with a vengeance.
“How’s your wife’s new job?” one cop asked another. “I hear the hours are insane at some of those big casinos.”
“So far, so good,” his coworker said. “The pay’s not bad, at least.”
“Did the lab results come back yet?” the female officer cut in. “We were lucky those fake diamonds were full of fingerprints.”
Though I could barely move my head, I glanced back and forth between Marge and Celeste, a question in my eye.
“Nah,” one of the guys said. “You know how we always wait forever for stuff to come back from the lab. Thankfully, it didn’t take them long to say that what we had was fake. Judging from the piles of stuff we’re dealing with, I can tell you one thing—this operation isn’t small.”
I raised an eyebrow and Celeste looked intrigued. Marge’s mouth had formed into a tiny O.
There was more picture-taking and some talk about their schedules and too much overtime, but no mention of the dead girl or about the stupid thugs or what they thought was going on.
Still thinking that they’d check the closet any second, I began to sweat profusely. Sorry, closet mates!
And then…a miracle happened!
“Well, I guess that’s it,” the woman told her colleagues. “Is there anything else you guys need before we hit the road?”
“I think I’m good. Let’s go.”
“That works for me as well. Anybody up for coffee?”
I could feel my heart rate slow. Another day without being arrested.
When we heard the front door close, we waited for a moment to make sure they were really gone until we all breathed hard, stepping out into the room.
“OMG, I thought I would suffocate in there,” I said.
“Tell me about it,” Marge said. “I was already getting dizzy.”
“Getting dizzy is better than getting arrested, so stop complaining,” Celeste said, straightening her hair.
“When she’s right, she’s right,” Marge said.
“Okay, so what was that all about?” I asked. “Did I hear them right? Fake diamonds?”
“Craziness,” Marge said, stretching her arms toward the ceiling and wiggling her hips.
“Let’s discuss this somewhere else,” Celeste whispered, heading toward the door. “Let’s leave while we still can.”
At the door, we listened to make sure the officers weren’t still outside, conferring on their next step, but we seemed to be alone. We glanced at each other, and Marge nodded. A sense of sweet relief swelled through me as we walked to the car, careful to appear as if we were just three friends leaving our crappy-as-heck apartment for a day out in the city. Even Nayeem seemed relieved to see us not being chased for a change.
Once we were settled safely in the car, I checked the time on my cell phone. “We have half an hour until we’re supposed to meet the guys,” I said. The relief evaporated. There was no point in celebrating one escape when your next date with terror was an Uber ride away.
