Up Against the Wall

But she was long past sitting on the sidelines and playing bookkeeper. Rebecca wasn’t a woman given to fanciful notions, nor did she waste her time when there was a story to pursue. She had big footsteps to fill as a reporter for the Kansas City Journal. This wasn’t just about living up to her father’s reputation and making a name for herself in her chosen career. This was about living up to her father’s love. This was about proving his faith in her hadn’t been misplaced.

Her artificially long lashes tickled her cheeks as she opened her eyes and steeled herself for the task at hand. The only thing that warmed her tonight was the muggy summer heat. The only scents were the faint, seaweedy smell of the Missouri River and her own spicier perfume. The only laughter she heard belonged to a few of the lucky customers outside the Riverboat Casino complex, waiting for a cab or valet service. The players who’d been less fortunate filled the night air with damning curses and desperate ramblings.

Rebecca watched them all from the front seat of her cherry-red Mustang. Was he the one? Was she?

Who were the big guns with money-laundering and murder on their minds? And who were the innocent bystanders, unaware of the big money, big influence and big cover-up hidden beneath the Riverboat Casino’s polished-steel facade and glitzy excitement? They’d all come to the shiny steamship that had once been the rusted wreck of the Commodore riverboat. Renovation and expansion could only mask the Commodore’s secrets. A new name and facelift didn’t change the fact that her father’s life had ended here.

And where the trail of clues he’d left for her ended, her investigation would begin. If she could unlock the details of that last exposé her father had been working on, she just might be able to piece together the rest of the puzzle and find out who’d murdered him. Which was a hell of a lot more than those pathetic all-talk, no-action bozos at KCPD had been able to do over the past three years. They’d relegated Reuben Page’s murder to their unsolved cold-case files.

Rebecca had no intention of giving up on her father.

His memory was all she had left.

With her nerve firmly set into place, Rebecca locked the precious notebook inside the glove compartment and inhaled a deep, fortifying breath. Squeezing the university class ring that hung from a white-gold chain around her neck, she whispered, “This one’s for you, Dad.”

She bussed the man-sized ring with a quick kiss and tucked it inside the décolletage of her little black dress. Once out of the car, she paused for a moment to adjust the swingy hemline that stopped several inches above her knees. Any day of the week she preferred the practicality of jeans and khakis over a dress and three-inch heels. But what was the point of standing five-foot-ten if a girl couldn’t show off a little leg when the occasion called for it?

Tonight’s game plan definitely called for it.

As did the free fall of curly brunette hair that tickled the bare skin between her shoulder blades. Rebecca paused to open her tiny purse and pull out her compact, ostensibly to check the subtle pout of her ruby-tinted lips. In reality, she was verifying that the miniature recorder she carried would be ready at the push of a button should she need it. Tonight was more about identifying the players she’d been researching rather than finding any meaningful facts. If she could ingratiate herself into the casino crowd, get the layout of the place and the faces memorized, then she’d be in position to start digging beneath the surface. Deck by deck. Suspect by suspect. Clue by clue.

The Journal hadn’t sanctioned this assignment. Her editor had no idea of the personal nature of this investigation. He probably wouldn’t have granted her vacation if he’d known what she was really up to. But blessing or no, she intended to approach this job with the same diligence she’d use on any other story she was reporting. She intended to be just as prepared, just as thorough.

Rebecca snapped her bag shut and let the masquerade begin.

She curved her mouth into a subtle pout at the appreciative glances and outright stares that followed her across the wide, fixed gangplank leading over the water to the Riverboat’s light-studded entryway. Good. She didn’t have the money to throw around at the gaming tables necessary to garner the attention of the men she was here to investigate. And she couldn’t exactly flash her press pass or use her real name, in case someone connected her to her father or the paper.

But there was more than one way to get herself invited into the back rooms and private offices on board. And though it stuck in her feminist craw, Rebecca Page was relying on the long legs she’d inherited from her father and the dramatic sculpt of cheekbones she’d inherited from her mother to get her inside that inner circle to the secrets hidden there.

