Hold ’Em Hostage (3 page)

“Because you're more successful at Hold 'Em than I am. And, besides, I
am
treating this time.”

“Thanks for the frequent flier miles, Mr. Generous, but in case you forgot, the Mellagio gave me the suite for a blurb on the website and if we are keeping track, you are about four vacations in the hole.”

“You can't count it if I was broke at the time when you decided we ought to go to Bermuda, Grand Cayman and—”

“Whoa.” Frank held up his hand to stop us.

I sighed, shot him an apologetic look and remembered my strangely silent friend. The friend who was now staring at her cell phone in her lap as if it were about to come to life. “Shana, what's wrong?”

Flamboyant and fearless, Shana would not normally be shaken by an interview with some cops, no matter how verbally rough they could get. Likewise, she wouldn't have been depressed if she'd been rebuffed by the object of her desire—the stud muffin in the poker room in whose arms I'd last seen her. Reluctant to look away from her phone, Shana's brown eyes met mine, full of worry. “It's Aphrodite.”

Our problems with the police immediately faded to the deep background in the face of trouble with her daughter. I ran to Shana, sitting down next to her and putting my arm around her shoulders. “Is she okay? Is she sick? Has she been in an accident?”

Shana shook her head. “I can't get her on the phone. She hasn't returned the call I made when we landed. I've called a dozen times since then. Her phone is turned off. Or, went dead.”

That hung heavy in the silence, broken finally by Frank. “Remember, ladies, it
is
the middle of the night.”

“You don't know teenage girls,” I interjected, resisting the impulse to tell him he would have to get to know teenagers one day soon, as he had a daughter and son tucked away somewhere in California—children I'd resolved to learn more about on this trip. Or else. “Teenagers answer their phones at all hours. You never know when your crush will call. Or your best friend will have a crisis with her boyfriend.”

Shana shook her head. “Besides, we had an agreement that she would keep her phone on at all times, so I could give her our room number at the hotel in case she needs me and I don't answer my cell. This is just unlike her.”

My goddaughter was an atypical sixteen-year-old American girl, as thoughtful, careful and reliable as her mother had not been at that age, so for her to be out of touch for this long was indeed cause for serious concern.

“Is she staying home alone while you're here?” Frank asked, again revealing how little he knew about teenagers.

Shana looked a little more like herself when she threw him her you're-out-of-your-mind glare. “No. Really, Frank. She's staying with the Cooleys.”

“Elva and Howard,” Frank confirmed, acquainted with my parents to the point of over acquaintance as far as I was concerned. Mom routinely asked Frank when he was going to marry me in irritatingly indirect ways. Dad routinely asked Frank for advice on how to “off” people. Couldn't I have parents who politely just asked about the weather over dinner? “Have you called them?” Frank inquired.

Ben, Shana and I all shared a panicked moment where we all imagined what Mom and Dad would do when awoken by a middle-of-the-night Vegas call. “Not yet,” Ben finally said. “We kept hoping Affie would call back, and we wouldn't have to.”

“I guess Shana has to decide whether she is tired enough of waiting to disturb the Cooleys.”

We were all quiet a moment while that sunk in. Shana blew out a breath, shook out her wavy dark hair and slowly rose to her feet. Ben rushed to hover next to her. Weird. I'd never seen him try so hard with any woman. Mostly they flocked to him, and he barely deigned to speak to them unless it regarded the next sexual position. He never chased, coddled or offered any kind of emotional or intellectual support. Hmm. I was going to have to nip this infatuation in the bud or else I was going to be caught in the middle when the relationship went south, which it undoubtedly would considering these were the two most promiscuous people on the planet. Finally, Shana tapped her clear-plastic-heeled Jimmy Choos a couple of times, then said: “Okay, let's call them.”

Clearly Ben and I were the “us” in “let's,” since Shana didn't move to use the cell that she held in her hand. I looked at Ben, who looked at me. He cocked his head. I guess his proprietary streak did not extend to calling Ma for Shana. I cocked my head right back. I had to deal with our parents more than he did, considering he was always “on the road” as a pharmaceutical sales rep and always busy going out every night. Of course, Mom still did his laundry, so he found enough time to go by and drop that off, didn't he? Frank tucked a hank of my unruly chestnut hair behind my left ear, leaned down and asked quietly, “Do you want me to phone them?”

Aw. It was love. It had to be. Nothing else would make a man brave enough to offer to deal with Elva at three a.m. I was tempted to jump his darling bones right then and there, but instead I shook my head. “No, Frank, I'll do it, but you know I owe you for offering.”

His crow's feet crinkled. His eyes warmed to liquid chocolate. Dark, rich chocolate. I had to look away as he said quietly but not softly, “I can't wait to collect.”

