by Harper Lin
So I was glad to see someone approach Don almost immediately. It was the same routine as before. All smiles and friendliness while talking to the visitor then—boom!—the second the guy walked away, back to staring blankly. But at that point, I stopped watching Don and started watching the guy. I had to be a little more subtle about that since I didn’t want him noticing and coming over to me, but I kept him at least in my peripheral vision. I needed to know if he went down the hall to “the bathroom.”
He wandered around for a couple of minutes, going back to his table, then talking to someone else, then to the bar, then back to his table, but he did eventually head for the little hallway. Unlucky for me, I couldn’t see down it to find out which door he went through. And I wasn’t about to risk making another “drunken” trip in that direction for fear of getting intercepted.
So now, with my suspicions pretty much confirmed that people who wanted to place a bet were stopping by Don’s table first, I just needed to figure out why. Wouldn’t it just be more efficient to sneak off to the back without going by his table first? If I’d noticed the pattern, anyone could. But, somehow, he seemed to serve as a gatekeeper of sorts. Just nowhere near the gate and with no apparent communication with the people behind it.
“Oh my gosh, are you okay?” Sammy appeared out of nowhere beside my table, and I wondered if I really was drunk not to have seen her walk up.
“I’m fine.” I repeated the waving hand gesture since that seemed to be what I’d landed on as something Drunk Fran would do.
“What are you doing here? Where’s Matt? Did you guys get in a fight or something?” She gasped and covered her mouth. “You didn’t break up, did you?”
“No!” I realized as soon as it came out of my mouth that it might have been a little too sober sounding. So I repeated it with less enunciation and added my hand gesture. “No, no, no, no, no. I just wanted to come out and have a little drinky-drink.”
Sammy’s brow wrinkled. “Let’s get you out of here.” She repeated the move Boston Goon had used, pulling one of my arms around her shoulders as she dragged me out of the booth.
“You need some help over there?” Dave’s voice called faintly over the noise of the bar. The bar was full now, and there was a band on stage getting warmed up. It was a good time to be getting out of there.
“No.” I waved my hand at him.
“No, I got it!” Sammy didn’t really sound like she had it. I supported myself a little more.
We stumbled out of the bar. Winky the Smokeface was still leaning against the wall, after all that time. Had he really never gone in? I didn’t remember seeing him inside. That was a long time to hang out outside a bar, smoking. Unless he was somehow involved in the gambling ring too.
“Looks like somebody ‘got clawed!’” He laughed to himself, apparently thinking it was the height of comedy to make yet another joke about my shirt. No wonder they’d been hiding in a box in the back of a closet if this was how people reacted to them.
Sammy ignored him and hauled me the rest of the way to her car, which she’d parked illegally, right in front of a fire hydrant. She really must have been worried about me.
She got me in—I limited my drunken flailing to manage that—and leaned across to buckle me. If I really had been drunk and in need of someone to take care of me, Sammy would have been the perfect person.
I slouched in the seat as she shut the door, walked around, and got in her own seat. I stayed like that until she pulled out of the bar’s parking lot and onto the street. I glanced in the mirror, just to make sure no one was following us, then sat up. “Thanks for coming to get me.”
She whipped her head in my direction so fast the car swerved. “Are you… fine now?”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. I was never actually drunk. Thanks for coming to get me though!”
“But—but—I saw you!” Her eyes were thankfully back on the road now, her hands locked properly in position at ten and two on the wheel.
“I was pretending.”
“You were pretending?” It was the closest to angry I’d ever heard Sammy.
“Yeah. It’s kind of a long story. I didn’t mean for it to go that far. But when I came out of the bathroom after going in there to pretend throw up, Dave had already called you.”
“I’m so confused! What is going on? Why were you pretending to throw up?”
I took a deep breath. “Well—” How much did I want to tell her? How much did she really want to know, given that we were dealing with a potentially highly dangerous gambling ring?
“You know what? As long as you’re safe and okay, it doesn’t really matter, does it?” We pulled up to a stop sign, and she reached over to pat my shoulder then put her hand back securely in the two o’clock position before proceeding through the intersection. “All that matters is that you’re okay.” She giggled. “But at least now you know that if you’re ever not, I’ll come get you. I’ll come get you if you are okay and just need a ride too.”
“Thanks, Sam.”
She smiled ahead of her at the road. I think she would have actually smiled at me if she weren’t dutifully focused on driving safely.
She pulled up in front of my house just as Matt pulled into his driveway.
“Franny? Is that you?” he called, seeing me get out of Sammy’s car.
“Yup. Hi.” I waved at him like nothing was wrong.
“Hi, Matt!” After letting me out, Sammy pulled her car up so she was even with Matt’s driveway and rolled her window down to say hello. It wouldn’t have been nice of her to just drive off without saying anything, of course.
“Sammy?” Matt looked between the two of us, his confusion obvious even in the dark.
“Yup! Just dropping Fran off. See you in the morning. I’ll have your donuts all ready for you. Oh!” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry! I wasn’t supposed to say that.”
