Raising the Stakes

For starters, the lady wasn’t Dawn Lincoln Kitteridge anymore. She was Dawn Carter. She had been, ever since she’d spent a couple of months in Phoenix where she’d somehow managed to acquire ID in that name: driver’s license, social security card, a gasoline credit card. Everything you’d need to assume a new identity.

Whatever else Dawn was, she wasn’t stupid.

She’d stopped at half a dozen other places after Phoenix, worked at a waitress in a couple of diners and at a Denny’s before she’d landed in Vegas more than three years ago and got a job waiting tables at the Desert Song. She’d made the most of the opportunities at the hotel and casino, shifting from waitress to blackjack dealer, then to dealer in what Jack’s investigator called the high stakes section of the casino. Now she was off the casino floor, working at something called Special Services where she “offered private attention to VIPs and big spenders,” Jack’s man had written, and underlined it.

Gray’s mouth thinned. He wouldn’t read anything into that, not yet, but he had his suspicions of exactly what special services she provided.

The personal data on Dawn Kitteridge—Dawn Carter, he reminded himself—was skimpy. There was nothing about who she had lived with, who she had been involved with during the months she’d spent working her way to Nevada. If what Harman said was true, she’d probably left a trail of men behind her but that wasn’t his business. She lived alone in Vegas. She had one seemingly close friend, a former stripper named Cassie Berk who was now a cocktail waitress at the Desert Song. She also seemed to have, in the sterile language of the report, a “significant personal relationship” with the hotel’s manager, Keir O’Connell.

What was that supposed to mean? Was she sleeping with her boss? Maybe that was why the lady had gone from waitress to dealer so fast. At least, Gray figured it was fast. He didn’t know very much about the way casinos or hotels operated, but it was a possibility. Harman had said his wife had been unfaithful. Why should that change now? Gray rubbed his forehead. There was nothing new in the report, nothing to help him get a better grasp of the woman he was going to meet. Actually the most telling piece of information was the one Jack’s man had omitted.

Dawn was beautiful.

He looked at the picture Ballard had faxed him. The investigator had obviously taken it at a distance and the black-and-white fax transmission was of such poor quality that he could see the grainy dots that made up the image. Jack had tucked in a note explaining that he knew the picture wasn’t very good but that he figured it might be of some use since it was more recent than the photo Gray had bought from Harman.

Lousy quality or not, one thing was clear. Dawn was no longer a shapeless girl in a simple dress. She’d been replaced by a woman with one hell of a body. A clinging T-shirt and short—very short—denim cutoffs made the most of high breasts, a slender waist, almost boyish hips and legs that went on forever.

Was that why she’d left her husband? Why she’d abandoned her son? Because she’d grown up and wanted a different life? Because she preferred the excitement of a wide-open city to the isolation of a mountaintop?

“Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. The weather has cleared. The following flights are ready for immediate departure…”

Gray looked at the faxed photo again. The accompanying note said Jack’s man had taken it in the front yard of a house at 916 East Orchard Road, where Dawn rented an apart

ment. The picture showed her watering a shrub that looked as if what it really needed was a quick and merciful death. The photographer had caught her as if she were staring straight into the lens. Too bad the image was so blurry. Gray couldn’t read her eyes. Did they hold the same mystery as Nora’s? That blend of sorrow and defiance that seemed to say more than words ever could?

Jesus. His mouth twisted with disgust as he stuffed the picture and the rest of the report back into the folder. What was with him? This was no mystical experience. He was going to Vegas to talk to Dawn, though he couldn’t figure out what they’d talk about any more than he could see much reason for it. He already had a good idea of what she was like. What more could he learn? Something good, maybe? That she was kind to animals, or that she bought Girl Scout cookies?

“Flight 1740 to Las Vegas now boarding. All passengers, please report to…”

Gray tuned into the voice coming from the speakers. The storm was over, planes were back in business, and his was boarding. About time, he thought, and headed for the door.

* * *

He read a book part of the way to Vegas, a bestseller by a lawyer who obviously knew more about fiction than the law, closed it when he found himself yawning and slept until the flight attendant woke him to say they were about to land.

If only this were a real vacation, he thought as his plane touched down. But it wasn’t, and when he exited the terminal at McLarran Airport, he felt the heat and thought wryly that he’d be ready for a vacation in the Arctic by the time he finished with this mess.

Gray turned the AC in his rental car to high.

He didn’t like Vegas. He’d been to the neon oasis in the desert once before, to meet with a client. The flashing lights and phony glitter, the crowds hell-bent on a good time and the electronic noise of the ubiquitous slot machines had impressed him but not the way he suspected the city fathers would have liked. Everything he saw convinced him that the town was a monument to self-indulgence.

No wonder Dawn had come here to live.

He edged into the long line of traffic headed for the Strip and the Desert Song Hotel and Casino. He’d blocked out five days for this trip, figuring it might take him that long to check out Ben Lincoln’s granddaughter, but he hoped he could cut out sooner than that, fly straight to Austin, write some notes on the plane, hand them to Jonas and tell the old man what he could do with his blackmail and his philanthropy.

“Here’s the information you wanted,” he’d say, “and by the way, Uncle, I’ll send you a check to cover the money you spent on my education. Goodbye, good luck, and to hell with you.”

Just thinking about it made him feel better.

The only thing he still had to do was decide on a way to approach Dawn Carter. He’d been wrestling with that problem for days. The straightforward approach was out. He certainly wasn’t going to come at her with blunt questions any more than he’d walk up, introduce himself and say that he here to take a good, hard look at her and see if she was worth, oh, six figures, maybe even seven, to an old man who had too much money and a bad case of the guilts.

Years in the courtroom had taught him that misdirection was often the best way to uncover information, especially from a hostile witness. And yeah, this wasn’t a courtroom and Dawn wasn’t a witness, hostile or otherwise, but it wasn’t much of a stretch to figure she wouldn’t want to explain herself or her life to a stranger.

He could always fall back on the story he’d told Harman, that her grandfather had left her a keepsake. Just for a minute, he thought about finding the kind of junky gift shops this town was sure to have in abundance. He could buy a music box, tear off the inevitable made-in-a-third-world-country-you-never-heard-of sticker, and present her with it.

Traffic opened up ahead. Gray gunned the engine and the car shot forward. What a scene that would be. He, acting his part to the hilt, solemn and sincere as he handed her the box. She, eagerly anticipating something old, maybe priceless. Her reaction when she saw what she’d supposedly inherited…

He’d love to see it play out, but it would never happen. In a pinch, he could tell her the story but actually giving her a phony legacy would be pushing the boundaries. He was a lawyer, not a shyster. All right. He’d play it cool. Forget telling her anything. A man didn’t need an excuse to talk to a woman. A smile, a couple of minutes of idle chitchat, and he could parlay that into an excuse for a drink and some conversation. The unadorned truth was that he had an easy time with women. It was only relationships that were hell.