Memories flooded back to her. Jennifer had never gone to a prom or homecoming. Hell, she’d never gone to anything! She’d never been around a school long enough to be asked. And if she had been asked, chances were she’d never be able to float the whole dress issue. But she’d known her fair share of guys in high school, and she knew what they were capable of. In fact, all the heartache surrounding these events was way more crystal clear to Jennifer than any of the glitter and fun of it.
“Come on, Hedda,” she said to the door. She leaned her ear against it. Just barely, muffled in there, was sniffling.
Jennifer went to the cash register and got the key to the bathroom. She unlocked the door and let herself in. “Hey!” Hedda protested from behind the fluffy white toilet tissue that soaked up her tears.
“Look, Hedda, I spent my entire high school career crying by myself in bathrooms. I’m not going to let you start doing it. It’s a terrible habit to get into. Now, what happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Did Max change his mind about taking you?”
“No. I just can’t go is all.”
“Since when?”
She sighed heavily and impatiently, but the tears rolled down her cheeks despite her attempt to appear annoyed. “Since my mom needed the money for the car insurance and we had to make some choices. Okay?” And she blew her nose heartily.
This was also something with which Jennifer had a great deal of experience. Single mom, a kid or two, no money…The specifics didn’t matter—they just didn’t have much. They lived paycheck to paycheck with very little left over. And Sylvia had to have her evenings out now and then….
“Oh, is that all?” Jennifer heard herself ask.
That brought a stunned look from behind the tissue. “Is that all?”
“So we’re just talking about a dress?”
“Just a dress,” Hedda said with sarcasm. “My mom talked about looking around for a used one. My luck, it would probably end up being one of the mean girls’ hand-me-downs. Wouldn’t that be cool.”
Jennifer reached out to her, using her thumb to wipe away a tear. “That might be easier to work around than you think. I might be able to come up with something.”
“You? You’re even less prom-appropriate than I am! I mean, no offense.”
She pursed her lips together and huffed. “While this is true, I also have a fairy godmother right next door. And a couple of saved-up bucks.”
“Swell, but I doubt I could ever repay you.”
“That’s the beauty of it—you wouldn’t necessarily have to. We could come up with a plan—you could help me out with taking care of Alice or something. The details aren’t important—you know?” She broke into a wide grin. “Friends are there for each other.”
“I don’t know,” Hedda said, blowing her nose a final time. “It seems like you’re always there for me, but there isn’t much I can do for you.”
“We’ll see about that. Are you free tonight after work?”
“Yes and no. I have to baby-sit at six so my mom can go to work.”
“Oh, not to worry—we can take care of little brother.” She winked at Hedda. “Don’t give up yet. We’ll get this handled.”
Hedda just looked at Jennifer, unbelieving. “Sure,” she said.
The minute Alex got to work, before the briefing even started, he told his partner everything Jennifer had told him, bringing her up to speed.
“We’re going to be forced to talk to Dobbs,” Paula said to Alex. “There’s no getting around it.”
Alex knew it. In his efforts to locate Barbara Noble he was coming up empty. There was no indication she was dead, but no indication she was alive, either. In trying to trace her movements, he’d discovered she had gone from one vacation home to another, from a spa to a cruise—all out of the country. A couple of phone calls revealed people who claimed to have seen her—but what if that wasn’t really her? Anyone could be a stand-in.
“I just hate to draw Dobbs’s attention back to Jennifer. I’d like to know what he wants from her first.”
“We have to call him before he calls us,” she said.
“You do it,” Alex said. “At least make it look like it’s a police thing, not a neighborhood thing or a romance thing.”
Paula peered at him. “So—it is a romance thing?”
“Well, I’m trying! There have been one or two little things clogging up the works! Like a possible murder.”
