Double Trouble

by Gretchen Archer

  I slept through it all.

  I typed out a text message to Fantasy. Are you still on assignment?

  She texted back. I am. Are you still drunk?

  Me: Not so much, but I may be looking for a new husband soon.

  Her: I might be right there with you. I haven’t been home in two days. Maybe three. How about doctors? We could find new doctor husbands. This place is crawling with them. Shouldn’t it be harder to get a medical degree? I swear, there are fifty in front of me right this minute.

  Me: Fifty?

  Her: Okay, five. Still, that’s a lot of doctors.

  Me: It’s ICU.

  Her: Don’t I know it. Two solid days of this. They never turn off the lights, they never lower their voices, it’s high noon around the clock here.

  Me: Anything?

  Her: Stable, awake, but not talking, which could be because her jaw is wired shut.

  Me: Try a tablet, maybe she’ll type. Try a white board, maybe she’ll write.

  Her: I’ve tried. She almost decapitated me throwing the tablet back and she sailed the white board the other way and knocked the oxygen off a comatose COPD patient’s head in the next bed.

  Me:

  Her: Davis, she got here with a core body temp of 37 degrees. She’s lost three toes. She’s a little angry.

  Me:

  Me again:

  Me, on my third attempt: I’m on my way.

  Her: Davis, no, don’t. I’ve tried, Bradley’s tried, Baylor’s tried, the police have tried. Whatever she knows, she’s not telling. And besides that, they’re grafting skin to her face today.

  Me:

  Me again:

  Me, third try: I’m on my way.

  It was time to meet Clone.

  If anyone could shed a light on where Sara Z. Stone might be, it was Clone.

  Frostbitten Clone.

  * * *

  I didn’t know Clone. I’d been under the same roof with her, because she worked, if you could call what she did work, where I lived. But I’d never met her. I’d made it my work to not meet her. And while admittedly, and embarrassingly, I’d privately cyber stalked her, only to the extent of proving to myself that she was barely getting the job of representing Bianca done, what I knew of real Clone, who’s former stage name turned out to also be her birth name—Sawyer James—could fit in a thimble.

  After a long hot shower, clothes, a breakfast of dry toast, another Aleve, and a final cup of hangover coffee, I tried to text my husband. I did more backspacing than anything else. I eventually landed on what I thought was a safe starting place. How was your trip?

  A full five minutes later, he texted back. Davis, I’m busy. In fact, I’m covered up. We can talk after I put out a few more fires. I’ll see you this evening. I need your word you’ll stay in the Penthouse with our daughters until I get there. Give me your word.

  I texted back, holding my breath the whole time, My word.

  Then I called Crisp and gave him my word.

  “Good morning, Crisp.”

  “Good morning, Mrs. Cole.”

  “I need a quick ride.”

  I stopped by the nursery, where my daughters and Baby Oliver were watching Frozen, kissed little noses, then took the secure stairwell exit from the Penthouse.

  It wasn’t that I had any desire to openly defy my husband.

  I did not.

  It wasn’t that I’d intentionally lied to him.

  Maybe I had.

  It was that we approached life from different perspectives. Which made us a great team. Great parents. And a great couple. Everything I didn’t have—a strictly adhered-to respect for protocol, procedure, and the law, a black-and-white view of right and wrong, and a systematic, analytical, and procedural process of problem solving—he did. And what he didn’t have—an unrelenting desire to place every piece of a puzzle, a healthy regard for vigilante justice, and a somewhat jaded view of human nature when it came to what people would and wouldn’t do—I did. Like I said earlier, I could never do my husband’s job. But by the same token, he could never do mine. I was absolutely as sorry as anyone else that Clone had been stuffed in a padlocked freezer with nothing but a tiny airhole to keep her alive, an airhole she clawed and chewed through a rubber seal between the freezer unit and lid to create, but for me, it went further back than the freezer. She’d aligned herself with criminals, and all evidence indicated she’d agreed to participate in the heist, which meant there was something in it for her. Had she not consorted and conspired with thieves, thieves who, it would seem, had turned on her, she’d have never wound up in a freezer. I was very sorry about her toes. No more sandals for Clone. No flips, no peep-toes, no Jack Rogers braided leather thongs. But my sympathy, and, for the first time, empathy, toward Clone didn’t let her off the hook. She was, at least initially, culpable. And I needed to know what she knew. She might be the only path to Sara Z. Stone and the ten million dollars. And if I didn’t find the ten million dollars, I had a feeling my marriage really would be seriously jeopardized. I wasn’t sure my husband would ever trust me again. And that was My Word. Of all Sara Z. Stone had taken from Bianca, from the Bellissimo, from me, and even from Clone, I wasn’t about to let her have my marriage too. So in a big way, I was doing it for Bradley.

  That’s what I told myself anyway.

  * * *

  “Where to?” Crisp smiled at me in the rearview mirror.

  I pulled my laptop from my purse and logged on. “Biloxi Memorial.”

  “You got it, Mrs. Cole.”

