Just Deserts in Las Vegas

by A. R. Winters

  “Where are you going this time?” I asked Jack, leaving Nanna to crouch down and play with Bridget.

  “Macau. There’s a casino operators’ conference. It should be interesting, though I wish it wasn’t so far away.”

  “It’s good to get away.”

  I thought about the trip we were taking—a couple of hours in the car out into the wilds of Nevada. It wasn’t exactly like jet setting across half the world. “Any other news?” I asked in a small voice. We both knew what I was talking about: Stone and Ryan.

  “My contact confirmed that two unidentified charred bodies were found at the crash site.”

  He might as well have punched me in the gut.

  “Unidentified?”

  “That’s right. We don’t know who it is yet. It could be…”

  Yeah. It could be Ryan and Stone. But it wasn’t. I was sure of it. They couldn’t be dead. They couldn’t be gone. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t possible, and it wasn’t fair.

  Jack came toward me and wrapped his arms around me in a supportive hug. The piney scent of his cologne somehow managed to make me feel more reassured than words ever could.

  “We’re not giving up hope,” he said in my ear. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said back in a voice that was barely a whisper.

  We parted, and Bridget bounded back up to me again, holding her leash in her mouth, ready to go.

  “Have a good trip, Jack.”

  “You too. And watch out for rattlesnakes.”

  Chapter Two

  It was early afternoon when we pulled up at Silver Bend. We had left the highway about ten minutes before, and the last part of our journey had been along a bumpy, dusty track. Not even Bridget had enjoyed that bone-jarring part of the drive.

  Once upon a time, Silver Bend had been a thriving community of several hundred people. But when the silver dried up, there had been nothing left to support the town. The miners moved on, and without them, the town had nothing else to fall back on. Like dozens of other communities in Nevada and across the Southwest, the formerly thriving small metropolis had emptied out, leaving behind only its structures like skeletons to be near-perfectly preserved in the arid desert climate.

  I pulled up at the entrance of the town, where several fenceposts had been driven into the ground to indicate a parking area. Not that there was any shortage of spaces around here. The main road into and through the town itself was blocked with a wooden gate. Clearly Sturdy Nanna didn’t want vehicles driving through. Considering how much dust we managed to kick up just parking my old Honda, I could see why.

  As soon as I opened the car door, Bridget bounded out, stopped, and looked around. Except for her brief stay at my aunt’s farm, Bridget had never seen so much open space before. Or heard such quiet. Or seen such an unobstructed view of the blue sky above.

  “Let’s go and explore!” Nanna sounded like an excited schoolgirl. I felt a frisson of excitement myself.

  “Just a minute. I got a couple messages on the way over. I want to check them.”

  With some disappointment as I looked at my phone screen, I noticed that all of them were from Ian. “He says Pepper’s Nanna is horrible! She’s been saying mean things to all of them. Even him. He says he’s calling her Horrible Nanna to distinguish her from you.”

  “I know her type,” Nanna said. “She’s from the tough love school of grandmothering.”

  “School of grandmothering, huh? What one did you go to?”

  “I went to the one that tells me to act like I’m twenty-one forever.”

  “I think I like that one better. Hold on, there’s another message. It says, ‘You’ll never guess who Sally is friends with. We just picked up—’”

  “Who?”

  “It doesn’t say. The message was part one of a two-parter. I must have lost the signal before the last bit arrived.” I checked the screen, and sure enough there were zero bars showing. I held it up into the sky to see if that would make a difference. It didn’t.

  “It’s like the old days,” Nanna said. “I wonder what the young people will do without their cell phones.”

  “I’m sure we’ll cope.” Actually, I wasn’t entirely certain about that, but it would be an interesting experiment. I was glad that Pepper wouldn’t have a signal though. It might discourage her from shoving her camera in our faces again.

