“Why’s that?”
“See what I mean about you two being so alike?” my grandfather says to me. “Leave her be, Chanti. This is big-time—US Marshals and all that. She can’t talk about it.”
He splits another log before he stands up straight, stretches his back, and then asks Lana, “Did you make any calls today?”
“At work?”
“No, I mean on personal business.”
A look passes between them that tells me they’re keeping secrets.
“I was busy.”
“He’ll just keep on calling here until you do something about it.”
“Let him.”
“At least give him your number so he’ll leave us alone.”
“I think he already has it,” I say, making them both look at me like they were just remembering I was standing there.
“Who?” Lana turns her eyes on me like I imagine she stares down her perps in the interrogation room.
“I don’t know who, but I’m guessing y’all are talking about whoever keeps calling home from an Atlanta area code but you keep avoiding. I thought maybe it was an angry perp you arrested, but now I’m thinking it’s whoever Papa is talking about. An old boyfriend, maybe?”
I start cheesing like I just solved a big case, but Lana is not at all amused.
“What boyfriend?” Lana asks, sounding angry.
“The one from college you told me about. You know, the one you wanted to marry until you found out he was allergic to children.”
“Okay, Chanti, you busted me.”
Of course I did. Who else but an ex-boyfriend could be so persistent if it isn’t someone she owes money?
“I guess I am a good detective,” I say, giving Papa a wink. But Lana doesn’t appreciate my talents or me sharing insider knowledge with Papa.
“Daddy, I’d appreciate it if you don’t bring up this subject again. And you,” she says, giving me the evil eye as she starts walking toward the house, “stop minding grown folks’ business.”
I’ve seen Lana stop a grown-man fight in the parking lot of Applebee’s. She practically had my manager at Tastee Treets crying for his mother when I told Lana he was hitting on me and some of the other girls and she went up there and cursed him out in front of a store full of customers. But whoever the mystery man is that she and my grandparents keep not talking about has her all worked up. Some dude that she hasn’t spoken to since college has my take-no-prisoners mother running for cover. Guess I won’t be getting that information about her case, after all.
When Lana left for work the next morning she wasn’t angry with me anymore, even going out of her way to act especially sweet to me, which tells me that she really doesn’t want to share the dirt about her college boyfriend suddenly resurfacing. It seems everyone has a secret but me. I mean a secret about themselves—my secret investigations of Cole and the Larsens don’t count. But Lana and her old flame are not on my radar at the moment. I need to check in with Bethanie to see if I can get anything else out of her.
“Did my mom call you yet?” is the first thing Bethanie asks when she answers the phone.
“Yeah, about an hour ago. I felt really bad lying to her.”
“Don’t even try it, Chanti. I’ve heard you tell a lie or two.”
“Not like this. Little lies don’t hurt, and I try to do it only when telling the truth will hurt someone’s feelings, but nothing else.”
“Or when you’re playing Nancy Drew.”
“That’s not hurting anyone—that’s helping.”
“Depends on who you ask.”
“Such attitude you have this morning. Don’t forget I’m helping you,” I remind her.
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that it isn’t going the way I hoped.”
“Strip poker didn’t work out?”
“No, and neither has anything else I’ve tried. He seems more like my babysitter than my boyfriend,” she says, and I can hear her disappointment.
“Bethanie, has he actually called himself your boyfriend?”
“No, but he doesn’t need to. He’s always wanting to be with me, and this weekend was his idea, not mine. You said yourself he stalked me just to meet me at the bodega.”
“True,” I say, before adding in what I hope sounds like a joking tone, “Maybe he just wants you for your money. You’re his sugar mama.”
“A week ago that comment would have pissed me off, but now I’m starting to wonder.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Except that I haven’t spent a dime on him. Not that I haven’t tried. He won’t let me. We split the tab on everything. And now my father has my money on lock, so I couldn’t spend anything on him if I wanted to.”
I remember Mr. Larsen saying he was going to decrease her allowance. I guess he made good on that. Which sucks because my entire theory about Cole being after her for her money is shot, unless he’s setting the stage that he’s just a nice guy and later starts mooching off her. I latch on to the weaker part of my theory.
“If he’s not after your money, maybe he wants you to teach him how to win at poker. Does he have a gambling problem?”
“Why would you even say that? What are you trying to insinuate?” Bethanie’s entire tone changes and she’s back to being all sensitive and paranoid.
“Well, he joked about it at dinner the night we double dated, and you said he kept taking you to the dog track. I was just throwing out ideas of why he wants to hang with you so much but hasn’t made a single move, that’s all.”
“It was a joke, and he never places a bet, remember? Some of the stuff you come up with is just so out there, Chanti. I have to go. I probably won’t talk to you anymore until I see you in school.”
“Wait a minute, Bethanie... .” I say, but all I get is a dead line.
So Cole isn’t after her money—at least not yet—but that doesn’t mean the rest of my theory is wrong. He really could be a gambler looking to improve his odds with Bethanie’s help. Maybe he is the guy Lana is looking for, a desperate guy on the run who just happened to find a Bonnie to play against his Clyde, a crazy rich Bonnie, no less.
