“We have the Scary Rich tournament in the poker room?” I pointed.
“Right.” He peeled himself off the Mad Money and patted his head.
“I need help.”
“Don’t you have your own guys?”
“I did,” I said. “They’re gone.”
“Where?”
If I knew that, I wouldn’t be bothering him. “Lookit, mister. Can you help me or not?”
“Can I see your gun?”
Blue Blazer and I turned to Esmerelda.
“This is a casino, ma’am. Not the O.K. Corral. We don’t carry firearms.”
Esmerelda said, “Poo.”
“Back to me.” I tugged his blue sleeve. “Help.”
“Help with what?” he asked. “You have a drunk?”
Esmerelda waved, like, here. And just to prove it, her long black nails shot out and wrapped around a glass, nabbing it straight off the tray of a passing server. The server stopped, like, hey! I shrugged an apology as Esmerelda downed what looked like ink in one long gulp. I’d never seen a solid black drink. It might have been motor oil. Esmerelda’s eyes grew wide and the glass slid out of her hand. I barely caught it. Then she coughed, clutched at her green throat, and froze. She stood perfectly still, her black nails wrapped around her neck, and stared straight through me. She shivered from head to toe, then started wobbling.
Uh-oh.
What did she just drink?
The Bellissimo was packed. There was nowhere for her to sit, and I didn’t want another of my guests on the floor. I leaned left, cashed out a Hex Breaker slot machine with the push of a button, and handed the payout slip to the stunned lady playing the machine. “You need to move.” She looked at me like, what? I said, “Move it, lady!” She looked at me like, well, I never. “Go!” I pointed. “Get!” She clutched her purse to her chest and backed away. I piled Esmerelda into the Hex Breaker chair and turned to Blue Blazer. “I have a guest who’s”—I searched for the right word, any word that wasn’t “dead”—“in distress,” I said. “I need help.”
“Just get her to her room,” he said.
“Not her.” I turned my head to check on Esmerelda and thought she should probably close her mouth.
Blue Blazer said, “What kind of distress?”
“The worst kind. I need help.”
He just stood there.
“Right now,” I said.
He swept out a lazy arm, like, lead the way.
“Not to be rude,” I said, “but I need more help than you. I need your boss. I need your boss’s boss. I need NCIS. Or the BAU. Or Richard Castle.”
Blue Blazer shifted his weight. “It’s a holiday, the bosses are off, and I don’t know that last guy.”
“There has to be someone,” I said.
“There’s not.”
“Then call the police.”
“No, no, no.” He didn’t like my idea at all. “We call the police last. For one, it’s Halloween and they’re busy. For two, you want to see this place empty out, fill it with police. For three, I’m not authorized to call the police. Ambulance, yes. Police, no.”
“Well, I’ll call them.” I swiped past four message notifications from Traci on my phone. The only one I halfway read said something about a Russian man on a roof singing “If I Were a Boogeyman.”
“Hold your horses, young lady.” Blue Blazer grabbed my dialing finger. “What’s your problem?”
I stood on my tiptoes and whispered. He smelled like my grandmother’s house.
His glasses slipped down his nose as he said, “No!”
I nodded yes and Esmerelda nodded off. Her head hit the Hex Breaker slot machine. She was out.
Blue Blazer stepped away and spoke into his lapel microphone. I nervously tapped a foot until he turned back to me. “Someone will be at the haunted house in ten minutes. He said to wait for him there.”
I was about to see Mr. Covey. And not in passing.
We pulled Esmerelda up and dragged her between us, which got us some crazy looks. I tried to smile reassuringly at the people who were staring, like, everything’s fine; mind your business. After we plowed through the crowd around the Candy Corn Audi and made it back to the haunted house poker room, I tried to pass off my half of Esmerelda to Blue Blazer so I could unlock the door, but she didn’t want to go to him. She wallowed all over me, hugging me hard, calling me April and drunk babbling that she loved me. She smelled like licorice. We got her in and spread her out on fake grass in front of the Scary Rich slot machines. Her black curly-toed witch boots flopped away from each other, pointing in opposite directions, and she started snoring up a storm. Blue Blazer gave me a quick smile, like, good luck, then closed the doors on his way out and left me there. With a drunk witch and a dead zombie.
My phone was going crazy with messages from Traci. Where was I? I’d missed Dorothy singing “Somewhere Over the Poltergeist.” I sent a message back that I’d run into a small problem, I was doing my very best, and I’d be there as soon as possible. I turned off my phone, then stepped over Esmerelda. I tiptoed, my heart hammering, to the end of the row of Scary slots. I covered my eyes with my hand and peeked through my fingers.
The zombie was gone.
“Boo.”
I screamed bloody murder, jumped straight into the air, and a stranger caught me on the way down. I’d been staring at the empty spot on the floor that’d been home to a dead zombie not fifteen minutes earlier and didn’t hear the doors open to let him in. One minute I was wondering if I’d hallucinated the dead zombie and the next I was in a stranger’s arms staring at long dark eyelashes. He made no move to put me down. He asked if I was okay. I nodded yes. Then no. He was not Mr. Covey. Not by a long shot.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“July.”
