"I"m looking at the evidence!" I yelled. I threw Dena"s jar of nipple warming cream at his head. "Your problem is that you have trust issues."
"I agree!" Mary Ann said. "Alex is the only one who has given Sophie any information at all. You think that just because someone works with the mafia they"re a criminal!"
Marcus stayed mute and let the awkward moment do his talking for him.
I leaned my head back against the wall. "I"m angry with Anatoly. I have the right to be. And I know Alex is totally ruthless and I would be stupid to trust him but..."
"But?"
I walked over to Marcus and sat down next to him. "I don"t think he"s petty. Evil? Maybe. But not petty. And what you"re suggesting...that he would set up an elaborate plot just to give his sister an eye for an eye...I know that"s beneath him."
Dena raised her thick Sicilian eyebrows. "You got all that from your one meeting with him at his office?"
"Um...I might have been in contact with him tonight too."
"You might have?"
"You know," I said, crossing back to her bag of goodies and holding up some of the lingerie, "this leather bra and panties set is actually kinda cute."
"What"s going on, Sophie?"
"Nothing! It"s been a while since we"ve heard from Leah. I think I"ll go check on her."
Mary Ann silently handed me the room key and I hurried out before Dena could ask any more questions although undoubtedly Mary Ann and Marcus would break under her interrogation.
When I got up to Leah"s room I knocked but there was no answer so I let myself in.
"Leah?" I called out as I stepped inside. All the lights were on but Leah didn"t seem to be there.
Leah always turned the lights off before going out. Always. "Leah?" I said again. I looked over to the bathroom. The door was closed but if she was in there she would have heard me come in, right? And I didn"t hear the shower.
"Leah?" I called out again, this time louder. Again, nothing.
And then I saw Leah"s purse sitting on the desk. Just sitting there unattended. Kinda like how Anatoly"s money clip had just been sitting there right before I discovered a dead body in a closet.
A wave of nausea washed over me. I reached into my handbag and pulled out the gun. I put my hand on the closet door and said a quick and fierce prayer before throwing it open.
Nothing in there but clothes.
I exhaled...but still...
Terrified I let my eyes slide back to the closed bathroom door. I called out her name and again got nothing for my efforts. I slowly approached the bathroom, gun raised.
She has to be okay, she has to be okay, she has to be okay.
And then I heard a thump of something falling to the ground and my sister cried, "Oh dear Lord!"
I c.o.c.ked the gun, threw open the door and jumped inside ready to shoot.
Leah let out a bloodcurdling scream...from the bathtub. The bottle of conditioner she had apparently knocked over rolled on the floor and her earbuds were firmly in place and attached to her iPod. As she quickly grabbed for a towel I noticed that there was a battery-operated octopus in her hand.
"Sorry!" I squealed and rushed back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind me.
Two minutes later Leah stormed out, wrapped in the white hotel robe. "What the h.e.l.l were you doing?!"
"I"m so, so sorry." I was sitting on her bed with my head buried in my hands. "I just heard you and...well, I"ve never heard anyone say Oh dear Lord while having an o.r.g.a.s.m before and--"
"Sophie!"
"I"m sorry! I mean, I"ve heard oh my G.o.d and--"
"I get it!" she snapped. "Are you really critiquing how I--"
"No, no! In fact I think the best thing is for us to both pretend I didn"t see or hear anything."
"I don"t even like s.e.x toys!" She pushed a wet strand of hair away from her face. "But...but..."
"But each tentacle has a different function," I finished for her. "I was rather impressed by that too."
Leah"s skin was a little darker than mine but I could still see that she was blushing. "Look," I said, trying very hard to be the mature one, "this is not a big deal. Every woman has at least one s.e.x toy."
"I don"t. Or I didn"t until today. I"ve never even owned a vibrator."
"Really?" I asked, honestly shocked. "Well in that case, Congratulations! You finally have what you need to...um...unwind."
"It"s disgusting."
"Please Leah, in the beginning of the twentieth century they were selling vibrators in the Sears Roebuck catalog. It"s normal."
"It"s not a me thing to do," she insisted. "It"s a you thing to do. You"re the one who faces down dangerous criminals, who goes to Vegas on a moment"s notice, who marries someone you"ve been dating a month. You"re the one who gets it on with octopuses and rabbit vibrators!"
"Oh come on! I don"t even own a battery operated octopus or a...well, I don"t own an octopus!"
"When I lost my husband...when he died less than a day after I discovered he was cheating on me...well, I went a little crazy."
"I remember," I said quietly.
"I...I got a belly b.u.t.ton piercing, I got burgundy highlights in my hair, I slept with a man I barely knew...a man who was practically a member of the Black Panthers!"
"Um, no, just because someone occasionally makes a fist and doesn"t wear Ralph Lauren Polo...that doesn"t actually make him a Black Panther."
"Well, all right, I"ll give you that...but still...I barely knew him."
"I remember," I said again.
"I was out of control."
"A little bit."
"It was fun."
I didn"t answer that time. I sort of thought Leah had already had this particular epiphany, although as far as I could tell she forgot it within months of having it.
