DOUBLE MINT (11 page)

“No. In a million years, no. And you need to make up your mind, Davis. Which is it?
Who are you after? Magnolia or Paragon?”

“Both.”

“Neither,” he said. “Find Holder Darby. Find Christopher Hall. Find the platinum.
Leave the conference alone, including the game, leave Paragon alone, and leave Magnolia
alone.”

“It’s all connected, No Hair.”

“None of it’s connected, Davis.”

“I’m going to see that game.”

“You’ll never get in the room. Your best bet is to watch live feed of the surveillance
video. Wait a minute,” he said. “It’s an exhibit hall on the conference floor. You’d
better check. There might not be enough surveillance in there to do you any good.”

He was right. Not a high-risk area, the conference facilities. I’d already scanned
surveillance video trying to catch a glimpse of the techs who’d set the game up yesterday
and came up empty. There might be twenty cameras total in the entire conference area,
unlike a blackjack table, with three dedicated camera for every five feet of game.
(Don’t ever scratch anything when you’re playing blackjack.) “I’ll check, No Hair.
If there’s not enough surveillance to do me any good, I’ll get in.”

“You’re not getting in, Davis. You don’t have a badge. You can’t just show up.”

“I’m going.”

“How?” No Hair asked.

“I’ll come up with something.”

“You could have come up with something a week ago. If you try to pull a fast one right
now and show up on the conference doorstep, you’ll do nothing but cause trouble. Your
goal should be to stay out of trouble.”

(Pfffffft.)

“Now, Davis. About Eddie.”

Bang, bang, bang, my head against the wall.

“I’m happy to take care of it for you,” No Hair said, “but I’m just giving you a heads
up. If I handle it, word will get to Richard. And Brad. Where one little phone call
from you might do the trick without either of them the wiser.”

In response, I asked, “Do you think it’s okay for Bradley to go into the vault with
the Paragon people?”

“Yes. The vault was emptied yesterday, Davis. He’ll be fine. And stay away from the
conference.”

I called Calinda.

“Mr. Cole’s office.”

“Hey, Calinda, it’s me.”

“Good morning, Davis.”

“Good morning. Calinda, do you know when Bradley will be at the bankers conference?”

“Let’s see,” she said. “Two o’clock.”

“Thanks.”

Don’t want to get caught.

* * *

Somehow I made it downstairs to 3B before Baylor, who lives two minutes away and can
be ready to go anywhere in five, and Fantasy, who was taking a vacation from her family
in a guest room upstairs. I flipped on lights and computers, then checked on my missing
people. First, I listened in on Holder Darby’s sister’s phone, which I’d bugged. Lady
Man took a fourteen-minute call last night from a burner phone. Bingo.

“Miss Baldwin? This is Animal Control. I’m calling about your sister’s cat.”

“That cat is not my sister’s, lady. Someone dumped that cat on her and she doesn’t
want it. It has anger issues. Put it up for adoption.”

Gotcha, Holder. You’re on the run. And you might be right about the cat.

Holder Darby might be in danger, or some kind of trouble, but she’d contacted her
sister, so she wasn’t dead and stuffed in a dumpster and probably wasn’t being held
at gunpoint. Terrorists don’t let you make fourteen-minute phone calls about cats.

Five minutes later, I was two for two pinging my missing people, because Christopher
Hall may have run out of his guest room leaving (millions in funny money) his wallet,
but someone used his credit card, the one issued by a Baltimore bank. The same credit
card Bill Dollar had used to check into the Bellissimo. The credit card had been swiped
last night at Langolis on Pauger Street in New Orleans. Dinner. A big dinner. More
than five hundred dollars of dinner. So I had loose evidence of Holder Darby’s and
Christopher Hall’s mutual safety and welfare. Granted, they weren’t exact locations
or explanations, but they were steps in the right direction. And the best news of
all? Who lives in New Orleans? That’s right. Magnolia Thibodeaux.

(I knew it.)

Baylor dragged in with a gallon of Mountain Dew and breakfast burritos from Taco Bell.
Before he could offer me an enchilada pancake, I said, “Get that out of here, Baylor.
It smells like the cat’s food.”

He brushed by Fantasy on her way in the door. She clapped a hand over her nose and
mouth. “Baylor! How do you
swallow
that stuff?”