I walked over to the coffee table and dug around in my purse for my cell phone, forgetting that it was under arrest. I growled, made a mental note to switch service to a new phone, and grabbed Ben's from out of his pants pocket. “Hey!” he argued.

I held it out to him with a questioning look. He evaded eye contact and leaned down to give Shana a shoulder squeeze. Jerk.

I dialed and waited, braced for Dad, who would certainly answer this time of night, but who would have the phone snatched from his hands as soon as Mom could knock him over for it. After six rings, however, it went to their voice mail. Not expecting this, I paused in the dead air, not sure what to say. “Mom, Dad, we all made it to Vegas fine. We wanted to give you our room number at the Mellagio, 1717. Oops, I just realized what time it is. Duh! So sorry! Y'know this place designs it so you never know what time it is. Call us as soon as possible and let us know Aph is behaving herself. We can't seem to get ahold of her on her cell phone.”

“Why wouldn't they answer?” Shana asked, chewing on her lower lip.

Ben and I shrugged, holding each other's gaze. There wasn't a good reason. Our parents had never failed to pick up the phone next to their bed on the second ring for every crisis that involved an overnight phone call, and, believe me, there had been many when Bad Boy Ben was a teenager. “Maybe Dad needs a hearing aid,” Ben offered.

Of course that didn't explain Mom, who still could hear a whisper through walls three houses down the street. I sighed and threw Shana a brave smile. Bowing her head, she looked away, knowing me well enough not to buy it.

“I say you three get a couple hours of sleep, giving Affie a chance to call back after the sun comes up in Houston, then we can proceed with some other venues.”

“Us three?” I looked at Frank. “What about you?”

“I'm going to find my friend on the force here and see what he can tell me about where you really stand with the cops in this case.”

I remembered Abel from our last fiasco in Vegas, nice guy, took bribes for inside information. I reached for my purse. Frank grabbed it first and slapped my hand away. “This one's on me.”

“But I'll owe you even more,” I argued.

“That's what I'm counting on.” He dropped his voice to a dangerous level. I squirmed in my Luckys. He cleared his throat. “And when I get back from visiting with my friend, I'll check into our room.”

“
Your
room?” Ben interjected, waving his hand around the suite that was two bedrooms and at least 2500 square feet. “There's plenty of room for us all in here.”

“Trust me, Benjamin, this suite is not big enough for the vacation I have in mind,” Frank said smoothly. I squirmed harder and tried to contain the blush running up my neck by going to put a protective arm around Shana to guide her to the bedroom doorway.

The phone in our room rang. We all stopped and looked at the phone, then each other. I held my breath. Shana relaxed with relief, then tensed, then went weak against me. Ben looked frozen. Frank was the first to recover, as usual. He strolled to the end table and picked up the receiver. “Yes?”

I could see the tension around his eyes dissipate and knew he recognized the caller. “She's right here,” he answered, holding the receiver out to me.

“Hello?” I tried not to let my voice catch on the lump in my throat.

“Bee, you're in d-danger. You g-gotta get outta Vegas and get out q-quick.”

“J
ack! I thought you were meeting us at the airport?”

“I'm sorry, Bee, I got caught under a game and had to wait it out, but that's where I heard something that scared me.”

Jack Smack was currently the hottest journalist covering the poker world, thanks to a stint on
Good Morning America
after our rather deadly Texas Hold 'Em cruise last autumn. More importantly, he was my friend and did me the highly underpaid favor of writing a gossip column on my fledgling website called “Hold 'Em Hearsay.” I was pretty sure his column was the only reason why anyone would log on. Well, maybe some came for Ringo's poker shades update. Anyhow, Jack had SAD. Yes, you got that right, he suffered from social anxiety disorder—a pathological aversion to social situations, which caused excessive sweating, heart palpitations and occasional stuttering, which ironically never struck him when on camera.

“Where were you and what did you hear?”

“I don't want to t-tell you over the phone. You know Vegas, b-baby. I'll come to your room.”

“See you soon. It's 1717,” I said in tacit agreement on the possibility of a bug. It had happened before. I hung up.

“What did he say?”

I considered telling Frank what Jack had said, but I didn't want him to overreact and order me to don a flak jacket, close the drapes and hide under furniture, so I just smiled. “He apologized for not meeting us at the airport, and is on his way up.”

Frank searched my face, apparently seeing the lie by omission there. Truly I don't know how I get away with winning bluffs because I can't lie very well. It must be the sunglasses. Frank continued to wait for me to spill it. I resisted. Sometimes he challenged my independence and sometimes he didn't. Tonight, he didn't want to miss his date with Abel, so he didn't push it.

“Okay, Honey Bee, but don't open the door to anyone else.” Frank raised his eyebrows, waiting for a promise. I nodded. He snatched the key card Ben had left on the bar and pocketed it on his way out the door.

