Darrell just stood there, then, as if hoping to be invited to join them. Sandra, however, made it clear that the two of them were enjoying a girls’ night out. She stared challengingly at him, waiting for him to leave.
“Well, have fun,” he said at last, and headed for the door.
“You’re tough!” Jessy said, laughing, as Sandra set her drink down and pulled out her chair, a frown creasing her forehead.
“I don’t like his vibe.”
“His vibe?”
“He wants something from you, and you can do much better,” Sandra said. She grinned. “You have done much better. Can’t forget tall, dark and handsome.”
“Trust me, I haven’t. But you don’t need to worry about Darrell. He just wants me to leave the Big Easy and work for the Sun,” Jessy explained.
Sandra stared out at the street as if she was still watching the man, though of course he was long gone. Finally she shook her head and said, “That’s not it. Not to take anything away from your talent, honey, because you know I think you’re great, but—this is Vegas. Beautiful, talented women are everywhere here. He doesn’t need to go stealing people to work for his casino. You need to watch out for him. He wants something. And like I said, I don’t like his vibe. Trust me, I’ve been around a few blocks.”
“He’s an opportunist, I’ll admit, but so are lots of people.”
Sandra shook her head. “I’m telling you, there’s something about him. He’s bad news. I’m sure of it.”
Jessy started to reply, but before she could, she heard a familiar voice call her name. “Jessy!”
She turned to see her fellow pirate queen, April, on the arm of a handsome stranger.
“Denny, meet my friend Jessy and her friend…Sandra, right? Guys, this is Denny,” she said proudly.
Sandra and Jessy smiled and shook hands with April’s new man.
“We were just heading on over to Harrah’s when I saw you two,” April said, “and I just had to stop. I was worried about you, Jessy. Did you report the incident?”
“I did, and Ron said he’d look into it,” Jessy told her.
“What incident?” Sandra asked sharply.
Jessy waved a hand in the air. “Nothing, a piece of the set came down when it shouldn’t have, that’s all,” she said. “I talked to our stage manager, and he’s going to have it checked out. All’s well that ends well, just like they say.”
“Well, good, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. See ya!” April said, and left, waving. They waved back.
Sandra leaned in. “Exactly what fell?” she demanded, frowning fiercely.
“One of the big sails that’s supposed to fall during the battle scene. It scared me, but I wasn’t hurt.”
“That’s not good,” Sandra said firmly.
“Well, of course it’s not good. And I reported it,” Jessy said. Before either of them could say anything else, her phone rang. She answered and was glad to hear Dillon’s voice on the other end. She told him where she and Sandra were, and when she hung up, Sandra was watching her excitedly.
“I’m going to get to meet him?”
“Yes.”
Sandra sat back then and sipped her drink, still eyeing Jessy. “I’m very worried about you.”
“Why?”
“Vibes,” Sandra said knowingly.
“Sandra, listen to me. Darrell’s a perfectly nice guy, and what happen with the set this afternoon was an accident—just an accident.”
Sandra leaned forward again, her expression intense. “You’re too trusting. What if it wasn’t an accident? What if someone was trying to kill you?”
“If someone really was trying to kill me, I doubt his weapon of choice would be a big canvas sail.”
“It didn’t hit you?”
“No, I heard it falling.”
“It could have beaned you.”
“Seriously, Sandra. It was an accident, not a murder attempt. I mean, I might have been hurt if I’d been a bit slower, but I wouldn’t have been killed.”
“It could have been a warning, then,” Sandra said sagely. “Someone wanting you to back off from…something.
“Sandra, any member of the cast could have been out there,” she said.
“But it wasn’t any member of the cast, it was you.” She shook her head. “This is scary, very scary.” She stood suddenly, looking past Jessy, smiled and said, “Hi, I’m Sandra Nelson. And you must be Dillon Wolf.”
Jessy turned and smiled at Dillon as Sandra continued to talk.
“Maybe you can talk some sense into her, since she thinks I’ve gone off the deep end just because no matter what she says about it being an accident, I think someone tried to kill her this afternoon.”
11
The lights were neon and garish, the streets wild and busy, and the bar was doing a bang-up business in cocktails, while the sober, semisober and downright drunk laughed and talked around them.
