Double Strike (A Davis Way Crime Caper Book 3) (4 page)

*     *     *

Fantasy and I hit the door of Training Room B three minutes late, signed in, got individual packets of information, had employee photo badges made, then snuck in and sat in the back row. I’d been on the clock since three that morning, and I was ready to end my work day so I could get with Bradley and tell him that I could possibly marry him tomorrow after my Strike It Rich orientation, if we made it quick, but I wouldn’t be honeymooning with him.

“If you’d go ahead and tell Mr. Sanders and No Hair you were going to get married tomorrow, you know they’d help you work it out.”

“It would get me out of ballet.”

We wanted a quick, quiet, small ceremony, family only, then squeeze in a quick honeymoon before I had to be back for Strike It Rich, and I’d never gotten around to telling Mr. Sanders or No Hair I was taking four days off because I was getting married. There was entirely too much going on for me to bring it up now.

Hashtag Elspie was at the front of the room, clapping her arms above her head, chanting, “Strike! It! Rich! Strike! It! Rich!” and most of the room’s occupants were chanting along with her.

Gold Bikini waitresses Fantasy and Davis weren’t chanting.

Our disguises were low-energy, on purpose, because we had to look this way every day for two straight weeks and didn’t want to endure fourteen extreme makeovers. Fantasy had gone from shoe-polish black pixie to dark brown extensions that hit between her shoulder blades, and from bright blue eyes to hazel. (Think Halle Berry.) I’d sprayed my hair Hot Toffee, which sounded delicious, and would be easy, because it only took one can of temporary color to cover my red. I went Jade Green on the colored contact lenses, which I poked in on the run in the elevator, and might have been a mistake. My new employee ID had a creature-from-outer space glow about it. The lights were going down for a Strike it Rich movie (produced by Hashtag Elspie) when Fantasy said, “Yow, Davis. Your eyes look nuclear.” The Jade Green was one of several new colors I’d ordered. Keeping it fresh. “Good grief,” she backed away from me, “those contacts are the color of slime.”

The movie began with the construction of the little casino. Salsa, the Mexican restaurant, had been moved from the back of the house to the front, renamed (Nachos), and scaled down. A ten-foot tall sheetrock mural of gigantic winning faces had been placed in front of the former Salsa six weeks earlier to hide the transformation from enchiladas to casino-in-a-casino. It was now Strike it Rich. And we were getting the first peek. Set to rap.

One minute in, my phone buzzed with an incoming message. My future husband’s face filled the screen and the accompanying text message read
911
. I let Fantasy see it for a millisecond before I ran out of the room. All but screaming.

“Bradley? What? What’s wrong?” In the three seconds between receiving the message and getting him on the line, I ran through every horrible scenario imaginable, all involving sirens.

“Davis.”

He sounded perfectly and completely defeated.

“Are you okay, Bradley? What’s wrong?”

I waved a concerned passerby off and ducked into a restroom. Which turned out to be a men’s room.

“You need to sit down. I have some news.”

I had three sit-down options. I stood.

“Say something.” I could hear him breathing. “Just tell me.”

“I stopped by the court clerk’s office to pick up our marriage license.”

“And?” My brain flew to court-house shootings. Killer bees. Volcanoes.

“It was denied.”

I sat down.

“Davis, you’re still married to Eddie.”

FOUR

Bradley Cole grew up in Texas. His Texas heritage was never more on display than during football season, when his weekend wardrobe either said Hook ‘em Horns or Go Cowboys. And Bradley Cole looked like a Texan—broad shouldered, sun-bronzed, sandy-blond. If he wore a Stetson with his lawyer suits, you’d swear he was an oil baron who’d just climbed off his Appaloosa after checking the rigs on the north forty. His real Texas tell was the hot sauce; Bradley doused chocolate cake with Texas Pete hot sauce.

