Free Death On the Flop by Jackie Chance Page A

the blood smeared on the wall and noticed the cracked glass of the coffee table and knew reality had taken a wide detour from my expectations.
    Swallowing a scream, I tried to get a handle on the thoughts that were careening around in my head. “Hello?” I called loudly. “Ben?”
    I ran to Ben’s bedroom; the door I’d left closed was now open. The comforter on his bed was wadded up in the corner, his clothes were strewn on the floor, the poker strategy books by his bedside riffled through and upside down on the pillows. I peeked in the bathroom. His shave kit was overturned in the sink.
    I sucked in a deep breath as I spun around. An alarm went off in the back of my mind, but I ignored it. I rushed to my bedroom to see the suitcase overturned on the bed. Every zipper was open, every pouch pulled loose. My makeup was scattered on the bathroom floor. My shoes and clothes were jumbled on the bedroom floor, save for my Victoria’s Secret bras and panties that were on a separate pile on the dresser, obviously having been pawed. Grr. So a man had robbed our room. Still steaming, I stomped back to the living area and saw the blood again. Had the freak robber not found any valuables, gotten mad, hit the table and hurt himself? I hoped so. But then a darker possibility crossed my mind. What if Ben were here when the robber broke into the room and Ben tried to stop him?
    But if that were the case, where was Ben now? At the hospital? Surely if he’d called 911, they would have left me a message. The message light on the phone was blinking. I almost reached for it, then remembered to preserve the fingerprints. I ran to the bathroom, snagged a wash-cloth, picked up the receiver and pressed the envelope button with my knuckle. One message. From me. I slammed the phone down at the sound of my voice. Then, I picked it up quickly and dialed the front desk.
    “Do I have any messages?”
    “No ma’am room 2003 has no messages.”
    I don’t know why I didn’t report the break-in right then, but a weird feeling held me back. Maybe I didn’t want to hand over my credit card for the cost of the lamp and coffee table. Maybe I’d just recognized the scent that had been bothering me since I’d walked through the room.
    A men’s cologne.
    Iceberg Effusion.
    The last time I’d smelled that scent this evening was when Electric Blue Rambo had caught me with Felix. I didn’t want to jump to a scary conclusion, so I returned to Ben’s bathroom and looked at the contents of his shave kit. I saw only the bottle of Balenciaga Cristobal I’d given him for his birthday. I smelled the crisp bite of the Iceberg again as I walked past the window. Damn. Whoever he was, he hadn’t been gone long.
    If he was gone at all.
    Without thinking more about that, I walked to the door and left.
    I ran to the elevators, pressed both up and down buttons and jumped in the first door that opened. The car was going up. I didn’t care where I was going because I didn’t know what I was going to do. I pulled Frank Gilbert’s card out of my purse and considered it. Security. Hmm. I reached for my phantom cell phone. Damn Ben. I started to tear up for a second then squelched the urge. In the age of wireless communication, it was almost impossible to find a pay phone anymore. At the twenty-eighth floor, the doors opened and a corporate looking woman in a gray suit and gray pumps, carrying a briefcase hopped in. She looked so solid, so normal, so much like the people I’d worked with at my ad firm that I almost spilled the whole story. I opened my mouth when her cell phone rang and she answered in a baritone.
    “Just tell the prick I’m on the way. If he wants us doing a Women of Wall Street gig at the last minute, he’s just got to be patient. Try finding butt ugly clothes that fit , in Vegas, in an hour, for a rehearsal. Hell, I know he’s a showman genius, but he’s got to chill when it comes to reality. I could find a thousand diamond thongs and not one