The former mayor’s name stood out to her. Ethan Valentine had worked closely with Dan Weston. His right hand, according to the city council. Could they have been in it together to rig the poker game? Lisa thought of how angry some gamblers could get at losing money. Could Dan have been dealing the cards from the bottom of the deck to arrange for his boss to win at poker? Had Valentine been caught cheating, and thrown Dan under the bus?
Lisa thought of the text she’d seen on Taylor’s phone, “You’re in over your head. This poker thing is bad news”. Had Taylor tried to warn Dan away from rigging the game, but been too late? Lisa needed to know more about that poker game.
Maybe she could get more information from another name on the list. Ryan Regent had given her his card. Maybe she could call him and arrange to meet. Lisa frowned. It wasn’t prudent to meet alone with a murder suspect. But maybe she could bring Mo with her. She smiled. Ryan had given her the card with the idea that she might know of another poker game. Mo could pretend to run that other game. Now she just had to convince Mo of her plan.
*
“Are you out of your mind?” Mo said.
Lisa held the phone away from her ear until the yelling stopped.
“I’m trying to do things the sensible way,” she said.
“Pretending to run an illegal card game is the sensible way?” Mo retorted. “What’s the less-than-sensible way?”
“I don’t know, I pretend to be interested in him for a date,” Lisa said.
She held the phone away again, anticipating another storm of yelling. When he finished, she brought the phone back up close.
“See? Sensible,” she said.
“Lisa Chance, you’re impossible.”
“Does that mean you’ll do it?” Lisa bit her lip.
He sighed heavily. “Fine.”
“Yes! I’ll call you with a meet time.”
Mo groaned. “This is a bad idea.”
“Love you.” Lisa made a kissy sound into the phone and hung up. Now she just had to get Ryan Regent to agree to meet and discuss a new game.
Lisa took out Ryan’s business card and tapped his cell number into her phone.
“New game in town. Interested?” she texted.
Lisa bit her nails, waiting for a reply. Mama Cat licked her paw and eyed Lisa curiously. In a minute, the phone buzzed with a new message.
“Very. Deets?” came the reply.
“My guy needs to vet all players. Meet tonight. Football field. 50-yard line. 11 p.m.,” she texted back.
Lisa didn’t have to wait long before she got a thumbs-up emoji in reply.
Next, she texted Mo, “We’re on.”
She had time to eat a quick snack and take a shower before changing into jeans and braiding her hair. She wanted to be sure she and Mo were at that field before Ryan got there.
At the high school, Lisa parked her car in the faculty parking lot, in the space where her father used to park, by the band room. The lot was empty. She waited, checking the mirror constantly, until a pair of headlights pulled into the lot and Mo’s truck parked next to her.
She got out and locked the car. Mo sighed as he got out of his truck.
“I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things,” he said.
Lisa smiled and gave him a quick kiss. Clouds covered the moon, leaving the school buildings little more than hulking shadows. In their dark sweatshirts with the hoods pulled up, Lisa and Mo blended into those shadows. She took his hand to lead him through the unlit maze of the campus to the football field.
A dark shape stood in the center of the field. Mo squeezed her hand.
“He’s here early,” he whispered.
“I guess we do this at 10:30 instead of 11,” she whispered back.
“Who arrives a half hour early?” he whispered.
“People who want the upper hand? Like us?”
She let go of his hand and they walked across the field to where Ryan Regent waited. A little flare of fire turned his face orange and monstrous as he lit a cigarette. They walked on toward the glowing coal, its tiny light bright in the murky gloom.
“Is this a punctuality contest?” Lisa said when they reached Ryan.
He laughed. “Nope. Just not much to do in this town at night. Who’s your friend?”
“I’ll be asking the questions,” Mo said, deepening his voice.
“Fine, what do you want to know?”
“Wait,” Lisa said. “I need to pat you down first.”
“What?” Ryan said.
“What?” Mo said.