Smart guy that he is, Bradley’s final year of law school had him twiddling his thumbs. He was down to two required courses to finish his law degree, so he filled his schedule with bar-exam prep things and electives. He took a Taxation of Financial Derivatives class, which turned out to be a hard look at how the gaming industry wove in and out of the overall body of tax law, and how gaming corporations capitalized on mark-to-market, constructive sale, straddle, wash sale, and short-sale rules to their bottom-line benefits. Included in the course syllabus was a trip to Las Vegas, where he spent four days at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas in the Konami Gaming Lab, just a few miles off the Strip, and four nights at the Grand Palace, where his law professor had arranged a meet-a-casino-mogul reception. The president of the casino, a Dallas Mavericks fan, took the empty seat next to Bradley. One drink turned into two, then four, and when twenty-four-year-old Bradley left Las Vegas, he’d signed up for more school and had a job. Upon completing his law degree, Bradley moved to Las Vegas to get a quickie degree in Gaming Management from UNLV during the day while working the casino trenches at night. After obtaining the additional degree and passing the bar, Bradley joined the Grand’s legal team. Two years later, when Grand Palace Biloxi opened its doors, Bradley Cole, lead attorney, was one of the ribbon cutters.

None of this sat too well with his mother, who’d wanted him to move back to Texas, hang his shingle a block from the house he’d grown up in, practice family law, marry a nice Texas girl, give her grandbabies, and so forth and so on. How she managed to blame me for this dream not coming true was a puzzle. I didn’t have a thing to do with it, because Bradley and I met three years ago. And in those three years, my ex-ex-husband has caused us immeasurable grief. He just wouldn’t go away. And I’m still married to him? How? Why?

We couldn’t talk at home because his mother was there. Bradley had no desire to leave the casino where he worked to meet me at the casino where I worked, nor did I, so we split the difference and met in the middle.

He was waiting for me in the Lucky Lady bar at the Belle of Biloxi Casino, built out like a riverboat, with a Scotch neat and a water back, at a small round table in a dark corner. He looked up, and stunned, when I walked in the door. A Keno runner girl almost knocked me down with her tray of tickets and mini pencils as I made my way to him. “No, thanks. I don’t understand Keno.” (True.) My purse thumped to the floor; I fell into a chair. I held out my hand, he passed me the envelope.

It was arbitrarily rubber stamped near the middle, with the word DENIED. Beneath it, the second item on the list had a check mark in the box to the left. PRIOR EXISTING MARRIAGE. It didn’t say which one of us had a PRIOR EXISTING MARRIAGE, but Bradley had never been married, so I was it.

To issue a marriage license, Mississippi doesn’t ask for proof of prior marriage dissolution, unless it’d been less than six months. I was only asked to list the month, year, county and state of all divorces on record. (So embarrassing, to have been married twice already at the ripe, old age of thirty-three. The first one had been annulled when I was sixteen. So I didn’t count it, but everyone else in Wilcox County, Alabama did. (“She’s been married
twice
already
.
It’s shameful.”) At issue, apparently, was my second divorce. From the same man. Eddie Crawford the Snake Rat Pig and many other Chinese Zodiac offerings.

I blinked back tears.

Bradley ordered another for himself and a glass of wine for me.

Five more minutes passed, with me, several times, sucking in air to speak only to chicken out.

“It could,” Bradley broke the horrific silence, “be a simple paperwork error.” He looked in his empty glass for answers. “You know you went to court.” I nodded along. “You paid your attorney. You received a judgment.” I remembered every precarious step. “It could simply be a matter of the court not filing the paperwork.”

I was a snapping turtle. No words would come out.

The Keno runner bounced to the table in her short skirt and big grin. Finally, I found my voice. “No!” I barked. “Go
away
!”

“Davis.” He pulled me in. “It’s not her fault.”

An hour later, we sat at a long table overlooking the bay at Mary Mahoney’s Old French House Restaurant. Everyone had a glass of red wine except Bradley, who was still on the Scotch, and my niece Riley, who was on Cherry Coke. My mother kept lobbing ice cubes into Granny’s glass of wine. Granny got a little goofy when she drank too much. Or at all.

“We’re all here, good grief, I think you two should go ahead.” My sister Meredith reached for the bread basket. “Let’s all get up first thing in the morning, go to the courthouse, get you two married, then you can go to work, Davis. Be done with it, already.”

“There’s no need to rush.” Anne Cole, after four days of being wound tighter than a tick, was relaxed, chipper, and even trying to make small talk with my mother. “I think they should wait,” she said. (“Forever,” she didn’t say.)

Bradley shared our news while I studied the stitching of the napkin in my lap. “We’ve decided, with the unexpected events at the Bellissimo this morning, since Davis can’t take even a day off, to wait.”

