Three Fates

connection.”
    The man didn’t respond to Gideon’s easy smile, but only mopped at the bar, shrugged. “She’s around.” And moved off before Gideon could ask where.
    So I’ll wait, Gideon thought. There were worse ways for a man to spend his time than watching well-built women peel off their clothes.
    “You looking for one of my girls?”
    Gideon turned from the performer who was currently crawling over the stage like a cat. The woman who stood beside him was nearly as tall as he was. Her hair was Harlow blonde and coiled in complicated, lacquered twists. She wore a business suit, without a blouse, and the milky tops of her rather amazing breasts spilled out between the lapels.
    He felt a twinge of guilt for noticing them when he looked at her face and realized she was more than old enough to be his mother.
    “Yes, ma’am. I’m looking for Cleo Toliver.”
    Marcella’s brows lifted at the polite address, and she signaled for a drink. “Why?”
    “Begging your pardon. I’d rather speak to Miss Toliver about that, if it’s all the same to you.”
    Without glancing at the bar, Marcella lifted the neat scotch she knew would be there. Might be handsome as sin, she mused, and have the look of a man who could handle himself in a fight. But he’d been raised to be respectful to his elders.
    While she didn’t necessarily trust such niceties, she appreciated them.
    “You cause trouble for one of my girls, I cause trouble for you.”
    “I’d as soon avoid trouble altogether.”
    “See you do. Cleo is the next act.” She downed her scotch, set down the empty and strolled away on her ice-pick heels.
    She made her way backstage, through the smell of perfume, sweat and face paint. Her dancers shared one room lined on both sides with long mirrors and communal counters. Each made her own nest out of a section, so that the counters were a messy sea of cosmetics, pasties, stuffed toys and candy. Photographs of boyfriends, film stars and the occasional toddler were pasted to the mirrors.
    As usual, the room was a gaggle of languages, of bitching, gossip and complaints. Complaints ranged from cheap tips, cheating lovers and menstrual cramps to aching feet.
    In the midst of it, like a cool island, Cleo stood putting the last pins in her long, sable-colored hair. She was friendly enough with the other girls, Marcella thought, but not friends with them. She did her work and did it well, collected her money and went home alone.
    So, Marcella remembered, had she in her time.
    “There is a man asking about you.”
    Cleo’s eyes, a deep, dark brown, met Marcella’s in the mirror. “Asking what?”
    “Just asking. He’s handsome, maybe thirty, Irish. Dark hair, blue eyes. Well mannered.”
    Cleo shrugged shoulders currently covered in a conservative gray pin-striped suit jacket. “I don’t know anyone like that.”
    “He asked for you by name, told Karl you were a family connection.”
    Cleo leaned forward to slick murderous red over her lips. “I don’t think so.”
    “You in trouble?”
    She shot the cuffs of the tailored white shirt she wore under the jacket. “No.”
    “If he gives you any, just signal to Karl. He’ll show him out.” Marcella nodded. “The Irishman’s at the bar. You won’t miss him.”
    Cleo slipped into the spike-heeled black pumps that completed her costume. “Thanks. I can handle him.”
    “I think this is so.” Marcella laid a hand on her shoulder briefly, then moved on to break up an argument between two of the dancers over a red-spangled bra.
    If she was concerned someone had come in and asked for her by name, Cleo didn’t show it. She was, after all, a professional. Whether dancing Swan Lake or peeling it off for Euro-trash, there were professional standards for a performer.
    I don’t know any Irishmen, she thought as she clipped out to wait for her cue. And she certainly didn’t buy that anyone remotely connected to her family would trouble themselves to ask about her. Even if they’d tripped over her bleeding body in the street.
    Probably just some asshole, she decided, who’d gotten her name from another customer and thought he might wrangle a cheap boink from an American stripper.
    He was going to go home disappointed.
    As her music came up, she pushed all thoughts but her routine out of her head. She counted the beats, and when the lights flashed on, Cleo erupted onto the stage.
    At the bar, Gideon’s hand froze in the act of lifting his beer.
    She was dressed