“Or you can do it,” she offered to Mo.
“Turn around,” Mo said.
“I don’t think so,” Ryan said.
“I think he’s carrying,” Mo said.
“Of course I am,” Ryan said. “Have you seen the nutjobs in this town? Some dude in tie-dye threatened me with ‘getting what you corporate pigs deserve’, and I don’t think he meant we deserve donuts and coffee.”
“Hmm,” Lisa said. “Billy Jack really does hate Bargain Box.”
“I don’t like it,” Mo said. “We should go.”
“I thought this was the West,” Ryan said. “Not some East Coast country club.”
“Fine. What kind of stake do you have?” Mo said.
“I can lay my hands on about twenty gees.”
“Lay your hands on?”
“I’m not going to show up with it to a meet-and-greet.”
Mo grunted.
“Was anyone ever suspected of cheating at the old game?” Lisa said, breaking in.
“I never cheated anybody,” Ryan said.
“That’s not what I asked,” Lisa said. “Did you ever think someone else was cheating?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“You’re not the only person being vetted,” she said.
“Valentine went on some improbable lucky streaks,” Ryan said slowly, “but that doesn’t mean I’m saying he cheated.”
“Did anyone say he cheated?” Lisa said.
“No.”
“What about Dan Weston?”
“Are you vetting a dead man?”
“Just answer the question,” Mo growled.
“He put the game together, he dealt the cards… If anyone had the opportunity… But I don’t know.” Ryan cleared his throat. “So? When’s the game?”
“We’ll text you,” Mo said.
Lisa held her breath and waited for Ryan to leave. As the soft rustling of his footsteps in the grass faded and a car door opened and slammed shut, she let out a sigh of relief.
“Ok, we can go,” she whispered.
“Did you at least get the information you wanted?” Mo said.
“I think so.”
She led him back through to the faculty parking lot and squeezed him in a tight hug.
“You’re the best,” she said.
“You won’t think that tomorrow at dawn when you have to open the café,” he teased.
“It’ll be my own fault, and nobody else’s but mine. Goodnight, sweetheart.” Lisa gave him a last kiss and climbed into her car. Mo was right; she would regret the missed sleep in the morning.
*
Back home in bed, sleep proved elusive. Lisa tossed and turned, going over the case and the suspects in her mind. It seemed clear that Valentine had been cheating, and that Dan Weston must have been helping him. But if that was so, why would Ryan Regent not rat him out and keep him out of the new game?
Sleep pulled her under at last, and Lisa found herself dreaming about the murder. The body on the floor. Her mother’s high-heeled footprints on the carpet. The pooling blood. The dream shifted to Lisa going over the suspects in her notebook. She tapped her pen back and forth between Ethan Valentine and Ryan Regent. The mayor with the unusual lucky winning streaks. The corporate representative for a store facing serious public opposition.
Lisa startled awake and caught her breath. She sat up in bed, prompting a complaining meow from Mama Cat.
<
br /> Could Valentine have been cheating with the full knowledge and cooperation of the corporate rep? Was the cheating a covert way of accepting bribes?
She thought of Gary Barlow’s claim that there was always a fish or two at the table, and that Ethan Valentine was the luckiest player around. It fit together. Valentine could have been accepting bribes for years. What a shock it must have been when he got arrested for the poker game and not the bribery!
Lisa flopped back down on her pillow. If Dan Weston and Ethan Valentine were working together on cheating at cards, it would give the people who got cheated a motive. But if those who got cheated were willing participants, the motive for murder vanished. She was no closer to solving Dan’s murder than before. Lisa closed her eyes with a sigh.
A minute later her eyes popped open again. What if Dan had heeded his fiancée’s warning about the poker game and was trying to get out? That would give Valentine a motive: keeping Dan quiet about the game. But would he really have gone that far? Killed his loyal assistant? Lisa flashed back to the scene of the crime, Dan’s lifeless body lying on the floor like so much trash. It was hard to believe anyone could do something so heartless, especially someone who’d known him so well.
