“Check the number,”I told Bitsy,who was one step ahead of me.
She shook her head. “Restricted,” she said, checking the readout. “What’s the point in caller ID if you can’t get the caller’s ID?”
My question exactly.
“Maybe it was Dan Franklin in that blue car and not Will Parker,” Bitsy said.
“But then why would he call us?”
“To make sure we got the message?”
Joel was scratching his head. “I have no idea what you two are talking about.”
That was fine with me. The fewer people who knew what we’d been up to, the better. But Bitsy didn’t seem to mind.
“Brett and I went over to the university to find out about this guy Dan Franklin and what his story is.”
Joel chuckled. “I can see you now: Cagney and Lacey.”
Bitsy ignored him. “And we met up with Colin Bixby and a lab tech who’s got a husband who beats her and happens to be a Dean Martin impersonator.”
“You know about Rosalie and the abuse?” I asked.
Bitsy rolled her eyes at me. “I remember her. Domestic-violence ribbons on her biceps. But I didn’t remember her name.”
As I hadn’t when I saw her at Jeff’s.
Joel was a few sentences behind. “Colin Bixby? As in the Colin Bixby?”
I sighed. “Yes, Joel, Colin Bixby.”
“Is he still hot?”
Before I could answer, Bitsy said, “He looks better than I remember. What do you think, Brett?”
I thought again about Colin Bixby and his clear green eyes and almost-punk look. Give him some guyliner and an eyebrow piercing, and there’s no telling what I’d do.
“He’s still okay,” I said, trying to sound casual.
Joel laughed. “What about this Dean Martin impersonator? Who rates better?”
“I don’t think rating them is fair,” I started, but Bitsy interrupted.
“The good doctor, hands down. I mean, at least he has a steady job, a good income. This Will Parker-Well, Brett, I’m sorry, but he’s another actor, and you’ve already had one of those, and see how that turned out.”
Bitsy didn’t have to remind me about Paul Fogarty, my onetime fiancé, an actor on Broadway in Manhattan, whose whole life was consumed by his work. So much so that he felt compelled to belittle my career. There had been enough time between then and now for me to do some self-analysis, and I’d realized Paul’s insecurities. But it wasn’t enough for me to try to contact him after fleeing across the country to shed his abuse.
However, Bitsy’s words brought out the contrarian in me.
“At least Will Parker doesn’t live down the hall from his mother,” I said haughtily.
“How do you know that? Have you Googled him? Have you been to his house? Maybe he lives with his mother.”
Bitsy’s words rang true. I had no clue about anything regarding Will Parker except his job and that he was sexy. And he had a blue car.
“Touché.”
“Hungry, anyone?” Joel looked hopefully from me to Bitsy.
Bitsy shook her head. “Ace has a client coming in any moment, and you two”-she looked in the appointment book-“have clients in about half an hour.”
Joel grinned at me. “Just enough time to pick up Johnny Rockets burgers.”
I was getting really tired of burgers.
Walking past the pricey high-end shops away from the canal, I stopped in front of one window, admiring a floppy straw hat I could totally see myself wearing if I ever went back to the Jersey Shore for a vacation. I’d never be caught dead in it here.
“Not you,” Joel said flatly, noticing the hat.
“Great beach hat,” I said.
“Not you,” he said again. “You’re not a hat person.”
“How do you know? Have you ever seen me in a hat?”
He studied my face and head for a second, then grinned. “Have you ever once worn a hat so I could find out?” he asked, grabbing my hand and pulling me into the store.
It was full of hats. Everywhere. And Joel started plopping them on my head one by one and announcing, “No, no, no,” for each.
I personally liked a small black one that perched on the back of my head, with a netting over my forehead and eyes, like they wore in the forties and fifties. For a second, Joel was starting to agree but then pulled it off my head and said, “You look like a gangster’s moll.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“We’re trying to destroy the Mob stereotype here in Vegas.”
“We?”
“Me and Steve Wynn.”
“Oh, and you’re best buddies, are you?”
He chuckled and put the black hat back on its mannequin head. “I’ve seen him.”
“From a distance.”
“In the men’s room.”
“No.” I knew what he was saying.
“Close enough to touch him,” he added.
We fell laughing out of the store’s doorway, back into the mall. It was nice to think of something other than dead people and rats and blue cars for a little while.
“I worked up an appetite,” Joel said.
“I can’t have another burger. I’ll start mooing,” I said. “I’m sorry, Joel, but I need Chinese or even a hot dog.”
The minute I said Chinese, he started salivating. “Noodles?” he said.
“Opposite direction,” I said.
We turned and almost ran back toward the Shoppes at the Palazzo, which were announced overhead on a sign at the end of the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes’s canal.
We were circling around the walkway, about parallel with the magnificent yet incredibly wasteful waterfall, when I thought I saw someone familiar up ahead.
I grabbed Joel’s arm and yanked him over to the edge of the walkway so I’d have a better view of the short elderly woman with a large cheetah-print tote bag hung over her shoulder. Her white hair was pulled up into something that looked like diamonds. A tiara, maybe. I was too far away to see exactly what it was.
But I wasn’t too far away to see the tattoos.
“That looks like Sylvia Coleman,” Joel said loudly.
The woman turned. And waved.
It was Sylvia Coleman.