DOUBLE MINT (10 page)

Ten

A glass of wine to calm my nerves later, I heard Bradley key himself through the front
door, explaining the missing chandelier to Mr. Sanders. Then he told him why we had
an Igloo refrigerator in our foyer, and by the time they reached me in Who Dat Hooters,
Bradley was telling Mr. Sanders about the babbling brook in the kitchen.

“Sears?”

“Sears,” Bradley said.

Mr. Sanders surveyed. “You could have redecorated five times by now.” Bradley poured
and passed him a short bourbon. He looked at us and said, “You don’t want to redecorate.
You want out of here.” He sipped the whiskey. “I don’t blame you.”

“Sit, Richard.”

Mr. Sanders chose a magnolia sofa. “I haven’t been here in forever.” He stared at
a voodoo doll on the wall. “One forgets.” He stared at the Jesuses. “How are you managing,
Davis?”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“You absolutely hate it, don’t you?”

Yes, but I absolutely liked Mr. Sanders.

“Let’s talk,” he said, “so I can get back to Bianca.”

* * *

Earlier today, while I was in 3B (supervising Baylor’s naps) gathering unwelcome information,
Bradley had been busy in, around, or on top of vault business. A second physical inventory
conducted by the auditors with Hammond Stevenson Morris & Chase came up clean, everything
else accounted for. Even so, Bradley had the vault contents relocated.

Bellissimo armed guards dressed as waiters pushed covered food trays loaded with tens
of millions in cash, casino chips, stock certificates, deeds, gold, silver, and a
treasure trove of Bianca Sanders’s jewelry she’d gotten bored with straight through
the casino, into public elevators, then to three connecting Deluxe Double guest rooms
on the 8
th
floor. The guest rooms around, across, above, and below were cleared, the guests
moved. (Upgrade!)

The loot was piled on the beds; the guards piled on the sofas, where they ordered
room service and still-in-theaters movies.

The only thing left in the vault was a rotating series of human gorillas with tattoos
and Ruger AC-556 assault rifles. Bellissimo bank deposits were rerouted to the human
gorillas, who lobbed it into laundry carts. At shift change, two gorillas covered
the loot with pool towels and rolled the carts to a receiving bay, where they handed
it off to armored trucks that delivered it to the bank.

Bradley filled in Mr. Sanders.

“How many more days do we have assets and revenue in guest rooms, laundry bins, and
on receiving docks?” Mr. Sanders asked.

“If the vault inspection goes well and no repairs are needed,” Bradley said, “one.
If Paragon finds they need to do any work in the vault, it might mean up to four days.
At most five. I plan to leave the vault contents where they are until the inspection
and updates are completed.”

We were wide open, fair game, an easy target for the next one, four, possibly five
days. And we knew it. We hoped, for the next one, four, possibly five days, no one
else discovered it.

“When will we know?” Mr. Sanders asked.

I sat quietly. Chugging wine.

“I’ll meet with Paragon first thing tomorrow,” my husband said, “and we can expect
repairs. They’ve come prepared. They brought a tech team, and they say they’ll have
us back in the vault quickly.”

Note to self: Paragon brought their own tech team for vault repairs and slot machines.
To do list: Find out if it’s the same crew.

“Who knows the vault is empty?” Mr. Sanders asked.

“In addition to the three of us,” Bradley said, “only our guards and Paragon.”

* * *

In the pecking order of things, moving money around a casino gets the top spot. So
for the next half hour, we pored over the details. Routes, timelines, personnel, procedures.
When Mr. Sanders began looking antsy and glancing at his watch, I steered the conversation
my way. The vault was Bradley’s job—to safeguard the contents and oversee the expected
refurbishing, a job he’d be doing around the clock for the rest of the week. My mission
was to find what was missing. People and platinum.

I asked Mr. Sanders to tell me everything he knew about the escaped convict Christopher
Hall. After his shock at even hearing Hall’s name again in this lifetime, he told
me all he knew. Which was no more or less than what I’d learned earlier. I asked if
the fake platinum found in the vault could have been an old sin committed by Christopher
Hall and Ty Thibodeaux.