The noise of bells and whistles, chatter and music assaulting her ears nearly sent Rebecca back out the sliding glass doors. But, seeing the wine-red carpet and refined appointments of an Old South cruise ship as some sort of surreal memorial to her father, she curled her toes inside her stilettos and refused to retreat. Bright lights and false fronts aside, this was where her father had died. It was where he might have hidden a disk or notebook before taking a bullet and plunging into the river.

His killer worked here. Or played here. Had rebuilt the place from below the waterline on up to the bright-red smokestacks. Someone here knew something or somebody. The money that had created this gambling mecca was tainted. Her father had known that and had been silenced for that knowledge.

If she couldn’t find the actual killer, then Rebecca was certain this place would provide the clues to lead her to him.

“WELCOME to the Riverboat.” A young woman wearing a mini version of a dance-hall girl’s costume pressed a brass coin into Rebecca’s hand. “We’re giving a token to every new player who comes in tonight. It’s good for one game at the quarter slots, or a free drink at the Cotton Blossom bar.”

Rebecca glanced at the token in her palm, arching an eyebrow with skepticism. “How do you know I’m a new player? You’ve been open since the Memorial Day weekend, haven’t you? Maybe I’ve been in here before.”

The hostess’s blank expression told Rebecca she’d interrupted the girl’s memorized spiel. Then the young woman laughed.

“Okay.” Rebecca waited for a “like, totally” to pop out of the blonde’s giggly mouth. “So we’re really giving a token to every customer who comes through our doors all summer long, whether it’s your first time or not. We want you to play the games and feel at home.”

In the enemy’s camp? Not likely. Rebecca returned a smile to the two men who entered behind her and who walked past before she dropped the token into her purse. Her questions had only just begun. She scanned the bubbly golden girl’s nametag. “Who’s ‘we’, Dawn? You and the other dance-hall girls?”

“Of course, us. Oh, you mean, who’s in charge?”

Rebecca nodded, gesturing around her and acting duly impressed. “Somebody laid out a pretty penny for this extravaganza.”

She knew the names on public record, but it wouldn’t hurt to know who the employees felt they really had to answer to. And if the perky blonde was willing to chat…

Dawn greeted two more guests and handed out tokens before she answered. “Well, there’s Mr. Kelleher. He does a lot of the boring business stuff.”

Rebecca ticked the name off her memorized list. That would be the chief financial backer from the Kansas City area. Local gossip claimed he had a grudge against the Westin family, who owned another wildly successful casino about two miles farther down river. Just how far would Kelleher go to get one up on the Westins? Would he murder a man whose story could close him down before he ever opened for business?

The hostess greeted another guest and continued, enjoying the opportunity to show off her inside knowledge of the place. “Let’s see. There’s the security guy. He used to be a bouncer, but now he’s in charge. Never smiles. And I don’t know Mr. Cartwright’s title, but I guess he designed the place and now he’s, you know, like the fix-it-up guy? Except he doesn’t do the work himself. I see him here more than I do Mr. Kelleher.”

Cartwright? Rebecca’s blood simmered as her subtle interrogation took a sharp turn into unexpected personal territory. That was a name she could have lived without hearing again. Shauna Cartwright was the stubborn lady commissioner of the KCPD whom Rebecca had interviewed more than once since assuming the position of crime beat reporter for the Journal. Even though the older woman had ultimately earned Rebecca’s grudging respect, she couldn’t exactly say they were friends. And, as if the chief cop wasn’t difficult enough to get along with, an even bigger thorn in Rebecca’s side was the commissioner’s bull-headed son, Seth Cartwright.

Another cop.

Built like a tank. To compensate for height issues, no doubt. Rebecca might even be a shade taller than KCPD’s lean, mean, testosterone machine.

