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 31

We took Trevor’s laptop with us after stuffing the money back in the boots. Kyle wanted to take it, but I didn’t want to have that much cash on my person. I already had Rusty Abbott warning me about accidents, and with that kind of money on me, accidents could most definitely happen.

I was also convinced now that Rusty Abbott was the champagne shooter and somehow he was involved with Wesley Lambert.

It was the ink.

Granted, Jeff Coleman had said two other men had gotten the tattoos the same night, too. But I hadn’t seen anyone else with one yet. So it was easy to place blame.

I’d definitely have to ask Jeff for the other two names when I brought his car back.

I hated to admit it, but it rode well. Not as well as my Mustang Bullitt, but well enough so I wasn’t uncomfortable like I was in Bitsy’s car. I’d been folded up like a pretzel in hers, but even when I wasn’t, my head hit the ceiling.

“So you think someone put ricin on that cork and deliberately shot Trevor with it?” Kyle asked. He hadn’t taken off the dress, the wig, the boots, or the eyelashes, so I supposed I should address him as MissTique.

Who knew I’d be driving a drag queen around in a gold Pontiac? Just call me Huggy Bear.

I nodded. I remembered something else, too. How DeBurra had told me at the scene that no one could find the cork that hit Trevor. Maybe somehow the shooter had managed to get the cork before anyone else could touch it and get contaminated. That way it would seem like a coincidence when Trevor got sick.

“Do you think Charlotte had something to do with it?” Kyle asked.

I sighed. It all kept coming back to her. She was buzzing all over that stage after Trevor got hit. And she did know Wesley Lambert.

“So where do you think she might be?” Kyle interrupted my thoughts.

“I don’t know where to look now,” I admitted. “I really thought she’d be at Trevor’s.”

“Maybe she was there, then left.”

“But where’s Trevor’s makeup case? I’m more inclined to think she was never there in the first place.”

We mulled that over a few seconds as we finally reached Chez Tango. The pickup truck was gone, Kyle’s Honda CRV the only vehicle in the lot.

“Want to come in?” he asked.

“I could use a phone,” I said, thinking I should call Bitsy at the shop and see how angry Tim was. And if Frank DeBurra was ready to lock me up and throw away the key. I still hadn’t answered his questions, and now I was AWOL.

Kyle, or, rather, MissTique, sashayed across the parking lot to the back door at Chez Tango. He unlocked the dead bolt and held the door for me as I went inside.

It was so dark, I couldn’t even see my hand in front of me.

“Lights?” I asked, and as I spoke, the hallway lit up like a chandelier.

Kyle moved past me, and I followed him into the dressing room behind the stage. Racks of sequined and lamé dresses stood sentry next to the row of mirrored dressing tables. As opposed to the other night, the tables were neat and uncluttered, the floor swept and clean.

“Is there a show tonight?” I asked.

Kyle nodded, taking a couple of dresses off the rack. He held up a gold sequined halter dress in front of him, his eyebrows arched high. “What do you think? It was Trevor’s favorite. I think it’s fitting I wear it tonight. We’ll do a tribute to Britney.” He wiped his eye and smiled.

“Trevor would love it,” I said.

He sighed and pointed past the dressing tables. “The phone’s in the office.”

“Thanks.” I left him trying on a wig of blond tresses similar to Britney’s.

The office was dark, and I found a light switch. The dull yellow glow made me wonder when they had last changed the bulb. Or maybe it was one of those newfangled energy-saving bulbs. I’d gotten some for the house, and Tim kept complaining the light was too dim. I argued with him about it for the sake of energy conservation, but secretly I didn’t think they were as bright as the old ones, either.