“You look like July.”
I’m five-seven, with extra-curly blond hair, enough for four people, hazel eyes, and a nose I hate because it’s covered with freckles. I don’t know how all that added up to July for him, because I didn’t have Fourth of July fireworks shooting out of my head, but I did know he was the one who looked like July. As in Mr. July. Fireman calendar Mr. July.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Baylor,” he said. “Just Baylor.”
“Do you work for Mr. Covey?”
“Mr. Who?”
I didn’t really care who he was or who he worked for. I was just glad he was here. He was tall, wicked tough, with thick dark hair, big brown eyes, and a dimple in his chin. I thought I might want to marry Just Baylor. I was almost totally sure I wanted to marry him.
“I have good news for you.” He made no move to put me down and I made no move to get down. “Your guest isn’t dead.” He swung me around to where we could see Esmerelda sprawled out on the floor. “She’s just drunk.”
“Not her,” I said. “Fifteen minutes ago there was a dead zombie on the floor over there.” I pointed and Just Baylor swung me back around, where we stared at nothing on the floor. “I went to get help and when I got back, he was gone.”
He wasn’t upset by the news, he didn’t look at me like I was the craziest person he’d ever met in his life, and I could stay right there in his arms until my Hearts on Fire event next Valentine’s Day. He smelled like falling leaves and a hardware store and good Scotch. He looked like magic. If I got fired for my event killing a guest and losing his dead body, I hoped it would be this man who fired me and I hoped he’d take his time.
The Bellissimo theater department had converted the poker room into a haunted house and they’d done a very good job of it. Clusters of spindly backlit trees cast eerie shadows across the walls and a thin layer of fog floated up from the floor. The lights were low and purple. The whole room smelled, ever so faintly, of caramel apples. Split down the middle by a cemetery, the slot machines were on one side of t
he graves and hospitality—club chairs, leather sofas, and the bar—were on the other. We sat at the bar on the other side, knees to knees, and went over everything—he asked, I answered—and this was after we looked high and low for the dead zombie.
“Let’s figure out who he was and start there,” Baylor said.
“Let me get my tablet.” I slid off the barstool, hoping he’d still be there when I got back in two seconds. But I only made it two feet before I stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Just Baylor asked.
“My tablet.” I stared at the spot where my Surface Pro 5 should have been. “I dropped it here,” I pointed, “and it’s gone.” The security guards were gone. The dead zombie was gone. Now my tablet, gone.
“What was on it?”
“The Scary Rich scores.”
“What were you doing when you dropped it?”
I think my eyes grew huge and my mouth dropped open. “I was transferring the money from the tournament account to the disbursement account!”
“What?” He said it like he didn’t believe me. “I thought you said you were a host.”
“I did!” I said. “I am a host! I’m the Holiday Host!”
He was off his barstool and at my side. “Holiday hosts don’t transfer money, July.”
Then we were on all fours, crawling through the cemetery, trying to find my tablet.
“Who told you to transfer money?”
I looked up from between Barry A. Live’s and Ima Goner’s tombstones. “I got a note from the accountants in the transfer department with instructions to move the Scary Rich winnings to the player distribution account.”
“July.” His head popped up from behind R.U. Next’s headstone. “There is no transfer department and there is no player distribution account. Where’s the note?” he asked. “How much was it and who did you send it to?”
I dug in the pocket of my jacket for the note. It wasn’t there. I checked my other pocket. “It was three million.” I checked my last-chance pocket. Then my very last-chance pocket. “I sent it to no one and the note’s gone.”
“Wait.” He crossed his arms on top of the grave marker. “The tablet and the note are gone? And you didn’t transfer the money?”
“I was just about to hit the button when I noticed they got my name wrong. Which I thought was odd.”
“How wrong was your name?”
“At the bottom it said, ‘Thank you, April.’”
“But you’re July.”
“Right,” I said. “I had my finger on the button to send it, but then I wondered how they got my name wrong and if I shouldn’t legally change it to something way easier exactly when the witch was running down the row of slot machines and she called me April.”
We looked at each other for a minute, then said it at the exact same time. “The witch!”
Then we said, “Jinx!”
I think I fell in love for the first time in my life right then and right there.
We ran for Esmerelda, who was passed out drunk by the Scary Rich machines. Except she wasn’t. She was gone. The zombie, the security guards, my tablet, the note, and now the witch were gone. Everything was gone.
“July!” Baylor waved a hand in front of my face. “Listen to me. The witch has the zombie, your tablet, and the note. Which means if we don’t find her, she’ll have the three million dollars.”
I heard a clicking-clacking noise. It was my teeth.
He grabbed my hand and we left the haunted house in a hurry. I tried to pay attention to where we were going and how we were getting there, but I couldn’t get past how small my hand felt in his. I couldn’t concentrate at all; I could barely breathe. When we stopped and he let go, I felt lost, but I wasn’t, because I’d been here before. The last time I stood at this door, I felt sure I’d see Mr. Covey on the other side, and not in passing. But it turned out to be an insurance lady.
“Is this your office?” I asked.