But there was no debating the vivid memory of taut, hard muscles. Once, they’d been pressed intimately against her, and all that man and heat had left an indelible imprint on her skin and her psyche. Contact with Seth Cartwright had ignited her temper, along with something at the core of her that made so little sense that she’d dismissed it. Denied it, actually.

Maybe if her previous run-ins with the detective had had more to do with passion, and less to do with her right and his refusal to get to the heart of a story, she wouldn’t resent this visceral response to the mere mention of his name.

The prickly sea of goose bumps bathing her skin was no trick of the Riverboat’s air conditioning. Rather, it was an involuntary response to the humiliating memory of being wrestled to the ground like a common criminal. Like an overprotective bulldog, Cartwright had pinned her beneath him to keep her from approaching his mother and questioning her about a baby’s murder that had sent the entire city into a panic nearly eight months ago. The jerk. Hadn’t he ever heard of freedom of the press? Or respect for a woman? Or…hell.

Rebecca rubbed her arms to dispel the unwanted memory that refused to fade from her body. The name had to be a coincidence and she was doing a mental freak for no reason. A cop in his mid-twenties couldn’t have put away enough money to invest in an operation like this one.

Unless he’d quit the force and gotten a new job. Or was on the take.

Now there was a story she’d love to sink her teeth into.

“And there’s Teddy, of course.”

Rebecca dragged her attention back to the present and Dawn’s eager smile. “Teddy?”

Her father’s ring burned against her skin inside her dress. Rebecca fisted her hand around her purse to keep from reaching for it. How could she have forgotten her purpose here, even for a moment? How had she let a man, especially that one, distract her from her investigation?

Burying all thoughts of her nemesis at KCPD, Rebecca asked, “Who’s Teddy?”

“I mean, Mister Wolfe, of course,” Dawn’s cheeks pinkened as she corrected herself. “He manages the casino, bars and restaurants. He’s more of a people person than Mr. Kelleher.”

Now the name registered. Theodore Wolfe, Jr. Daniel Kelleher’s not-so-silent partner. Rebecca’s colleague in charge of the Journal’s business pages said Wolfe was a British investor who’d come to the U.S. to expand the successful gaming establishments his father’s company owned in London, Monte Carlo and the Bahamas—Wolfe International. Did his arrival in Kansas City have anything to do with her father’s death?

But Dawn was still talking. No, gushing was a better word. “You should get a load of that British accent. If James Bond had a twin…You know, they’re not all stuffy and tea and crumpets over there. At least, Teddy isn’t. Now his executive assistant, on the other hand—”

“Dawn, dear—are you monopolizing this beautiful lady?”

Rebecca “got a load” of that melodic, articulate British accent an instant before the scent of fine tobacco filled the air and a hand brushed the small of her back. She stiffened at the unexpected touch, then forced herself to relax as one of the men she’d come to investigate circled around her. Theodore Wolfe, Jr. Thirty. Boy wonder of the business world. As handsome in person as his publicity photo had indicated. Rebecca tipped her chin, unaccustomed to meeting many men she had to look up to. Teddy had expensive taste in smokes, deep-blue eyes and a killer smile that could make a woman with twice Dawn’s experience blush like a schoolgirl.

He also had a thick-necked sidekick who positioned himself behind his shoulder. Rebecca was guessing the older man with the nearly-shaved, silver hair was the executive assistant Dawn had sneered about. Looking more bodyguard than business associate, despite his tailored suit and tie, he stood far enough away to be removed from the conversation, but close enough for Rebecca to see his dark eyes studying her, then dismissing her as though she wasn’t worth his interest.

Cold, Rebecca thought, looking away before another attack of goose bumps betrayed her. Creepy.

“The idea is for you to welcome each guest,” Teddy chastised and flirted at the same time, though Rebecca wasn’t sure if the charm was aimed at her or Dawn. “Then we send them on his or her way to enjoy their evening. We want them to play.”