Dazzled, page 6
part #5 of Charlie Cooper Mystery Series
Hmm. That was…unexpected.
“Do you paint?” I asked. Everybody here is an artist, apparently. The drivers and the dolphins…
“Nayeem would love to paint, but the thing I enjoy the most is…it’s what you call in America interior design. I love colors, fabrics, fine rugs. I love to make a home sing by putting nice things inside. What I would like the most is to make happy rooms for people—homes that make their hearts smile.”
Definitely not what I would have guessed.
“That’s so interesting,” Marge said. “I love that too, Nayeem! I’m always changing something: rearranging all my knickknacks or buying something new. I think when I get home, I’ll paint my kitchen cabinets a nice taupe, and I love to buy good art.”
“Art is very…how you say it? Art makes a home in your home. Art shows your special style. If I see the art you choose, I know a little more about you than I did before.” He drove for a while in silence. “Do you know what I love? I love a painting of a city street when it starts to rain. The city lights, they get all blurry, right? Blurry in the rain. And different colored umbrellas, they make the picture nice.”
“I like art with lots of color,” Marge said. “I also collect small paintings that all feature cows. Cows have the sweetest faces; don’t you think? I’ve always been a fan of cows.”
“Very nice,” Nayeem said.
“Do you have clients that you work with to help design their rooms?” Celeste asked.
“Right now, I take classes to learn more about design. I go two nights a week. Not big university. Small college. It is what I can manage, not so big a cost.”
This had to be the sweetest and weirdest combo I’d ever heard. A Bangladeshi Uber driver who’s passionate about interior design.
“That’s really great, Nayeem!” I told him. “Go for your dream.”
By that time, I noticed that the scenery had changed. The buildings looked all dingy, and instead of tourists, the people on the streets looked like they might stab you if you looked at them the wrong way. Not the ideal place at all to sashay down the street with a Kate Spade bag filled with jewels. I planned to keep an eagle eye on that bag.
Nayeem came to a stop in front of a dilapidated building that turned out, unfortunately, to be our address. It was four stories’ worth of awful. The paint was peeling, and the fire escape looked like it would crumble with the smallest bit of weight. A young man out in front glared at passersby, like he was judging which pockets might be the easiest to get his grubby hands into.
Nayeem turned to us with a frown. “Do you see what I mean? Please. Check the address again before you leave the car. Perhaps you wrote down the wrong street?”
How I wished that were the case.
“No, this is the place,” Celeste said, “but thank you for double checking.”
Nayeem stared at the building. “Normally for tourists, Nayeem give a little history of the destination. But Nayeem knows no fun facts about this place you want to go.” He stared hard at the building, then he turned to us. “May I suggest I take you to the High Roller wheel? Fun ride. I love it! All the tourists love it! Best view of the city.”
“Thank you, Nayeem,” Marge said. “We’ll put that on the list. And thank you for worrying about us. But we really need to go in here.”
“Nayeem, would you mind waiting?” Celeste asked. “This shouldn’t take us long, and we’ll pay you for the extra time.”
“I think that’s best,” he answered. “I see no new orders have come in. I will be right here. I will not leave you in such a place as this.”
Strangely, I felt a little better. At least we’d have a fast means of escape if this stupid escapade blew up in our faces.
Warily, we got out of the car and walked up to the front door—or what used to be the front door; the whole front door was missing. Crazy stuff. Anyone could walk on in. On the other hand, I really doubted there was much to steal there.
“Nice place you’ve brought me to on my first day in town,” I said with a smirk.
The smell in the hallway was an awful mix of old food and mildewed carpet. This was a far cry from the opulence of the Vegas strip. Our tour of the “glamour spots” in Vegas had taken an odd turn.
The first floor seemed to only have three units. Figuring that unit four had to be one floor up, we trekked up the dusty steps, stepping over crumpled beer cans and dirty bits of napkin.
“I’m regretting this already,” I said to the others. “This is way worse than I thought.”
“Too late now,” Marge whispered. “But it might be worth it. On CSI, you know, all of the best cases seem to happen somewhere really creepy. We could be on to something big.”
“I don’t want to be on to something big,” I whispered back.
Marge glared at me. She knew me too well. A detective’s curiosity doesn’t go on vacation.
“Fine,” I sighed.
We found a scratched door with the number four, or at least there used to be a number four once upon a time. Now there was just an outline in the shape of a four that was a little bit less dingy than the rest of the old-looking door.
Here we go.
Just as I began to knock, the door, with a slow creak, opened on its own.
Marge gasped.
Celeste jumped back.
My heart skipped a beat.
Marge huddled close behind me with one hand on my arm.
We all stared at the door, frozen into place. Nobody thought to run.
“Not to worry!” Celeste finally whispered. “Old doors do that sometimes—if someone doesn’t take the time to close them in the proper way. I’m sure that’s all it was.” She turned to look at Marge, who despite her love for all things creepy, was not a fan of ghosts.
I knocked again, and we all listened, but it seemed no one was home, so we took a few steps inside the entrance. From there we had a view of most of the rooms. The furniture was old and worn, and dirty dishes and huge piles of stuff were strewn throughout the place. The door to one of the rooms was shut, I noted in alarm, and there was some light coming from one room in the back.
