DOUBLE MINT (9 page)

Paragon Protection’s home office was located in Oakridge, Illinois, with production
and distribution facilities in (click click) Mattawa, Washington; Wickenburg, Arizona;
Bottineau, North Dakota, and Galax, Virginia. Their most recent property acquisition
was in Horn Hill, Alabama. Which stopped me dead in my tracks.

Now I was getting somewhere.

I tracked Paragon down in accounts payable. Six weeks ago they paid the Bellissimo
eighteen thousand for the bankers’ custom slot machines. The invoice was for fifty
software and graphic installations for a custom game called Mint Condition. (Cute.)
I almost clicked out of the agreement—legal jargon, legal beagle, legal eagle—when
I reached page four and fell out of my chair.

Paragon Protection put down a one million dollar deposit on platinum. Platinum on
loan from the Bellissimo vault for the Mint Condition game.

What
? The bankers’ game had cash
and
platinum in it?

I couldn’t get my husband on the phone fast enough. Except I couldn’t get him on the
phone. I called Calinda.

“Calinda. I need Bradley. Right now.”

“Is this about the refrigerator?”

“No!”

“Davis, he’s in the vault. I can’t call him out unless it’s life or death. I can have
him call you the minute he gets out.”

I sat perfectly still until the phone rang, quietly contemplating a job at Subway.
I could Eat Fresh. I loved the assembly line of it all. And the peanut butter cookies.

My phone and I jumped.

“Why didn’t you tell me there was platinum in the banker game?”

He sighed.

“That’s how you found out the platinum in the vault was fake,” I said. “The accountants
were doing an inventory, but they were also pulling platinum for the Mint Condition
game.”

He sighed again. “Yes.”

“Does Paragon know they have fake platinum in the slot machines?”

He inhaled like it was the last breath he’d ever take.

“No.”

“What are we going to do, Bradley?”

“We’re going to find the platinum, Davis.”

And by we, he meant me.

“Can we talk about this after dinner?” he asked.

Dinner. I forgot about dinner. Would this day ever end?

On my way out, I gave Baylor a nudge. “Hey, wake up and go home.”

“TRUCK SNORKELS IN THE TREE.”

On my way to meet Bradley for dinner, it occurred to me Paragon Protection might have
the Bellissimo’s platinum. They had access—the annual inspection. And they had it
hidden in plain sight. Inside their Mint Condition slot machines.

How in the world did Magnolia Thibodeaux orchestrate all this?

Nine

Richard Sanders, president and CEO of the Bellissimo Resort and Casino since the ribbon
cutting, having climbed Mt. Biloxi, and having finally hired a casino manager in whose
capable hands he could entrust his billion dollar baby, raised his stakes and spread
his wings. He secured controlling interest of the Bellissimo from his ailing and retiring
father-in-law, Salvatore Casimiro, then tackled the next item on his list: He branched
out.

Mr. Sanders’s job has always involved a fair amount of travel, but as long as I’ve
worked for him, he’s always left town bent on returning as quickly as humanly possible
to (keep an eye on his wife) be at the helm of the S. S. Bellissimo. That is, until
he hired a likeminded first mate, my husband. Bradley and I were married on October
22
nd
, he was sworn in as operating casino manager on October 23
rd
, and Mr. Sanders left for Tunica on October 24
th
.

For us, it meant leaving a home we loved, to live here, in the Booyah Bordello, Bradley
working a ninety-hour week, with me reporting directly to him. It’s been an adjustment.

For Richard and Bianca Sanders, it meant a physical separation, because Bianca Sanders
wouldn’t even say the word Tunica aloud, much less go there. She barely goes here.
It’s been frustrating.

Tunica is the number two gambling venue in Mississippi. It’s in the northwest corner
of the state, as far away from Biloxi as you can get and not cross the state line,
and the only things in Tunica are farming, wildlife, and gambling. There’s nothing
in, around, or under Tunica but coyotes and a strip of three-star casinos in the middle
of cornfields.

All that was about to change.

Mr. Sanders had been ready to put his dog in the Tunica fight for years, and broke
ground for the city’s newest and grandest casino, Jolie, the week I would have otherwise
been honeymooning, and the worst of it for me turned out to be he took my immediate
supervisor, No Hair, with him. Since then we’d barely seen either of them. Mr. Sanders
was three-for-four—three days here, four days there—for nine months. When he is here,
he had his desk to clean off, his spoiled rotten wife to appease, and his new casino
manager to conference with for eight-hour stretches. As soon as he finished those
chores, he was back on his Gulfstream 650 to the Jolie. That plane could probably
fly itself to Tunica and back at this point.