His mother hooked a possessive arm through his. “It’s for the best.” She wore the only smile at the table.

My father, from the other end of the table, eyed us both. Back and forth.

*     *     *

“We’re the future of gaming.” Levi Newman welcomed us to the rescheduled Strike orientation in Theatre C wearing a dark suit, red silk shirt, shiny shoes, and a headset microphone. A spotlight followed him. It felt like a Get Rich Quick motivational seminar. A flashing screen display behind him said,
futureGaming
, in monster-sized letters.

“We’re a casino within a casino, completely self-contained, and the gaming industry hasn’t even thought of, much less seen, what we’re about to unleash.” He crossed the stage in the small amphitheater auditorium. “The software for the gaming has been six months in development, and it’s guaranteed to blow you away.”

Hashtag Elspie hopped up and led the crowd in a cheer, clapping her arms above her head. “Blow! You! Away! Blow! You! Away!”

“The goal is to keep the Strike players in the Strike casino for the twelve hours we’re open, each and every one of the seven days.” Mr. Newman was a big man, with a mop of chestnut hair and very sun-damaged skin. He wore a thick gold chain around his neck and a square gold pinkie ring on his right hand. “And we believe we can do it, by offering unparalleled gaming, amenities never before even heard of, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll lock the doors and not let them leave.”

(“Lock! The! Doors! Lock! The! Doors!”)

“We want the players addicted to Strike, and returning again and again for the thrill. Even after the players are eliminated from the competition, we want them glued in their gaming chairs.” He waited until you could’ve heard a feather floating to whisper his next words into the microphone bud: “On. Their. Own. Dime.”

(“Their! Own! Dime! Their! Own! Dime!”)

Fantasy and I sat on opposite sides of the room and texted each other.

WTH?

We think it’s just a paperwork problem. Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone.

You didn’t tell your dad or Mer?

NOOOOOO!

You should tell NH.

No Hair didn’t even know we were getting married. Why would I tell him this? No!

“Let’s say a Strike guest needs a spa appointment rescheduled, the bottled water in their guest room switched to another brand, or maybe a little…” Levi Newman paused for effect,
“
…
companionship
.
”

Did he really just say that?

OMG, he’s so slimy.

“You’ll direct all these inquiries to our Strike Concierge, Bret Renfroe. Stand up, Bret.”

Bret stood and took a bow.

Does Eddie know?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

You’re going to have to tell him.

I realize that, Fantasy.

Levi Newman wandered up and down the main aisle speaking into a headset microphone. “Credit lines for all qualifying players have already been established with a twenty-percent cushion. Which means,” Levi Newman said, “if a Strike player asks you for an increase on their credit line, you direct the player to this young lady. Stand up, Rachel. Ladies and gentlemen, Rachel Logan, Strike Casino Credit Manager.”

How’s Bradley taking the news?

Not great. He thinks we’ll have problems with E the Ass.

“All banking will be handled within Strike. Advances, transfers, wires, deposits, ATM transactions, and markers happen right then and right there. Let me introduce you to our Strike Cage Manager, Cassidy Williams. Cassidy?”

Like what?

Like him not cooperating.

“And your name?”

OMG.

“Your name, young lady?”

Or demanding some ridiculous amount of $$$. I haven’t had time to put a plan—”
my phone flew out of my hand. Levi Newman waved my phone in the air. His rear end in my face, he spoke to the assembly. “Does it not go without saying you all need to silence your phones?”

There were beeps.

Just then my phone pinged with an incoming text. Levi Newman read it to the class. “
The only way to fix this is to kill him
.”

There were gasps.

Levi Newman dropped my phone into my lap, then pushed the microphone bud of his headset to his lips with a finger. “You. Are. Fired.”

(“You! Are! Fired! You! Are! Fired!”)

*     *     *

My grandmother had buried two husbands and was divorcing a third. There weren’t many man problems she hadn’t dealt with in her eighty-three years. Already in disguise, and suddenly semi-unemployed (No Hair was going to have a fit), I hit the casino, where I thought I might find Granny. I needed to lay a little groundwork on my way to Pine Apple to kill the attorney who’d mishandled my divorce.

