Chapter 9 #2
Pru didn’t quite roll her eyes, but Caleb got the feeling that she wanted to.
“He works at the Cove Bar…but he’s also going to be serving at the private party on the boat.
When I told him that August Sellers denied my old, sick mother’s claim to her winnings at the craps table and that I needed to get in his face to get her the money she’s rightfully owed, Jacob agreed to smuggle us all onto the cruise. ”
Okay, Caleb had to admit Prudence had earned some points with that flabbergasting lie. “And this guy believed you?”
“Of course,” she said, and fluttered her eyelashes at him.
He didn’t think they were fake, but they were impressively long and lush.
“I guess ol’ August has a reputation for being a real tight-ass.
So now we can get on the boat and see what he’s up to…
because we all know he’s not having this river cruise for shits and giggles, right? ”
Probably not. Or rather, Caleb couldn’t think of any good reason why the casino’s general manager would suddenly want to head out on a cruise on a Tuesday night when he’d probably gone on similar cruises multiple times in the past.
“You think he might have Delia hidden on the boat?” Ty asked, and Caleb wanted to smack himself for not thinking of that first.
“Maybe,” Pru replied. “It would make a pretty good hiding place. And it would be a place where he could question her without anyone hearing them or interfering.”
Caleb didn’t want to contemplate the terrible notion of the woman he cared about being questioned by someone who might or might not be a demon. “Okay, that makes sense,” he said. “What time is the cruise?”
“The boat leaves the dock at seven,” she responded. “The crew needs to be there no later than six-thirty.”
Since it was only a little after four, that meant they still had plenty of time to kill.
Good thing, because he definitely wasn’t looking forward to setting foot on that boat. As soon as Pru had brought up the possibility of going out on the water, he’d been wracking his brains, trying to figure out the best way of dealing with what felt like an impossible situation.
He had no idea whether the solution he’d come up with would even work, but he had to try something. Otherwise, he might be less than useless once they were out on the water.
“We need to find a drugstore,” he said, and both Pru and Ty stared at him, clearly confused.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I need to buy some Dramamine,” Caleb replied.
When they met Jacob, the guy who’d agreed to smuggle them onto the boat, Caleb immediately saw that this was probably just as much about earning brownie points with a girl he thought was cute as it was about getting some kind of justice for her fictional mother.
The guy looked less than thrilled to learn that her two “friends” were men only a little older than she was, but at least he didn’t try to tell them that they couldn’t come aboard.
No, he only pointed to the closet where the uniforms were kept and said they needed to put some on so they wouldn’t stand out too much. Pru had already warned Caleb and Ty about this, so they quickly switched out their T-shirts and jeans for dress pants and white shirts and bow ties.
She, on the other hand, had gone shopping in one of the casino’s stores and had come back out with a tight-fitting sheath dress and high-heeled black sandals.
A couple of hairpins allowed her to pull her siren-green hair up into a twist, and when she emerged from the bathroom, she looked like an entirely different woman.
“Impressive,” Caleb said. “I guess you’ve watched a lot of James Bond movies.”
Pru stuck her tongue out at him, thereby ruining the impression of subversive elegance.
“Well, when Jacob told me there’d be some high rollers from the casino in attendance along with the casino execs, I figured that was my chance to get glammed up rather than having to look like a working stiff like you two. ”
A pained expression crossed Ty’s face, but he only said, “In a way, that’s good. It’ll give the three of us more opportunities to fan out on the boat and see if we can learn more about the real reason for this cruise.”
Caleb thought he’d seen a flicker of admiration in Ty’s features when Prudence appeared in her evening attire, but it was certainly gone now. No, he was all business.
Which was fine. If Ty wanted to moon over Pru Nelson, he could do it when they weren’t trying to figure out where Delia had been spirited away to.
“How are you doing?” Pru asked, and Caleb gave a stiff nod.
“I’ll survive.”
He’d taken a couple of Dramamine and put on some of those anti-seasickness elastic wrist bands for good measure, even though he knew his real problem with the river wasn’t the motion of the waves but the power the water itself contained.
