Death Plays Poker

by Robin Spano

  George entered his password — “darkroast” — and opened Safari. As he was contemplating what search term to type, he heard a shuffling sound at his door.

  He looked over and saw an envelope at the base of the door. Blank on the outside and sealed. He pried it open.

  Stop stirring shit around yourself.

  George grabbed his room card and ran down the hallway to the stairwell, where he thought he’d just witnessed the door closing. He shouted, “Who are you?” as loud as he could. But all he heard was a click as a door shut on another floor.

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  CLARE

  Clare gazed out at the boats of False Creek. They were familiar to her now. She said a silent hello to Polar Ice, one of the smaller yachts that she couldn’t see making the journey to either pole. The boat must have been named after the vodka.

  She checked the time on her phone. Clare wondered if it should worry her that she didn’t gag on the hot pink color anymore. She hoped when she got home she didn’t start accidentally adding pink clothes to her real wardrobe.

  Noah wasn’t due for another twenty minutes. She punched in the numbers to call Roberta. She’d make damn sure not to say anything classified.

  “How’s that Virago?” Clare asked when Roberta picked up.

  “The more I fix, the more it breaks,” Roberta said. “The electrics are fine, and now the carb’s like new. Damn thing just won’t start.”

  “The starter motor?”

  “That would be logical. Except I’ve pulled the thing apart and it’s perfect. I think I stared at the insides of that starter for half a day, trying to find a flaw that isn’t there.”

  Clare took a sip from her water bottle. “I hope you’re billing by the hour.”

  “I’m not counting hours I waste due to my own vacant brain. Anyway, Lance was in and out of the shop, so a lot of that time was spent trying to help him find a caterer. He’s pulling out his hair with wedding plans.”

  “Why is he looking for a caterer in Toronto? Isn’t the reception in the legion hall back home?”

  “Shauna’s being fussy. One of her friends just got married and hired a fancy caterer from Lake Joe. Lance can’t afford anything that pricey, but Shauna wants him to scour Toronto for something she can pass off as upscale.”

  Clare rolled her eyes at the information about Roberta’s soon-to-be daughter-in-law. If she wanted to seem upscale, Shauna should stop wearing spandex to the grocery store. “Everyone wants to fool someone. So why doesn’t Lance leave the planning to Slutty Shauna?”

  “Because he’s a modern man who believes household duties should be shared.”

  “Since when?” When Clare had dated Lance, he’d been as manly as they’d come. And by manly, she meant someone who belched to indicate he was ready for his woman to bring him a new beer. “Don’t tell me Shauna’s got him tuning into his softer side.”

  “I think it’s nice,” Roberta said. “So are you coming to the wedding? Lance says you still haven’t responded to his Save the Date card.”

  “I’ll be undercover in Helsinki.”

  “They plan that far ahead?”

  “I was speaking wishfully.”

  “Clare!” Roberta was laughing, but she sounded disappointed. “I thought you and Lance were friends now.”

  “On the surface. But . . . is it weird that part of me still wants us to be together?”

  “It’s not weird,” Roberta said. “You two played together since you were twelve and fourteen.”

  “Yeah,” Clare said. “Maybe that’s all it is.”

  “Anyhow, don’t you have too many men?”

  “No.” Clare kicked a stone off the path she was walking on. “I’m done with the guy here. I’m waiting to go home to Kevin.”

  “Don’t sound so excited.”

  Clare’s gaze wandered back to the boats. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “You’re in your twenties. You’re figuring out what you want. Why does something have to be wrong with you?”

  “What if I can’t fall in love?”

  “Of course you can fall in love. You’re waiting for the right guy. It isn’t Lance. And maybe it isn’t Kevin either.”

  “What if it is Kevin? What if I’m afraid of something that isn’t letting me go that final distance? What if that fear is making me crave this asshole I met on the assignment?”

  “Then I repeat what I said before: you’re in your twenties.”

  “Roberta, that’s dumb. I can’t go through life excusing every character flaw I have by saying it’s a function of my age.”

  “Why not? When I look in the mirror and an Italian Riviera body doesn’t stare back at me, I don’t whinge and complain — I say hell, Roberta, for forty-three you look damn good.”

  Clare grinned.

  Then she heard Roberta draw in a breath. “Clare, your dad’s in the hospital.”

  “Again?”

  “This time it’s serious.”

  “It was serious before,” Clare said. “He needs a lung transplant.”

  “They don’t think he’s going to make it home.”

  Clare lit a smoke. “Did you hear that from a doctor, or from my mother when she was halfway into her nightly vodka bottle?”

  “Both.”

  “You saw my dad in the hospital?” Clare took a deep drag and held smoke in as if it was a joint.

  “He’s off the transplant list.”

  “What? How did that happen?” Clare didn’t know how that made her feel.

  “They know he smoked in January. He’s telling everyone you gave him a cigarette.”

  “I did,” Clare said.

  “You what?”

  “Don’t treat me like I’m Satan. I was smoking. I told him that if he was too, he could smoke in front of me. It’s the lying I hate more than anything.”

