Colleen Collins - Sleepless in Las Vegas

After gathering equipment, they’d drenched his office in gasoline. Considering how rapidly the fire spread through that part of the house, they must have also splashed gasoline down the hall and into the bedroom, too. Then torched the place.

With the dog still inside.

His fingers dug into the steering wheel. That son of a bitch would pay dearly for what he did tonight. And Drake would do it personally, not hand over the meting of justice to some arson investigator.

Sure, he could have leaked Yuri’s name to Tony Cordova, who would have tracked the bastard down tonight for an interview. The Russian would have had an alibi, of course, along with a string of witnesses who’d back up his story. Plus, with Drake siccing government dogs on him, Yuri would go into hiding, and Drake’s personal investigation would grind to a halt. Any hopes of digging for more dirt, or ever getting back the ring, would be crushed.

Then there was Brax.

His brother felt above the law, but arson? He wasn’t that dirty. But if Drake offered up Yuri to arson investigators, trails could lead to his brother. And if they didn’t, Yuri would ensure sure they did.

A form materialized in Drake’s mind. That woman. Who Dat. Had she been a player in this arson? Paid to keep Drake busy, give Yuri and his goons time to do their job? His gut said yes. Just like the Mississippi River that ran through her city of New Orleans, she was twisting, swift and treacherous.

She had never been to Dino’s, a dive bar in a lousy neighborhood, yet she showed up tonight, out of the blue. Made a straight line for him, too, and even after he’d shunned her, she didn’t budge. Stayed perched on that stool like some kind of tufted bird of prey, waiting for an opportunity to sink in her talons.

He’d walked out of that bar knowing she was trouble, but had given in to the night, the heat.

He clenched his teeth. And for those few hot, heady minutes, his home had been destroyed. Hearsay nearly killed.

Just as Yuri would pay for what he had done tonight, so would she.

By morning, he would know her name, age, address, where she hung out, where she worked. And he would pay her a visit.

The kind of visit a person remembered for the rest of her life.

* * *

AT TEN-FORTY, Val walked through the door of her second cousins’ Char and Del Jackson’s home, carrying a paper bag from Aloha Kitchen.

Their home was a hodgepodge of secondhand furniture, along with some everyday objects Char, with Del’s handyman help, had remade into furnishings. Stacked crates had become a bookcase in the living room, and a polished wooden wire spool now served as a small table on the patio. Val’s favorite was an old trunk they had recycled into a wine rack. “It’s not about what God took away,” Char liked to say, “but what we do with what’s left.”

To Val, that said everything about their being survivors of Katrina. Char and Del had visited her and Nanny, Del’s cousin, several times when Val was a child, but they had lost touch over the years. Right before Katrina, they had moved to Gulfport, Mississippi, an area also ravaged during the storm, during which they’d lost their home along with Del’s job as a truck driver.

Six years and a relocation later, they owned the Gumbo Stop, which they’d grown from a concession trailer to a store that offered creole cuisine in boil-in-a-bag portions. After locating Val, they’d asked her to come to Las Vegas to live with them and their daughter, twenty-one-year-old Jasmyn.

Who was curled up on the couch in her pink capri pajamas, patterned with the word Paris in a flowery script along with miniature Eiffel Towers. She called them her Je rêve—French for “I dream”—jammies because her overriding desire was to live in Paris. Her parents accepted their daughter’s dream to live in the romantic city, but weren’t so thrilled about her wanting to work there as a burlesque dancer.

Jasmyn had years of training as a dancer. At ten she’d won a regional tap competition, followed by several summers working in the chorus for regional musicals. The past few years, she had been teaching tap and ballet to kids at the Dance-a-Rama Studio.

As a counteroffer to the burlesque-dancer-in-Paris dream, Char and Del offered Jasmyn full tuition to Le Cordon Bleu, which they called “a virtual Parisian experience,” which just happened to have a college in Las Vegas. Instead of struggling as a dancer, they argued, a prestigious culinary arts degree opened doors to a lifetime career as a chef.

Jasmyn’s interest in the idea was about as peaked as a collapsed soufflé.

“Hey, baby,” Jasmyn called out in her soft, lazy drawl. She twittered her fingers in greeting, her eyes glued to the black-and-white movie on the TV screen.

“Weren’t you watching that show last night?”

“I bought the DVD because this movie, Double Indemnity, defined film noir. Those old-time movie stars Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck are hawt, cuz.”

Sometimes they called each other cuz, although in the two years since Val had moved in here, she’d come to feel more like a sister to Jasmyn. Or what she assumed a sister would be like. They sometimes argued, sometimes irritated each other, but they were also each other’s sounding board and confidante.

Jasmyn played with a curl of her long raven hair. “Cuz, I’m thinkin’ of dyeing my hair platinum, the brassy but trashy color of Barbara Stanwyck’s pageboy wig.”

Val glanced at the screen. “Looks better than my brassy but trashy wig.”

Jasmyn’s gaze landed on Val’s hair, where it paused for a moment before darting down Val’s outfit, then quickly up. “Whoa, sugar, laissez les bons temps rouler!”

It was French for “let the good times roll,” a popular saying heard all the time in New Orleans.

“Actually, this wasn’t worn for fun.” She set the bag on the coffee table. “I worked my first investigation tonight.”

“Investigation?” Jasmyn punched a button on the remote. The room instantly grew quiet, the movie frozen on an image of Fred MacMurray looking at Barbara Stanwyck’s leg. “Isn’t that outfit the one you wore at that casino where you dealt blackjack and lip-synched Christina Aguilera’s songs?”

Val plopped down on the couch. “Has nothing to do with her, though. I dressed like this to...” Her heart and mind felt all jumbled up with everything that had happened tonight. She wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. “Hungry? I picked up some to-go from Aloha Kitchen.”

After shooting Val a knowing look, Jasmyn gestured at the bag. “I love them funny little rolls. You get some of them?”

“Lumpia Shanghai. Got extra just for you.” She handed her a few of the mini egg rolls stuffed with ground pork, carrots and onions on a napkin.

They ate in silence for a while. The air conditioner chugged quietly in the background. On the TV screen, Fred continued to stare at Barbara’s ankle. The way he looked at her—startled and hungry—reminded Val of the look on Drake’s face when she showed him the fleur-de-lis on her heels.

Like she cared. It was over. Dead. Gone.

She gestured to the screen with an egg roll. “What’s Fred looking at?”

“Her anklet. It’s a big deal in the movie.”

Chewing, Val made a keep-going gesture.

“The anklet is a symbol that represents sexual fascination.” Jasmyn grinned. “Read that in some film critic’s review on the internet. In my own words, that little gold anklet sends a signal as big and bright as a lighthouse beacon. It flashes ‘I’m a bad girl looking for trouble.’ Women who wore them were thought to be loose.”

Val wiped her fingers on a napkin. “This movie was made when?”

“Nineteen forty-four.”

“You just turned twenty-one, what, three months ago? And you know all about anklets worn nearly seventy years ago?”