  On the way, I glanced at the emails—158 new—that had parked themselves in my inbox the day before, and was at the end of Wednesday’s Incident Report—Elvis, Elvis, Elvis—when the car stopped at the main entrance to Biloxi Memorial Hospital. I unbuckled. Crisp walked around and opened the door. I had one leg out, then pulled it back. Crisp’s head peeked over the top of the door. “Mrs. Cole?”

  “Take me back to the Bellissimo.”

  He raised two quizzical eyebrows. “Is everything okay?”

  “Take me back, Crisp.”

  He closed the passenger door, walked around the car, resumed his place behind the wheel without asking why, and off we went. I closed my laptop and slipped it back in my bag. Who cashed the ten-million-dollar wire for Sara Z. Stone? There was nothing, absolutely nothing, on my Wednesday Incident Report about a ten-million-dollar transaction. There was no record of it having been received by Casino Credit, cashed by the main casino cage, or requisitioned from the vault. My brain was busy running through the list of who had authorization to cash a wire that large (which was exactly no one), and there were only two people—Megan Shaw and Gray Donaldson—who even knew how to sneaky cash a wire, when my phone interrupted my brain with a message from my husband: Thank you, Davis.

  Crisp was his driver too, for official Bellissimo business, airport runs, and when it was more expedient to call Crisp than hike a mile to his BMW in the parking garage. As such, Bradley, like me, could track Crisp’s whereabouts. He knew I left the Bellissimo after having given him my word, and seeing the dot that was Crisp’s car returning, assumed I’d thought better of breaking it. He knew I left and didn’t do what he could have done, which would have been to call me on it, or call Crisp on it, dragging him into our marriage, but instead, he’d given me a little rope. Which was to say he loved me. And given that little rope, I should have reciprocated by telling him why I was returning to the Bellissimo. It had nothing to do with keeping my word. I didn’t return his text and tell him I was only postponing the hospital to go straight to Casino Credit, which I should’ve, so he’d know where to start looking if I wound up in a freezer. I did text back that I loved him.

  With a little red beating heart.

  I was halfway out of the car before Crisp parked. I marched through the Bellissimo lobby, down the middle aisle of
the casino, past the cashier’s cage, to the security door that led to the accounting offices. I keyed myself in. I tried the door to Casino Credit.

  Locked.

  I knocked.

  No answer.

  I fished for and found my all-access passkey and opened the door to find Sara Z. Stone at Gray Donaldson’s desk with an ax wedged deep into the crown of her head.

  TWENTY

  When the confusion and chaos of the authorities—police, homicide detectives, and coroners—died down, and Casino Credit Manager Gray Donaldson was swarmed by SWAT on Beach Boulevard, taken into custody, and charged with first-degree murder and grand larceny (wearing, of all things, her Bellissimo uniform), my team was summoned to the boss’s office. We arrived before he did. We lined up chairs opposite his desk so it would be easier for him to yell at us. I took the middle seat. After ten minutes of uncomfortable silence, during which the three of us faced our own demons and dreaded the tongue lashing we knew was both well-deserved and on the way, Baylor leaned forward and pulled something from his back pocket. He passed it to me. It was a brochure for a local alcohol rehab facility. The words marching across the front read, “Recovery Delivers Everything Alcohol Promised You.”

  “Very funny.” I threw it back.

  The door opened and No Hair stepped in. He dropped his Las Vegas suitcase, took his seat behind his desk, loosened his necktie—red silk background featuring a postmarked letter with an Elvis stamp in the upper right corner and the words RETURN TO SENDER in block letters over the address—all without saying hello. He settled in his seat, cleared his throat, then read from a phantom teleprompter above our heads without making eye contact once. His tone, unemotional. His delivery, rote. His speech, well-rehearsed, because it was the same speech he’d been giving for months, titled, “You Must Work Together as a Team.” The biggest difference that time was the ending. Where before, he’d always threatened us, that time, he unloaded on us. He didn’t single anyone out; he blamed us equally. And just when we expected our assignments—Davis, do this, Fantasy, do that, Baylor, clean up after them—he relieved us of our duties.

  Our jaws hit the floor.

  “For the time being, you’re still Bellissimo employees,” he said, “and I’ll make sure you keep your salaries and benefits until you can work something else out.” He gave me a nod. “I’m not sure I even have the authority to fire you—”

  He just had.

  “—but I’m disbanding what’s left of this team.”

  He opened a thin file that had been sitting on his desk the whole time and presented each of us with a letter of termination. I think between the three of us, we were altogether too stunned, too stricken, and too panicked to react.

  “Baylor,” No Hair said, “you’ll stay with me. In what lesser capacity—” he paused to make sure Baylor heard him “—much lesser capacity, I haven’t decided.”

  Beside me, Baylor’s foot began tapping a mile a minute.

  “Davis, go back to work for Bianca.”