“You two are so damn picky.” He went into the hall with his Taco Bell.

I gave Fantasy a look.

“How was your spa day?”

“Davis, it’s my vacation.” That was quickly followed by, “Are we working all day?”

“Why?” I asked. “Is today your pool day?”

“Maybe.”

“Have you seen your car?”

Her brows drew together. “No. Why?”

“You need two new tires.”

“I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.” She smiled.

“You’re going to a bankers conference.”

From the hallway, mouth full of nacho waffles, “Cool.”

“Not you, Baylor. You’re going to Tunica.”

Twelve

The Bellissimo banquet uniform was ugly and uncomfortable, cut straight from cardboard.
We were in our dressing room. Dressing.

“We need cash,” I said. “How much do you have on you?”

“Not much. Ten bucks, maybe.” Fantasy adjusted the knot of her banquet tie. “We’ll
stop by the casino for a minute and you can get all you want.”

“That’s not true.” But it was a good idea.

“You know it’s true.” Fantasy tied her black apron. “You’re lucky. You have the gift
that keeps on giving.” There was no denying I had a special knack for the slot machines.
“I don’t care what you’re playing, you win.”

I found a twenty in my purse; I stuffed it in my apron pocket. On our way to the main
kitchen behind the Plenty Buffet, we made a casino detour and stopped at the first
slot machine we came to, Pink Diamonds. On my third spin, I lined up three blue diamonds
and won $200. Fantasy threw her hands in the air. We zipped to a cashout machine,
traded the payout ticket for two crisp hundreds, then hightailed it to the main kitchen,
because employees aren’t allowed to gamble at the Bellissimo in the first place, especially
in uniform.

“There they are.” I spotted the crew preparing the bank lunch. I passed Fantasy one
of the hundreds. “Find one who looks hungover.”

“They all look hungover.”

“And they all look stupid in these hats.”

“No,” Fantasy said, “that’s just you.”

My red hair, all of my red hair, was stuffed in the black banquet beret, so it looked
like I had a squirrel nesting in mine. Everyone else’s sat flat on their heads. I
tried to smash it down.

We found two waitresses filling tea glasses and offered them cash for their lunch
shifts. They took the money and ran.

Ten minutes later, Fantasy and I were in a kitchen service elevator on our way to
the convention dining room one floor up, a cart with four metal shelves of lunch,
Savings Ratio Salmon Caesar Salads, wrapped in cellophane between us. We looked at
each other across the Savings salmon.

“Tell me what we’re doing,” she said.

“We’re going to see the conference slot machines.”

“Why?”

I studied a salad. “I don’t know yet.”

“Funny feeling?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Me too.” The service doors opened and we wrestled the food cart through the doors.
Fantasy said, “But my funny feeling might be these salads. They smell nasty.”

* * *

We claimed the two tables closest to an emergency exit at the back of the banquet
hall, slung Savings salads at bankers, sloshed water in their glasses, and Fantasy
told her table we were out of pepper, all of the Bellissimo and not a flake of black
pepper in it.

“How are we going to get away from these people?” Fantasy asked. “I’ve got one lady
who’s lost three napkins. How hard is it to keep up with a napkin?”

We waited until no one was looking, then slipped out. By slipped out, I mean we left
our lunch tables to fend for themselves, tiptoed out of the dining room back to the
food cart, rolled it to a mop room, climbed on top of it, popped an air vent, hoisted
up, then crawled down an air duct to the events hall.

(Four miles. Four feet wide, two feet tall, and freezing.)

“This is filthy,” Fantasy said. “Why doesn’t anyone clean these things?”

Creeping along on elbows and knees is slow travel, but we finally reached Event Hall
B. We peeked through a vent to see a twenty foot drop. We kept creeping along until
we got to the game.

“Holy moly,” Fantasy said. “Can we get one of these in my car?”

“We can’t even get ourselves in the room, Fantasy. How are we going to get one of
these in your car? And news flash, it might not be real money.”

“It sure looks real.”

Yes, it did. One look at Mint Condition, the conference tournament slot machine, and
it was easy to see why they didn’t want anyone in the room.