Chapter 16
Lana and I are on our way to do some shopping when she gets a call. I pick up her cell because Lana won’t talk on the phone while she’s driving, but I know for a fact that’s only when I’m in the car. I guess she’s trying to set a good example or something, since she’s already terrified of me turning sixteen soon and getting behind the wheel.
“Lana Evans’s phone.”
“This is Detective Sanders,” says the familiar voice. “Is Evans available?”
“She’s driving at the moment. Whenever I’m in the car, she pretends she doesn’t use her phone while driving.”
Detective Sanders laughs before saying, “You must be Chanti.”
“All day long. Can I take a message for her?”
“Can she swing by the department? We have some new information that we’d like her input on, and I know y’all are heading back to Colorado tomorrow.”
“You mean right now? On a Saturday?”
“If that wouldn’t be a problem,” the detective replies in a tone that says it better not be a problem.
By now Lana is making faces at me trying to get information on who’s calling, and becoming more distracted from the road than if she had just taken the call herself.
“Not at all,” I say, making an executive decision and ignoring Lana’s gesticulations. “We’re on Interstate Eighty-five now, just a few miles from downtown, so we should be there in less than ten minutes.”
“Who was that?”
“Detective Sanders. They have some new developments on the case and want you to come right over. I knew you’d want to, so I answered for you.”
“I wonder what’s going on,” she says excitedly, and then remembers the day we had planned. “Do you mind, Chanti? Maybe this won’t take too long. I could take you back home and pick you up later.”
“That’s why you�
�re here, remember? I don’t mind at all. And there’s no time to take me home—I told her we’d be there in a few minutes. She sounded really impatient, like she had to talk to you right now.”
It couldn’t have worked out more perfectly if I had planned it. Now maybe I’ll get a little information on this case, and see if I’m even close on my speculations about Cole being the runaway witness.
When we arrive at Atlanta PD, Detective Sanders meets us at the employee entrance and leads the way to the detective bureau. The police department seems about like any other, except more quiet since it’s Saturday; mostly uniforms work on Saturday and they’re all out patrolling. If something goes down on the street that requires a detective, like a homicide or a big drug bust, a patrol officer will contact an on-call detective. At least that’s how it works in Lana’s department. I guess some detectives are working this weekend because when we get to Sanders’s desk, there are several of them there. This must be a big case if this many detectives are in on a Saturday morning.
“Can I get you a soda or something, Chanti?” Sanders offers.
“No, thank you, ma’am. I’m fine. I’ll just sit here listening to music and catching up on my e-mail,” I say, holding up my phone as proof. I put my ear buds in and pretend to be instantly engrossed in texting. I want them to forget I’m even in the room. They totally buy my act, which I knew they would since, according to Lana and every other parent I know, they think we’ll all develop carpal tunnel from texting, go deaf from playing our music so loudly, and grow a brain tumor from holding the phone to our heads all day long.
Sanders walks up to a big map on the wall, which I know right away is the map they’re using to track the runaway witness’s movements. If you watch a lot of TV like I do, you’d think the cops would use some kind of wall-sized GPS system and just wave their hands in front of it to change the location or terrain or something, but really they use a big old map with pushpins just like they did back in the day. Not only do I not look up directly at the map, I even dance around in my seat a little like I’m getting into my music when really the volume is off. Once they all turn to watch Sanders, then I get a good look at it.
“I’ve changed my theory on the case since yesterday and want to run it by all of you. We already know through our casino surveillance that the subject has been moving west, hitting casinos in Mississippi, Missouri, Kansas,” Sanders says. “Originally, we were only tracking his movement by watching points of egress at the casinos. Then we started watching his actual gambling activity and noticed that as he makes his way west, he’s been increasing his stakes.”
“How much?” asks Lana.
“First he seemed to be gambling only for entertainment—very small stakes. By the time he reached Kansas, he was hitting the high table limits.”
“Where’s he getting the money?” asks a very cute detective.
“Exactly,” Sanders says. “He owes money to several dangerous people so we know for a fact he didn’t have any, certainly not the amounts he’s been throwing around at blackjack tables. If he had it, he would have paid them off rather than come to us with a deal.”
“He may have stashed something away, with plans to run. Probably what he stole from the Boss,” Lana offers.
The Boss. I make a mental note of that even if it isn’t a real name. It must be a code word for the guy the missing witness was supposed to testify against. I could take notes on my phone, or record the whole conversation, but it isn’t worth getting caught when I’ll just remember everything anyway.
“I doubt he had that much stashed away, not unless he robbed the Federal Reserve or won the sweepstakes,” says the detective. Okay, he’s cute, but he didn’t have to check Lana like that.
“He stayed on the move, presumably to keep us from finding him. After a few weeks at the tables in Kansas, he dropped off radar. First we assumed he continued moving west through Colorado without gambling because stakes were really low in that state.”
“But ... ?”
“Colorado recently raised their limits—not Vegas stakes but high enough to bring him back into the casinos,” Sanders explains. “An addict won’t stay away too long, no matter how risky it is for him to surface.”
“That’s why you called Denver in,” Lana says. “You know he’s there.”