Taking a seat at the table, Dillon frowned at Jessy. She should have been safe at work, surrounded by other people.
If Rudy Yorba hadn’t died in what had clearly been meant to be mistaken for an accident, he might not be so concerned. But Rudy Yorba was dead, smashed almost beyond recognition.
Other people had seen the security tapes of the night Tanner Green had been murdered. Cops, casino personnel. What if someone—someone complicit in the murder—had noticed that Green had opened his mouth, had said something to Jessy before dying.
Indigo.
Would that mean something to the killer? Because it sure as hell didn’t mean anything to him. The place was a ghost town, nothing but a ghost town.
“Tell me what happened—exactly what happened,” Dillon said to Jessy.
“It was nothing. You’ve seen the show. When we attack Port Royal, the guns of the port fire back and we lose a sail. The sail fell again after the show was over and I happened to be walking by, that’s all.” In an effort to change the subject she looked more closely at Dillon and asked, “What have you been up to? You’re all dusty.”
“I took a drive out to the desert today,” he told her. “I guess I could use a shower and some clean clothes.”
“Want a margarita?” Sandra suggested.
He shook his head, smiling. “No, I’d rather have that shower, I think.”
As they walked Sandra out to her car, she plied Dillon with questions about his job with Harrison Investigations, which he answered politely. There were so many things, he said, that no one could be sure of, but he could assure her that he’d never personally seen any evidence that a ghost had harmed anyone who was innocent of wrongdoing.
“Does that mean a ghost will harm a bad guy?” Sandra asked him eagerly.
He laughed. “It means exactly what I said. We’re called in when inexplicable things are happening, but there’s usually an explanation that’s completely real-world. I suppose that if a ghost could manage to move objects, it could also manage to hurt someone with them. But we usually find a real perp behind whatever’s going on.”
They’d reached Sandra’s car, which she’d left in a casino garage. Dillon opened the driver’s side door for her and checked out the interior as she settled herself behind the wheel. “Drive safely,” he told her.
“Will do,” Sandra said. “And you—watch out for Jessy. Please.”
“I intend to,” Dillon assured her.
They watched her drive away, and he was silent as he slipped an arm around Jessy, leading her back toward the elevator. Finally he said, “I think maybe Sandra’s right to be worried about what happened to you today.”
“Dillon, Sandra is a good friend, and I love her for worrying about me, but nothing that happened this afternoon was anything other than an accident.”
He frowned and let that go unchallenged, asking, “What’s your work schedule, anyway?”
“I usually have Mondays and Tuesdays off.”
“So you work tomorrow, then you’re off for two days,” he said thoughtfully, feeling an unwelcome sense of urgency. Maybe it was paranoia. Maybe he shouldn’t be so afraid for her. But he was. He had barely spoken to Rudy Yorba, and Rudy had died. He and Jessy…
“Let’s go to your place,” he said.
They walked to his car, which he’d parked in a public lot by one of the huge shopping plazas. They were halfway back to her place when she turned to him excitedly. “I forgot to tell you! Tanner Green was back.”
“Right,” he murmured.
“Right?” she said, surprised. “I thought you’d be happy. Weren’t you hoping he’d come back?”
Dillon gave himself a mental head-slap as he realized that she didn’t know that Ringo had been watching Tanner Green watch. He really did need to tell her about Ringo.
“Sorry. I was sure he would come back. He’s trying to reach you.”
“Well, he was at the show. And then, when Sandra and I were at the bar, I saw him again, and Rudy Yorba was behind him, acting like maybe he didn’t want to be seen. I tried to talk to Tanner, and I’m pretty sure he heard me, but then we were interrupted.”
“Oh?” Dillon asked, his attention sharpening. This was news—very interesting news. “Who interrupted you?”
“It was just Darrell Frye. He’s a pit boss at the Sun. You’ve seen him. He was there the night I won all that money. He wants to get a job in entertainment management, so he talked to me a few weeks ago about going to work over there. Do you know him?”
He nodded. “He went off shift right before Green died. I’ve been wanting to speak with him, see if he remembered anything, saw anything. They told me he was on vacation, and I haven’t had a chance to track him down yet.”
“Well, when he came up and started talking to me, Tanner Green and Rudy Yorba both disappeared,” she told him.