“Tell me about the wedding, Davis. I heard you wound up with cake on your face. And
what’s this about you having a cat?”

“Oh, dear Lord.” Bianca Sanders. “A
cat
?”

Mr. Sanders—forty-five years old, blonde hair lighter at his temples, blue eyes behind
small, round, tortoiseshell glasses—wanted to hear my version of the Hello Kitty wedding.
We arrived for dinner at the Sanders’s at seven and before we’d taken a sip of our
cocktails, I was already in the hot seat.

“The wedding got out of hand, Mr. Sanders. And before it was over, we were all covered
in frosting.”

“Honestly, David.” Bianca Sanders was disgusted. “Show some decorum.”

My name is Davis.

Bianca Sanders is, at (most) times, the bane of my existence. She’s almost ten years
older than I am, but in spite of our age difference and aside from pesky details like
coloring, scruples, and general disposition, we look just alike. Part of my job is
to dress up and prance around making public appearances for her, and she’s addicted
to it. She’s forever telling me I’m the face of the Bellissimo, and what she means
by that is
do it for me
. She says it all the time—I’m her face—as if it’s a compliment. I don’t want to be
her face, I don’t have time to be her face, but after three years of running her each
and every public errand, her activities beyond the 30
th
floor penthouse had dwindled to one: commuting to Million Air, the private airport,
to board a Bellissimo jet to anywhere that wasn’t here. She could jet set for as long
as she pleased, because she had me to cover for her. Bianca didn’t hang around long
after Project Tunica started. Ten minutes, maybe. The Sanderses had been here together
no more than five days of the month for nine months running.

The day he left for Tunica, she took off shopping. She was gone three (glorious) months,
only stopping back in to (torture me) drop off her goodies to make cargo room for
more, and the whole time no one knew she was gone because I was being her face.

She toured Europe first and we didn’t hear a peep from her for six weeks. From there,
she hit Tokyo. Then she slowly made her way back to Biloxi via San Francisco, Las
Vegas, Austin, Chicago, and NYC, Mr. Sanders in Tunica the whole time. Finally fed
up with living out of seventeen Louis Vuitton trunks, she got home and had me on the
phone within an hour, threatening death by boredom. My death, if I didn’t do something
about her boredom.

“And I’m ill, David! Something dastardly is going on with my physical person! I need
a team from Johns Hopkins here today. Did you hear me, David? Today!”

Sadly, with Mr. Sanders and No Hair absent, exercises like these (cost a small fortune)
were all mine.

A team of life-saving physicians were ripped away mid life-saving procedures and flown
here. Guest suites were revamped into five-star medical facilities for the four different
specialists. At the end of two weeks—she’s a terrible patient; pricking her finger
is an all-day affair—it was determined Bianca was in excellent health. The only thing
the million-dollar doctors found was she’d gained five pounds since the last time
they’d been summoned for a luxury vacation at the Bellissimo because she’d sneezed,
and they attributed it to fluctuating hormones, perfectly natural, at her age.

She had a fit like no other fit in the history of fits.

“David.”

It’s Davis.

Bianca had dark circles under her eyes, her neck red and splotchy, and I could see
a thin sheen of moisture across her top lip.

“I want them all fired for incompetency. I want lawsuits filed. Talk to your husband.
Today. I want their credentials stripped! Their grants revoked! Their licenses rescinded!”
She demanded I have her top-notch physicians taken out back and shot while hiding
the extra five pounds under ten yards of a black silk muumuu. It was a designer nun’s
habit. She stomped back and forth in front of me, the black silk billowing around
and trailing behind her. “I need a new team of doctors. STAT, David. I am offended
at their delivery, their incompetency, and never has anyone been misdiagnosed so erroneously.”

Never has anyone fought aging with the energy, investment, and arsenal as you, Bianca.

“Write this down, David.”

I’d been taking notes the whole time:
Mrs. Bradley Cole. Mrs. Bradley Cole. Mrs. Bradley Cole.

“I will
not
make a public appearance until I lose this weight. Not one! Do you hear me, David?
It’s all you.”

It’s Davis. And you haven’t made a public appearance since the day you met me.

“I need you to lose five pounds, David. To offset the temporary bloating I’m experiencing
from so much travel. Immediately.” (Does that make any sense at all?) “And just to
be
certain
.” Bianca sat down beside me, black silk pillowing, scanning the room to make sure
none of her staff was eavesdropping, and moved in for the kill. Her cat-green eyes
were bloodshot. “Make an appointment with my gynecologist. You know her. The Brazilian
girl.”

