Fired Up

didn’t let a little thing like the weather get in the way of the ambience. Come high summer, when the temps were routinely in the low one hundreds, Drake Stone’s patio would be just as comfortable as it was now. The row of misters installed at the edge of the awning would cool the atmosphere with an airy spray of water.
    Stone had given them a true Vegas welcome. He had dispatched a stretch limo to pick them up at the airport. The bar in the rear of the vehicle had offered cold beer, chilled champagne and an assortment of soft drinks. She and Jack had sipped sparkling spring water in hushed luxury on the drive out to Warm Springs Road to an exclusive enclave of private estates. Along the way they passed subdivisions and small strip malls interspersed with acres of undeveloped land covered in sagebrush.
    High stone walls surrounded Drake Stone’s home. The gate was manned by a uniformed guard. Pines and purple plums shaded the grounds. The main house resembled one of the fantasy hotel-casinos on the strip, an over-the-top Mediterranean villa built around the pool and a large, lushly landscaped courtyard.
    Stone’s interior designer had gone mad with what in Vegas passed for the Renaissance look. The heavily gilded furniture was oversized, covered in rich brocades and trimmed with a lot of gold tassels and velvet pillows. In the vast living room a hand-painted sky complete with fluffy clouds and plump cherubs adorned the ceiling. Tapestries covered the walls.
    Stone had proven to be a genial host who was obviously enjoying his guests. He was dressed in a pair of loose, elegantly draped white trousers, a white, long-sleeved shirt, white sandals and designer sunglasses. There were a lot of rings on his hands and some gold chains around his throat. The gemstones and the gold looked real.
    Chloe knew that he had to be in his mid-sixties, but there was an ageless quality about him, as if he had been preserved in plastic or maybe embalmed. He had obviously had a lot of work done, and it had all been of the highest quality. His jaw line was amazingly firm, his teeth were brilliantly white and the sprayed-on tan was just the right shade. His hair was as dark and thick as that of any nineteen-year-old, although the average nineteen-year-old probably would not have gone with the blow-dried pompadour.
    It would have been easy to assume that Drake Stone was a caricature of an aging Vegas lounge crooner, but that would have been a serious mistake, Chloe thought. She knew, because Phyllis had explained often enough that it took intelligence, pragmatism, luck and sheer grit to keep a career in show business going as long as Stone had. That was especially true when that career was founded on a single hit song. It also took a lot of financial savvy and connections to amass the kind of fortune that could re-create a Roman villa in the Las Vegas desert.
    There was something else about Drake Stone that caught her attention, a faint but discernable aura of energy. She could see it in his psi prints. She was willing to bet that he was a low-level sensitive, maybe a two on the Jones Scale. He was probably unaware of his talent. People with above-average intuition usually took the gift for granted. But over the years it would have given him an edge that no doubt accounted for his long-lived success in a cutthroat business.
    She took a sip of the tea that Drake’s housekeeper had served. The men drank coffee. She was having a good time. Meeting people like Drake Stone was one of the perks of her job. But Jack, seated on the chair next to her, was barely masking his impatience with the pleasantries. Dark glasses shielded his eyes and his face was impassive, but she could feel the cold anticipation in him.
    Drake laughed. “Trust me, I’m always thrilled to hear that I’m anyone’s favorite singer. But I’ll admit I’d have been even more flattered if you had said that I was your assistant’s favorite singer, not her mother’s.”
    “Her mother was murdered a few years ago,” Chloe said gently. “The memory of her mom listening to your music is very important to her.”
    “Understood,” Drake said, going very serious. “Tell her I feel honored.”
    “I will.” She smiled. “Is it true that the ladies in the audience still line up for a kiss after the show?”
    “It’s true.” Drake winked. “But I’ve been doing my show here for thirty years. Back at the start, the women in the audience were thirty years younger.