Paula put the business card from Dobbs on her knee and dialed her cell phone. “You have to admit, if that’s what happened, she has good reason to be scared.” She listened for a second. “Yeah, Dobbs, this is Detective Aiken from Las Vegas Metro. I want to run something by you, might be information you need. We have a C.I. who says he has it on good authority that Nick Noble killed his wife, Barbara.” She listened for a moment. “Well, how we got it was the C.I. claims it happened here in Vegas, at the hotel where he was staying. It’s pretty murky since we can’t get any confirmation from the hotel that the wife was in town, and we haven’t been able to confirm our efforts to locate her.” Again, she listened. “Well, I was told by the concierge of a spa in Costa Rica that she had been there, but she hadn’t been to that spa before, so they weren’t familiar with her. Coulda been anyone, huh? Huh? Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah? No, sorry—I can’t give that up. But I don’t think this has anything to do with Noble—our C.I. was trying to trade us anything under the sun for a walk and I just thought I’d give you a call. Better to be safe than sorry, huh?”
She clicked off and looked at Alex. “Barbara Noble is not dead.”
That seemed to knock him back in his chair. He waited for more.
“I doubt Dobbs believes we have a confidential informant, but since he knows we know they’re watching Noble, he was able to verify that Barbara Noble is alive and kicking. But here’s the thing that’s a little strange—he didn’t ask me for any details of the alleged ‘death.’ Why do you suppose that is?”
“Because he knows all about it. Because he knows everyone who was there.”
“You’re going to have to tell Jennifer. And between the two of you, see if you can figure out why she’d be a threat to Noble, since we know she didn’t witness a crime. More important, let’s see if we can figure out what the FBI wants.”
Jennifer would have enlisted the assistance of Rose on the shopping trip in any case, but the issue of needing a car clinched the matter. Besides, the only shops Jennifer knew about were on the strip—Chanel, Armani, Brighten—and she couldn’t help quite that much, even if she had once frequented those shops. Jennifer needed some direction for shopping for prom dresses she could afford. And Rose had a black belt in shopping.
“Do you think she’s going to let you buy her a prom dress?” Rose asked.
“I think she’ll show sufficient resistance,” Jennifer said. “She’s really proud. So, worst-case scenario, we do a little shopping, a little trying on, see what’s good, and then go back for the dress later.”
“Ah,” Rose said. “Then we knock her over the head on prom night and pour her into it?”
“Whatever it takes,” she said.
“This is a strange thing you’re doing,” Rose pointed out, unable to resist letting her eyes rove over Jennifer’s attire.
“I know. I hate proms. What they do to girls is offensive to me. Everybody in that age group gets all overwrought at this time of year, panicked at the thought of going or not going. It isn’t really all that important, is it? Which is why, at the age of thirty, I am still thinking about the effect that proms had on me. And why I don’t want Hedda, who has a chance to put on a pretty dress and go, to miss it over a car insurance payment.”
Rose smiled at this. “You don’t want her to regret missing it at thirty.”
“Let’s just try to make this sort of fun. Okay?”
Jennifer phoned Alex at work to tell him what she was doing and to ask if he’d have time to drop by later. He promised to be waiting at her ho
use when she finished the shopping trip. Then she and Rose gathered up Hedda and her little brother, Joey, and headed down the hill to the Henderson Mall. At seven years old, Joey wasn’t very excited about shopping, but it turned out that he was very easily bribed with a promise of ice cream at the end of the evening.
It was only a twenty-minute drive, but it was twenty long minutes as Hedda kept any trace of enthusiasm from her expression. She sat quiet and serious in the back seat next to her brother, her arms crossed over her chest, her eyes downcast. “Did you bring any of the pictures of your favorites along?” Jennifer asked her. She shook her head. “Do you have anything in mind?” she tried. Again, Hedda shook her head. “Are you going to speak tonight, or just shake your head?” Hedda raised her eyes and shrugged.
As they were entering the mall, Hedda dragging behind, Jennifer whispered to Rose, “This is more what you’d expect from a girl in Hedda’s circumstance. Ornery. Surly.”
“She usually copes so well.”
“Too well, I suddenly realize,” Jennifer said.
