“So how did you end up in Lambert’s condo?”

Charlotte took a deep breath. “I had a message on my voice mail from him asking me to come. He said he knew something about Trevor and that champagne cork. But he was dead when I got there. I couldn’t risk calling the cops and having DeBurra find me there.”

“Why has DeBurra been after you? Why did he show up at the pawnshop?” I asked.

“He said he knew I was holding something back and if I didn’t tell him, he’d have me arrested for stealing that brooch. He’s a cop. Who’d believe me?” Her eyes filled with tears.

“Why would you agree to do this at all?” I asked Charlotte. “Work for DeBurra, I mean?”

A band of flush moved up Charlotte’s neck and into her face.

“What did DeBurra have on you?” I asked, suspicious.

She shrugged, but her face got redder.

“Charlotte, it’s okay,” I said, although I was remembering Tim’s advice about background checks on all employees.

When she spoke, her voice was so low, I had to lean forward to hear her.

“I got caught tattooing a fifteen-year-old girl. She was the sister of a friend. Her parents weren’t supposed to come home that early. They called the police.”

I took a deep breath. I totally was going to be changing my hiring policies.

I wanted to be able to tell her it was all right, but I couldn’t. Because it wasn’t.

She could tell. Tears sprang into her eyes, and she blinked a few times. “I’m fired, aren’t I?”

I nodded without thinking.

She jumped out of her chair and swung the door open, dashing out. I took a deep breath as I got up. I kept forgetting that she was ten years younger than me, that I might have reacted the exact same way if Mickey had threatened to fire me when I was just a trainee.

The front glass door was already closing when I emerged, and I saw a flash of her as she ran, Bitsy and Joel staring.

“What happened?” I heard Joel ask. I shook my head and sped past him after Charlotte.

She was fast. She was running along the canal, dodging shoppers and tourists. I had about five inches on her, but I’d had a slow start and wasn’t gaining much. I kept my eye on her, bumping into a few people because I wasn’t watching where I was going, and when I finally thought I’d catch up, someone stepped out from around a turn up ahead that made me stop short and caused my heart to beat even faster, but not for the right reason.

Colin Bixby.

He took two steps toward Charlotte, who was careening toward him.

She grabbed onto the top of the small railing that ran along the length of the canal and stopped short. She looked first at Bixby, then back at me. An expression of terror crossed her face, and before I had a chance to even shout out her name, she catapulted over the railing and splashed into the water.

A gondola sailed under the footbridge at just that moment and slammed into her.

I held my breath, considering my options. Should I jump in after her? I did have my lifesaving certificate from when I was fourteen.

But Bixby was seconds ahead of me. He was already in the water. Just as I was about to pull myself up over the railing to join him, a hand clamped down on my shoulder.

“Don’t even think about it.”

Chapter 57

As I stared into Frank DeBurra’s eyes, which were black with hate, something popped into my head that was sort of a non sequitur, considering.

How had he known there should’ve been two bodies inside Chez Tango after the explosion?

No one had told him this. I knew only because “Kyle” had called me. Bixby knew, but he had been somewhere in traffic, supposedly. Jeff Coleman and Tim knew because I’d told them.

No one had gotten around to telling DeBurra, yet even before he’d spoken to any of us, he was telling the firemen to look for two bodies. A man and a woman, he’d said.

Why hadn’t this occurred to me before? When I might have been in a better position to actually raise that red flag with Tim. Because at this moment, the prospects of talking to my brother seemed a bit bleak.

A crowd had formed around the canal, everyone angling to see the girl who’d jumped in and gotten hit by the gondola. The gondolier was in the water now, too; Bixby was cradling Charlotte’s head in his arms and shouting that someone should call 911.

No one was paying attention to me, or the fact that I was being herded out of the mall by a scruffy cop who was taking advantage of the situation. He had my right arm twisted up behind my back, and to hide that, he was walking so close we might be mistaken for lovers.

So didn’t want to go there.

Blood still caked DeBurra’s nose where my brother had hit him, and one of his eyes was swollen shut. “You shouldn’t run from the cops, Miss Kavanaugh.” His voice was low and menacing, his breath hot against my neck.

My throat and mouth were so dry, I could barely swallow. I licked my lips, but it was like licking the desert sand.

“Where are you taking me?” I managed to croak.

“Where we won’t be bothered.”

“Why?”

“You and I have some things to settle.”

“Like what?”

He snorted, his one good eye shifting back and forth as he pushed me forward toward the exit.

So he was no Chatty Kathy. Normally that would’ve suited me just fine, but I didn’t like it that he was taking me to an undisclosed location.

We’d reached the end of the canal and entered the circular area that was the entrance to the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes. The ceiling was painted with elaborate Renaissance frescoes, gold accenting everything. In a way, I preferred this area to the one where the ceiling was painted as if we were supposed to be outside. The illusion was less theme park-like.

The vestibule was remarkably free of people, most likely because they’d heard the splash and the screams and had gone to see what the fuss was all about. Maybe they thought it was another one of those little plays or dances performed periodically for entertainment.

My hand, the one twisted around, had fallen asleep. I tried to wiggle my fingers to wake it up, but he only gripped harder, like a vise on my wrist.

His other hand, the one not holding on to me, swung jauntily by his side.

He probably didn’t expect me to try to wrench free, so that’s exactly what I did.

I twirled around and yanked my arm down, pulling it from his grasp. I was free. Who knew those self-defense classes in high school would pay off someday?

But that’s when I noticed that his sleeve had gotten pushed halfway up to his elbow. I hesitated.

He had ink.

Familiar-looking ink.

It was the bottom half of a queen-of-hearts playing card.

He saw me staring at it, and an ugly smirk tugged at his lips.

“Do you think you could’ve done better?” he asked, sliding the sleeve up farther so I could see the whole thing, as if we were just comparing tattoos like at Chez Tango the first night I met him.

I cleared my throat, trying to force the saliva into my mouth so I could speak. “It’s flash,” I said flatly.

“Yeah, it’s flash,” DeBurra said. “That’s all Jeff Coleman does, isn’t it?”

“Jeff did that?”

“His mother started it, but she’s a whack job. I asked him to finish it after he finished up with Rusty’s. It was a full house that night.”

“The Queen of Hearts Ball,” I whispered, unable to tear my eyes away from the ink. It wasn’t Lester Fine after all. It was Frank DeBurra. “You were in drag.”

He coughed. “For the job,” he said.

But the band of flush that crawled up his neck said that could be a cover.

“Why did you say your name was Colin Bixby? I mean, did you know him?”

“Lambert and Abbott did. He was at that ball. I met him.”

Of all the pictures I’d seen of the Queen of Hearts Ball, I hadn’t seen one of Bixby. I hadn’t even considered that he might have been there. “And you just decided to use his name that night?”