  “Clare you can’t — when you’re dealing with an addict — it’s not —”

  “Can you not lecture me?” Clare felt her throat constrict. “I get it. I made a dumb mistake. When he dies it’s going to be my fault.”

  “That’s not even a little bit true.”

  “Of course it’s true. I’m a murderer.” Clare gazed out at Polar Ice, bobbing on the water. “Like those people I’m supposed to catch and put in jail. Bitter irony, huh?”

  “He’s not dead yet. You can still make your peace.”

  “What peace? I can say, ‘Sorry I tempted you with tobacco,’ and he can say, ‘Oh, that’s okay,’ and I can say, ‘Thanks for blaming me, by the way,’ and he can say . . .” Clare couldn’t finish the thought. She felt a tear roll down her cheek.

  “When are you coming home?” Roberta asked.

  “Depends when the case is solved. A few days, ideally.”

  “He’ll hang on until then.”

  “How do you even know that?”

  “It’s how things work.”

  Clare wiped her tear away. Thankfully no more had followed. “So what’s the next step with the Virago?”

  “I’m going to stare at it some more. Then attack the electric start.”

  “Totally thought it would turn out to be the main fuse.”

  “Totally?”

  “My cover character talks like a Richmond Hill girl. What about a starter solenoid?”

  “Yeah,” Roberta said. “This is why I hate motorcycles. They’re supposed to be so simple, but they never are.”

  EIGHTY-NINE

  NOAH

  Noah watched Clare on the phone as he walked toward her. She looked upset. He slowed his pace; he’d let her be alone. He watched her wipe her cheek, smile slightly, and hang up. He gave her half a minute more and made his approach.

  He sat on the bench beside her. “You ready for an exciting day?”

  “Yup.”
She spoke enthusiastically, but it sounded forced.

  “We should stick together as much as possible,” Noah said. “We can tell everyone we made up; no one will care.”

  “Okay.”

  Noah took her hand. “You sure you’re cool with this?”

  “I’m fine. I’m a professional. Let’s do this.”

  “My handler made a good point,” Noah said. “Why don’t you suggest to your handler that the Canadian cops search bags and jackets as players arrive at the game? Then we don’t have to risk our covers breaking into rooms to find out who else has phones and computers that are set up to receive the cheating signal.”

  Clare wrinkled a corner of her mouth while appearing to think. “We’re pretty sure we know who’s cheating — Joe and T-Bone and maybe George. If we raid people’s bags, we might confirm that information. But we also might tip people off that they should be a lot more careful. Searching bags looks like what it is — cop interest.”

  “True,” Noah said. “It just might be the safest way to go.”

  “To find the cheaters, yeah. But not to find the killer. Or is it back to you don’t care? You have your case solved, and if you can get some more free information before you get the hell out of here, so much the better?”

  Noah didn’t blame Clare for mistrusting him. “I can’t arrest someone in Canada, but you can.”

  “So why are you even here now? You could be kicking back in comfort while the game finishes playing itself out.”

  “Are you kidding?” Noah was sitting inches from Clare, but it felt like she was a lot farther away. He remembered seeing her upset on the phone, and softened. “I want to catch this killer.”

  Clare frowned.

  Noah continued, “Another question Bert had: have you seen reports about personal effects found in the victims’ rooms?”

  Clare rolled her eyes. “Like phones that just happened to be set up to receive secret encrypted transmissions? I think the killer would have taken that kind of evidence with him.”

  “Really?” Noah said. “What if the killer doesn’t know about the technology?”

  “Oh.” Clare’s eyes opened wider. “Sorry. My brain is mush today. You mean what if the killer isn’t the Dealer?”

  Noah nodded. “Mickey’s angry. There must be others — maybe Elizabeth — who feel the same way.”

  “So does that make Joe and T-Bone, and maybe George, potential killers? Or potential victims?”

  “Right. That’s one question. Another is: if Oliver’s running the scam, which we now know he must be, because Fiona was dead and the hole card feed was still coming through, and someone else is murdering people, is there even a connection between the murders and the cheating?”

  “How could there not be?” Clare said. “They started at the exact same time.”

  “I agree — my first guess is they’re linked. But we have to keep an open mind.”

  Clare shook her head. “It’s time to close our minds, rule things out. All this open-mindedness and my dead grandma could be the killer from her grave.”

  Noah laughed.

  “If you saw my grandma you wouldn’t think that was funny.”

  “That’s not why I’m laughing. I just realized that for all our two agencies’ fighting, none of us have looked at the most obvious clue.”

  “What clue?”

  “Whoever killed Fiona had to get across the border. We can get rental car records and border crossing IDs.”

  “We have all that.” Clare looked at him liked he’d missed the short bus that morning. “I mean, you and I don’t, but the RCMP is already looking into border crossing records. Anyway, when you cross the border with the intent to kill someone, I’m pretty sure you use a fake name.”

  “Maybe.” Noah shrugged. “But it won’t be a fake photo.”

  Clare narrowed her eyes with interest. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Facial recognition software,” Noah said. “We’ll give them photos of Joe, Elizabeth, T-Bone, Mickey, Oliver, George . . . I’m sure we’ll have an answer by tomorrow.”