Seating areas were stretched along both walls, and the long room held three full bars,
plus the slot machines through the middle. There were five circles of machines, ten
to a circle, so fifty in all, and from above they looked like arcade games slash slot
machines. They had properties of both. There were armed Paragon Protection security
guards in the four corners of the room and two at the entry doors.

Fantasy sneezed twice, and we froze in place.

“Security guards are worthless,” she whispered.

“Would you feel better if they heard you sneeze and shot us?”

“Probably not.” Sneeze. “Why is there so much damn dust up here?”

We crawled to an air vent almost directly above a gaming kiosk to get a better look.

Mint Condition had a bonus round, my favorite kind of slot machine. On a standard
slot machine, the player knows they’ve lost before the last reel stops spinning, but
with a bonus round, the last reel can land on the bonus symbol and they’re right back
in the game. The play screen of Mint Condition was your basic three-reel slot, but
the third reel had a surprise. It looked like a gold combination lock, like a vault
lock. If it landed on the payline, the bonus round ensued. The bonus round was played
above the machine—think big wheel on Wheel of Fortune slots. Instead of a wheel, Mint
Condition had a clear cabinet full of money. Row after row of money.

The player used a joystick to guide a metal grabber to stacks of cash, and by cash,
I mean moola, green stuff, major bucks. Line up the metal claw just right and close
it just so, then pull away a stack of money. That dropped. Right into the player’s
lap.

I’ve never seen a cash game. Ever.

“That is a lot of money,” said Fantasy.

“That is a fantastic game,” said me.

We bumped elbows for better views.

“The bottom row looks like one-dollar bills,” I whispered.

“Yeah, but it’s an inch thick,” Fantasy said. “It’s probably a hundred dollars, and
that’s not a bad bonus.”

There was a time element. I knew this because of the digital countdown clock beside
the joystick. The goal was obviously to win enough time to maneuver the money grabber
to the second row and grab a stack of five-dollar bills before the joystick timed
out. Or the third row, with a fat stack of ten-dollar bills. The fourth row, guess
what, twenty-dollar bills.

Above the rows of money, and obviously the grand prize, was a big fat stack of hundred-dollar
bills, and perched on top of the inch of cash was a round Lucite roll. Full of something.

Coins. Big coins. Coins the size of silver dollars. But they weren’t silver dollars.

“What in the world?” Fantasy whispered.

“It’s platinum. Platinum coins.”

“No!”

Yes.

“The hundred-dollar bills add up to ten thousand. Easy,” Fantasy said. “And no telling
what those coins are worth. What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered, “another ten thousand? Fifteen?”

“So, make it to the top and a twenty-five thousand dollar payday drops in your lap?
I want to be a banker.”

We’d come full circle. Platinum coins missing from our vault; platinum coins in the
conference slot machines. I didn’t know if the coins in the game were fake or real.
I hadn’t gotten that far yet. I had, however, gotten this far: It couldn’t possibly
be a coincidence that the very thing we were missing was the grand prize of this game.
I asked the burning question: “How in the hell does Magnolia Thibodeaux even
know
about this conference?”

Fantasy’s head dropped. She let it hang there for a dramatic moment, then she cut
her eyes at me. “What? Davis! Have you lost your mind? Magnolia doesn’t have a
thing
to do with this conference! There’s no way we’re going to find the platinum, Holder
Darby, or the money guy, if you don’t stop blaming
everything
on that old woman, who has nothing to do with anything.”

“Whose side are you on, Fantasy?”

It’s hard to make good points when you’re whispering in an air duct dangling above
slot machines. She geared up to sneeze again, a big one this time, and I think I broke
her nose a little, slapping my hand over it. Then there was some poking, a few loud-whisper
threats, and some rude name calling. The security guards didn’t move a muscle, and
the aftermath of her sneeze was totally averted when we heard a scuttle. Just a little
scratch. Somewhere near our legs. Our wide eyes met, and we proceeded to get the hell
out of the air ducts. Fantasy wasted no time backing up, but I grabbed for her, getting
a handful of hair. “Wait a second.”

“Owww, dammit!”

I turned my phone upside down and eased it between two slats in the vent to snap a
picture of the machines, specifically the platinum coins in the machines, while she
grumbled her way back to me. She got there just in time for us to watch the doors
to Event Hall B open—and my husband walk through.