“It’s okay,” Matt said. “She already knows.”
“Oh, okay! I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Bye, Fran.”
We both waved goodbye as she drove off.
Matt turned to me, looking perplexed. “I didn’t know you and Sammy were going out.”
“We didn’t,” I said breezily. “She was just picking me up.”
“From where?”
“Um… the Sand Bar.” Any hopes I’d had of getting out of this without letting him know how I’d spent my evening were gone.
“The bar called the Sand Bar or an actual sand bar in the ocean? Because I’m not sure which is more likely with you.”
I evaluated the likelihood that I could convince him it was an actual sand bar in the ocean, but given that I was completely dry, it seemed unlikely. “The bar called the Sand Bar.”
“And why were you there? Why did Sammy have to pick you up? Were you there alone? Why didn’t you just walk home? Or drive? And why were you there?” Why I was there was clearly the part he was most interested in. I was most interested in leaving that part out, so I ignored it.
“Sammy just picked me up because she’s a good friend.” I shrugged like it was no big deal and not remotely an unusual circumstance.
“Why didn’t you walk? Or drive? And why were you there?”
“I didn’t bring my car and didn’t really feel like walking.”
“Why didn’t whoever you were with drive you? And why were you there?”
“I wasn’t with anybody.”
“Why were you there?”
“Um…”
“Franny?” His voice had a tone that told me I wasn’t dodging the question anymore.
I tried to smile. I tried to sound like it was a no-big-deal, everyday occurrence. “I was investigating whether there was an illegal gambling ring running out of the back.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“So, let me get this straight—” Matt rubbed his temples as he’d been doing every minute or so for the half hour since I’d confessed to my evening’s activities at the Sand Bar.
We
were sitting in my kitchen, facing each other across the table, with Latte somehow managing to be sprawled across both our feet. I’d explained everything at least twice all the way through—the first time with me just telling him, the second with him repeating parts and asking me questions. He wasn’t exactly thrilled with what I’d been up to.
“You went to the bar because Pablo’s brother—” He was obviously still having trouble believing what I’d done.
“Eduardo,” I prompted.
“Eduardo,” he repeated. “Because Pablo’s brother Eduardo said that there was an illegal gambling ring running out of the back of it that Pablo owed a lot of money to, and instead of going to the police, you decided you should go try to find out if it was true or not.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to report it if it wasn’t true. Mike already doesn’t trust me. That wouldn’t help things any.”
“Right. Of course.” He rubbed his temples again. “So, you sat and watched some guy—”
“Don.”
“Some guy named Don for a while who may or may not have anything to do with this gambling ring—”
“He does.”
“And then you snuck into the back and eavesdropped on some guy—”
“Kevin.”
He gave me a look, and I decided that maybe the names weren’t important.
He took a deep breath and started again. “You snuck into the back and eavesdropped on some guy named Kevin being threatened over his unpaid gambling debts. And then, when you got caught—”
“I didn’t get caught. I fell out of a closet.”
He blinked several times. He clearly thought I’d lost my mind. Another deep breath. “When you got caught—falling out of a closet—”
I bit my tongue and didn’t remind him that it was because I’d heard Pablo’s name.
“—you decided to pretend you were drunk and thought you were in the bathroom.”
I nodded, trying to look like it was a totally reasonable way to spend a Wednesday night.
“Which led to one of the probably very dangerous operators of the gambling ring escorting you to the bathroom and the bartender calling Sammy to come get you.”
“Yup!” I said cheerfully. “That about sums it up.”
He looked at me like I was completely off my rocker. “And you think this isn’t something I should be concerned about.”
I hesitated. Would I be worried and anxious if he were off doing this kind of thing? Well, yes, of course. He could get hurt. But what was done was done, and I’d made it out and gotten home just fine, so there wasn’t anything for him to be worried about now. “I can understand why you would be concerned, but you don’t have to be because it’s over and I’m fine.”
He dropped his head to the table with an audible thunk. He rolled his head back and forth on the table in what I had to assume would have been him shaking his head if he’d been vertical. He muttered something to himself that sounded like “I love her. I love her. I love her,” but his voice didn’t sound too certain. Finally, he looked at me. “Franny, if I didn’t love you so much—”
I stopped him. “But you do.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled the tiniest bit. “I really do. And I want you to be safe. Please don’t ever do anything like that ever again.”
And because I loved him, too, I said okay.
He took a deep breath. “So, now are you going to tell the police? It doesn’t even have to be anything official. Just pull Mike aside sometime and tell him—”
“But I still don’t know if it has anything to do with Pablo’s murder.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again. “You still think Pablo was murdered.”
“Well, yes. All the evidence points to—”
“All the evidence points to Pablo dying from a stroke. You can owe money to a bookie and still die of natural causes.”
“I know, but—”
“No buts, Franny. Nobody found any evidence of murder. We were there when it happened. Nobody was near him. Nobody killed him.”