I tracked her down at the most irritating slot machine in the building. Kitty Galore. She liked it, she said, because she could hear it. Which meant the volume on the machine was cranked to Ear Splitting. She played the one-cent denomination, and kept her little bird hand going on the spin button full speed. The screen would hold up to fifteen screeching cats, and Granny hit the play button so quickly, switching hands when the one grew weary, it was nothing but a huge cat fight on a loop that could be heard next door. The trick to the game was to line up the same breed, which made the cats purr, and rarely happened. When they didn’t line up, they wailed, which was happening non-stop. The bonus round was called Caterwaul. And it meant it.

“Granny, let’s play something else,” I said. “It doesn’t look like you’re winning on Kitty Litter.”

“Are you kidding me, Davie? I have twenty-seven dollars in this thing.” She gave the screen a whack. “I’m not leaving until I get my money out of it.” The game began meowing from inattention. “What is wrong with your eyes, honey? They’re the color of snap peas.”

I dug in my bag for sunglasses. I wasn’t feeling very eye-contacty anyway.

“I thought you were working all day.”

“I took a little break.” I got fired. “And thought I’d come visit with you for a minute.”

She grabbed me by the chin. “Spill the beans.”

“Walk with me, Granny.”

She gathered her things: a player card in the Kitty Litter machine attached to a plastic coil rope that was clipped to the collar of one of her sweaters, her pocketbook, which was more luggage than handbag, two extra sweaters, and an array of good luck charms she had scattered around the flat surfaces of the machine: a rabbit’s foot on a keychain, a naked purple-haired troll doll, and a 1964 Kennedy silver half-dollar coin. It took her ten minutes to pack. “Where to?”

“Let’s go see the new casino in the back.”

“Oh, yeah,” Granny said. “The Strike thing.” She shuffled. “I tried to qualify for that, you know. Didn’t even get this close.” She spread her arms wide, hit three people, and dropped everything she was holding. “Can you get me in?” Ten minutes later we got going again.

“Tell me why you’re getting a divorce, Granny.”

We’d covered two feet of casino floor. “Same reason everyone else gets one,” she said. “Unreasonable differences.” She stopped. “Is this what you want to talk to me about? Divorce?” (Yes.) “Honey, you’re not even married.” (Debatable.)

Granny used the slot-machine seats along the aisle instead of a cane or walker, and she didn’t care if anyone was sitting in them or not. A woman yelled, “Hey!” when Granny got a handful of her long hair. “I’m Price is Right, he’s Let’s Make a Deal. I’m Polident, he’s Fixadent. He’s taken up with a mangy dog, and you know I won’t live under the same roof with a dog. He lost my good gravy spoon, and he farts.” She knocked a guy playing Billionaire Sevens in the back of the head with the corner of her suitcase pocketbook and kept on going. “The worst?” She stopped in front of a bank of very busy Monopoly slot machines and raised her voice to be heard over a Go to Jail bonus round. “HIS GET UP AND GO HAS GOT UP AND WENT.” Granny twerked. “IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.” The Monopoly players knew exactly what she meant. The cocktail waitress going the other way who stopped cold with a tray full of drinks knew what she meant. The four people who ran into the cocktail waitress who stopped cold holding a tray full of drinks knew what Granny meant. Every player in a five-foot radius showered with glass, ice, and alcohol from the cocktail waitress’s tray knew what she meant.

Granny shuffled a few feet, then turned. “But mostly,” she said, “it’s that dog. Are you coming?” Leaving destruction and ruin in our wake, we rounded a corner to torture a whole new set of Bellissimo patrons as we made our way to Strike.

“Have you said anything to Cyril about the dog, Granny?”

“Three hundred times.”

As a young girl growing up in Pine Apple, Granny had walked a dusty Alabama path to school, as did the other four or five students, and her fear of dogs was rooted on the two-lane to the schoolhouse. She tells the story about once a week. “I was in primary school. I had my book satchel and my lunch tin. The big dog came out of nowhere.” Granny’s left arm still bore the scars, and to this day she remained terrified of dogs—all shapes, all sizes, she should meet Bianca’s little rats—and everyone in Pine Apple knew it. Cyril surely knew it at some point, but at this point, Cyril didn’t know what day of the week it was. Obviously, he’d forgotten that Granny could hardly carry on a conversation about dogs, much less live with one. A dog, much like a prior-existing marriage, was a deal-breaker. I’d give old Cyril a call and remind him, but he had the hearing capacity of a rock, and I’d just been fired, so I didn’t feel like screaming into the phone.