“So you’re suggesting that sometime before his retirement, Ty Thibodeaux and Christopher
Hall stole four million dollars in platinum from the vault and replaced it with counterfeit?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see it, Davis,” Mr. Sanders said. “Ty Thibodeaux would have never stolen
from Casimiro.”

Stealing from Salvatore Casimiro would be a death sentence.

“Thibodeaux was a good casino manager.” Mr. Sanders loosened his tie. “I’ll give him
that. Which is not to say I didn’t suspect my father-in-law had him running illegal
errands behind my back, but none of it on my books,” Mr. Sanders said. “Nothing criminal
crossed my desk, and I had enough on my desk without asking for more.”

“Did you know Christopher Hall, Mr. Sanders?”

“I never heard his name until the day he was arrested,” he said, “and even then I
had no idea who he was. I didn’t know we had a counterfeiting operation in-house until
Thibodeaux retired.” He tugged at his collar. “I socialized with the Thibodeauxs as
little as possible, and I was only a guest here a handful of times through the years.
It wasn’t until they moved out and I did a walk-through that I found the equipment.
Which is when I realized that not only had my father-in-law sanctioned it, he’d installed
and operated it, literally under my nose.” He stared at a Jesus dangling from a balcony.
“It’s one of several precarious predicaments he had me in that I wasn’t aware of until
after the fact. For what all could have happened to me since the day I met Salvatore
Casimiro, I’m lucky I’m not in prison.”

Well, I thought, you are stuck with Bianca.

He told us why, upon discovering the printing and coining equipment, he didn’t dispose
of it. It couldn’t be physically removed from the residence without sounding copious
alarms. Which made sense. You can’t really roll a coin minting machine the size of
a minibus out the front door without raising a few eyebrows. “Not only that,” he said,
“I’m not sure I want the equipment out of the building.”

Right. Keep the secrets close. He, we, a lot of people could be indicted. The equipment
down the hall could close the Bellissimo doors for good. Four thousand employees on
the street. Innocent people would go to prison. Bradley and I had known about it for
nine months, Mr. Sanders a little longer, and none of us had made a move. We were
culpable, all three of us. We were liable and we were in a tight tough spot.

Mr. Sanders went on to tell us he’d hit the same moral, legal, and personal wall we’d
hit. The sins of Casimiro’s and Thibodeaux’s past would jeopardize too many presents
and futures to pursue it. “What am I going to do? Send my only child’s grandfather,
my wife’s father, an old man who doesn’t know what day of the week it is, to prison?”

We sat quietly, except for the gluck gluck from the kitchen.

“Bianca’s father is almost ninety,” Mr. Sanders said. “He has dementia. He’s out of
the casino business altogether. Even if I went to him and demanded an explanation
or retribution, it wouldn’t happen. I could ask where the missing platinum is a hundred
times and never get an answer. From what I understand, Ty Thibodeaux isn’t in much
better shape. We’re at a dead end.”

When I hit a dead end, I put it in four-wheel drive and keep going.

“What about Magnolia Thibodeaux?” I asked. “Let’s say you’re right, Mr. Sanders, and
Ty Thibodeaux had nothing to do with stealing platinum from the vault. But what about
her?”

My suggestion was met with extreme skepticism.

“Have you met her, Davis?” Mr. Sanders asked. “Granted, I didn’t know her that well,
but I do remember she had great difficulty navigating,” he fumbled for words, “simple
tasks. To breach our vault would be a gargantuan undertaking that I don’t believe
she’s capable of.”

Am I the only one? Seriously?

“I’m not saying she masterminded a vault heist, Mr. Sanders. But I believe she knows
about the platinum and she thinks it’s here.” I used both hands to present Jambalaya
Junction in all its glory. “In this residence.”

“What makes you think that, Davis?”

“Because she won’t stay out of here. She keeps breaking in. She either doesn’t know
where it is and she’s looking for it, or she knows where it is and she’s hauling it
out a little at a time.”