Please, please, please, don’t let anyone be home in this awful place.
Very quietly, Marge opened the door to the room that was on our right. It appeared to be a storage room with a few cardboard boxes on the floor next to an old bike and a pile of trash. Nothing much to see.
We headed to the back and peeked inside that room: it looked like a living room with more worn furniture, more junk, some old curtains on the dirty windows, and…another door that was shut tight. Shoot. We’d have to check behind that door, then we could vamoose.
With a knot of worry in my chest, I tiptoed through the room behind the others, heading to the closed door on the other side. We moved quietly past a gray couch and a table that held coffee cups and half-empty bags of chips. I peeked behind the couch—something I would regret later.
What I saw was a girl. She looked young and pretty. Only problem: she was lying very still in a pool of blood.
A chill ran through me as I stared.
The blood leaked onto her shorts and her white tank top, and streaks of red were matted throughout her long, dark silky hair. Judging from the pool of red, the wound appeared to be somewhere around her waist.
I almost threw up right there.
Marge and Celeste rushed over to see what had me spooked.
“Holy crap,” Celeste said, taking one step back.
“Whoa.” Marge breathed in hard. “Is she...?”
“Dead?” I said. “That seems to be the case.” I grabbed onto her hand. “Let’s get out of here. Right now!”
Just when you think things can’t get even worse, they do. We heard male voices coming from behind the door we’d been just about to open.
“Don’t you screw with me, man!” The first manly voice we heard sounded super pissed.
“Nobody’s screwing with you,” the deep-voice reply came.
“Leave very quietly.” Celeste mouthed the words.
In our scramble to get out of there, Celeste ran into my back and knocked me to my knees. Marge did a somersault over me. We were helping each other up, trying to avoid another awkward ballet of klutz moves, when we heard more yelling.
“Who’s there?” the first man boomed.
I nearly had a heart attack when I heard their footsteps as they ran for the door.
Chapter Five
As we ran out of the apartment and flew down the stairs, my heart was pounding in my chest, and a pain shot through my ankle like a knife. The floorboards creaked behind me as the men rushed toward the steps.
Finally, we made it out into the fresh air. Noticing my pain, Celeste took my arm as we rushed toward the car. Thank goodness for Nayeem.
The men were close behind us.
“Who the hell are you?” one of them yelled.
“Son of a snake!” the other boomed. “What the freaking heck?”
Celeste waved her arms wildly at Nayeem as if to say, Emergency! Prepare to floor it as soon as we get in.
As far as I was concerned, anyone could see we were in major trouble. The two very angry guys were getting closer every second.
“Go, go, go!” Marge screamed as she reached for the handle and flung the car door open. Her arms flailed up in the air as if a swarm of angry bees had flown in to attack. Which made me think of the way I must have looked when I was behind that Porsche and the unfortunate incident happened.
Poor Nayeem was a trouper. He smiled happily and nodded, like this kind of freak-out was all in a day’s work for an Uber driver. I guess crazy has a high bar when you’re driving in Las Vegas.
We fell into the car.
“Drive, now!” Celeste screamed frantically.
With that, our driver hit the gas, jerking me hard against the seat. It was only then that I felt brave enough to take a look behind me.
One man glared at us while the other’s mouth hung open; he still wore a look of shock. Felon Number One (with the pissed-off face) started to move toward us as if to leap inside the car and put his hands around our necks. Felon Number Two stood still with his mouth still open.
It all happened so fast, and I didn’t know where to look first—ahead of me or behind me. I didn’t even think I got a clear image of Felon One and Two. I could breathe a little better when they disappeared from view, but it seemed to take forever before anyone could speak. There was so much to say and no way to really say it, what with a pair of listening ears in the driver’s seat and all.
Marge was hyperventilating, and I’d begun to sweat. I pushed my glasses further up my greasy nose. Celeste held one hand to her chest as if to calm her pounding heart. I knew just how she felt; my heart was racing too.
Nayeem glanced at Celeste beside him, then he peered at Marge and me through the rearview mirror. I could not help but be touched by the worry in his eyes. He looked over at Celeste again.
“You go now to your hotel?” he asked. “You stay at the Kaleidos if Nayeem remember right.”
Celeste could only nod.
“We talk about a trip to the High Roller wheel, but I am thinking not today.” Nayeem hesitated. “Is it all good with you?”
“We are fabulous, Nayeem,” Marge said, finding her voice at last. “Thank you so much for asking. We’re just a little out of breath.” It never stopped to amaze me how Marge could just transform; she was her old self once again.
Still, Nayeem was not convinced. “If something have gone wrong, Nayeem is here to help. You seem like nice, nice ladies.”
“You are very kind, and we are loving Vegas. We just need a little…rest,” Marge said. She managed a string of comments about art and betting odds and which buffets might be best.
Our driver left us with a smile in front of the Kaleidos, but it was not his usual trademark Nayeem smile. We waved him goodbye as he drove away.