“Bee Bee, you still haven't told me what the cops asked you,” Ben said, pouring himself a Johnnie Walker Red. I was impressed at yet another sign that my brother might be growing a sensitive side at the ripe old age of forty-one; he'd waited until Frank left to open the alcohol. Not that Frank would have cared, but I would have. Frank's infrequent, temporary denials of his alcoholism had been serious obstacles in our relationship. (The dead bodies that seemed to crop up when we were together might be counted as others. Although Frank, I'm certain, would argue that it wasn't the murders, but my involvement in trying to solve them that was the problem.)

But that's another story.

Or was it?

“And, you never told me why you look like you took a shower fully clothed,” Ben persisted.

I sighed, accepted the proffered glass of chardonnay and eased onto the couch to tell the short version of what happened after we'd been separated. “You lost your Angels?” Shana asked, distracted out of her worry by my fashion horror.

I stopped in mid nod. “I know where they are, just retrieving them may be a bit difficult.”

Shana wagged a finger at me. “Those are one of a kind originals. And besides, they are the sexiest shoes I've ever seen and I want to borrow them. We're going after those silver suckers.”

Ben looked from Shana to me and back again, but apparently wanted to stay in her good graces badly enough to withhold comment. “So, the cops think you sliced the guy's throat, slipped him into the lagoon, passed off the knife, sat down to play a small time sit and go, got caught, then tried to ditch them by swimming around with the corpse?”

I shrugged. “I don't know what they think, but that scenario alone is ridiculous. I suppose that's why they had to let me go.”

“Who was the guy who tried to sneak off with you?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Or maybe you better wish you don't ever find out,” Ben said.

“You're probably right,” I admitted, suppressing a shiver at the memory of the cold fury in his eyes when he realized he'd lost me. “He had a really weird tattoo that looked like a combination of a dragon, snake and shark on his neck.”

“A dragsnashark—sure, you see those everywhere.”

My head snapped up. “Really?”

“No, Bee Bee, I'm joking. It sounds like some kind of gangland mark.”

“I don't know what a gang would want with hassling me. Plus, the guy didn't look much like a gangbanger, more like he belonged on Wall Street.” I paused, deep in thought for a moment as I watched the neon-lit pedestrians on The Strip below, then I turned back to them. “You haven't told me what the cops asked you two.”

“Oh, they just tried to get me to admit I knew the knife guy, some Keith character. Then they wanted me to confess to killing the mystery person, because I guess you hadn't gone swimming with the body yet. Wanted to know what a badass you were and how many card games we'd ripped off.”

“They think we're card sharks?” I asked, confused.

Ben shrugged. “Maybe they were fishing and just wanted to get lucky.”

I turned to Shana, who sipped the orange-flavored Absolut on the rocks Ben had served her before answering. “They wanted to know what my relationship was to you, Ben and the mystery man with the knife. What we were doing in Vegas, that kind of thing. They wanted to make sure I knew to call them if I noticed anything ‘untoward' in your behavior here at the casinos.”

“Did they mention what untoward things they expect you to witness?”

“No, but when I said you were here to play in the Main Event, the room went electric.”

“I wonder what that means. There are ten thousand people in Vegas playing at the Main Event,” I mused. “And what could the WSOP possibly have to do with some guy with a knife in a poker room and a body at a casino across The Strip?”

We silently pondered that for a moment, then Ben said, “Remember, they may be isolated events. We are assuming your swimming partner was killed by the knife that fell on our table and by the man who was carrying the knife. We might be the only common denominators.”

“Humph. Which is why we are suspects,” I murmured.

“We?!” Shana and Ben exclaimed.

I put up my hands. “Okay, why I am a suspect.” I bumped Shana with my shoulder. “What happened to Matthew McConaughey?”

I was surprised to see the dark look on Ben's face when she answered distractedly, “Who? Oh, Kent? We have a date for lunch tomorrow. I mean, today.”

“I thought you were playing in the first event? It starts at noon, you know,” Ben put in quickly.

Shana frowned and glanced again at her cell phone display.

“Hey, none of us know what's going to happen by morning, Ben.” I pointed out gently.

“Well, you're playing,” he sulked.

“I don't know yet.” I hadn't told them what Jack had said on the phone. I didn't know what it meant so I just decided to wait. They could hear the whole story from him.

Ben slid another dark look at Shana as he downed a swig of JW.

Hmm. Ben was acting jealous. That he was showing any emotion at all toward a woman was amazing. Where had this come from? Ben considered women his playground, running from the monkey bars to the swings to the sandbox. After years of keeping them apart, I'd finally acquiesced to going to the nine-day WSOP circuit tournament together because I thought Shana had finally seen and heard enough about Ben's antics to be forewarned against involving herself with him. Now in the time it took me to drop into the Image lagoon, they seemed to have developed some sort of relationship. At least, as far as he was concerned.

