“No problem, man,” Will said, nodding, then turned to me with a concerned expression. “Are you going to be okay?” Now that I had a “real” fiancé, he seemed ready to forget about my snooping.
I nodded, although the thought of being engaged to Jeff Coleman still made me woozy.
“She wanted to get married in a church. This is all my fault,” Jeff told Will before giving me a wink Will Parker couldn’t see, then added, “We can go back home and talk about this.”
“Hope to see you again,” Will said, his eyes twinkling as he nodded at me.
I had a sudden urge to tell him to definitely call me. Jeff must have sensed my hesitation because again I felt his hand on my lower back, and he steered me back around to the front of the building. He gave Will a little finger waggle as we went.
“What was that all about?” he asked as we settled into the Pontiac. “Flirting with another man on our wedding day?” he teased.
“I was trying to get some information out of him,” I said, strapping myself in with the seat belt.
“That wasn’t all you were after,” he said.
“You’re not really my fiancé, so what do you care?”
He cocked his head at me and looked at me for a couple of seconds before saying, “You’re right. Why should I care?”
And then he gunned the engine, and the tires screeched as the car slid out of the parking lot.
“So what did you find out from Mr. Studly?” Jeff asked when we stopped at a light. Neither of us had said a word to the other for the last five minutes.
“Nothing,” I admitted, kicking myself that Will Parker now knew far more about me than I knew about him. “But there was this other door that led out from the bathroom into the Dean Martin changing room. There were lockers, and I found Dan Franklin’s wallet. He looks exactly like Ray Lucci. It was a little creepy, but it explains why Lucci might tell people he’s Franklin.”
“Interesting,” Jeff said. “I’m surprised his wallet was in the locker.”
“Why?”
“DellaRocco said he hasn’t seen Franklin in two days.”
Chapter 14
I thought about my conversation with Dan Franklin. How he’d said he and Lucci didn’t get along.
“Franklin had an ID card in his wallet,” I said. “He’s some sort of lab-animal technician or something at UNLV.”
Jeff immediately caught on. “That rat. You think Franklin offed Lucci and stuck that rat in there for some reason?”
“Crossed my mind.”
“And now the guy’s in hiding.”
“Except that he did get Bitsy’s phone message, so he must be at home.”
“Or he has a cell phone. He could be anywhere.”
Right. Cell phone. “But why would he leave his wallet in his locker?” And then I had another thought. Maybe he killed Lucci, stuck him in my trunk, and then took off without getting his stuff. Because maybe someone saw him. Like Sylvia and Bernie. Maybe he went after them next.
My imagination was getting the better of me. This was stuff that made a bad TV movie. Except it made sense. It would explain everything.
But then again, it probably wasn’t that easy.
I could see Jeff’s brain was working overtime, too.
“Where does this Franklin live?”
I flashed back on the file folder with Franklin’s information. I remembered the address because it was only a couple of blocks away from my house in Henderson. I told Jeff as much.
“You want to go over there, don’t you?” I asked.
Jeff didn’t answer, but in seconds he was pulling into a parking lot and swerving around, putting the car in the opposite direction.
“We have no business going over there,” I said.
“The man hasn’t been to work. His wallet’s in his locker.”
“I talked to him yesterday, so he’s not dead, like Lucci,” I said.
“He wasn’t dead as of yesterday,” Jeff said. “Who knows about today?”
The Pontiac came to a stop at a light. A trail of Asian tourists following a man holding up a big orange flag moved across the intersection. A few heavyset couples wearing fanny packs got caught in the middle of the Asian group but managed to separate themselves on the other side.
Jeff shook his head sadly. “They’re like sheep, aren’t they?”
His question was rhetorical, and I merely nodded as the light changed and we started moving again.
The Strip was taking too long, so at the next block, Jeff hung a left and went down Koval. No scenery, only the backs of the resorts and casinos, but it moved faster.
“So did you get anything out of DellaRocco about Franklin?” I asked when we got onto 215 heading toward Henderson.
“I tried to find out if Lucci had any enemies, and that’s when Franklin came up. Apparently there was no love lost between them. DellaRocco was pretty vague about it, though. We didn’t get much further than that, because he got really suspicious as to why the water was running in the bathroom and you weren’t coming out.”
“So now it’s my fault?”
“Has to be someone’s,” he said.
I was regretting this little adventure more and more.
We were quiet until Jeff reached my street. “Where to from here?” he asked.
I directed him a couple of blocks up and over.
The neighborhood was similar to mine: rows of stucco houses, the occasional palm tree, banana yuccas. Some houses had lawns, real lawns that would need watering. Since Vegas was in the middle of a drought and Lake Mead was way lower than it should be, this upset me. We were in the desert, with beautiful desert flora that was perfectly fine as a yard. No need to drain the water system just because someone wanted to pretend he was living in another part of the country.
I opened my mouth to say something, but I guess I’d said it before because Jeff held up his hand and said, “I get it, Kavanaugh. Water shortage. You’re a broken record, you know?”
I was thinking about a smart retort when I spotted the address we had for Dan Franklin. I pointed. “That one, there.”
Jeff eased the Pontiac against the curb across the street and a couple of houses down. But it wasn’t exactly as if we were incognito. It was a bright gold car. Sort of like how Starsky and Hutch were driving around undercover in that bright red Gran Torino with the white stripe. Stick out much?
An old blue Ford Taurus sat in the driveway.
“Looks like someone’s home,” Jeff said, indicating the car.
“I don’t think so.” The house was closed up: shutters drawn; the mailbox hanging open, leaking envelopes and advertisements; three newspapers on the front step.
I climbed out of the car and walked up to the driveway and around the Taurus, peering into the windows. It was immaculate inside, no litter of any sort. There was a university parking sticker stuck to the back bumper.
“Kavanaugh,” Jeff hissed behind me. “What are you doing?”
I waved him off and went to the mailbox, reaching in and pulling out the mail. I leafed through it. Electric bill, a couple of credit card bills, junk mail. Jeff peered around my shoulder-I was a couple inches taller than him-and stuck out his hand, grabbing one of the envelopes.
“Hey,” I said, twirling around, trying to get it back.
Jeff grinned and waved it around. “What? You’re going to take the stolen mail from me?”
His words stopped me, and I realized what I was doing. Right. I was messing with the U.S. mail. I could get thrown in jail for this.
“Let’s leave it,” I said.
“Now you want to leave it,” Jeff said. “You wouldn’t want to if you saw what it was.”
Against my better judgment, he’d piqued my interest. “Okay, I’ll give. What is it?”
He stuffed it in his back pocket and took the rest of the mail from me, shoving it back into the mailbox. “This way,” he said, going up to the front steps and actually ringing the doorbell.
“What are you doing?” I asked.