He glanced at the picture on her screen, frowning. “That guy? Yeah, I’ve seen him. He’s always hanging around Rico and Eduardo.”
She blinked. “You know the Gutiérrez cousins?”
“Yeah, kind of. I’ve played squash with Eduardo a couple times. He’s a poor loser, so I stopped.” He shrugged. “He’s got a bad temper. Broke a two-hundred-dollar racquet last time I beat him. But dude knows how to throw a party.”
“And Willie Murphy is a friend of his?”
Dick snorted. “Friend? No. I think he’s, like, an errand boy or something. He rounds up people for the parties and stuff.”
She stood for a moment, her mind processing all this. What if Willie was working for the Gutiérrez cousins? What if he’d gotten rid of Hayley and Aurora on their orders? Then, trying to cash in another time on the crime, he’d taken Hayley’s necklace and sold it. Not exactly criminal mastermind behavior—but then again, Murphy wouldn’t be the first guy to screw himself over that way.
“Have you seen him here tonight?”
“Sure.” He pointed up toward the terrace. “Right over there.”
She looked up to see a scrawny form in oversize patchwork pants, his dark blond dreadlocks bobbing around his shoulders as he walked through the doors into the house.
She released Dick’s arm. He rubbed it again, frowning. “Thanks, Dick. I’ve got to run.” She walked a few quick steps away from him, then turned around. “And, Dick?”
“Yeah?” He frowned.
“If anyone asks, my name is Amber.”
He blinked, then shrugged. “Whatever you say, Rons.”
She turned and walked up the steps, as quickly as her heels—and her bikini’s precarious arrangement with her anatomy—allowed. By the time she reached the door he’d vanished into the house.
She looked around the kitchen. The strip poker game had deteriorated, the boy who’d been shirtless just a few minutes ago now in nothing but boxers and a single white sock. The girl in the necktie had a rancid-smelling cigar clamped between her teeth. “Did you guys see a boy with dreadlocks come through here? Which way did he go?”
The girl gestured with the burning end of her cigar toward the hallway that led to the front of the house.
Veronica pushed into the hall, into the depths of the crowd. In the front entryway, kids gyrated and screamed like the world was about to end, climbing on top of one another. She couldn’t see anything at her height—but looking up, she caught sight of Willie Murphy heading upstairs.
By the time she got to the second-floor landing, he was disappearing through a pair of wide double doors at the end of the long hall.
When she finally fought her way to the doors, they were locked.
She pressed her lips together, glancing around. The hall was filled with people, and while none of them seemed to be paying attention to her, she didn’t want anyone to suddenly look up and see her trying to get access to a locked room. Especially not those guys, she thought, noticing that in the crowd there were a few granite-faced men with suspicious bulges beneath their armpits. More heavies, in case crowd control was needed.
She staggered back downstairs with a ditzy, drunken grin on her face. She paused for a moment on the lowest stair, pretending to clutch the banister for balance. There would be only one shot to make this work, and it was a long one. She had to pick her target carefully.
Then, before she could talk herself out of it, she plowed into a bull-necked guy in a University of Washington football jersey as hard as she could.
The size discrepancy between them was vast, to say the least. Veronica barely came up to his armpit. But she threw her weight low in his center of gravity. He staggered forward a few steps, then turned to see who’d hit him. She could have sworn she saw steam coming from his nostrils.
She’d always been able to summon a few thin crocodile tears. Now her lip trembled, and she pointed at another man, a big guy with a ponytail and a shirt that barely buttoned over his massive chest. “That guy just threw me down,” she whimpered. The football player’s eyes narrowed. He chivalrously helped her to her feet. Then he strode over to the other guy and started shouting in his face.
She couldn’t hear what they were saying over the sound of the music, but it was easy to piece together what was happening when the football player started to shove the other guy with sharp, taunting pushes. Ponytail didn’t back down. His lip curled up in a savage sneer. Then he swung a punch.
It happened quickly. Everyone moved to the edges of the room, trying to get out of the way while still securing a spot to watch the fight. People coming in from other rooms craned their necks to see over the crowd. Johnny Football had a nasty uppercut and could take a punch like a pro—but it turned out Ponytail was some kind of mixed martial artist. His leg lashed out in a sweep beneath the football player’s knees, and suddenly both men were on the floor, rolling around in a tangle of limbs. The music drowned out the dull, fleshy sound of punches landing. The crowd cheered.
A stampede of footsteps, and five enormous bodyguards came running down the stairs. Three of them worked to try to herd the crowd outside, away from the fight. Two moved in to try to get the guys off each other. Veronica didn’t stick around to watch who won.
It was just as she’d hoped—the upstairs hallway was almost empty. She heard predictable sounds coming from some of the bedrooms—moans, shrieks of laughter, catcalls—but the double doors she’d seen Willie go through were unguarded. She pressed her ear to one side. Then she knocked. When she was sure there was no one there, she pulled the hairpin she always kept in her wallet and jammed it in the lock.
Interior locks were usually pretty easy to get into. She felt the pin moving at the end of the pick. Then the door swung inward. She slid the pin into her hair, stepped in, and locked the door again behind her.
She stood at the head of another long hallway, the walls painted peacock blue and wainscoted in dark, glossy wood. An end table beneath what looked like a signed and dated Picasso sketch held an enormous urn of roses in white and yellow, and stained glass sconces gave off a mild glow up and down the hall. From somewhere inside one of the rooms she could hear a low rumble of music. She froze for a moment, straining to hear where it was coming from. She couldn’t tell.