Lisa closed her eyes firmly. She could let her subconscious mind ponder the crime and its solution, but she needed to get some sleep if she was going to survive a full day at the café.
Chapter 27
The curtains were drawn when Lisa arrived at Carly’s house Wednesday after the café’s lunch rush was over. She knocked on the door. A minute later Carly opened the door and stared out at Lisa, a blank expression on her face.
“Oh. Hi,” Carly said.
“Hi. Are we still on for lunch?” Lisa said.
Carly shrugged.
“Is everything ok?” Lisa said, putting a hand on her friend’s arm.
“Everything is very… everything.” Carly walked away from the open door, back into her dim living room.
Lisa followed her inside and closed the door. A daytime talk show flashed bright colors on the TV screen with the sound muted. Carly flopped onto the couch and stared at the flickering screen.
Lisa perched on the edge of the couch and dug the remote control out from between the cushions. She turned the TV off.
“You seem like you’re having a rough time,” Lisa said.
Carly sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Did something happen?”
“I woke up at four this morning in a panic. Liam was quiet, and I was sure he was dead. I rushed into his room to check if he was breathing. He was asleep, and his tiny little baby face was so beautiful… I just—” Carly choked on her words as tears started to flow down her face.
“It’s ok,” Lisa said, scooting closer on the couch so she could put an arm around her friend.
Carly leaned her head on Lisa’s shoulder and sobbed. The tears soaked into Lisa’s sweater. Lisa patted Carly’s back.
“He’s so beautiful and perfect, but so helpless!” Carly cried. “How can I be responsible for him? What if I’m not good enough? What if I fail him, my perfect, precious little boy?”
“Shh, shh,” Lisa said, patting Carly’s back. “You won’t fail him.”
Carly pulled away and stared at Lisa with huge teary eyes. “You don’t know that! You can’t know that. I couldn’t get back to sleep until six, and then he woke up hungry, and his crying made me so angry I thought I was losing my mind. What if I’m a bad mother?”
“Oh, honey, that sounds really hard. But you’re doing fine. And he won’t always be this helpless. They get bigger. They turn into third graders, and you know everything about third graders,” Lisa said.
Carly laughed. “Third graders are so easy compared to babies!”
“Well, they are now, after you’ve had lots of practice with them. But remember your first year of teaching? Was that year easy?”
“No.” Carly shook her head and sniffed.
“Here, have a tissue. You’re going to be fine. Liam is going to be fine. We’re all going to be fine. My mom might even become mayor,” Lisa said.
Carly blew her nose. “That would be good!”
“Yes, it would be good. Good things happen. You know what else is good?”
“What?” Carly said, reaching for another tissue.
“The onion rings at Lola’s.”
Carly burst out laughing. “They’re more than good, they’re amazing!”
“Ok, then. Put some shoes on and let’s go have lunch.”
At Lola’s, the lunch crowd had thinned out, giving Lisa and Carly their pick of tables. They took a booth by the window and grabbed a sling to rest Liam’s car seat on. Liam blinked twice and fell back asleep.
“How are you doing with the treatment? Is it helping at all?” Lisa said. She took a sip of her milkshake.
“I guess.” Carly shrugged. “Sometimes it seems like I’m my old self, and other days it’s, well, like this morning.”
“You’re taking pills, right?”
“Yeah, but the doctor said it can take a while before their full effect.”
“That stinks,” Lisa said.
“Tell me about it.”
They were halfway through their cheeseburgers when Lisa’s phone buzzed with a text message. She glanced at it, her brow wrinkling in confusion at the message and the out-of-state number.
“Oh!” she said.
“What’s up?” Carly said.
Lisa held up the phone.
“Is the game on?” the message read.
“I don’t get it,” Carly said.
“I wanted more info on the poker game, the one the mayor got arrested at, so I might have pretended I was setting up a new game in town,” Lisa said.