The medication helped, but he could still feel the river’s energy pulling at something deep in his chest, like a constant low-grade headache he couldn’t quite shake.
Well, he supposed it could have been worse…even if it could also have been a whole lot better.
“Okay, let’s get out there,” he said, and did his best to quell the flicker of unease in his gut.
It wasn’t so much that he might be confronting a bunch of demons…
he’d slid a couple of bottles of holy water into the pockets of his dress pants as he changed, just to be safe…
but more that he was going to have to walk out there and pretend he knew what he was doing when he’d never had a food service job in his life.
He had no idea whether Ty did, either, but at least he’d been working as a tennis pro for the past few years and knew how to deal with the public.
And although Caleb didn’t have a clue as to Pru’s work history before she became a private detective, he wouldn’t have been surprised at all to learn she’d waited tables while attending college and playing bass in Delia’s band.
Not that it really mattered, since Prudence got to play a high roller tonight, not a waitress.
She went out first, and then Jacob — a gangly guy around twenty-five who never would have had a chance with her — pointed Caleb and Ty toward the bar.
“It’s pretty easy,” he said. “They’re only serving champagne tonight. All you have to do is pick up a tray and circulate with it, then come back and get a fresh one — and drop off any empties — after you’re done.”
Okay, that didn’t sound too hard. Caleb had been having nightmare scenarios in his brain of serving a room full of people who wanted a million substitutions or a bunch of stuff on the side, just like how one of his girlfriends in college used to order her meals whenever they went out to eat.
That relationship hadn’t lasted very long.
He picked up a tray and Ty did the same, and then the two of them headed into the cabin.
It looked larger than Caleb had expected, partly because of the large windows that made up the bulk of the walls.
Outside, the sun was long gone, and although a faint orange glow lingered on the horizon, it didn’t do anything to interfere with the brilliant, multicolored lights of the casinos and the hotels reflecting off the waters of the Colorado River.
Looking at the view, his stomach tightened again, but he told it — and his sometimes troublesome demonic blood — that he didn’t have time for any of that crap tonight. No, he needed to focus.
People were dressed up, but not in an over-the-top sort of way, the women in cocktail dresses, the men in dress shirts and pants, although ties and jackets were in short supply.
It was really too warm for that sort of thing; even with air conditioning pumping through the cabin’s vents, the doors that led out onto the deck stood wide open so people could come and go as they pleased, and warm air flooded the space.
Pru had shown him on her phone what August Sellers looked like, so Caleb knew he was looking for a tall, blond man with dark eyes and brows that were much darker than his hair. Maybe he bleached it, or maybe that was his natural coloring.
That didn’t matter. What mattered was that their quarry was naturally distinctive enough that Caleb knew he’d be able to easily pick him out of a crowd.
Except…he didn’t see the guy, even though he circled the cabin several times, letting people clear his tray of champagne glasses and then bringing back the empty flutes so he could pick up a fresh batch.
No one here seemed to have any worries about partying hearty on a Tuesday night, but he supposed a lot of them weren’t exactly the type to be holding down a nine-to-five job.
“Anything?” he murmured to Ty when they came back for new trays of drinks, and the half angel shook his head.
“I haven’t seen him. And even though the water’s energy is playing with my senses a little, I still haven’t gotten the feeling that any of the people in here are anything more than regular human beings. If there are demons around, they’re not in this room.”
Caleb had come to that same conclusion.
Had this whole thing turned out to be a colossal waste of time?
Just as he was about to pick up yet another tray, Prudence appeared out of the blue and murmured, “Sellers and his buddies are downstairs on the lower deck. They’ve convened in a private room.”
Well, that didn’t sound sketchy at all.
“Do you know why?” he asked, and she shook her head.
“No, but I doubt it’s for anything good. We should go check it out.”
Caleb sent a quick glance around the cabin, but Ty was on the far side, which meant there was no way to go fetch him without looking far too obvious.
No, the half angel would have to keep up his waiter masquerade while Pru and Caleb headed down to the lower deck.
“Come on,” she whispered, then gestured for him to follow her.