Death On the Flop (4 page)

“That’s the perfect attitude to have, Bee. I am so proud of you,” Ben said. “Let’s zip up your suitcase and we’re out of here.”

He released me, leaned down and flipped the lid closed. Uh-oh. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Wait, let me double check what I’ve got in there.”

“No can do.” Ben yanked the zipper and snatched up the suitcase by its handle all in one swift motion.

“What if I forgot something?” I tried to keep the panic out of my voice. Why did I just throw things willy-nilly in there? What was I trying to prove? Why didn’t I play it safe and grab my tried and true combinations instead of risking being sorry that I let my temper take control?

Ben strode out of the bedroom, calling over his shoulder, “Anything you need, I’ll win enough in this tournament to buy you. Anything you have, I’ll win enough to replace with something first-class. Got rhinestone earrings? I’ll get you diamonds. Got a mere Coach knock-off bag? I’ll buy you Prada.”

Shana sighed audibly from behind us. Geez. And I’d always thought of Shana as having good sense. She was buying this load of BS?

“Where did you learn so much about women’s fashion? I thought only gay guys knew this much,” I said hoping to slow him down.

“I pay attention to women,” he informed us.

“Yeah, when you think you might get them into bed.” I muttered under my breath.

“Bee! You are offending Shana.”

Shana didn’t look offended. Shana looked excited. Enough of that line of conversation. I turned the lights off as we passed through the living room and into the kitchen. “I can’t go,” I stated flatly.

Ben stopped in his tracks. Shana opened her mouth, ready, no doubt to take my seat on the plane.

“What’s your excuse now?” Ben asked.

“Grog.” I waved at the aquarium on the counter. A forked tongue flicked out from behind a pile of rocks. The python was the only pet I’d ever had. Friends always recommended I get a cat but that always seemed like such a big commitment. After one too many margaritas at Grog’s Bar a year ago, Shana and the bartender dared me to get a pet and I’d ended up taking the bar’s namesake home. I tried to take it back when I’d sobered up but Grog’s was boarded up, repoed by the bank, which is no doubt why the bartender had been so eager to get rid of the damned thing. I’d been hunting down food alternatives to live mice for him ever since.

That incident described my life in a nutshell. I never did anything spontaneous without paying dearly for it.

How would I look back on the grand Las Vegas Texas Hold ’Em adventure? Probably not a whole lot more fondly.

“Affie will take care of Grog. She’s looking for a little extra money. She wants to get her hand pierced.”

Ben drew his eyebrows together. “Is she doing a Jesus on the cross play at school or something?”

Shana shook her head. “No. She really is going to pierce it right here.” She pointed to the muscle between the thumb and forefinger. Ben and I both shivered.

“Why?” I asked when the nausea had passed.

“Because I won’t let her pierce her belly button or her tongue,” Shana answered matter-of-factly, as if that were the obvious answer. I guess I couldn’t argue—when it came to teenage girls, I was in the dark. Shana had given birth to Aphrodite without benefit of marriage and named her for the goddess of love even though I’d argued at the time that a name predestines us to a certain kind of life. I certainly was a boring Belinda. Shana was a wild Indian flame. And Affie had spent most of her life with her head in the clouds, doing unrealistic things.

Still, she was my goddaughter and I loved her. “Okay, I’ll pay her ten bucks a day to bring in my mail, water the plants and feed Grog. But tell her if she pierces her hand I
will
cut her out of the will.”

“Whoo-whoo.” Shana rolled her eyes. “If you were still about to become Mrs. McKnight, that threat might carry a little more weight.”

I got no respect. That was going to be goal numero uno when I got to Vegas, to earn some respect. From a bunch of gambling addicts. Great start.

Ben threw Shana his spare key and hustled me out the front door. And then grabbed my arm. “Last thing, leave your cell phone here. I left mine at home. This is going to be a true vacation. No outside interruptions.”

“What if there is an emergency?” I asked, handing my phone to Shana with trepidation.

