Ashes to Dust (Las Vegas Mystery)

smiling. Stood up from her swivel chair, her fingertips lightly touching the desktop. “I just want you to know that is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”
    Snow forced a look of mock confusion. “What are you talking about?”
    “You know what I’m talking about,” she said. “My father. You called him and asked him to call me.”
    A half grin formed on the right side of Snow’s mouth. “I did not!” he protested.
    She lifted her fingertips off the desk, turned slowly, and walked out from behind it—toward Snow. She stopped in front of him, her face only inches from his. She kissed him, then wrapped her arms around him and placed her head on his shoulder.
    Snow felt his own arms encircling her waist, as if they had a mind of their own. And the two of them stood like that for a few moments, her warm breath on his neck.
    “What did he have to say?” Snow murmured.
    “He wanted to know if I needed any money,” Alice replied.
    “Well, that’s good,” Snow said. “That shows concern. A father should ask his daughter if she needs money—just to be sure. What else did you talk about?”
    “He wanted to know what I had been doing since the last time he saw me, which was practically my whole life. I gave him the abridged version. He asked about my mother, how she got along after he left. I told him she met someone nice, they got married and had my two brothers. And how he turned out not to be so nice after all, when he snuck off in the middle of the night with a waitress who worked at a greasy spoon we always ate Sunday dinner at.”
    “Was your stepfather…was he…?”
    “Yes,” she said. “He was one of your people. My mother only dated white men. Even in Detroit, that was fairly unusual back then. But my mother was a looker; she had no trouble attracting them. She just couldn’t hang on to them.”
    They moved apart. She walked back behind her desk to her chair and sat down. Snow slid back the client chair in front of her desk and plopped down. “Is your mother living alone now?”
    Alice smiled. “She never married again, and she lives alone. She’s still in Detroit, and my brothers and I visit her as often as possible.”
    “That’s good. So she doesn’t get lonely being by herself?”
    “Definitely not,” Alice said. “She has a lot of friends. She has her church activities. And she’s on the Internet all the time, on those dating sites, looking for new prospects. Some guy from Florida drove all the way up there in his RV to meet her. They drove around the country in it for three months. Then he dropped her off and went back to Florida.” She laughed. “One of my brothers called me and told me about that. He said Mom told him she wore him out—he had to leave because he couldn’t take it anymore.”
    Snow chuckled. “She must be in pretty good shape.”
    “She goes to the gym quite a bit, plays tennis, and walks four miles a day. Strangers have approached her, asking for her autograph—they think she’s Tina Turner.”
    “How does she handle that?”
    Alice shrugged. “She gives them the autograph.”
    Snow grinned. “Sounds like quite a lady. So, what about you?” Snow asked. “When are you planning to see your father?”
    She made a sour face and shook her head rapidly. “No way.”
    “No way—what? What are you talking about?”
    “All these years gone by. He won’t bother himself with flying out here to see me.”
    Snow frowned and folded his arms. “What did he say?”
    Alice leaned to the side and rested her cheek on two fingertips. “He said he’d give me a call next time he comes to Vegas.”
    Snow unfolded his arms and spread his hands. “Well, there you go!”
    “There I go shit ,” Alice said. “He’s a bullshit artist. That’s how he got to be CEO of a big, bloated corporation like Dep Tech. He’s got no reason to want to see me.”
    “You’re his daughter. He loves you.”
    She offered a pained expression. “He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t even know me.”
    “He doesn’t have to know you to care about you. There’s a biological bond, and that can’t ever be broken.”
    She leaned forward in her chair. “That’s one of those bonds that was made without any glue. But that’s okay. I’m a grown woman; I don’t need him.”
    Her eyes growing damp, she bit the side of her lower lip and lowered her gaze to the scattered papers on top of her desk.
    Snow took in a deep breath and looked down at his shoes, letting it out