“I can read palms, did you know that?” she said, with mischief in her voice.
Serena played along. “What do you see?”
“Well, we already know you’re tough.”
“Rights”
“You’re a cop, so I’m going to hedge my bets on your life line. Your love line is broken, I’m sorry to say.”
“Is that so?”
“Definitely.”
“I can also see that you had a passionate affair with another woman when you were young.”
Serena yanked her hand away. “What the hell is this?”
Claire raised her own hands in surrender. “Easy, okay? It was a joke.” She added, “But methinks I touched a nerve, Serena”
Serena realized her heart was pounding. “No, you just surprised me.”
“Well, don’t worry about it,” Claire replied smoothly. “I was reading my own palm. That’s my story. I’m gay, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Did Boni not approve?”
“That’s part of it”
“But only part?”
Claire sighed. “I spent my first twenty-eight years with Boni running my life, like he runs everything around him. I’m his only child, and he wanted me to follow in his footsteps. I went to UNLV, got a master’s degree in hotel administration, all so I could take over the business whenever he was ready to hand it over. That’s what I wanted, too. He bred all his ambition into me.”
“So what happened?” Serena asked.
Claire’s face was emotionless. “He had to make a choice between me and the business. The business came first. Big surprise.”
Serena guessed that she was covering something up. “What about your mother?”
“She died giving birth to me. It’s always been just me and Boni. At least until I walked out. I decided I wanted to be my own person, not some clone of my father.”
“You sound pretty tough, too,” Serena said.
“I told you, I was reading my own palm. Anyway, that was more than ten years ago, and we’ve hardly spoken since. He makes overtures from time to time, but I’m on my own now. I don’t want him to buy me. It drives him crazy. I’m the only person in the world he hasn’t been able to dominate.”
Serena felt sure that Claire must be very much like her father. Stubborn. Dominant. She imagined that they must have had titanic fights over the years. It impressed her that Claire had stood her ground. That was what she had had to do herself, along the rocky road from her mother to Deidre. People who promised to save her and then betrayed her.
“You’ve made it hard for me to ask what I wanted to ask,” Serena admitted.
Claire shook her head. “Not at all. Ask me anything. I may ask for some of your secrets, too.”
“I need to talk to your father. We think he may know what’s going on, and why. If it involves what happened to Amira, he’s the only one who may be able to put the pieces together.”
“And you want me to call him,” Claire said.
“That’s right”
“I’m sorry, Serena. I’m not ready to do that. If it puts me in his debt, I won’t do it”
“I understand. But lives are at stake. Maybe yours, too.”
“Do you really think I’m in danger?” Claire asked.
“Yes, I do.”
Claire nodded. “I need to think about this,” she said. A moment later, she added, “I can’t give you an answer now, okay?”
“Don’t take too long,” Serena urged her. She found a card in her pocket and handed it to her.
Claire took it and tapped the card lightly on the table. “You tell me something,” she said.
Serena smiled. “Okay.”
“Was I right?”
“You mean about me?” Serena knew exactly what she meant. The affair. Touching a nerve. “That’s none of your business.”
“I forgot, you’re tough.”
Claire stood up and stretched her arms languorously over her head. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said.
Serena scraped her chair back along the linoleum and began to stand up. “I’ll go.”
“No, it’s okay.” Claire waved her back to her seat. “We can keep talking.”
She took the few steps to the dressing room door and turned the dead bolt, then began unbuttoning her blouse. When she was done, she left her blouse hanging open, her cleavage and midriff on display.
“Do you sing?” Claire asked Serena.
“Me? No. I clear the room on karaoke night.”
“So how do you express yourself? You must have something.”
“I take pictures,” Serena said. “Desert photos.”
She watched Claire carefully remove her earrings, using two hands as she unhitched the gold hoops. Claire put the earrings on the table, then ran her hands back through her hair, gently separating the strands.
“I’d like to see them,” Claire said.
Claire nudged the blouse off her shoulders. The silk rubbed up along her skin, then separated and fell down her back. Her breasts were bare, perfect white globes with erect red nipples. She gently tugged the sleeve off each wrist and turned away to hang the blouse on the clothes rack. Her spine rippled, dipping into the hollow of her back.
“Would you like to have dinner?” Claire asked, without turning around.
“Sorry, I can’t.”
Claire slid a zipper down the side of her black pants. She pushed them down over her ass and past her thighs and then bent each leg to step out of them. She was now wearing only a black thong. She turned back. “Too bad.”
Serena knew she had an opportunity to say something, to make a joke, to leave. When Serena sat there, not moving, not even breathing, Claire stripped the thong off her body, exposing her auburn mound, which was trimmed to leave only a wisp of curly light hair. She stood there for a brief moment and then disappeared into the bathroom. The water in the shower began running.
Serena got out of the chair. She looked at the locked door to the dressing room and knew she should simply leave. Then Claire returned, a towel slung around her neck, reaching low enough to cover her breasts but not the rest of her naked body.
“The water takes forever to heat up,” she said.
Serena nodded and tried to moisten her lips with her tongue, but her mouth was dry.
Claire walked up to within a few inches of Serena, too close for comfort. “You could join me.”
“No. I couldn’t do that”
“You’re very beautiful,” Claire told her.
“So are you,” Serena admitted, before she could stop herself.
“I’d like to see you again.”
“I’m not gay,” Serena said.
“Does that matter? I’m attracted to people. I don’t care whether they’re men or women. I’m attracted to you.”
“I’m involved,” Serena said. She added, “With a man.”
“But you’re attracted to me, too.”
Serena wanted to deny it, but she didn’t. “Look, this isn’t going to happen.”
Claire reached out and touched Serena’s face with the back of her hand. “Don’t hide it from him. You’re keeping a secret now.”
“I’m sorry.” Serena pulled away. “I sent the wrong signals.”
“They weren’t wrong. You want me so bad you can taste it. What’s wrong with that?”
Serena’s cell phone rang. She backed up as if the room had caught fire and dove into her pocket to retrieve it. She heard Stride’s voice, and she felt a wave of guilt crashing over her. She couldn’t believe what she was doing, what she wanted to do. Not since Deidre, she thought.
“What is it?” she asked, and she hated herself because her voice was husky with arousal.
Stride brought her down to earth.
“There’s been another murder,” he said.
TWENTY
Amanda choked back tears as she stared at the body of Tierney Dargon. It surprised her. She had steeled herself to death over the years, but the bodies she saw day in and day out were rarely people she had known when they were alive. They were corpses, flesh, wounds, devoid of personality. Amanda had seen Tierney so recently that she could remember her perfume and hear the girlish intonation of her voice. She had liked her. Felt sorry for her. Tierney was a decent kid lost in the Vegas high life. No more.