“You want a cheesesteak too, Dad?”
“Sure.” He nodded. “I bet Jack could go for one, too.”
Jack looked up from the tablet he was using in the other room. He had the news still on. “I could.”
I approached Anson. “I have to say you seem awfully calm.”
“You mean about the car?”
I nodded.
He gave me a short, terse smile. “Let’s just say that while they might track that plate to this address, they’ll never find the car.” He looked at everyone. “If that happens, if the authorities do show up, the story is the car was stolen last night. We didn’t call the cops because we only discovered it this morning.”
Sin crossed his arms. “You hid it?”
Anson nodded. “And it’ll stay that way for as long as necessary. Now, let’s go get some food.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Jayne
Birdie worked through her meal. What she was working on, I wasn’t quite sure, but she had given the rest of us assignments to do when we were done eating. Except for Jack. He’d gone to take a nap. I didn’t blame him. I’d have done the same thing if I could, but the stress of my mother-in-law’s disappearance was too much.
Spider and Sugar had trotted off to the guest room with him. Naps were sort of their thing, and they weren’t about to miss the opportunity to sleep curled up next to a bigger warm body. Also, Jack was a raven shifter, and I knew they could smell the bird on him. I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling that was a quality the cats really enjoyed.
Sin and I were to search local newspapers, via the internet, for any past articles about Tony or Lou that might give us insight into where they’d taken Lila, if they had taken her. Birdie wasn’t as ready as Anson to let Lou off the hook. Dead or not.
I had Tony. Sin had Lou. We were working year by year, and so far, it was slow going. Most of the articles we found were fluff pieces. Tony at the opening of a business. Tony and Gabrielle at a charity event. Lou giving a one-line quote on the state of show business in town. Boring stuff.
Anson had gone to his office to make the dreaded call to the Oasis about the show being canceled tonight. He’d also have to call everyone involved. Well, maybe not the ushers, but certainly the stagehands, the lighting guys, the makeup people, the… I didn’t really know who else worked on a show like that.
Regardless, I suspected he might be in there a while. It wasn’t a call he wanted to make for a variety of reasons, one of which being that it made Lila’s disappearance real in a brand-new way. He could no longer hope that we’d find her in time for tonight’s show. That things would be back to normal with the rise of the curtain.
My heart ached for him. All I could do was pour myself into my work, as boring as it was.
Then, a new article popped up, and it wasn’t quite as boring as it had been. “Wow, Tony’s wife is beautiful. I can’t believe he was cheating on her. Did you know she was a showgirl?”
Sin looked up from the laptop he was working on. He nodded. “More than just a showgirl, she was the principal dancer in the last review featuring showgirls to ever run in Vegas.”
I did a quick Google search. “A Pussycat in Paris?”
“That was it. Think Aristocats in Paris with half-naked women, and you’ve got the gist of it.”
I snorted. “Sounds wildly entertaining.”
“It was, until it wasn’t. Showgirl reviews couldn’t keep up with the big headlining acts, and they were incredibly expensive. The Oasis held on the longest, but obviously even they ended theirs. Wasn’t long after that they did the remodel and expanded the theater my parents are in. That’s just where the money was.”
“It’s kind of sad. Las Vegas and showgirls go together like peanut butter and jelly. To me, anyway. They just seem synonymous with each other.”
“To most people. Maybe someday someone will bring them back.”
“So what happened to…what was her name?”
“Gabrielle,” Sin reminded me. “She became Tony’s assistant for a while. A lot of the other showgirls stayed in the game by doing special appearances. Birthday parties, conventions, stuff like that. But Gabrielle never did any of that. I think having her in the show helped Tony a lot. Brought in audiences that might not have come to see him otherwise.”
“That worked out for him.”
“It did, for sure.”
“Was he already successful when they married?”
“No, he was just getting started really. In fact, Gabrielle was a bigger star than he was when she joined his show. She absolutely was a part of his success. Just one more reason I can’t believe he’d cheat on her.”
That raised new questions for me. “Was he cheating back then? Is that why she didn’t stay on as his assistant?”
“I’m not sure about either of those things. Maybe she decided to focus on being a wife? Maybe she got tired of working every night? After all, she’d been at it longer than he had.” Sin shrugged. “Whatever the reason, she retired from show business altogether after that. And Tony’s had a string of different assistants throughout the years. I swear, it seems like he has a new one every time you turn around.”
I thought about everything Sin had just told me. “Maybe they get tired of his advances? If that’s what’s happening. If it is, makes me even sadder for Gabrielle. Why stay with a guy like that? Unless she doesn’t know?”
Sin sighed. “Vegas is very much a small town. Word gets around, so I’d be surprised if she didn’t at least suspect. But maybe she’s just decided to look the other way. And now with a kid on the way? It’s not a good situation, that’s for sure.”
I studied the wedding picture I’d found online. Even in her wedding dress, Gabrielle looked like a showgirl. Tall and beautiful with the kind of sparkling smile that must have been visible from the back rows. “She looks like she’s a good bit younger than Tony.”
“She is. By probably twelve years. Maybe more.”
“Boy,” I said. “He has some nerve running around on her.”
“Agreed.”
I glanced at Birdie, still deep in whatever rabbit hole she’d gone down, then back at Sin. “You know what I think?”
“What’s that?”
“We need to look at Carrie again. The new assistant.”
His brow furrowed. “As a possible suspect for my mom’s abductor?”
I nodded. “Think about it. If she sees her job as disposable, what better way to build job security by proving your loyalty with a little kidnapping of the competition.”
“Except that’s also crazy.”
“No one said she was sane. In fact, that works in her favor. If Tony knows she’s a little bananapants, then he’d probably be worried she’d name him as her accomplice if the kidnapping came to light.”
Sin’s brows bent further. “I could see that.”
I held my finger in the air to punctuate my next sentence. “And just because she bought mulch and plants didn’t mean part of that order wasn’t duct tape and tarps.”
He blinked a few times before he answered. Then he checked the time. “Get your shoes on. If we go now, we can catch her before she leaves for the show.”