Sammy Keyes and the Showdown in Sin City
Read Sammy Keyes and the Showdown in Sin City Online
Authors: Wendelin Van Draanen
Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief
Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man
Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy
Sammy Keyes and the Runaway Elf
Sammy Keyes and the Curse of Moustache Mary
Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy
Sammy Keyes and the Search for Snake Eyes
Sammy Keyes and the Art of Deception
Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen
Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway
Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things
Sammy Keyes and the Cold Hard Cash
Sammy Keyes and the Wedding Crasher
Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls
Sammy Keyes and the Power of Justice Jack
Shredderman: Secret Identity
Shredderman: Attack of the Tagger
Shredderman: Meet the Gecko
Shredderman: Enemy Spy
The Gecko & Sticky: Villain’s Lair
The Gecko & Sticky: The Greatest Power
The Gecko & Sticky: Sinister Substitute
The Gecko & Sticky: The Power Potion
How I Survived Being a Girl
Flipped
Swear to Howdy
Runaway
Confessions of a Serial Kisser
The Running Dream
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2013 by Wendelin Van Draanen Parsons
Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2013 by Dan Yaccarino
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Van Draanen, Wendelin.
Sammy Keyes and the showdown in Sin City / Wendelin Van Draanen. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When youth sleuth Sammy Keyes travels to Las Vegas to stop her mom from marrying her boyfriend’s dad, she never expects she’ll learn the identity of her absent father in the process.
eISBN: 978-0-307-97408-2
[1. Fathers—Fiction. 2. Identity—Fiction. 3. Mothers and daughters—Fiction.
4. Las Vegas (Nev.)—Fiction. 5. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.V2857Sapm 2013
[Fic]—dc23
2012013474
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
This book is dedicated to Berto and Betty van Veen, rare saints in a world with plenty enough sinners.
*
With special thanks to:
Mike Clawson, special event supervisor, for taking us behind the scenes at the House of Blues Las Vegas—your time and patience were greatly appreciated!
Robyne Wilson and Danielle Meyer, wedding coordinators at Vegas Weddings, where a bride can walk in, drive through, or do the whole nine yards.
The security screener at the Clark County Detention Center, who will remain unnamed, as I already got him in trouble once.
Loraine and Bill “we’ve never done Vegas like this” Simpson for sleuthing chapels, rooftops, jails, concert halls, and the back corridors of Las Vegas with us during the research phase of this book.
Also, thanks to my husband, Mark Parsons, for always being willing to “talk plot” and for putting the best spin on my harebrained schemes, and to Nancy Siscoe for her editorial wisdom and support in reaching this pivotal point in the series.
It’s been more than two and a half years since my mother left me with Grams so she could move to Hollywood to become a movie star.
Or, at least, the Gas-Away Lady, and then a recovering amnesiac in
The Lords of Willow Heights
—a soap so popular it’s just been canceled.
Yeah, it’s been more than two and a half years since she promised me she would get settled and send for me “soon,” but after about a year of broken promises and non-answers it finally sank in that I’m just a burden and an unwanted embarrassment—someone she wishes would just go away.
Or at least quit asking questions.
Especially questions about who my dad is.
But I have a problem with non-answers, and I have a problem with people who don’t keep their promises. So when the call came from Casey, I snapped.
Enough, as they say, is enough.
Casey Acosta is my boyfriend.
He’s also my archenemy’s brother, and my mother’s boyfriend’s son.
So yeah.
It’s complicated.
Especially since my boyfriend’s mother hates me and
my
mother for “stealing her men.” Never mind that Candi and Warren Acosta had been divorced a long time before my mother came into the picture, or that Casey’s only fifteen and not exactly
property
—we’ve still “stolen her men.”