Yes, I knew her gynecologist, who was Asian. I knew all of Bianca’s people because
I was her face. Bianca ignored the fact that sending me to the gynecologist for her
didn’t exactly work. So to keep from wasting my time, not to mention wearing the lovely
paper gown, I scheduled her appointments then went to lunch with her gynecologist.
“Have a thorough examination, David,” Bianca said, “and make certain these idiots
aren’t suggesting what I think they’re suggesting.”

Which made even less sense.

The next day, she had me arrange a Johns Hopkins cosmetic intervention party, then
dig up high-dollar personal trainers. She flew them in from all over, conducted probing
interviews, and hired the one who loved her most, Hans Solo. Hans Something. I call
him Hans Solo. And he was a big believer in sculpted muscles. “The body is as the
clay. We must
mooooold
it.”

I don’t know what kind of
mooooolding
Hans had Bianca doing three times a day (she claimed she and Demi Moore do the same
workout), but after several months of it, Bianca looked like she was training for
the Olympics. Boxing or Freestyle Wrestling. She had newly-acquired abs of steel,
First Lady guns, and she’d bulked up her butt to the point of having her implants
removed. (That had to be fun.) So that we might see all her muscles, she was wearing
two ounces of a satin slip dress, threatening with her every breath to burst at its
satin seams, and mile-high stilettoes. All black, as usual. She pressed a tall glass
of designer water to her hot cheeks, because not only had Hans pumped her up, he cleaned
her up too. She stopped drinking ten martinis a day, quit her happy pills, gave up
gluten (I have no idea what gluten is), and had Cartier custom build a diamond jacket
for her Fitbit bracelet. Guess what? She hadn’t lost the weight.

“David.” She fanned herself. “I’m hot. And you need to meet with Hans. You’re getting
mushy.”

I’m about to get a lot mushier, the initial reason for our dinner date with Richard
and Bianca Sanders. While I thought it would be better if we took care of a few things
first—the crime rate, international terrorism, the economic collapse, climate change—Bradley
was ready to start a family. He couldn’t do it without me, I usually changed the subject,
and yet here we were to inform the Sanderses we intended to move back home to our
condo at the Regent, just five little miles away, when Jolie opened in two weeks and
Mr. Sanders resumed full-time residence here. The plan, for me to get pregnant five
minutes after we moved home, had been in place for months, a date way off in the future,
yet here we were. And if all went according to plan, and I spend the rest of my life
trying to protect a little guy who looks just like Bradley from armed conflict in
the Middle East, infectious disease, and the fact that there will be no drinking water
by the time he’s ten years old, I couldn’t be Bianca’s face for who knows how long.
Depends on how mushy I get.

That was the agenda when we made this dinner date weeks ago, to break it gently to
the Sanderses together, because I needed someone between me and her, so she wouldn’t
kill me. We stood outside the Sanders’s front door at five till seven wondering if,
in light of the events of the past few days, we should even bring it up.

“Let’s wait,” I said.

“To have a baby? Is this about Social Security?”

Social Security is a big fat mess, no doubt about it, but that wasn’t what I meant.
Specifically.

“Let’s wait to talk to them about it.”

He was a patient man.

“We have more pressing issues right now, Bradley.”

“Let’s play it by ear.”

“Good idea,” I said.

He was just about to knock on the door.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes.” No.

A little bit of Bradley went a long way with me, and right now, it was just a finger
of his hooked with one of mine. Passing between us in that small touch, a promise,
a confirmation, and a hope for the future. Surely, something could be done about the
budget deficit between when I got pregnant and gave birth.

The Sanders’s new butler (I’ve never seen this guy in my life) opened the door, Bradley
and I shared a look and, in that split second, decided to wait.

To tell them.

“We’re not staying for dinner either,” Bradley whispered as we walked through the
foyer.

“Amen,” I whispered back.

A tuxedoed waiter tiptoed around topping off everyone’s drinks. Bianca yawned, demanded
a thicker slice of lime for her fizzy water, admired her manicure, and crossed her
legs the other way every three minutes just to make sure we all caught her ripped
hamstrings, while Mr. Sanders and Bradley conducted their version of small talk.

“All’s well in Tunica?” (Bradley.)

“It was when I left two hours ago.” (Mr. Sanders.) “How about here?”

“We’re at sixty percent occupancy, half of that the bankers.” (Bradley.)

“As expected.” (Mr. Sanders.)

Then revenues, profitability, activity, disbursements, gross pay, gross earnings,
gross negligence, such fun cocktail talk, I thought I might lose my mind.

“I have a headache,” I announced.

“Well, you’ve given it to me, David.”

We shot off in opposite directions. Me, for the front door. Her, for a hot flash.