“With your snake?”

“I was thinking more about Mom or Dad.” I tried not to roll my eyes. After forty years of self-absorption, Ben wasn’t going to change now.

“We’ll call with our room number when we get there,” Ben offered generously as he shoved me toward the stairwell, dragging the suitcase along.

“When are y’all going to be back?” Shana called from the door.

“When we can afford to,” Ben called as he went around me, jogging down the stairs and out of sight.

Slot machines greeting us as we exited the con
course was a little disconcerting for a girl born and raised in Texas, where dancing is illegal in some counties. The person in the airport women’s room who had a five o’clock shadow and was duct taping something under her hot pink miniskirt was another clue that this Dorothy wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

The Twilight Zoneness of it all made those incidents easier to deal with than ordinary people doing bizarre things. After we shared a cab with a married sixty-something couple from Anchorage, I nearly begged Ben to go back to the airport and home. The cabbie was told to drop the wife to meet friends at the David Copperfield show; then after telling her he was going to rest at their hotel room, the husband proceeded to pull out a wad of cash, count out fifty thousand dollars and ask to be dropped off at “the biggest stakes craps table in town.” Nothing like gambling the farm away while Mama watched magic tricks.

“Aw, Bee,” Ben assured me, patting my hand, “anything goes in Vegas.”

“That’s what scares me.”

“Think of it as liberating. What you do here, stays here.”

“Life is never that easy, Ben.”

“Oh okay, it is that. Free and easy.” The heavily-accented taxi driver agreed with Ben, nodding and smiling as Ben handed him a sizeable tip along with the fare.

“See.” Ben gestured to the retreating cabbie. “Vegas is as easy as that.”

“‘Free and easy’ philosophy by a foreign taxi driver from a country that hasn’t had the same government for more than thirty minutes at a time,” I grumbled as I looked with amazement at the opulence surrounding us. It was a good thing that the airplane magazine had a feature article on what was in store for me or I might have been in shock. Still, the sight was more than I’d expected. The Strip was a five-and-a-half-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard lined with thirty-two casinos. Really, calling them mere casinos did them an injustice, for they were rambling neon, golden, glittering, overdone fantasies, each competing for attention with its equally otherworldly neighbor. Flanked by Luxor’s life-size pyramid, complete with Pharaoh head on the south end and the world’s tallest observation tower of the 113-floor Stratosphere on the north end and everything from palaces to treasure islands to genie’s lairs to medieval monstrosities in between, The Vegas Strip was truly an awesome grown-up playground, even for someone like me, for whom playing is uncomfortable at best.

“You can say it, sis.” Ben jostled me with his shoulder. “I can see the ‘wow’ in your eyes.”

“‘Wow’ doesn’t cover it.” I admitted with a slight headshake.

Ben danced around me for a minute, then started to explain the three day poker tournament he’d be playing in at the newest hotel on The Strip, the Lanai. It involved about two thousand people, starting with two hundred tables of eight amateurs and one pro on each table. It was an elimination tournament and the final round would be televised live by ESPN. Steely Stan, Ben’s apparent self-proclaimed nemesis, would play in the final two rounds. The first round was two days away, starting at seven in the evening so even after it began, we had all the daytime hours for more fun and games.

“Yippee,” I said with zero enthusiasm.

“Mark my words, Bee Bee, you are going to have the time of your life here.” Ben flashed a grin that stopped foot traffic on the sidewalk. A roly-poly man poked his wife in the back when she paused to give Ben a second glance. A pair of coeds in ragged denim miniskirts and fur-topped Uggs giggled and whispered to each other. Ben winked.

“We’re going to play blackjack at Caesars,” they called out before sashaying off with as much sway as their size zero hips would give them.

“See you there,” Ben called back, adding pointedly, “After
my sister
and I check in at the Lanai, where I am playing in a Hold ’Em tournament. Look me up.”

They giggled again and fluttered their fingers in a wave. The redhead bent her knee, flipping her furry suede boot up coquettishly. Sexy.