“Sort of.” Baylor punched in a code on the keypad and pushed open the door.
“Does ‘sort of’ mean yes or no?” I asked.
His head rocked from side to side. “Yes,” he said. “Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“Wait.” His hand was on the doorknob. “Have you been in this office before?”
“Sort of.”
He studied me, hard, which made my hair buzz, then pointed at my freckles and said, “The Easter egg.”
He knew who I was.
There’d been an incident at my All Your Eggs in One Basket event last Easter in the conservatory. Those geese were not tame as advertised. Those geese were rabid. Things were bad enough already when the ringleader goose, the meanest one, somehow found and ate the $10,000 golden egg. Me and my hundred casino guests crowded around and watched the gold egg slide, lug-lug, down that crazy goose’s throat, sideways, in slow motion, and I was like, I’m having an incident. Then that crazy goose started honking, flapping his wings, and took off like he was on fire. My assistant Traci chased him out the door, through the lobby, and out the main entrance, and that goose was never seen or heard from again. I was like, I’m going to jail.
But I didn’t. I came here. To this office. I met with an insurance woman with very pretty red hair. Not carrot orange or strawberry red, but a warm pumpkin copper color. I felt like I’d seen her before, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. She said she needed me to fill out a lost revenue report for the umbrella policy, but the whole time it felt like she was trying to get me to confess to being a goose owner. Like me and my pet goose were in cahoots on the gold egg heist. I was like, gross.
Now, I was like, all by myself. I’d fallen in love at first sight with a man who would never trust me, all because of my sordid history with a wild goose. Which hardly mattered, because right inside his office, behind the door, was a double stroller. It had baby things in it. Just Baylor was married with babies. The stroller was mint green, the exact color of Esmerelda’s face, so it was impossible to know if he had girl babies or boy babies or maybe one of each.
“July?”
It never works out for me.
He leaned in; our faces were so close. He tugged a forever unruly curl of mine that was dangling in my face. It sprang back, like, boing. “July?”
He absolutely didn’t look at me like a man who was married with babies, but he was, so I gave him a confident and professional smile, straightened my shoulders, and moved on. I’d only known him twenty minutes, which gave me the rest of my life to get over him. While I picked up the pieces of my broken heart, Baylor sat down and logged onto the computer. He looked up and around. I took inventory with him: one desk, one computer, one chair, and the double stroller. He said, “I don’t know who runs off with all the chairs.” He scooted left, then patted the empty corner of the chair. “We can share.”
I was like, you’re married.
He said, “I don’t bite.”
I perched on the edge, so close to him, hoping the mother of his children didn’t burst through the door and find us all snuggled up. She might not appreciate that the monitor was built into the desk, not going anywhere, so there was no other way for us both to see it, so I was forced to practically sit in his lap and dream the dream another minute.
“I could stop the transfer,” he said. “But I’d have to wake up my boss.”
Mr. Covey.
“Then she’d kill me.”
Mrs. Covey?
No, the red-headed insurance woman. I could feel the blood draining from my face. The people and the pieces were falling into place. I was in the middle of the deepest darkest SWAT Special Forces commando team of the Bellissimo.
I said, “Senator Rigby.”
He raised one eyebrow.
“That was you, right?” I knew who he was too. Labor Day weekend, which felt like last week, but was last m
onth, my Work Hard Play Harder event at the Bellissimo pool was almost a disaster because one of my guests, who was a Mississippi State Senator, drank too much I Don’t Want to Work punch and went skinny dipping in front of two hundred people at my barbeque. I was in the pool with the naked Senator, who I didn’t know was naked, or even in the pool, because I was at the swim-up blackjack tournament in the shallow end, when Traci, who wasn’t in the pool, walked up to where I was with a blue zillion blackjack players and said, “We have a problem.” Then she held up drippy men’s swim trunks that had a big Seal of the Mississippi State Senate on the butt for all the blackjack players to see. I got out of the pool in a hurry, grabbed the Senator’s shorts, and looked every-single-where, but the naked Senator was nowhere to be found. I caught what I thought might be the backside of him, totally wrapped in a Bellissimo pool towel, slung over a big shoulder sneaking in a side door of the building. I think I was shoulder to shoulder with the shoulder that the Senator had ridden out on.
“That was me,” Baylor said. “And this is me and you.”
I was dizzy.
“I need your help, July.”
I nodded.
“The easy answer would be to get someone from accounting to stop or reverse the transaction.”
“Good good,” I said. “Do it.”
“That’s Plan B.” He looked at his watch. “We’re going to give ourselves thirty minutes for Plan A.”
“Why?”
“Because the witch didn’t do this by herself.”
“How do you know?”
“Where are the accountants? Where are the security guards? Where’s the zombie?”
I wished I knew.
“Someone at the Bellissimo is behind this,” he said. “If we cancel the transaction, we’ll never know who.”
He didn’t act like he suspected me at all, which was good, but then he didn’t act like he was married with babies either. Which wasn’t good.
The computer screen was split into four mini black-and-white movies, and, humiliatingly, I starred in almost every one.
Double Jinx Page 2