And with that, I lost them. I couldn’t get anyone on my Magnolia bandwagon—some say
witch hunt—and when this is said and done, when I’ve nailed her, I’ll remind these
men of this moment when they looked at me as if I’d lost my very last marble.

Richard Sanders shook his head at our grave marker coffee table.

“Magnolia could not have known about a counterfeiting operation that even I didn’t
know about.”

“She had to have known Christopher Hall was running in and out of her home. How could
she not?”

Mr. Sanders shook his head.

“Bianca doesn’t pay a bit of attention to anything that happens in our home unless
it’s directly related to her.”

Which needed no explanation.

“Do we know how this man got here from prison?” Mr. Sanders asked. “Or why he had
a million counterfeit dollars in one of our guest rooms?”

“I have a theory,” I said. “But at this point, that’s it. A guess.”

They were listening.

“I think the money was a payout.”

“To whom?” Bradley asked.

“Someone he wanted to take down.”

“What makes you think
that
?” Mr. Sanders asked.

“The money we gathered from his guest room was a trap. A deliberate trap.”

“What kind of trap?” Mr. Sanders asked.

“A go-straight-to-jail trap,” I said.

Gluck, gluck.

“Who would Christopher Hall want to go straight to jail?” Bradley asked.

“Magnolia.” They looked at me as if they’d heard me wrong. Again. “We may have stumbled
into the middle of a fight between Magnolia Thibodeaux and Christopher Hall that has
nothing to do with us.”

My husband and Richard Sanders weren’t buying it.

“If you don’t like that theory, you won’t like this one either,” I said. “Because
if it’s not them, it’s Paragon.”

“Absolutely not.” (Mr. Sanders.)

“No.” (My Husband.)

“Listen,” I said. “Several months ago Paragon Protection bought property in Horn Hill,
Alabama.”

“Horn Hill?” Bradley tried to place it in reference to my Alabama hometown of Pine
Apple.

“Horn Hill is in Covington County,” I said, “a hundred and fifty miles northeast of
Mobile, on the other side of the Conecuh National Forest. Six people live there, and
there’s nothing there in Horn Hill but a long-gone sock factory, dilapidated warehouses,
and one gas station.”

Bradley and Mr. Sanders waited patiently.

“Holder Darby is from Horn Hill.”

Bradley broke the long stretch of stunned silence when he asked, “When did you learn
this?”

“An hour ago.”

Mr. Sanders asked, “Is it possible
all
these people are involved in a sting revolving around this convention?”

“Who would be the ringleader?” Bradley asked. “It couldn’t possibly be Conner Hughes.
He doesn’t have a semblance of a life beyond Paragon Protection.”

“And it’s not Magnolia Thibodeaux,” Mr. Sanders said, “she simply isn’t capable.”

I was shaping the right words to tell them I’d find who was behind it, but in the
meantime, we’d better get our guard up for what was getting ready to go down, when
from the foyer we heard a decidedly atrocious noise. It was a ticking retching rhythm
that grew louder until it crescendoed into a choking gag, and for once, it wasn’t
the refrigerator. Someone or something was being strangled near the front door. Someone
was
dying
in the
foyer.

I was the only one with a gun. I clicked the safety off my Glock, the homicidal noise
growing louder as I made my way toward it, clearing the King Cake room, finger on
the trigger, Bradley and Mr. Sanders on my heels.

It was coming from the fake magnolia tree.

“What the hell?” (Mr. Sanders.)

“Furball.” (Bradley.)

Eleven

Dark and early Tuesday morning I woke to see my husband standing ten feet from me,
backlit by the closet, buttoning his sleeve cuffs. I’m married to this man. A shock
and a thrill every morning of my life.

He whipped his tie around and, before I could yawn, had it in a Windsor knot. He adjusted
his collar around the tie. His shirts are so starched they can stand up by themselves,
and the collars are pressed to a razor sharp edge.

“Isn’t that uncomfortable?” I asked once.

“No, Davis, I’m used to it.” He tugged a lock of my hair. “Are bras? Your shoes?”

“Yes, hell yes, and I’m not used to it.”