"I knew you weren"t going to marry a stranger...no matter how drunk you got."
I shifted my position and sat cross-legged on the bed. "Then could you tell me why you"re here?"
"Because I wanted to come to Vegas!" she burst out. "Why were you so adamant that I stay home? Why didn"t you want to include me?"
I blinked in surprise. I hadn"t even considered that possibility...then again, I had been distracted.
"I want to have fun too, you know! I"ve never been to a s.e.x toy trade show! Didn"t it ever occur to you that was something I might want to do before I died?"
"A s.e.x toy trade show," I repeated slowly, "that was on your bucket list?"
"It wasn"t on yours?"
I stared at her, too baffled to come up with an answer.
"And then that show..."
"Puppetry of The p.e.n.i.s?"
"I haven"t seen anything like that in years."
I laughed. "Leah, I"ve never seen anything like that. Not many have."
"I mean a man"s p.e.n.i.s."
"Oh."
"I have a horrible life!" She cried.
I shook my head quickly to clear it of the confusion that was gathering there. "Leah, you realize that I"m in the middle of a life or death situation here, right? The Russian mafia might be after me."
"Oh, there you go again, making everything about you," Leah snapped, then hearing herself, she blushed a little harder. "I know you have a lot on your plate, but when you told me not to come to Vegas all you were dealing with was a breakup."
"You told me you wanted to come just so you could chaperone me!"
"You"re saying that if I had phrased it differently you would have wanted me to come?"
"Look, our friends are downstairs--"
"Your friends," Leah corrected. "That"s how they would define themselves."
She was right. Marcus, Dena, Mary Ann...they would all say that Leah was their friend"s sister. It was also true that Leah was always considered an attachment to somebody or something. She was Jack"s mother, Bob"s widow, that crazy woman"s daughter (although, to be fair, we were both stuck with that one). G.o.d knows she sat on enough boards, promoting the opera, the symphony, the cultural WASPification of San Francisco (which was quite a feat for a black, Jewish woman), but her social connections never seemed to extend past the planning meetings. Leah had come here because she had wanted to be part of my Vegas getaway and when she had arrived and realized that things had taken a dark turn she could have left. But she had stuck by me. Leah often drove me nuts but she loved me and she was loyal...
...and I wasn"t always nice to her.
"I"m glad you got the octopus," I said quietly. "And I"m glad you got to see men play with their p.e.n.i.ses. You deserve it."
Leah giggled. "You think?"
"I know." I ran my fingers back and forth over the duvet. "Look, I don"t really know what I"m doing right now. I don"t even know what I should be doing, but while I figure that out you should try to...to fully experience Vegas."
Leah eyed me warily. "What do you mean, fully experience Vegas?"
"Tomorrow morning I"m going to come up here at...let"s say, 9 a.m. and we"re all going to order a room service breakfast with b.l.o.o.d.y Marys."
"I can"t drink at 9 a.m.! I have to maintain some sense of propriety!"
"Propriety? Five minutes ago you were sitting in the bathtub with an overs.e.xed octopus! This is Vegas. f.u.c.k propriety."
"But--"
I held up my hand to stop her. "Once you have a little vodka in you take Mary Ann down to the casino. Shoot a couple games of c.r.a.ps or something. Then go to the last day of the s.e.x toy trade show before hitting the clubs...preferably clubs that feature men in various stages of undress as entertainment. Live a little."
"And if you need help?"
"I promise to ask for it as long as you promise to have fun until I do." I glanced at her robe and dripping hair. "I"ll go and let you put yourself back together...or whatever."
As I got up and walked to the door Leah called out to me. "Sophie?"
"Yeah?"
"If you tell anyone about the octopus you won"t have to worry about the mafia. I"ll shoot you myself."
I smiled. Of all the threats I had been dealing with that was the only one that seemed justified.
CHAPTER 15.
The best revenge you can reap on the "other woman" is to let her have him.
--Death Of The party The next morning Dena, Mary Ann and I had a b.l.o.o.d.y Mary breakfast up in Leah and Mary Ann"s room. Marcus chose to sleep in. Dena also agreed to accompany both Mary Ann and Leah down to the casino for a bit of gambling before escorting them back to the trade show. She was clearly irked with me for going to see Alex without tell her (Mary Ann and Marcus had ratted me out) but she didn"t make a big thing out of it. I figured she had basically given up on the idea of talking sense into me...or maybe she was just trying to be nice because it was clear I was in a bit of a funk. Anatoly was in danger and I had no idea what my next move should be...worse yet, he was probably with his wife. I chose to stay in Mary Ann and Leah"s room and continue to pick at my breakfast instead of going down with them.
I sat on Leah"s bed and tried to come up with a plan. The best way to find Anatoly was to find Natasha. Would she be at the Hotel Noir again? What about this information that everyone seemed to think Anatoly had on a storage disk somewhere? Did it exist and if so where would he hide it?
There was a knock on the door. I smiled as I stood up. Marcus no doubt...unless...
My heart caught in my throat. Anatoly? Had he come back?
I practically flung myself at the door but then stopped right before opening it...what if it wasn"t Anatoly or Marcus. What if it was someone...bad.