на главную | войти | регистрация | DMCA | контакты | справка | donate |      

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
А Б В Г Д Е Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Э Ю Я


моя полка | жанры | рекомендуем | рейтинг книг | рейтинг авторов | впечатления | новое | форум | сборники | читалки | авторам | добавить



Chapter 30

My mouth hung open as I stared. “How much?” I managed to stammer.

Kyle chuckled. “This isn’t all of it. There’s money stashed in all the boots, and that girl loves her boots.”

I followed him into the bedroom, which I’d dismissed before as just another room where a hurricane had blown through. Now, though, I watched as Kyle pulled boot after boot out from under the bed, sticking his hand inside each one and taking out wads of bills, dumping them on top of the unmade bed.

I peered around the closet door. “Any in here?”

“He seems to have kept all the boots under the bed, for some reason.”

The boots were all thigh high and patent leather, and in all the colors of the rainbow. There were ten pairs, when all was said and done.

“Didn’t Trevor believe in banks?” I asked.

“These might be tips,” Kyle said, his tone matter-of-fact. “This is the cash we don’t want Uncle Sam to know about.”

“What was he doing to get tips like this?” I asked, noting that most of the bills were either hundreds or fifties. I started counting.

Kyle was counting on the other side of the bed. We were silent for a while as we kept the numbers in our heads. Finally, Kyle said, “I’ve got twenty grand.”

Our eyes met. “I’ve got thirty grand.”

Kyle blew a low whistle. “This ain’t tip money,” he said. “No one’s that good.”

“I thought Trevor didn’t have any money. That’s why he kept pawning that brooch.”

“If you listened to him, he never had any money.” Kyle surveyed the bills, which we’d arranged neatly in piles. “What a con.”

“Maybe it’s not his,” I said softly.

“It’s in his boots,” Kyle said.

He had a point. But something was nagging at me. “It seems like a coincidence that Wesley Lambert was poking around Chez Tango the other night. Now Trevor’s dead, and Lambert is dead. Maybe it’s not so much a coincidence.”

We mulled that a few minutes.

“I wish I had my laptop,” I said. “I really want to go online and look up ricin.”

“So use Trevor’s,” Kyle said. “It’s in the living room.”

How he could spot things in this place was beyond me, but he disappeared and came back toting a laptop that was maybe a couple years old.

I didn’t want to sit on the bed-who knew what was under those covers?-so I took the laptop out onto the balcony and set it on the small table. I flipped up the top and turned it on, keeping my fingers crossed that there was wireless.

Trevor didn’t have it, but someone by the name of Priestly didn’t have a secure account. Fortunately, Priestly wasn’t online at the moment, so I accessed the account with no problem. I might not run yellow lights, but I have no scruples when it comes to stealing Internet connections.

Priestly would think it was Trevor’s ghost anyway.

I Googled ricin and found a slew of news stories, a few from right here in Vegas. Some guy making ricin in a hotel room a couple years back. He died, too. The stories gave the symptoms, just like Dr. Bixby had related them to me.

I took a second to try to be aware of how I was feeling. I didn’t feel nauseated, and I was breathing just fine.

A link caught my eye. Some guy in London in the seventies. Stabbed with the end of an umbrella, which was fitted with a small pellet of ricin. The guy died after exhibiting flulike symptoms.

A thought started to form. I didn’t much like it, but it would explain things.

Kyle was staring at me. “What?” he asked. “What did you find?” He’d found time to apply about three layers of fake eyelashes, and he batted them at me.

“I think Trevor was poisoned,” I said slowly.

He snorted. “How? At my club?”

I nodded. “The champagne cork. I think it was laced with ricin.”



Chapter 29 | Pretty In Ink | Chapter 31