“But what about those spies that get injected with stuff and die? Nobody ever sees that happen.”
“That’s radiation poisoning, Franny. That’s completely different from a stroke. And besides, it’s a lot slower. You don’t get injected and drop dead immediately.”
“I know, but—”
“Franny, please. Let it go. You think it’s a murder because you want it to be a murder. You want there to be some reason that he died other than that it’s just the way things happen sometimes. Let it go.”
“But the gambling—”
“The gambling has nothing to do with his death unless the stress of owing so much money gave him the stroke. It’s irrelevant. And more important than that, it’s dangerous. If you really think those guys killed Pablo, you should stay far, far away from them, not get more involved.”
He had a point. But something about Pablo’s death—the timing of it, the way he died right after the lottery drawing. Sure, maybe he was hoping to win the billion dollars and use it to pay off all his debts, and the stress of not winning caused him to keel over, but maybe the guys from the gambling ring were giving him one last chance to get the money, and when he lost, they pulled the trigger. Well, not the literal trigger since he wasn’t shot but the figurative trigger of whatever actually did kill him. If I could just figure out what that was. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay, I’ll be careful.”
“I don’t want you to be careful, Franny. Well, I do, but what I really want is for you to stay out of it. Staying out of it is the best way for you to be careful.”
I looked at him then at the table. I knew he was right, but I wasn’t ready to give in.
He sighed and rubbed his temples some more. “How about we just drop this and go watch TV for a little bit. Sound good?”
I smiled. It sounded a lot better than sitting there with him still trying to talk me out of investigating Pablo’s death. “Sounds good.”
We moved into the living room and curled up together on the couch to watch TV. “We,” of course, including Latte. He followed us right into the other room and climbed up onto our laps.
“Nothing like a little private, romantic moment,” Matt said as Latte licked his face.
“Aww, the doggie loves you,” I said in a teasing voice and scratched Latte’s head. I kissed Matt on the cheek. “And I do too.”
The corner of Matt’s mouth turned up in a smile, and I knew he forgave me. He grabbed the remote. “What do you want to watch?”
“I don’t care. Whatever.” It was a dangerous power to give him. Saying those words, I knew I’d more than likely end up watching basketball or hockey or talking heads yelling at each other about basketball or hockey if I’d really burned up all my luck for the day. But even though he hadn’t known about my activities until after the fact, I had put Matt through a lot today and figured he deserved to watch whatever he wanted.
He surprised me by picking a cop show. “Maybe this will get it out of your system.”
I could see why he hoped it would, but his plan backfired. Instead of a normal episode where they found the body at the beginning and spent the rest of the episode trying to figure out who committed the obvious murder, in this episode, the police were called in by the medical examiner who found something in the autopsy, almost at the last minute and completely by accident. The victim had been injected with a drug designed to mimic a heart attack. And because a heart attack made sense, given the victim’s medical history, they almost didn’t catch it.
“Oh no,” Matt said as soon as the medical examiner on TV told the detectives what was going on.
I lifted my head from where it was resting on his shoulder. “You don’t think—”
Matt held up his hand. “No. Stop. Don’t even think about it. This is a TV show. It’s fiction. They make up stupid stuff all the time. Do you know how much they just make up about engineering? The
y act like you can just dig a hole in the ground and lay some pipes, no big deal. Like there are no regulations or permits or giant beds of granite right in the middle of where you’re trying to dig. It’s imaginary, Franny. It’s not real.”
I had to admit he was right. Half the time they didn’t even show people making coffee right, so I could fully believe that they also regularly messed up things that required specialized knowledge. But still—Pablo being slipped some kind of drug would solve the problem of there being no obvious signs of murder. I’d been on the right track with the radiation injection, but something in his food or drink was a much more obvious possibility—and so much easier too. Lots of people would have had access to the food he ate, especially at the restaurant. And if he left a drink sitting around somewhere in the kitchen, someone could have dropped something in when he wasn’t looking and had it completely dissolved before he came back to drink it. It was so obvious, I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it sooner.
Matt was still looking at me, waiting for me to agree that TV was TV and it was fictional. And I did agree. Just, in this case, I thought it may have some small basis in reality. And that was just enough for me to feel like I was on to something.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I’m not sure if it came to me in a dream or if letting my mind rest was what did it, but when I woke up in the morning, I knew what Don’s role in the gambling ring was. He was the one who gave out the password! They probably changed it every day, and it was Don’s job to make sure that only the right people got into the back room. They couldn’t just let anyone in who wandered back there. And a password wasn’t any good if they never changed it. It was so obvious that I didn’t know how I’d missed it earlier. It wasn’t an earth-shattering revelation or anything critical to my investigation, but it was a little piece of the puzzle that I was happy to put in place.
I rolled out of bed and blew through my morning routine, the little realization about Don putting me in a good mood. I felt like things were finally clicking into place. After more than a week of feeling like there was something suspicious about Pablo’s death but not knowing where to start investigating it, I finally felt like I was onto something. Now I just had to figure out where to go with it next.