  I stopped breathing. That ship had sailed. The damage done by Clone was too great to be undone. The only way forward was for Bianca herself to come clean, tell all, and personally apologize for her physical inconsistencies and ridiculous behavior, or withdraw from the public eye altogether.

  “Fantasy,” No Hair said, “I’ll help you find a position in Security or Surveillance. If nothing’s available here, I’ll reach out to our casino neighbors.”

  Her hands slapped the chair arms. Her knuckles were white.

  “Clean out your lockers, pack your cardboard boxes with your Chia pets, your coffee mugs, your puppy pictures, so on and so forth. You’ve escorted enough employees out the door to know the drill. Report back here tomorrow morning at eight sharp with your service weapons, building passes, IDs, and everything else you know I need from you. I would ask if there were any questions had I not already told you everything you need to know.” He clasped his hands on the empty folder on his desk. He leaned in. He caught every eye. “Until lately, it’s been my pleasure. And I mean that. I care for each of you on both a personal and professional level, and I wish you the best. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think it was the right thing to do. If I don’t do this, the three of you will be the end of this casino, or worse, someone will get hurt. You either have each other’s backs or you don’t. The three of you don’t. It’s that simple. That’ll be all.”

  Our termination letters limp in our hands, we shuffled out like the whipped and unemployed dogs we were. Silently, unanimously, and without any manner of conflict, we followed each other down hallways, on and off elevators, and around corners to our basement offices, where still, neither Fantasy nor I could get in the door. We stepped aside to make room for Baylor. Before he opened the door, he turned. He looked us both in the eye, back and forth. “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

  We were all sorry.

  Never more than just then.

  My phone buzzed with a message from my husband. It’s for the best, Davis.

  * * *

  It was noon. Thursday. I did what I should have done months earlier, which was step up and lead my team. I’d wallowed so deeply in wishing things were the way they were before that I’d let them devolve to where they were after. It was as if the minute I took control of myself, my job, and my responsibilities, everything in my head and my heart fell into place. Then we fell into place on the sofas.

  “Gray Donaldson didn’t do this.” I broke the silence.

  “Davis.” Fantasy’s voice was weary. “Don’t start.”

  “It’s done,” Baylor chimed in.

  They were better than that. They were smarter than that. They were sharper than that. So I let them think about it a minute. Gray Donaldson wasn’t the mastermind of anything. From the beginning, she only did her job. If she’d wanted to steal from the Bellissimo, she’d had ten years to do it. Which was secondary to the very obvious primary: Why would Gray Donaldson murder Sara Z. Stone at her own desk with her own ax covered in her own prints, walk off and leave the body there for us to find, then be pulled over driving her own car, wearing her Bellissimo uniform, on her way to clock in for her next shift? In front of God and everybody?

  “Oh, nooooo.” Fantasy got it first.

  Baylor got it second, but I can’t repeat what he said.

  And off we went.

  “Fantasy, take Clone,” I said. “She’s not going to tell us who stuffed her in the freezer, so run her through the ringer. Crack into her phone, see who she communicated with. If you don’t find anything there, take the deepest dive you can into her background. When you finish, do the same with Sara Z. Stone. Find what I missed.” Then I turned to Baylor. “You. Casino Credit. First, Gray Donaldson. Pull surveillance and see if you can pin down Gray’s hatchet-tossing gear, who helped themselves to it, and who wandered our halls with her ax. Then, the cashier, Megan Shaw. Oliver’s mother. We never should have stopped looking for her, not that we ever really started, if for no other reason than because her baby deserves to know what happened to his mother. Start when the first wire hit Casino Credit Friday night and track her all the way through. If she left here, follow her out the door, get the make and model of the car, or Uber, or spaceship she left in, then set a Kaleidoscope trace on the vehicle, and send someone to toss her apartment in Mobile. Find what I missed.”

  Their faces were question marks. Historically, I sat in the dark cave of Control Central and did the cyber digging. “Baylor, you’re the best at surveillance,” I said. “You see toothpicks, mosquitoes, and paperclips I miss. Remember when you found the AWOL kid tracking the LEGOs he dropped all over the building? You’ll see something I didn’t.” I turned to Fantasy. “You make connections I don’t. How many times have I been at the end of the road and you’ve said, ‘Go back and see if they worked at Burger King at the same time?’”

  “Once, that I know
of,” she said, “and it was Chick-fil-A.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She knew what I meant.

  “If you work together—” No Hair’s words “—you’ll find what I missed.”

  “What do you think you missed?” Fantasy asked.

  “Specifically,” Baylor added.

  “The common denominator,” I said. “The one person whose path crossed all four of theirs.” They nodded, but their faces were blank. Of course, that could have been lingering unemployment shock. “Listen,” I said, “if we know Gray Donaldson didn’t do it, No Hair knows it too. There’s a reason he gave us until eight o’clock tomorrow morning. It’s because there’s someone out there who thinks they’re off the hook. Let’s be the ones to hook that person. Let’s make the best of the time we have left. Let’s go out swinging.”

  The three of us stood.

  “Where will you be if we need you?” Fantasy asked.