“Think they come as a pair?” I asked, feeling like the sour old maid that I was.

“Maybe, but I like to hold out for three of a kind,” Ben said, waggling his eyebrows.

I shook my head. “Don’t tell me you are going to make sad poker-themed sex jokes this whole trip.”

“You caught the poker reference!” He yanked my hair out of its bun.

I shoved Ben out of reach, shaking the hair out of my eyes. “I’m not a total idiot.”

“Says who?” Ben threw back.

I felt a hand close on my right elbow, drawing me off the sidewalk and behind one of the manicured bushes on the grounds of the Bellagio. A hand that dragged conveniently across my rear end. A smooth voice sounded behind me. “You know, you don’t have to stand for that kind of abuse, you are too beautiful a woman.”

I swung out of the stranger’s grasp and faced a staid silver-haired man. “Huh?”

“I couldn’t stand by and watch this gentleman treat you so despicably,” he gave a half bow. I could see Ben out of the corner of my eye. He’d retrieved my suitcase, and was now rocking back on the heels of his black snakeskin Luccheses, grinning. Big help he was.

“Uh, this is no gentleman,” I began.

“Indeed!” the stranger interjected with a glare at Ben, who just grinned wider.

“I mean, he’s my brother.”

“Really?” The man raised his plucked eyebrows slowly, his contact enhanced blue eyes taking on a shiny cast. He was well dressed, in Bruno Magli loafers, an Armani sweater and a Loro Piana cashmere coat I knew cost several thousand dollars because we’d featured one like it in an ad for an exclusive men’s wear store back home. Ack. He was walking around wearing more than my bank account. “So he is your brother,” he said smoothly in his accentless voice.

I looked for a hearing aid behind his well cut if longish hair. I spoke slowly, articulating clearly, “Yes, he is my brother. Same mother, father, you know.”

“Yes.” His shiny eyes became sharp. “So you aren’t attached?”

“Like conjoined twins? Heaven forbid,” I laughed.

“No, I should say, you are in Vegas with your brother, so I can only ascertain that you are without a husband or boyfriend.”

Hey, did I have a scarlet L for “Loser in Love” on my forehead or what? How could this yahoo know I was hard up?

Ben, recognizing my anger, chuckled. That just fueled my fury. “Listen, mister, I don’t think it’s any of your business.”

“Actually, it is my business. I am searching for a girl just like you.” His hand dipped into the pocket and I braced, for what I didn’t know . . . maybe a microphone to interview me for a show about single women with aging eggs. Instead, he extracted a business card. A psychologist? I knew it. He was some kind of love doctor and he thought I needed therapy. I probably did.

“I just wanted to make sure you could make your own decisions, without having to consult a mate,” he was saying while I read his card. Black suedey paper with gold lettering. Just the name Cyrano and a telephone number with a New York City area code. Okay, so he wasn’t a sleazy reporter. The pricey clothes should have tipped me off. He wasn’t a shrink either, since they rarely paid their clients. Who paid for types of people? Someone fitting a script. “You’re some kind of talent scout?” I asked, suddenly feeling in my element again.

His mouth curved slowly into a smile. Ben had moved up next to me.

“Exactly,” Cyrano said, reaching over to put my hand in his. He had one of those cold fish handshakes. Ick. “Miss . . . ?”

I wasn’t sure I trusted Cyrano even though I’d pinpointed his line of work. Hadn’t Ben said I could be anyone I wanted in Vegas? Glancing over Cyrano’s shoulder past Bellagio’s expanse of fountains and gardens, I caught just half of a sign from a hotel down the strip. “Carlo. Paris Carlo.”

“Lovely name. Perfect in fact. And you, sir?’ he asked Ben.

“Monty,” Ben answered. Smart ass. But, good ole Cyrano was too busy giving me the heebie-jeebies with his X-ray eyes to catch on.

“So, are you available for a session?” It looked like Cyrano was sizing me for the costume.