“Who’s your lawyer, Granny?”

“Smerle.”

Good. Smerle T. Webb was the only attorney in Wilcox County, Alabama, and he’d been my attorney of record when I’d (apparently not) divorced Eddie. The second time. He was Granny’s attorney, too, so me paying Smerle a friendly visit under the general heading of my grandmother’s behalf wouldn’t stir it up. Of course, sneezing stirred it up in Pine Apple. (“Where’s she been to catch a cold? Out honky-tonkying probably.”)

“And how’s it going?” I asked. “Divorce can be tricky.” And ineffective.

My grandmother came to a stop. “We don’t have kids, you know.”

I knew this.

“So it’s pretty run-of-the-mill divorcery,” she said. “Other than him wanting spousal support.” She shook her blue curls. “Can you believe it? Cyril wanting me to support him?” She moved an inch. “So I’m countersuing him to support me.”

“Does Cyril have any money, Granny?”

“Not a stinkin’ dime, honey. It’s a strategic move on Smerle’s part to pressure Cyril into dropping his suit against me.” She caught my eye. “Personally, I think Cyril will drop dead before any of this comes to pass. He’s old as the hills you know.”

Yes, I know. “I was thinking, Granny,” Strike was, mercifully, in sight, one hundred yards ahead, “that since my wedding is postponed and I have a few extra days on my hands, that I might check in with Smerle for you.” Her bright eyes found mine. “Just to look over everything. You know. Protect your assets.”

“Lookie.” Granny pointed. “The little casino. Let’s get our assets in there.”

“Why don’t you wait here, Granny,” I led her to a Triple Double Five Times Pay Deluxe Diamond Doozy slot machine, “and let me make sure the coast is clear.”

Granny dug in her suitcase and met up with a five-dollar bill. “Okey-doke.”

I tiptoed behind the Pardon Our Progress partitions and pushed right through the front doors. So much for security and secrecy.

The smell almost knocked me down. What in the world? It wasn’t necessarily a bad smell; the problem was there was so much of it. I yanked my shirt over my nose and mouth to diffuse it, then google-eyed the Strike Casino. It wasn’t a casino at all; it was a futuristic nightclub.

Salsa, the restaurant, had been 11,000 square feet, sixty percent of that dining room. The rest had been kitchen, service, and storage. The Strike it Rich mini casino replacing the restaurant looked to have been remodeled much to the same floor plan, at about the same proportions: nightclub in front of me, staff areas behind several doors. The walls were cold, black granite, at least thirty feet high, the furniture black leather, and everything else was gold. Ah. A gold mine. As in strike gold.

The centerpiece of the room was an elevated bar. It was long, oval, and solid black granite. Above it, one of the most breathtakingly beautiful sights I’ve ever seen: a blown-glass chandelier suspended from the ceiling, at least fifty feet long and ten feet wide, made up entirely of individual gold glass icicles. It was absolutely celestial. Thousands of illuminated gold spikes in varying circumferences and lengths each pointed to one of the three hundred and sixty degrees possible. They had pinpoint stiletto tips. There’s no doubt, if you could reach it, you’d prick your fingertips on the needle tips.

I bet you could perform micro-surgery with one of those things. I wondered how in the world they’d installed it. It was gorgeous, and there was absolutely no telling what it had cost. I would be scared to death to sit under that thing.

The bar seating, forty or so black leather stools, were just outside of the perimeter of the chandelier (still too close for comfort), but the bartenders would be working directly under the golden spikes, and far enough below it that should one of the golden stalactites break free, it would have a good running start before it split you in two. I’d be demanding hazardous duty pay.

It twinkled.

When I finally tore my eyes away from it, I counted two small cafés, bistro tables and settees on opposite ends of the room, a banking center, his-and-hers lounges, and two sunken conversation pits on either side of the bar, black leather loungers around circular black granite tables.

The actual gaming floor was fifty empty spaces.
future
Gaming was so secret, its installation was still days away. The whole place was other-worldly, as quiet as a library, and empty. It was a perfect time to sneak a peek, because everyone who had anything to do with Strike was in the meeting I’d been kicked out of.