“Unfortunately we aren’t sure. Our last tape of him is over a month old. He resurfaced shortly after the stakes were raised, but only for a week or so, then we lost him again. I thought maybe he had run out of money or got bored with limited stakes and moved on to Nevada, which his pattern so far indicated he would do. But I figured if he had been in Denver recently, your department could at least pick up his trail faster than we could, even if he’d already left town.”
“Now you have a new theory.”
“He hasn’t shown up in Nevada yet, or anywhere outside Colorado. It could mean he kicked the habit, but I doubt it. I think something spooked him, scared him enough to finally stay under, and we know it wasn’t us because he’s always been ahead of us. We didn’t think to watch the casinos until he’d been on the run awhile, so everything we’re looking at is old news.”
“Right. You told us yesterday the Marshals Service was on him,” says a detective sitting next to Lana.
“That’s what I thought at first. They haven’t been especially forthright with us with that whole need to know basis bull—”
She stops talking and though I never look up, I can hear them all turn in their seats to look in my direction, presumably because Sanders almost used a bad word in front of me. Yeah, keep right on thinking I’m just a kid, and keep right on talking while you’re at it. My thumbs pound away at my phone’s keyboard and I dance around in my chair a little for added effect. They resume the conversation.
“It could be the marshals, but now I’m thinking it might be the Boss.”
“But how?” asks Detective Cute.
“If we know his penchant for gambling, you know the Boss does. That’s the whole reason he’s after him.”
“If the Boss has him, our case is done.”
“That’s where Evans and her department come in. The Boss might have him, but the other possibility is the witness figured out the Boss was on his tail and went into hiding. People always think it’s easier to hide in a small town, but you can really disappear in a larger city and those are hard to come by out west until you reach California. I think he’s still hiding out in Denver somewhere.”
“He could have gone south to Dallas or Houston. Maybe Phoenix,” Lana offers.
“I don’t think so. I think he was hell-bent on getting to Las Vegas. I’ve watched hours of tape on him. I spent a lot of time with the guy, during interrogation and at the safe house, and he was always talking about those poker tournaments on ESPN and how he was going to Vegas so he could beat Doyle Brunson.”
“Who’s that?” Lana asks.
“I don’t know, some god among poker players, I guess. There isn’t much casino action between Denver and Las Vegas, so I figure he’s lying low there, blending in until he gets up either the nerve, the money, or both to move on to Vegas. He may have gotten a job if he’s run out of money.”
“A nine-to-five?” says the hottie. “That guy hasn’t lived a straight day in his life.”
“Which is why I think he knows the Boss is after him. He literally has been scared straight by something.”
“I’ll put in a call to my department now,” Lana says. “I’ll give them all the details tomorrow, but at least we can get a BOLO out on him.”
Lana walks away from the group to find a phone, pretty much out of my hearing range, which sucks because I know if she’s going to establish a Be On the Lookout Order, she’ll be giving someone a description. Atlanta PD will send Denver an official description, too, but I know for a fact she’s calling her partner first. I only pick up on a few snippets, but not enough to make sense of anything. The one solid piece of information I do get is nothing I want to hear. The missing
witness is a forty-seven-year-old male, which means he isn’t Cole. I guess a picture can sometimes lie.
Chapter 17
With new information that the perp might be in the Denver area, Lana cut our trip a day short and got us on the last flight out. We didn’t get in from the airport until after midnight, so I’m in deep sleep when my phone rings the next morning and I have to run around the house trying to figure out where I left it. I find my bag in the living room and dig out the phone on the last ring, hopefully before Lana heard it. When I see Bethanie’s number on caller ID, I’m ticked. Not only was I asleep, but she didn’t call me when she was supposed to, didn’t answer her phone when I tried to call her, and has me more than a little worried.
“Where’ve you been?” I ask without a hello.
“Excuse me?” It’s not the voice I expected.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Larsen. I didn’t check caller ID and thought you’d be a friend calling.”
“I know your mama taught you better than to answer a phone like that.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now then, I need to speak to Bethanie.”
“Right now?”
“That would be why I called right now. She said she was gonna let me know whether she’s staying over there another night. If she is, Mr. Larsen and I were thinking of spending another night in Black Hawk.”
If Bethanie is going to use me as her alibi, she could at least let me in on the story I’m supposed to be telling.
“Um, yes, Mrs. Larsen, I do believe she’s planning to stay over another night.”
“Do you mind if I just ask her myself?”
“Of course not, but she’s in the shower right now.”
“Y’all must have one nice shower over there—the girl lives in that shower.”
I forgot that was the excuse I used last time she called. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll have her call you when she’s out.”
It’s bad enough I have to lie to Mrs. Larsen, but at least I can handle her. Now I hear Lana in the kitchen, and lying to her is a whole other thing. Have you ever tried lying to the person who knows you best in the world when she makes a living catching people in their lies? I’m very good at it, but that doesn’t mean it’s an easy thing to do. When I walk into the kitchen, she’s got one hand on her hip, using the other to lean against the counter. She looks like she was very much asleep until three minutes ago. I don’t like my mother when she’s sleep deprived. No one does.
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