“Do you want me to do some research on this end?”
“No, but thanks, Jane,” she said, heading down the hall to the elevator. “I’ve got plenty of research.” Half a ream of it, compliments of Buck Grant. “When I get back, we’ll put the finishing touches on next week’s Solano opening. See you in a couple of days.”
She ended the call and dialed in Levi Asher’s number. He let it go to message, just as she figured he would for an unknown number.
“Levi,” she said. “It’s Suzi Toussi. I’m in Ciudad del Este tonight, I think for the same reason you are, and I was hoping we could get together over drinks and see what we can come up with on this deal.”
She didn’t even get the phone back in her fanny pack before it was ringing.
“Hello?” she said, and she kept walking. “Oh, hello, Levi. Thanks for returning my call… Yes, how thoughtful, dinner would be wonderful… At the El Caribe, of course… Of course… Yes…and, Levi? Send a car, please. I’m at the Posada Plaza, and I’ll be out front in twenty minutes. Don’t be late.”
She hung up the phone and kept walking, all the way down to the elevator before she came to a stop. Then she let out a long breath and pushed the call button. The old elevator kicked in and started to grind its way up to the fifth floor, and Suzi stood there and waited-waited for what she needed, Marcella and Marceline, the Latino transvestite elevator tag team, the girls with the goods.
Thirty minutes, Dax thought, his jaw tight. He hadn’t left her alone for more than half an hour, and she was gone.
He walked through his room at the Posada one more time, checking the bathroom and the balcony again, and the girl was gone, just like the Memphis Sphinx.
Sonuvabitch.
He dropped the small wooden crate on the closest table, where it rolled and fell open. The lock on the crate had been broken long before he’d pried the damn thing out of the cistern in Beranger’s basement-all for nothing. It was empty, with only an indentation in the foam packing container to show where the statue had been, and the indentation was perfect, like a fricking lost wax cast of the Maned Sphinx of Sesostris III, the damn Memphis Sphinx.
Dammit! It had been here, in Ciudad del Este, in Beranger’s, and somebody had beaten him to it. How in the hell had that happened?
And where in the hell had Suzi gone? He couldn’t think of a single safe place for her to be, other than with him. If she’d gone after the Sphinx, she’d had fresh intel since he’d left, because when they’d been in that basement together, she’d been tearing through that garbage hoping to find it.
He set the bag of food he’d bought on the table next to the crate and ran down the options. It didn’t take much running. Beranger was dead. Ruiz was dead. She wouldn’t have contacted Esteban Ponce, not after the mess he’d made of Jimmy. That only left Levi Asher.
It was time to pay the big-name art dealer a call, and maybe, probably, Suzi had come up with the same idea.
He pulled his phone out to make some calls, to find Asher. If he wasn’t at the Gran Chaco or the El Caribe, he could be at one of the resorts near Iguazú Falls. Or he could be in Asunción.
Or he could have gotten the Sphinx and be hell-and-gone out of Ciudad del Este.
Dax still had the number for the Gran Chaco in his call list and was about to hit it, when something on the table caught his eye-a padded red bra with rhinestones on the straps, a very padded bra.
It wasn’t Suzi’s. He’d been pressed up against all girl when he’d kissed her. He knew that much, and from the size of it, he was going to say Marcella instead of Marceline, and how in the hell had Marcella’s bra gotten into his room?
He walked back to the bathroom and turned on the light. All of Suzi’s toiletries had been left at the Gran Chaco. When she’d run out of her room at the hotel, she’d left with what she’d had on her.
But there were toiletries in his bathroom, girl stuff-two barrettes, a twist-up tube of bronzer, and half a dozen bobby pins.
He turned on his heel and dropped his phone in his pocket. He didn’t need to make phone calls to find Suzi. He just needed to go hit the call button on the elevator and shake down whoever came out first.
Night on the river was a beautiful thing, the wind in his face, the stars above, the cool dark water below, and the roar of the twin Mercs off the back of the boat.
Up ahead, Con could see the lights of the city just starting to break the darkness at the edge of the world. He didn’t have a doubt in his mind that he would find Suzanna Toussi in Ciudad del Este. Something about the woman had sunk into him, triggered something, and now she was there, deep inside him, elusive but there, like a scent on the wind.
Reaching down to the controls, he throttled up the engines, doubling his speed, and the shoreline stretched out on his port side, slipping away mile after mile into shadows and darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Dax didn’t have any trouble picking Suzi out of the crush of people playing and paying in El Caribe’s casino. She was the tallest redhead in the room. She had the tightest skirt, a cheap little black polyester number with a zipper all the way up the side he’d last seen on Marcella-but Suzi made it look like Gucci. She had the biggest hair, all ratted, sprayed, swirled up on top of her head and held in place with a sparkly barrette. She had the biggest earrings, gold hoops, and the tightest bustier, red with little black ribbons running through it, her breasts all but spilling out of the top, the tiny black lace straps going up over the tops of her shoulders.
By any stretch of the imagination, she had the silkiest, palest skin, and there was just so much of it on display, all bare legs, bare arms, those lovely shoulders, the death-defying décolletage-geezus.
Her eyes were made up with a barely restrained hand. He was guessing Marceline’s-eyeliner, shadow, and bronzer all set on Sultry and Stun.
He recognized her, yes, but he didn’t think anybody else would. The girl was in disguise, and as outrageous as she looked, she fit right in with the rest of the casino crowd. In El Caribe, bare skin was camouflage, wild hair was de rigueur, and cleavage was the answer, no matter what the question.
And the shoes. There was nothing like a pair of trashy, black patent leather platform heels with lots of buckles and straps to really slut-up an outfit.
Talk about overkill.
She looked so freakin’ hot.
And that jerk Asher kept trying to put his hand on her ass, which Dax figured might be the whole point of the exhibition and her costume, but it still pissed him off.
He needed a life, one like he used to have, before he’d walked into the Toussi Gallery in Denver six months ago and been hit by a cosmic freight train, and he was going to get one, he swore it, right after he took charge of this little get-together and rearranged the dynamics a bit.
He started forward into the casino, working his way through the crowd, trailing Suzi and her new, fat, old boyfriend. Cutting him out, that’s what she was doing, and to think he’d had a couple more pangs of conscience when he’d been down in Beranger’s basement, slopping around in the cistern, trying to get his hands on that crate.
Well, no more. He could see her chatting Asher up, doing all the little things guaranteed to get a guy’s attention-the leaning in close, the touching his arm, the sweet smiles, doing her damnedest to soften the old buzzard up.
In that outfit, she looked like she needed paddling, and Dax was thinking he was just the guy to do it. He could sure as hell see Asher was thinking he was the guy, the way he kept trying to pat her ass. The jerk finally did get one in, and man, if the buzzard had missed the flash of Suzi’s smile turning downright tight and dangerous, then Asher was a bigger fool than he thought.