We froze.

“I thought you said we had until two.”

“I thought we did. Be quiet.”

I barely had a grip on my slick phone with my thumb and index finger. Most of it was
dangling below the vent. Fantasy held her breath and I did my best to hold my phone
as Bradley and a man in a suit walked to the middle of the room.

“Who is that?”

“It’s Bradley!” I can scream and whisper at the same time.

“The other man, Davis. Who is the other man?”

“He must be the Paragon Protection man, Conner Hughes, and I’m going to drop this
phone.”

“Do not drop that phone.”

“Help me catch it. It’s slipping.”

“I can’t help you catch the phone, you goof. You’re taking up all the arm space. Do
not drop your phone.”

I pinched harder, which did nothing but propel it out of my fingers. It dropped straight
down and landed on the carpet with a muffled thud, ten feet from my husband and five
feet from Conner Hughes. Fantasy and I stopped breathing.

“What was that?”

Conner Hughes’s head snapped and he turned in the direction of the noise. A few of
the security guards woke up. Hughes spotted my phone on the floor, then looked up.
At us. Frozen in place. He marched directly under the vent we were above.

My heart was beating out of my chest already, when Conner Hughes bent down and picked
up
my phone
.

“Where could this have come from?” He stood, turned my phone over a few times, then
tilted his head back and looked hard. For us.

“Let me see.”

Bradley took it from him—he knew exactly where it came from. How many people have
phone cases with
I
(Heart)
Pine Apple
? He dropped it in his pocket, steered Conner Hughes the other way, then swung his
head back and gave us a hellacious dirty look. I hadn’t taken a breath yet and I hadn’t
moved a muscle.

Conner Hughes turned back too, craning and straining to see in the vent, while Bradley
did everything he could to direct his attention elsewhere.

It’s not like we could get out of there. Or even blink.

“Has anyone been in this room, Brad? Your people? Gamblers from the casino?”

“No, Conner.” I could hear Fantasy’s heart beating and I’m sure she could hear mine.
“Absolutely not.”

Bradley led Conner Hughes in the direction of the door, but not before he threw one
parting nasty look at us. I don’t know how long we stayed that way before Fantasy
began crawling backwards again. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Not me,” I whispered. “I’m staying here for the rest of my life.”

“No, you’re not. Come on, Davis.”

It was a good decision to stay, paralyzed with fear of divorce and pending unemployment,
because three men dressed in solid black picked that moment to file into Event Hall
B. I reached for Fantasy, got another handful from the top of her head, and it became
clear to me that Bradley might not be able to kill me for crawling through the air
ducts and spying on the bankers, because Fantasy was going to beat him to it if I
didn’t stop yanking her hair.

“What. The. Hell?”

“Hush.”

They looked like Navy Seals. All three wore black cargo pants, long-sleeve black t-shirts,
and black ball caps, and all three were all the way around big, burly, and mean. One
spoke up. “We got this, boys. Take a break.”

The Paragon security guards left their posts and filed out the door.

The man who dismissed the guards toured the floor in a loopy figure eight, weaving
in and out and bending to look in the general vicinity of the play area on every Mint
Condition machines. He stopped in front of one. “This one.” He bounced a fist off
the top of the game cabinet. He took four more steps. “This one.” He did it again.
“This one.”

“What the hell are they doing?” Fantasy asked.

“I don’t know.”

The men in black stood at the three chosen machines, opened the cabinets, sat in the
chairs, and went to work. From our vantage point, we couldn’t see exactly what they
were doing, but I had a good idea.

“What is going on?”

“They’re switching out the data chips in three of the Mint Condition slot machines.”

“Why?”

“They’re rigging the game. Give me your phone.”

“So you can throw it at them?”

* * *

With no room to turn around, we crawled backwards the whole way to the mop room, at
least five miles, where we dropped onto the food cart and, in the process, knocked
it over, which sounded like the building imploding. We scrambled up, knocked as much
of the dirt off each other as we could, then stepped into the service hall as if all
was well, if all was well means filthy, breathless, and in big trouble with our boss.
Double trouble for me, because I’m married to the man. A waiter carrying a tray of
waxy cheesecake spotted us and was so busy staring, he almost ran into a wall.