Vanity, Vengeance And A Weekend In Vegas (A Sophie Katz Novel) by Kyra Davis Page B

“Where the
hell could he be?”
    “When did you last see him?” I
asked, trying unsuccessfully to keep the rising panic out of my voice. “What
happened last night?”
    She was quiet for a moment as she
stared at the cigarette between her fingers. “Are you the reason Anatoly quit
smoking?”
    I hesitated. I hadn’t known that
Anatoly had ever smoked. I let my eyes wander to the cars lined up impatiently
at the red light. “He…he quit before we met,” I hedged.
    “Ah.” Did she sound relieved?
“Well he never smoked much to begin with,” she went on. “Just while enjoying a
good cognac or after sex.”
    My head snapped back in her
direction. She raised her eyebrows mockingly as she sucked leisurely on her
cigarette.
    “Natasha?” I asked.
    “Ah, you know my name.” She
craned her neck upward before blowing out a long steady stream of smoke.
      “If you see him tell him I can still help him,” she said and
then added with a sly smile. “Tell him I’ll bend over backwards for him…just
like old times.”
    I stood there frozen as she
turned on her impossibly skinny high heels and walked away.
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter 8
    “They say a good man is worth
fighting for. But a man who’s good for YOU shouldn’t make you fight just for
the right to be in his life.”
    --Death of The Party

 
    I thought of following her but
what would be the point? It’s not like she could lead me to him now.
    His wife! That was the woman he was claiming to marry for citizenship. Sure,
and Brad Pitt was shacking up with Angie because he needed someone to split the
house payments with.
    I started walking back to my
hotel. I couldn’t stomach the idea of going to the sex toy trade show now. My
amused indifference to all those deviant devices had morphed into an intense hatred.
As if an inflatable doll could ever replace the feeling of Anatoly’s warm skin.
As if I needed a lotion to become sensitive to the path of kisses he made up my
thigh. As if something as harsh as a nipple clamp could somehow be more
exciting than Anatoly’s gentle fingers as he caressed my breasts, bringing my
nipples to attention. It was like a cruel joke; the universe’s way of reminding
me of what was lost.
    And the worst part was that the
man who had made me feel all that…I didn’t even know if he was dead....
    I shook my head, hard, as if
trying to fling the idea out of my head. I gave Dena a call and let her know my
plans and so I wasn’t all that surprised when I finally got back to my room and
found both her and Mary Ann there, sitting on my bed.
    Mary Ann got up and pulled me
into a hug. “You’re having a hard time, huh?”
    I sighed and dropped down in one
of the chairs. “My life sucks.”
      “I’ve been thinking,” Mary Ann said, as she sat back down
next to Dena, “maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem.”
    “How is that even possible?” I
laughed.
    “Well, we know someone broke into
your house and brought your stuff to that hotel room but maybe there wasn’t an
actual murder. Maybe, just maybe this woman committed suicide!”
    Dena shifted her position to look
at Mary Ann. “The woman was found stuffed in a closet with a bullet hole in her
head, in a room that wasn’t hers and without a gun in her hand. What about that
sounds like a suicide?”
    “Well, I was thinking,” Mary Ann
said again, “what if she didn’t want her blood and…you know, her…her brains
splattering all over the place.   So
she decided to, like, contain it to the closet? She was just being
considerate!”
    “And the fact that she didn’t
have a gun?” Dena asked dryly.
    “Are we sure she didn’t have a
gun?” Mary Ann pressed. “Maybe she was sitting on it.”
    “Uh-huh.” Dena looked like she
was working extra hard not to hit her cousin over the head with the jaguar
handle of her cane.   “How did she
manage to sit on her gun after she had just used it to shoot herself in the head?”
    “Oh, oh, I thought of