The mood prevailed even as Jennifer and Rose gathered up dresses for Hedda to try on. Hedda went through the motions of fitting and rejecting them one at a time. Jennifer thought it was probably her pride—not wanting to take charity from anyone. Or possibly she feared her mother wouldn’t allow it in the end. And it started to look as though Hedda could get out of this arrangement by failing to find a suitable dress.
But then it happened, as it so frequently did—she was captivated and turned upside down by a slim pink sheath with feather straps. The moment Hedda slipped into it, pulling the straps up over her shoulders, she began to glow.
“Oh, my,” Rose said.
The dress was narrowly fitted and sank into a low V-shaped neckline with a very low back, also in a V, all lined in the same soft pink feathers.
“It reminds me of my boa,” Rose said.
Hedda’s tattoo peeked out from her lower back, just above the dress, and she smiled as she looked over her shoulder to spy it. There was a slit in the skirt on the left side, baring a shapely leg to the thigh. With just the right pair of high-heeled sandals, she’d be the dancing queen.
The color, with her creamy skin and coal-black hair, was stunning. Her burgundy highlights, which Jennifer sincerely hoped she would get rid of for the prom, even complemented the dress. And the feather straps were so unique—the dress didn’t even need jewelry. But Jennifer was already thinking about a small necklace and maybe a thin, sparkling bracelet.
Finding the dress was almost as painful for Hedda as it was exciting. Tears gathered in her eyes and Rose sprang at her with a tissue. “Don’t!” the older woman commanded. “It might water-spot!”
“I can’t do this,” Hedda said. “I just can’t.”
“Don’t be so silly!” Rose said. “Can’t you see it’s more fun for us than for you?”
“It is, Hedda!” Jennifer said.
“My mom probably won’t let this happen,” she said with a giant sniff. “She’s all pissed off about it, anyway. She thinks it is so selfish of me to want to do this. I didn’t even have the guts to tell her about this shopping trip. I said we were going to watch a movie at your…I mean Louise’s house.”
Joey was busy making faces at himself in the floor-length mirror. “Won’t someone tell?” Jennifer asked Hedda, glancing at Joey.
“Maybe. Maybe not. It’s not like they talk.”
“Hmm, I feel some ice cream coming on while you two finish up business,” Rose said. “I’ll meet you down at Stone Cold. Take your time.”
Jennifer didn’t even think about the strange fact that Rose had left the shopping to her, someone she didn’t think had an ounce of taste. Rose took Joey away.
“Why wouldn’t your mom let you go?”
“Because she’s mad about everything. She’s jealous and pissed off all the time. And she hates me.”
“Hedda, mothers don’t hate their daughters. It just isn’t—”
“Believe me—if I weren’t the baby-sitter, I don’t think she’d keep me around.”
Jennifer stroked her upper arm. “Sweetheart, your mom is probably just in a constant bad mood because she has to work so hard all the time. It’s not your fault, after all.”
“Yeah, that’s what you think,” she said, slipping the dress down over her shoulders and reaching for her baggy T-shirt.
Jennifer remembered seeing Hedda hand over her earnings to her mom and never even get a thank you, much less a hug. She remembered the woman’s errant fist all too well. And then there was that issue about drinking a little too much and bringing home “company.”
“Well, I’m sure you’re wrong,” she said in spite of all that. “But no matter what’s going on with your mom, we can work around it—this isn’t about her. This is about you. But one thing at a time. Let’s get the dress, find some shoes, and then we’ll work out the details.”
“It might be a waste of money,” Hedda said.
“Look, if it doesn’t work out, we can always return the dress. But I like to think positive.”
“I’d like to, too,” she said. “But I have more experience in this than you do.”
“I know, kiddo.” Jennifer looked over Hedda’s shoulder and met her eyes in the mirror. “When I was your age, I didn’t trust my crazy mom a bit,” she said, knowing Hedda couldn’t possibly know how wacked out her life was. “It’s hard, being a teenager. I know you don’t believe this now, but even the luckiest teenagers feel like they’re underprivileged. Sometimes, just feeling like the world is against you all the time, you just don’t take advantage of the opportunities that actually do come along. I know I didn’t. I just accepted the idea that I was alone and no one could help me. Hedda, this is an opportunity. You’re not as alone as you think. It’s a pretty dress. We can keep it at Louise’s house. If you think you need to, you can get dressed for the evening there.”