Uh-oh.

I jumped at the knock on the door.

Ben unfolded his legs and rose to let Jack in. “My man.” Ben shook his hand. Jack did a little dance with his orange-lizard-skin-boot-clad feet. “My hero,” he shouted, winking at me, “has finally landed in Vegas! My world is right again.”

“I love your boots,” I told him as I kissed his cheek.

“The Lucchese dudes were so c-cool to offer to make me a custom pair,” he said as he plopped down on the couch and admired his toes.

“Not everybody can wear that color,” Ben observed.

I introduced him to Shana. He kissed her hand. She blushed. Jack had a way with women he never would recognize.

“How's Ingrid?” I asked.

“She's s-so totally hot.” He blushed. “But I guess you'd know that from Frank, right?”

I smiled noncommittally. Ingrid, the potential übermodel who worked with Frank, had hooked up with Jack on our cruise. However, I wouldn't know anything about the current state of her love life from Frank as he was an antigossip to an extreme. I always thought he didn't talk about other people's relationships so as to not open the door for questions about his own. Admirable ethics, if irritating for his girlfriend (i.e., me) who had to ferret out his secrets by nefarious means.

“So tell me why you warned me on the phone,” I said to Jack.

“What warning?” Shana asked, instantly tense again.

“Jack told me to catch the next plane out because I'm in danger.”

“Huh,” Ben grunted. “Maybe he saw you swimming around the Image lagoon with a guy with two smiles.”

Jack sat bolt straight. “W-what?”

I waved off his question. “You go first.”

Jack threw me a cautioning look but began his story.

“I'm working on an article on the secrets of poker millionaires for
On the Felt
magazine. I'm undercover at the Mellagio high-stakes poker room.”

“Hold on, Jack,” Ben said. “How did you get under a table in the high-stakes room? It's a raised room behind panels in the middle of the casino's main poker room that's completely open sided to passersby. Anyone could see you coming and going down the two ramps that lead to either side.”

“That's the beauty of it,” Jack said. “I hung out with the railbirds along the ramps and waited until we got a half-million-dollar stake in front of us and dropped a piece of paper, bent to retrieve it and slipped under the table next to the rail. If they noticed me missing, it wasn't mentioned and I knew it wouldn't be. In this age of political correctness, nobody wants to pipe up and say, ‘Hey, where did the sweaty guy with the bad stutter and dumbo ears go?'”

Smiling, Shana and I shook our heads.

“So, I'd recognized this one dude, called Golden Hammer because he won last month's circuit bracelet at Rincon by dropping the hammer on the last hand. He's sitting there, winning with a lot of backdoor hands in a row, ticking off the table with his arrogance.”

“Whoa, dropping the hammer?” Shana asked.

“When you win with seven/two in the hole.”

“Huh, you can expect to win with that pocket?”

Ben threw her an arch, teasing look. “I thought you just tried that at the Image, you Maniac.”

Shana stuck her tongue out at him as I marveled he'd noticed. Jack continued, “And Hammer's heads-up with a guy in high society who's sat in the luckbox all night.”

Shana lifted her eyebrows at me.

“A luckbox is a novice who's won repeatedly, due more to fortune than skill. High society meaning with at least a hundred grand in front of him in the game.”

“And I c-can't see the c-cards, but I can see sweaty palms wiped on thighs under the t-table, knees bouncing ninety miles an hour, so I know who's got c-cards, and who doesn't.” Jack paused and I could tell he was moving into his reporter mode, because once he warmed to a story, his stutter stopped. “High Society and the guy sitting next to him, a real ABC player who doesn't belong at this table, start talking under their breath about the boss planning some moneymaking partnership with another group having a poker agenda. They need a fall guy. The groundwork had already been laid and more was going down tonight.”

“So why is this dangerous for me?”

“Because when ABC asked High Society who was the duck, he laughed and said someone who will have a hard time showing off toe cleavage in paper shoes and an orange jumpsuit.”

“It could be Clonie Gowen,” Ben offered with a knowing grin.

I swallowed hard, unable to speak. My signature was my preference for dressing up instead of down for the game, especially in what I put on my feet. Clonie was beautiful and often dressed up but I wore beautiful shoes. Always. The phone rang. I assumed it was Frank. Shana assumed it was Aphrodite. We both reached for it but I withdrew my hand and let her answer. Shana's olive complexion whitewashed as she listened, handing the phone to me without a word, obviously stricken.

“Hello?” I said tentatively as I kept my gaze glued onto Shana.

“Bee Cool, welcome to Vegas. We have your goddaughter. We also have you framed for murder. You are going to do some things for us if you want to keep her alive and yourself out of jail.”