what a great story it would make if she could reveal that Brandt’s carrying on with Angelica Boudreau and all those other beautiful women had been just a front to cover up his homosexuality.
She forced herself to focus on what Ted was saying. “Two tough guys. They looked almost like…like crooks, Jessie. Gangsters. Only the old-fashioned kind, like in mobster movies.”
Jessie’s brain shifted gears as smoothly as any of those race cars Brandt drove. Forget the gay stuff, she told herself. Brandt might be connected to the mob. A made man, for all she knew. Maybe that was how he had gotten his money in the first place. Maybe he’d been a contract killer for the syndicate. Yeah, that would make a great story.
Although it was hard to reconcile the idea of him being a cold-blooded killer with the way he looked. Tough and ruthless, yes, maybe even dangerous when he had to be, but not evil. Not with those eyes that masked depths of feeling and that jaw that needed to be stroked so that it unclenched and the anger and pain went away…
And why in the world had she described him as ruggedly handsome to Nana Rose, without even thinking about what she was saying?
“Jessie? You still there?”
“I’m here,” she said with a little shake of her head as she banished those thoughts. “Ted, I have to get in there.”
“What!” Ted’s voice rose to a mouselike squeak. “Into Brandt’s lodge?”
The hotel was actually a group of buildings modeled after Alpine ski lodges, scattered across some rolling hills on the edge of the city and clustered around a central building that housed all sorts of amenities, including a five-star restaurant. The appeal of The Chateaux was not only its luxury, but also its privacy.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Jessie said. “If he’s having some sort of meeting with his gangster buddies, maybe they’ll order room service or something like that. I’m on my way, Ted.”
“But you can’t! I’ll get in trouble! I’ll—”
She didn’t hear the rest of his protest, because she had already closed her cell phone and was on her way toward the door of her apartment, her digital camera dangling from its strap around her wrist.
She smelled a story, maybe the biggest story of her career, and she would take any risk to get it.
Chapter Two
The night had a chill in it, but in her jeans and lightweight brown leather jacket, Jessie didn’t really feel it. She parked her sturdy old blue Toyota pickup at the edge of the lot in front of the Chateaux. It looked out of place among all the limos and luxury cars.
She carried the little recorder in her jacket pocket, even though she wasn’t really after an interview tonight. She wanted to get some shots of Michael Brandt and the men with him. Maybe if Brandt’s companions really were mobsters, one of her law enforcement contacts could identify them for her.
Getting the pictures might be tricky, though. Brandt had been a celebrity long enough to have developed a knack for dodging the paparazzi.
Not that she considered herself one of those guys. She was a reporter, damn it, not some sleazy celebrity photohound.
She knew the Chateaux had security cameras all over the place and personnel watching the video feeds 24/7, so trying to sneak around to the lodge Brandt had rented would just net her a hassle from some burly rent-a-cops. Instead she walked openly into the main building and headed for the registration desk where Ted Carlisle stood behind the counter. His eyebrows rose in surprise and maybe even alarm when he recognized her.
“Jessie, you can’t just barge in here like this,” he hissed between his teeth as he leaned forward over the desk.
She ignored the warning and reached inside her jacket to pull out a folded manila envelope. “I have some legal papers here for Mr. Bennett Chapman,” she said in a normal tone of voice, remembering the alias Ted had told her Brandt was using.
“I—I’ll take those for him.” Ted held out a trembling hand.
“No can do, hon,” Jessie said. “He has to sign for them, and I have to get his signature personally.” She smiled. “You wouldn’t want me to lose my job, would you?”
This masquerade was just for the benefit of the security cameras and the men watching them, of course. Ted hesitated and then poked a few keys on his computer. “I’ll have to escort you to Mr. Chapman’s lodge,” he announced.
Jessie hadn’t counted on that, but she had little choice other than to play along with him. She nodded.
Ted said, “Just a minute,” and picked up a phone. After a second he said into it, “Stacy, can you cover the desk for a minute? I have to escort someone making a delivery to one of our guests.”
He hung up, and less than a minute later a blond woman came out of a rear office to take Ted’s place. Like him, she wore cream-colored slacks and a blue blazer, the employee uniform here at the Chateaux. Ted came out from behind the desk and said to Jessie, “Come with me, miss.”
Nobody would think anything unusual was going on. A lot of high-powered businessmen stayed here while they were in town, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to have visitors and receive deliveries at all hours of the day or night. After all, on the other side of the world it was already the middle of the next day.
Jessie and Ted left the building through a glass door that opened onto a flagstone walk. Discreet but effective illumination came from lights in the trees that covered the property. The walk split into various paths that led to the different lodges. As they moved along one of the paths, Ted said, “What were you thinking, walking in like that?”
“Oh, come on, Ted. You know as well as I do that if I started skulking around this place, security would be all over me in two seconds. This way the guys keeping an eye on the cameras think it’s all legit.”
“That’s what they’ll think until you start annoying Brandt and he starts yelling. Then it’ll be my ass for letting you in.”
“You won’t get fired over something like that. Reprimanded maybe. But you can blame the whole thing on me. After all, I did lie to you about who I am and why I’m here. You can’t catch everybody who has an ulterior motive for wanting to see one of your guests.”
“Wanna bet? That’s exactly what I’m supposed to do. If anybody else asked me to do this…”
“I’ll make it worth your while, Ted.” Before he could get any wrong ideas, she added, “If I get some good shots and a story to go with them, Supernova will pay through the nose and I’ll cut you in on it.”
“Well…all right. What’s really in that envelope you showed me?”
“Half a dozen pages of meaningless boilerplate. You’d have to actually start reading them to know they aren’t valid documents.”
“You’ve pulled this scam before, haven’t you?”
“It’s not a scam. I’m not trying to rip anybody off.”
“Sorry,” he muttered.
They
