She looked as if she might be offended even with my nicer version, but then she said, “Hell, I don’t know. Probably. If anyone could get away with it, he could. But then again, that girl was wild. For that matter, so was he a little back then. More so than now, anyway. They partied a lot. Accidents happen easier when you’re not being responsible, if you know what I mean. I suppose I wouldn’t be surprised if I found out he did or he didn’t. Though he never did really grieve for her. Not around here, anyway.”
Lucy waved her hand, snapping out of her memories. “But whatever happened, the resort doesn’t need all the talk that could be stirred up with the picture. Would you mind handing that frame to me? I’ll put another picture in its place. I’ve got some other snapshots somewhere around here from that night.”
I took the frame off the wall and gave it to her as I sat back on my stool. “You’ve been here awhile, then.” As long as Lucy was feeling chatty, I had other questions I wanted to ask. “Did you ever meet his other women? The one he dated last summer, for example? Amber Pries?”
“Ms. Pries? She came in here a few times.” The bartender peeled the notches back from around the back mat of the frame as she spoke. “I never talked to her much personally except to take her drink order. She was another wild one. Liked to drink. I’m sure she liked doing other things as well. Especially liked to flirt with the boys, even when she was here with Mr. Sallis.”
“I bet he didn’t like that.” It was typical Amber. The men she’d usually paired up with generally liked how social she was. Enjoyed that she was so willing to be shared.
But I didn’t need to be told how Reeve felt about it and I hated the part of me that jotted that reason down as a possible motive.
“No. He didn’t like it at all. They’d fight about it sometimes in here. But he was real fond of that one so I think he would have put up with anything from her. When he came back last fall without her, he definitely seemed more somber. I wouldn’t be surprised if the girl messed around in front of him one too many times, and he finally broke it off.”
Or worse.
No, I couldn’t think that. Even if it did give Reeve reason, it didn’t mean he’d… hurt her. Did it?
“That’s quite interesting,” I said when Lucy seemed to be looking for an acknowledgment of her statement.
She gawked at me for a second. “You know, I just figured out who you remind me of. Your voice. You sound just like that computer in that sitcom, NextGen.”
For a brief moment I considered admitting the truth, considered delivering the “user error” line I knew she was wanting, but ended up delivering my usual response – a smile and, “I get that a lot.” Even without my current dark thoughts, I didn’t love dealing with fans.
Her expression fell ever so slightly. “Fun to be a celebrity sound-alike though. Such a great show.” Her eye caught on a customer flagging her down at the bar. “Excuse me a minute.” She set down the photo, now out of the frame, and left to attend to the patron.
I took a sip of my wine and picked up the picture absentmindedly. It had been bigger than the matte. Now, unframed, I saw the whole picture. And in the part outside the three-inch square, the part that had been hidden when it was on the wall, was another familiar face.
My pulse quickened as I glanced down the counter to make sure the bartender was occupied. Careful to not attract any attention, I dropped the picture into my bag. I left a fifty to cover my tab and slipped out.
Back at my room, I pulled the picture from my bag and studied it again. Then I compared it to the one I had on my phone that Joe had sent a few weeks before. Without a doubt, the man beside Reeve in both pictures was the same – Michelis Vilanakis. The two together on one occasion was easy to dismiss as coincidence. They were important people at the same function. No big deal. But for them to be together twice, and at an event as personal as Reeve’s birthday party… I had to accept that the two absolutely knew each other.
So what exactly was Reeve’s connection to the Greek mob boss? They both had a bit of a playboy reputation, but Vilanakis was at least two decades older than Reeve. If they were friends, they made an odd pair. Business associates seemed more likely. And if Reeve was doing business with Vilanakis, it meant Reeve was doing business with the mob.
I sank down on the edge of my bed and tried to decide how that information made me feel. It should have made me feel scared. Cautious. And it did.
But also it didn’t. Because it didn’t change anything in regard to Amber’s disappearance. And it didn’t make Reeve someone different than the man I’d already met. A man who was powerful with or without mafia ties. A man who commanded as easily as he charmed. A man who had put his hands on my body, had touched me on his terms, had excited me and turned me on while he’d made a fool of me.
Dammit, why did I come on so strong?
I rolled my shoulders, trying to loosen the rocks that had taken residence there, while I lamented my situation. Nothing I’d learned today made up for what I would have learned if I hadn’t fucked up my original plan to get close to Reeve. I was disappointed to the point of heartbreak.
I fell back on the bed and curled myself into a ball. Tomorrow, I tried to tell myself, but didn’t find it as soothing as I had the night before. At least tomorrow I was getting a massage. That was something to look forward to.
CHAPTER 6
The first time I shared a man with Amber had been on my seventeenth birthday.
She’d been hanging around the neighborhood for the better part of the six months before that, and we’d become friends. We’d had the same taste in food and music and movies and, unlike the other girls we’d known, we both preferred a line of coke to a bowl of weed. “Champagne taste,” Amber would say. “That’s us.”