He caught me watching him and sat beside me. “Good morning.”

I rolled his way.

The cat followed him out of the closet and landed between us.

“Jeremy’s already looking for you this morning, Davis.” I pulled a pillow over my
head. Bradley lifted it. “Anything you want to talk about?”

“No.” I smiled. “I’ll call him.”

I’d been avoiding No Hair’s calls for days. Not that I didn’t miss him. I just didn’t
want to talk to him. But I’d have to suck it up and do just that, because right after
I woke up and remembered I was married to Bradley, I also woke up and realized everything
else wasn’t a midsummer night’s dream. Missing people. Counterfeit money. No refrigerator.
Fake platinum. A cat.

We went over Bradley’s schedule, which took all of two minutes. He’d be the captain
of this industry for the next twelve to fourteen hours. “And,” he gave me a game-show
host smile, “you’ll like this, I’m going to drop in on the convention.”

Now I’m up. “Can I go?”

“No. You’ll shoot someone.”

“Surely you don’t mean that.” I never shoot people who don’t need to be shot.

I twisted my hair into a knot, a morning motion I perfected when I was seven years
old, and Bradley, in a morning motion he perfected when he was thirty-five, passed
me a pen from his shirt pocket. I put it where it belonged, in the middle of my knot
of hair, and ta-dah, no more bedhead. I stood. He stood. The cat stood.

“If you make any headway today,” he said, “platinum or otherwise, let me know. And
call Jeremy.”

“You need a gun with you today.” I fixed his jacket, where it always caught his shirt
collar. “I’ll send Baylor when he gets in.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll have Bellissimo guards with me everywhere I go. Keep Baylor.”

“You need your own gun every minute you’re with Paragon Protection until we get to
the bottom of this. If you don’t want Baylor, then I’ll go with you.”

“Nice try.” He kissed the top of my head. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

I followed him. The cat followed me. “I’m talking about a babysitter with an assault
rifle, Bradley.”

“Which is even worse.”

“Seriously, Bradley, it’s not a good idea for you to go into the vault alone with
anyone from Paragon Protection until we get to the bottom of this.” Whatever this
might be. “If you have to, please let one of us go with you.”

“Davis,” he stood in the open door. “The vault is empty.”

Right.

The cat cried when he left.

* * *

Showered and dressed before I left the bedroom, I called Fantasy on my way to the
coffee pot, cat on my heels. The coffee was ready, my favorite cup waiting.

“Hey,” she said. “What?”

“Are you up?”

“No. Why?”

“We’re going to the conference. Meet me at the office in an hour.”

“Got it.”

Then I called Baylor.

“Oh, my God, Davis, no. The sun isn’t even up.”

“Get in here, Baylor. I need a favor. And bring breakfast.”

* * *

My ex-ex husband Eddie Crawford is a pig, the rottenest human in the state of Mississippi,
a raging idiot, and he’s on the weed whacker crew at Jolie.

Yes. I married him twice. I get really tired of explaining it.

I also divorced him (several times), left Pine Apple, got a job, fell in love, and
I’m happily married. Which is to say I moved on. Eddie Crawford, on the other hand,
had only done one of those things. He left Pine Apple. And there wasn’t a doubt in
my mind that situation would be corrected quickly. Bad Penny Eddie. He currently
had
a job, but he didn’t
get
a job.

He was handed one on a silver platter by Richard Sanders, and this to reward him for
being in the exact right place at the exact right time and not totally screwing up.
It was, the cosmic timing of it all, a very weak moment for Mr. Sanders, and a flat-out
miracle for Eddie.

In my wildest dreams, I never thought my ex-ex-husband, Eddie the Snake-in-the-Grass
Crawford, would, or even could, actually work. Much less work for the same corporation
as I do. And even in my wildest dreams when hell froze, pigs flew, I won the lottery,
and Eddie actually
did
work, and it just so happened to be under the same corporate umbrella I stood under,
I’d still have never believed
his
job, snuffing out dandelions in Tunica, Mississippi, four hundred miles away, would
interfere with
my
job.