  “Look at this!” Nanna was a few steps ahead of me, at the edge of the parking lot. She was standing beside a cracked and weathered wooden sign. At the top, it said Silver Bend, and underneath it read “Population” followed by a series of ever-decreasing, crossed-out numbers, starting with 5,748 and ending, finally, with 2.

  “Population two?” Nanna said in disbelief. “I thought this was supposed to be a ghost town. It should be zero.”

  “That’s close enough for me. I guess one of them must be Pepper’s grandmother. I wonder who the other one is?”

  “That would be me,” said a voice behind us, startling us both.

  When I turned and looked up, it was at an old man atop a chestnut horse. He was staring down at us.

  Nanna and I took a step back.

  “Who are you?” Nanna asked.

  “Name’s Abner. You can call me… Abner.” He leaned forward and tilted the brim of his white Stetson down in a greeting.

  “And are you Mrs. Watson’s boyfriend?” Nanna asked.

  He just about fell off his horse.

  “No, ma’am, I’m not,” he said when the fearful look passed from his eyes. He shook his head. “No,” he repeated.

  “So you work here, do you? How many of you are there?”

  He pointed at the sign again. “Just us. Mrs. Watson says she’s going to start hiring soon. But for now, just us two.”

  “Must be lonely out here.”

  “I don’t feel it.” He lifted his head in a general indication of the surrounding area. “Didn’t see a one-eyed man on a white horse, did you?”

  Nanna giggled. “Is he a ghost?”

  “Not yet. Didn’t see him then, I take it?”

  We both shook our heads and told him that no, we had not seen anyone riding a white horse, one-eyed or otherwise.

  “Good.”

  “I think it must be one of the ghosts,” Nanna whispered to me.

  “I don’t think there are supposed to be any ghosts. It’s just an abandoned town,” I whispered back,

  Nanna didn’t look convinced. “If you say so.”

  “Right. Nanna, let’s look around before the rest of them get here.”

  Nanna looked up at Abner. “Would you like to give us a quick tour? Show us everything?”

  “Ain’t nothing to see here.”

  I looked behind us in the direction of the town. There was clearly a lot to see here. Just from our current position, I could see abandoned old cars and wagons, a row of wooden buildings, one solid brick building, assorted bits and pieces along the edge of the town that looked to be outdated farming and mining equipment, and who knew what else lay farther inside. All of it was contained along one main road.

  Just off the edge of the parking area was the only sign of new life: half a dozen small cabins arranged around one slightly larger one. The smaller ones looked like they were only large enough to contain a single main room and a bathroom.

  The bigger cabin had a deck along the front with a rocking chair and a sign reading Nanna’s Place. I idly considered adding a qualifier before the word Nanna—sturdy, or perhaps horrible.

  “It looks to me like there’s plenty to see. Come on. I want to see Main Street.” Nanna took me by the wrist. With Bridget by my side, we walked around the wooden barrier that stopped cars from entering the main street and began our exploration.

  Despite having told us there was nothing to see, Abner began to trot along beside us. I had the feeling he was keeping an eye on us, making sure we weren’t up to any mischief.

  “That’s a dog,” he said, pointing a gloved hand down at Bridget.

 
; “That’s not just a dog, that’s Bridget. She has her own hospital,” Nanna said.

  “A wing, anyway,” I said when Abner’s weathered old face scrunched up in confusion. The talk of wings didn’t help allay it.

  “Wings or not, you better watch her. We got coyotes out here. Ain’t much they like more than eating a soft city dog.”

  “What?”

  “Keep an eye on her. And don’t let her out at night. If not…” Abner sucked in a breath between his teeth. “Your doggone dog’ll be long gone.”

  I wrapped my hand around Bridget’s leash extra tight.

  “Hear that, girl? No going out at night.”

  Bridget gave me a whine of agreement. She would be good; she promised.

  The air around us was still and silent, without even the sound of birdsong or traffic. The slow thumping of Abner’s horse’s hooves on the dusty road was the loudest sound we could hear. On either side of us, boarded-up old buildings silently watched us as we strolled down the main street. I half expected a cowboy or sheriff to pop out at any moment. But of course there were no cowboys or sheriffs here, just the ghosts of them.