“But who’s the text from?” Carly said.
“Ryan Regent.”
“The Bargain Box guy?”
Lisa nodded. “He was acting really weird about it. I don’t think he’s just a gambler. I think it’s something else.”
“But what?” Carly said.
Lisa leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I think Valentine was dirty, and Ryan Regent was trying to bribe him to get the Bargain Box approved.”
Carly’s eyes widened. “And now he wants you to set up a game? He must be trying to corrupt your mother before she’s even elected! What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Should I block his number?” Lisa said.
Feeling eyes on her, Lisa looked around the restaurant to be sure they weren’t overheard.
“You can’t just let him get away with it like that. You should tell Toby,” Carly said.
“Ok. But what should I do now, about this text?”
“Stall for time,” Carly said. “Say you’re working on it.”
“Right.”
Lisa tapped in her message. “Not yet. Working on it.” She hit send.
They waited in silence, staring at the phone until a reply came back. “Ok. Let me know.”
Lisa and Carly sighed in unison, then giggled. Lisa took an onion ring.
“My heart is beating so fast right now,” Carly said.
“Mine too. I think we need to calm down with some milkshake.” Lisa took a long drink. “What am I going to tell Toby? He’s not going to like this.”
“What’s not to like? You texted this guy about poker, he seems really interested, you think he might be trying to bribe your mom,” Carly said.
“Well, I might have done more than just text,” Lisa said.
“How much more?”
“I had him meet me on the football field after dark,” Lisa said.
“What? Alone? Are you nuts?” Carly said.
Baby Liam’s face scrunched up in a threat of tears at the sound of his mom’s raised voice. Lisa and Carly went silent, waiting for the baby to drift off again.
“Not alone,” Lisa whispered. “Mo was with me.”
“How did you get Mo to sign off on that?” Carly whispered.
“I might
have suggested I’d go alone if he didn’t.”
Carly shook her head. “That guy really cares about you. Try not to give him a heart attack.”
Lisa shrugged.
“Do you think this Ryan Regent could have killed Dan Weston?” Carly said.
“Maybe,” Lisa said, chewing on a bite of burger. “If Dan set up the poker game, and if the poker game was dirty, and if Ryan wanted to bribe Valentine, and if Dan cut him out of it after the raid, then I guess he might have had a motive?”
“That’s a lot of ifs,” Carly said.
“I know. Plus, he has an alibi.”
“Hmm,” Carly said.
They munched on French fries and onion rings for a minute.
“I have an idea,” Lisa said, smiling. “I’ll need your help, and Gideon’s, too.”
“Ok, what’s your idea?”
“You remember how to play poker, right?”
Chapter 28
That night after closing the café, Lisa bustled around moving furniture. She put her largest round table in the center of the library, moving the little tables to the sides of the room. She put two unopened packs of playing cards on the table, plus the bag from the grocery store and a little stack of porcelain bowls. A knock on the front door pulled her away from the table.
“Darling, I really don’t understand what this is about,” her mother said when Lisa opened the door.
“Come in, Mom, don’t let all the warm air out.”
Lisa took her mother’s coat and hung it up, guiding Penny into the library. Another knock announced Carly and Gideon’s arrival. Carly clutched Gideon’s arm in a tight grip, and her face was pink.
“This is the first time we’ve been out of the house without Liam since he was born,” Carly said breathlessly.
Gideon smiled at her and patted her hand.
“And you’re ok leaving him with my aunt?” Lisa said.
“Kooky as she is,” Carly said, “I know she loves babies.”
Toby poked his head in the door, tapping on the frame as he came in. “Hello, cuz!”
“Come in, come in, have a seat in the library,” Lisa said, closing the door behind Toby.
They sat at the big table in the middle of the room.
“Will someone please explain what this is all about?” Penny said. “I could be using this time to connect with potential voters.”
Killer Campaign (Lisa Chance Cozy Mysteries Book 3) Page 15