  Clare frowned. “So should we kill our plan with the notes?”

  Noah shook his head. “Because what if the killer found another way across?”

  NINETY

  ELIZABETH

  “Is someone else on the boat?” Joe said suddenly.

  Elizabeth stopped what she was doing and listened. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Shh.” Joe put a finger to his lips. There was a soft thud, like a cupboard being closed. “Did you hear that?”

  “I did,” Elizabeth said, in a voice just above a whisper. “But we’re on a boat. The sound could be anything. Maybe a buoy slapping against the dock.”

  “Maybe,” Joe said.

  Elizabeth heard a zipper. “That sounds like the canvas being opened.”

  “Or zipped back up.”

  “It might be another boat’s canvas.” But Elizabeth was scared. “Should we go upstairs?”

  “I’ll go.” He glanced at her bare, still mostly flat stomach. “I don’t want you in danger.”

  “I’m coming with you.” Elizabeth pictured Joe going into the galley alone and a gloved killer waiting for him with a piece of rope. “I’ll dial 911 and be ready to press Send.”

  “Thanks, Scout.” Joe gave a mock salute.

  “You’re welcome.” Elizabeth slipped on shoes and a shirt. She didn’t want to waste time putting jeans on.

  “You’re coming like that?” Joe looked amused.

  “Who cares what an intruder sees?”

  “Okay. Let’s go.” Joe opened the stateroom door softly and looked both ways down the hall before turning toward the stairs. Elizabeth followed as silently as she could.

  At the top of the stairs, Joe turned quickly to face the dock side of the boat. He motioned Liz to follow him up, and they both looked around at an apparently empty main level. The galley was intact, the deck was empty, the canvas was closed, and the poker table was as they’d left it.

  After a careful search of every stateroom, they determined that there was no one else on board.

  “What about the zipper?” Elizabeth said. “You heard it too, right?”

  Joe nodded.

  “You think someone was looking for something, and they left when they heard us downstairs?”

  “Possible.”

  “What would they have taken?” Elizabeth said. “Do you have your computer and phone?”

  “They’re in our stateroom. You have yours?”

  Her laptop was on the galley table, where she’d left it. She checked her purse and found her phone. “What else could they have wanted?”

  “Maybe to leave us this.” Joe fingered a piece of paper that had been fixed to the fridge with an Ace magnet.

  Elizabeth’s stomach felt weak. “You think someone left that here?”

  “Wasn’t here before, was it?” Joe pulled the note from the fridge. “It looks like the other note you got. The one about mystery sex. Same font, same kind of paper, I’m pretty sure.”

  “What does it say? Let me see it.”

  Joe shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  He didn’t look like he planned to pass Elizabeth the page, so she took it.

  Tiffany James is your Dealer. Instructions will follow. Follow the instructions.

  “I knew it!” Elizabeth stomped her foot in what would probably be a comical gesture under lighter circumstances.

  “What did you know?” Joe looked at her oddly.

  “Tiffany. She’s not a little trust fund princess. I knew she had an angle.”

  “What do you think her angle is?” Joe asked.

  “I don’t know. I just knew something wasn’t right.”

  “How?”

  “Her father doesn�
��t own any furniture importing company in the English-speaking world. I even checked China, just in case. But no.”

  Joe took a Coke can from the fridge. “So what does this note mean?”

  “I don’t know. But I know it’s real. I know it means something.” Elizabeth’s nausea was getting worse. She sat down.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” She was glad she hadn’t eaten breakfast. “It’s a big chance to take, breaking onto our boat just to leave a one-line note. The Choker wouldn’t do that. My guess is someone’s trying to warn us that we’re in danger.”

  Joe laughed. “Okay, Liz. I’m glad to hear your take on how the criminal mind works.”

  Elizabeth took a Sun Chip from the bag on the counter, and immediately recognized it as a mistake. She chewed it anyway, and swallowed. Hopefully it would stay down. “I’m the one who figured out Tiffany.”

  “Clearly someone else did, too, if they’re warning us. But this doesn’t look like a warning note to me. It looks more like a statement of power. As in, Tiffany’s going to give us some orders now. Or someone pretending they’re Tiffany.”

  Elizabeth wondered if whoever had left the note was outside listening to them. She decided they probably weren’t — it would be dumb to hang around on the dock once the message had been delivered.

  “Hey,” Joe said. “I looked up those bags. You know they’re not biodegradable anymore?”

  “What are you talking about?” Elizabeth picked up the Sun Chip pack and looked at the back. “Yes, they are. That’s what this little symbol means right here.”

  “That’s just the Canadian bags,” Joe said. “In the States, the eco-friendly bags were too loud and crinkly for the average consumer. So Frito Lay went back using to the old kind.”

  “That sucks.” Elizabeth felt herself getting angry. The poison, which had been gone for almost a day, started to creep back in. She stood up and threw the nearly full bag in the garbage. “That’s, like, knowing you can do the right thing, and choosing not to. I’m never eating another fucking Sun Chip again in my life, Canadian or American.”