  “What’s that brick building?” I asked Abner. It was one of the few two-story buildings along the street.

  “That’s the old courthouse.”

  “I don’t suppose that sees much use now, does it?” Nanna asked.

  Abner and his horse both snorted at the same time. Neither responded. The answer was clear.

  “There’s only two of them here. They’d have to be prosecuting each other.”

  Nanna and I both laughed.

  “There wouldn’t be any work for you to do out here either,” Nanna said.

  “Dealing or investigating?”

  “Neither. Both.”

  “Dealing?” Abner halted his horse and glared down at me.

  “I work in a casino,” I explained.

  He lifted his head in a slight nod of comprehension, followed by a shake of disapproval.

  “Ain’t no casinos here.”

  “Good. It’s the weekend. I’m trying to relax.”

  The next series of wooden buildings we passed looked to be old storefronts, the doors closed and the signs outside faded. I could see old ads for grain, seeds, and farming equipment in one store. On the other side of the road was what must’ve been an abandoned grocery store, judging by the ads for canned soup and stew outside.

  “That’s the saloon.”

  I looked up at Abner in surprise. It was the first piece of information the reticent old man had offered us without prompting.

  “Oh yeah?”

  The building he indicated looked to be in better shape than the abandoned stores. The sign above the door that read Silver Bend Saloon was faded, but it seemed to be artfully done rather than from decades of neglect. The windows along the front were shuttered rather than boarded over, and on the door hung a new-looking padlock.

  “Yep. You’ll see it later.”

  “A saloon? I wouldn’t mind a cold drink now,” Nanna hinted with all the subtlety of a credit card waved in the face of a bartender.

  “Ain’t open.” Abner pulled on the reins of his horse to halt her again. “Mrs. Watson’s coming. Best get back.” He wheeled his horse around to start the short walk back to the parking lot.

  “How can you tell?” I asked him as I hurried back beside him again.

  “I can sense city folk comin’ a mile away. And look.” He pointed off into the distance. I could just about make out a vague plume of dust rising into the air.

  “Is that the car driving down the road?”

  “That or a herd of wildebeest.”

  “Wildebeest?”

  “And we ain’t got wildebeest.”

  Our brief tour of Silver Bend Main Street complete, Nanna, Bridget, and I walked back to the parking lot. The walk back seemed even shorter, and we arrived at the parking lot just as Mrs. Watson’s minivan pulled up.

  “I can’t wait to see our cabin,” Nanna said, rubbing her hands together.

  Bridget barked in both agreement and excitement to see who would get out of the minivan. I was curious too. I wondered what Sally’s friends would be like. Were they all going to be like Pepper? I sure hoped not.

  Horrible Nanna, as Ian had dubbed her, turned off the engine of her vehicle. There was a thunking noise as someone began to open the sliding door of the back of the minivan.

  I put on a polite smile to greet Sally and Pepper’s friends.

  My polite smile turned to a round O of shock when the first man climbed out of the back of the van.

  Now I knew what the other half of Ian’s message must have said. The message that said that I would never guess who Pepper and Sally were friends with.

  “Hey, baby!”

  Unbelievable.

  Chapter Three

  “What the—”

  “Tiffany!” Nanna admonished.

  “Hey! It’s my closet buddy.”

  “What does he mean?” Nanna asked, nudging me for an explanation. She hated to be left out of anything.

  “Last time we met, we played Seven Minutes in Heaven,” Brad said as he stood in front of the car door, hands on his hips and a very stupid grin on his face.

  “When was that? High school?” Nanna asked.

  My cheeks were burning. “No. A couple of months ago, when I was working on a case. I wanted to talk to him in private, but his friends got the wrong idea. He’s just being a goof.”

  “Out of the way!” came an annoyed voice from inside the minivan. Brad was completely blocking the entrance, the silly smile still on his face.