Right there on the street, we exploded into whispers.
“I can’t believe what we just saw.”
“Was that…again?”
“It was.”
“Why are there always bodies everywhere we go?”
“Oh, that poor, poor girl.”
“She looked so young. I could just cry.”
“Horrific. Just horrific.”
“That was so brutal.”
“And those morons…”
“Not on my vacation! I am so done with this.”
“What if they’d caught us?”
“Ouch! I’m dying with this ankle. I really need to sit.”
Celeste looked around. “Let’s head upstairs with all these questions. You know—where we can talk alone?”
She was right. Words like almost caught us and killed her can only lead to trouble on a crowded street.
Once we’d made it to Celeste’s room, I threw myself across the bed.
“I knew it!” I said. “I was right. We should have left it to the police. We should have just called them in the first place and handed them that stupid bag.”
“We have to call them now,” Celeste added with a nod. “Now it’s way more than the diamonds—or fake diamonds or whatever.”
“Now it’s a body.” Marge let out a breath.
“It could have been four bodies. What we did was dumb.” I closed my eyes against the memory of that one guy’s angry face.
“That was rough,” Marge said, “and I know we have to tell now. Still, I wish there was a way to just get on with the vacation. Is that a selfish thing to say? I always strive to be kind, but I want to play in Vegas, not sit in some dingy office answering their questions, filling out their forms. Nothing’s ever simple when you deal with the cops.”
“Well, it is a murder, Marge.” Celeste raised an eyebrow. “If it had been my body that was left behind that awful couch in a mess of blood, I’d hope the cops would jump on it full force and put those creeps away.” She paused. “Actually, we could make a call and not get involved at all. We could leave a tip and not give them our names.”
“That’s genius!” I said.
“You’re right,” Marge agreed. “Our names are not important. We could say there’s been a death, give them the address and be done with it.”
“No need for us to do any more than that,” I said. “And we’d be doing our duty as good people and all. I don’t want to sound selfish either, but it’s the first time in forever that I’ve gone on a trip—and it’s my birthday trip!” All I could think about was the endless string of lights that was the Vegas strip, each light standing for a place I might never see. “I don’t want to spend a zillion hours talking to the police. We don’t know this girl. I mean, I’m really sorry that some girl is dead and all, but…” I let my voice trail off. I was suddenly ashamed. Sure, I’d had some awful luck, but this girl’s day was so much worse.
“Yeah, we can’t just walk into the station now and tell them what we know.” Marge opened her purse and handed out wrapped chocolates. “You know exactly what they’d ask us. They’d want to know what stopped us from turning in those diamonds as soon as they turned up. Walking around the city with someone else’s baubles? That looks sketchy to a cop. They don’t know that we’re the good guys.”
“They could think that we were mega weird to go off to that address and investigate ourselves—and they could be right.” I stuffed a chocolate in my mouth. “We know we are in the business, but it could still look…not right.” It would look really whack.
“Okay, then we have a plan. I’m making the call and we don’t say any names.” Celeste took a deep breath.
I pulled out my phone and found a number for an anonymous tip line, and Celeste made the call. She stuck to the barest facts: the body, the address, the two men in the unit. She hung up and closed her eyes.
“It’s over now,” she said with a sigh. “We’re no longer on the case. I’m sure it’s in good hands.”
What a relief! The investigator part of me ran through the facts again, trying to predict the chance of an arrest.
“I guess those two guys got out of there and are long gone by now,” I said. “I’d love to think the cops are gonna rush right in and grab the jerks and throw them behind bars. They had to be involved in the death of that girl.” I fell silent as I wondered if we should be doing more. “It’s not like we could really help,” I tried to reason with myself. “We didn’t get a good look at either of the guys. We were all too busy running for our lives. It’s not like I could look at five guys in a lineup and say, ‘It’s those two in the middle.’” I flipped over on the bed. “I hope the body is still there. Poor girl.”
I wondered who she had been and if she’d seen it coming. I hoped it had been quick with no time to be scared.
“You do know we still have a problem, right? It’s not over yet.” Marge glanced at Celeste. “There is the little matter of the diamonds in your purse.”
I added to her sentence, “…that led us to an address with a dead girl on the floor.”
“That could be a problem,” Celeste said with a nod. “That is absolutely information the police would like to know.”
“No kidding,” I said with a sigh. This vacation was looking more and more like it wasn’t going to happen.
“I was very careful to make sure I put that piece of paper back exactly where we found it,” Celeste said to us. “It’s lucky we know our way around these sorts of things.”
Lucky was not the thing I was feeling most.
“I wish there was a way,” I said, “to just drop off the pouch and run, maybe leave a little note. Found this in a hotel. Went to the address and found a body. See you later. Bye!”
“That won’t work,” Marge said, not getting the joke. “Chain of evidence, description of the scene, all of that good stuff.” She paused and formed the kind of smile that meant she had a big idea. Sometimes, that meant trouble. No, let me rephrase that. Almost always, that meant trouble. “Nothing says we can’t still go and have those stones checked out, see if they’re real or fake. Right?”
Farewell, my sweet vacation.