“Behind her back?” she asked.
She shrugged. “I hate lying. But I hate for you to miss your only chance to go to the prom even more.”
“Isn’t that kind of devious?” Hedda asked.
“It is. I’m a very bad influence.” Plus, it made her very angry to think that Sylvia would actually deny Hedda something so special, especially if it didn’t put her out at all.
“I don’t know…”
“Decide later, then. Right now—we need some shoes.”
Later, when they were walking with their packages to the ice cream shop, Hedda asked, “What opportunities would you have taken advantage of?”
She thought for a minute. “I would have tried to get an education. I had a couple of teachers tell me I was smart enough to go to college and I didn’t believe them. When believing them was tempting, I thought I’d never, in a million years, be able to afford it.”
“Could you have afforded it?”
“No,” she said with a smile. “I should have let someone help me.”
After Hedda and Joey were dropped off at home, Jennifer carried the dress and shoes back to Louise’s house. There were some lights on; her heart picked up a little speed as she realized Alex would be waiting for her.
“Hey!” she said when she entered, and saw that he had brought Alice home from the veterinary hospital. She draped the dress over a handy dining room chair, left the shoes on the table and went immediately to Alice. The Lab stood and wagged, but only took a couple of delicate steps in Jennifer’s direction, so Jennifer knelt on the floor in front of her. “Easy does it, girlfriend,” she told the dog. “Don’t want to overdo it.” To Alex she said, “How’s she doing?”
“She’s making great progress. Sam thought she’d do better here with you than in the kennel. Don’t get her excited….”
“Like I could,” she laughed.
“We went outside for a little while.” He nodded in the direction of the dress. “I guess that means you had success.”
“She looks absolutely beautiful.”
For a m
oment neither of them spoke, and very slowly Jennifer became aware that something hung in the air between them. Something perhaps ominous.
“I have some good news and some bad news,” Alex finally said.
Twelve
“What could the FBI possibly want with me?” she asked, a sense of panic dropping into her gut.
“They won’t say. You’re not in any trouble, I know that. It was when I tried to look into Nick Noble’s background that the red flag went up and an agent contacted me wanting to know what I was looking for. They do that—flag the computer file to see if any other police agencies are interested in their suspect. It might give them more evidence to bring him in. Noble wouldn’t know that—unless he has an informant in the bureau.” He shrugged. “I told the agent I’d seen the missing-person flyers in my neighborhood and wanted to check it out.”
“But that was a while ago…” she said.
“Yeah, it was. But I had to go back to the fed to find out about Barbara. Paula made the actual call. She told the agent we had a confidential informant who claimed Mrs. Noble had been murdered by Mr. Noble at the MGM Grand. The fed said he could guarantee that didn’t happen. They’ve been watching Noble for a long time—they know his wife.”
“Then what did I hear? What did I see? She was dead, Alex. I just know it.”
“How long were you gone from the room?”
“A couple of hours. Maybe a little more. But—”
“Come here,” he said, patting the sofa beside him. She went to him and he held her hands as he said, “A lot could have happened in that time,” he told her. “Barbara could have been drunk. Passed out.”
“But I saw blood.”
He shrugged. “A little? A lot? Splatters? The kind of splatters that could come from a bloody nose caused by a slap?”
She turned that over in her mind. “Nick had an ice pack on his face. Maybe it was his blood. But she was lying facedown and it looked to me like the back of her head was all wet and kind of matted.”
“If she hit him in the face hard enough to hurt him and draw blood, it is possible one of his assistants could have hit her in the head with something like a bottle or a vase…? Something that contained water? Is it possible that in two hours of fighting with her husband she started drinking heavily and passed out? And maybe someone tried to revive her by throwing water on her? Or how about this—the wetting of the hair was something that happened in the argument—he threw a drink at her. Two hours later she was asleep, thanks to some booze, some Xanax?”