  When I met Brad during an investigation, I discovered that he was a pickpocket who stole things from other employees at Jack’s casino, the Tremonte. He quit his job there after I caught him. At least he hadn’t been the murderer I was seeking.

  Brad finally moved out of the way and the others began to emerge from inside the van. First was Ian, who pointed at Brad as he exited, jabbing a finger in his direction, eyebrows raised and mouth open to make sure I recognized who it was. I nodded at him that, yes, I knew.

  Ian was followed by his girlfriend, Sally, and then came Pepper, camera emerging first, filming me and everything else in her field of vision. Before fully exiting the vehicle, she turned her phone around so it was pointing at her face.

  “Oh. My. Gosh. We’ve just arrived at the ghost town, and it. Is. S’cool.” She finished climbing out, almost tripping as she was paying so little attention to her feet. She twirled around outside, doing a complete 360 with her camera.

  “This is one of the remotest places on the entire planet. And there isn’t even a cell signal. You guys won’t even be seeing any of this until I return to civilization. If we even survive this Wild West wilderness.”

  Goodness, she had a flair for the dramatic. I was pretty sure we could all survive a couple of nights without a cell phone signal. And there was a gas station with a convenience store less than a half-hour drive away. Hardly one of the most remote places on the planet.

  The next couple to emerge from the minivan was new to me. They were both very well put together, in neat but expensive-looking clothes which I’m sure, like Ian, they had bought for the occasion. In matching jeans and matching checkered shirts, they looked like the very model of a perfect, wealthy young couple.“Where can I get a cell signal?” the woman asked, peering around, her gaze landing in the direction of the town’s main street.

  Horrible Nanna laughed. Not an amused tinkle, but one with unexpected bitterness. “Cell signal? Who would want one of those? No. We don’t get phone coverage around here. You young people and your phones…”

  Even I was rolling my eyes at that. Young people and their phones? They’d been a necessary part of modern life for more than twenty years as far as I was concerned.

  “Babe, don’t worry, babe. They’ll survive without us for a couple of days.” The man squeezed his wife’s arm, and she visibly calmed.

  “I
hope you’re right, babe,” she replied. She turned her attention to me and Nanna. “I’m Rachel Hardwick, and this is my husband, Hunter.”

  We exchanged pleasantries while I sized them up. Rachel seemed to be the same age as Pepper and Sally but had an air of maturity about her that the other two lacked. I could tell she was a busy professional, even before she told me she worked in one of the largest banks in Vegas. Her husband, Hunter, was a few years older and already Vice President at an investment firm. The pair of them oozed a hardheaded confidence and drive that everyone else there, except for possibly Horrible Nanna, lacked.

  There was still one more person to emerge. Curious, I watched as Pepper crouched down to film the arrival of what must be her boyfriend. But he didn’t just step out like everyone else. He had musical accompaniment. Provided by him.

  “And so we finally arrive alive… Let’s hope this ghost town is not a dive…” he sang as he strummed his guitar while crouching down and exiting the vehicle.

  “That doesn’t rhyme very well,” Ian whispered in my ear.

  “I think it’s improvised.”

  “He played that thing most of the way here. I hope he stops soon.”

  “I think a bit of music is nice,” Nanna said, leaning in between us. She listened intently as the next couple of lines of the musician’s improvised song emerged. “But I hope he does some songs we know.”

  The guitarist then made a display of running into Pepper, so that he crashed into the cell phone, while Pepper screamed in acted delight. Holding her phone out to the side, but still pointed at them, she filmed the pair of them hugging each other and spinning around.

  Horrible Nanna scowled at the display. “All of you, gather around. It’s time to lay some ground rules.”

  “Ground rules?” Pepper said as she shoved her phone into the back pocket of her jeans. “We’re not kids anymore, Nanna.”

  “You’ll always be kids to me. And anyway, these are the same rules that future guests will have to follow.”