Yet, here I am.

They hid Eddie, who has an IQ of twelve, on the new Jolie golf course, Even Money,
and told him to stay out of everyone’s way. For months, the reports (I didn’t want)
were uneventful—when he did show up for work, he slept the day away in the backseat
of his car, a 1962 baby-food-green Cadillac Eldorado convertible with big bull horns
mounted to the front grill and a sawed-off shotgun in the passenger seat.

Have you ever?

As the story goes, he was asked to take care of a pest problem on the fourth hole.
Instead of thinning the brush along the fairway, like he was told to, he built a hunting
blind. For two weeks he showed up for work at four in the morning with a Hefty bag
full of cheese popcorn, sprinkled it along the fairway, then shot animals large and
small. Not what they meant. The golf people were scared to death of him, No Hair hadn’t
managed to catch him, and he’d been spotted with gopher skins duct-taped by their
heads to the soft top of his convertible Cadillac. Eddie Crawford was driving around
Tunica with gopher skins flapping around on top of his stupid baby-food-green car.
The car with the bull horns. And the sawed-off shotgun.

No Hair wanted me to do something about it before PETA did. I’d been avoiding No Hair’s
calls because the last one had been so rough.

“If you’ll wait it out,” I advised, “he’ll surely shoot himself. Problem solved.”
It got quiet. “No Hair?”

“Davis, listen.” (He said this all the time, as if most of the time I didn’t listen.)
“If you’ll do me a favor, I’ll do you one back.”

“I’m listening.”

“You say Magnolia Thibodeaux is running in and out of your place.”

“She is!”

“If you’ll talk to Eddie, I’ll talk to Magnolia.”

“And say what to him, No Hair? ‘Stop shooting gophers and duct-taping them to your
stupid car?’ He doesn’t listen to me. And besides, I’d
rather
talk to Magnolia than Eddie, and that’s saying something, because I think she needs
to be in a straitjacket.”

“Every time you call her and leave a message chewing her out, she calls me and leaves
a message chewing me out. I’m willing to call her back. See what she wants. Help you
get to the bottom of this. I’ll scratch your back, Davis, and you scratch mine.”

That was almost two weeks ago. No Hair had left me ten messages and sent countless
mean texts and howler emails, and I knew there’d be hell to pay when I dialed.

“Hey, No Hair!”

“Don’t you hey me, young lady.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t returned your calls. I’ve been busy.”

“You most certainly have not been busy. I know you’re busy now, but don’t lie to me
about not returning fourteen phone calls.”

The cat’s voice was as close to microphone feedback as it got. Just as abrasive, and
just as painful.

“What the hell?”

“Oh dear Lord, No Hair, it’s Holder Darby’s cat. Who, as it turns out, isn’t Holder
Darby’s cat.”

“Whose cat is it?”

“I wish I knew.” I swear, the cat knew when I was talking about it. It hissed at me.

“Is it a Tom cat?”

“No collar, No Hair. I don’t know its name.”

“Is the cat a girl or boy, Davis?”

“Honestly, No Hair, how would I know that?”

Five more minutes of cat, five minutes of Holder Darby, five minutes of Christopher
Hall, two minutes of Baylor, and two minutes of Fantasy.

“Why is Fantasy in the hotel?”

“For one,” I said, “everything around us has blown up. We’re busy. And for two, her
tires are slashed. And for three, Reggie and the boys are on their summer trip to
Saints camp.”

Fantasy’s husband Reggie is a freelance sports writer, covers all things New Orleans
Saints, and takes the Erb boys, K1, K2, and K3—I never get the right K name, so I
go by size and call them K1, K2, and K3, and even at that, I still mix them up—on
a two-week summer trip every year to see the Saints at training camp. These are the
best two weeks of Fantasy’s year. She calls it her vacation from family life.

We spent the entire two weeks last summer in a Bellissimo high-roller cabana at the
high-roller pool. We stretched out on lounge chairs with built-in cool water misters
(napping and drinking frozen fruity cocktails) until the sun went down watching for
bad guys. For two whole weeks. (No bad guys.) (Lots of pool boys, no bad guys.)

“Who slashed her tires?” No Hair asked.

“I don’t have a clue.”

“Where was she parked?”

“Behind me.”

“Were your tires slashed?”

“Not that I know of.”

No Hair wanted to talk about focus, specifically me focusing, for the next little
bit. We both felt an obligation to locate Holder Darby, agreeing her disappearance
didn’t bode well, and No Hair said he’d use his former MBI (Mississippi Bureau of
Investigation) clout to call the warden in Pollock, Louisiana, and see how Christopher
Hall’s release and/or escape had gone down. He’d get back with me. We wouldn’t find
the platinum missing from the vault until we found Christopher Hall, who surely was
behind the manufacture of the counterfeit platinum.

“And the counterfeit money, No Hair. Don’t forget we found a million fake bucks in
his room.”

“What’s your take on that?”

“I think it’s a payoff to someone he doesn’t think very highly of.” I explained how
good, and how bad, the counterfeit money was. “It’s the best I’ve ever seen, and at
the same time, it’s a flaming red flag ticking time bomb.”

“Do you have any idea who it was intended for?”

“My best guess this morning is Paragon Protection.”

“Guess again,” No Hair said.

“What?”

“First of all, Conner Hughes would spot it. You’re good at it, and so is he.”

“Okay, then it’s Magnolia.”

“Don’t you start that, Davis.”

I started. Somehow, someway, Magnolia Thibodeaux was in this up to her voodoo earrings.
No Hair strongly disagreed. Things were heating up between us when out of nowhere
the refrigerator backfired. It happens every few days. Like someone walking in the
front door, sneaking up behind you, and shooting a rocket launcher. It has scared
us to death in the middle of the night, interrupted very private moments, and even
got us up close and personal with Ray Romano when he was staying next door at Jay
Leno’s place. He beat on our door wearing a red bathrobe and blue Chaco flips, thinking
the building had been bombed.

Well, the cat had never heard it.

Airborne, it shot over my head, out the kitchen door, and straight through to Who
Dat Hooters. The noise it made was that of a wide open bullet train trying to stop
on a dime. I took tentative steps after the cat, wondering how I’d explain its sudden
death to Bradley.

“My God, Davis. Are you alive?”

“Sorta,” I said. “But I’m not so sure about the cat. Hold on.”

Touring Who Dat Hooters, I found the petrified cat hanging from the bars of a fake
balcony. Disturbed Jesuses on both sides of it were dancing. The cat had clawed its
way up and was hanging on by a thread and two paws. It was panting and its tongue
was hanging out the side of its mouth. This cat could get itself in more predicaments.
I stood under it doing the “here, kitty kitty” until it was obvious the cat didn’t
intend to drop that far. I dragged a lime green crushed velvet Queen Anne chair under
the balcony, climbed onto it, and held up my arms until the cat loosened its grip
on the bars and fell screaming onto my head, used it as a launch pad, then shot off
like a missile.

“You’re welcome.” I rubbed my head.

“Are you there?” I picked up my cell phone, conversation, and coffee cup.

“Davis, you need to move.”

“Boy, don’t I know it. But before I move, I need to sneak into the conference.”

“Why?”

“To nose around.”

“You can get to the meeting rooms from the service hall behind the main kitchen,”
he said, “but bring a pillow.”

“Why?”

“You’ll fall asleep. Conferences are boring, Davis.”

“I want to see their slot machines. I need in the exhibit hall.”

“There’s only one door in and out of the exhibit hall. No sneaking in. You know that.
And why do you want to see their slot machines?” he asked. “There are thousands of
slot machines in the casino. Go look at them and stay away from the bankers’ game.
Don’t you have enough to take care of? It sounds to me like you have a full-time job
taking care of your cat.”

“Not my cat, No Hair, and stop changing the subject. Did you know the bankers have
a cash game?”

“That’s what I hear,” No Hair said.

“What if Paragon Protection teamed up with Christopher Hall, and the slot machines
are full of counterfeit cash?”