Vacation to Die For

by Josie Brown

  “Is he scared of Mandrake, or the bacteria?” Emma asks.

  Arnie squints in thought. “What does it matter?”

  She shrugs. “I’m still not convinced Mandrake is Dr. Evil. If he is, wouldn’t he be hanging out with the swells, as opposed to traipsing through the jungle, like this other lonely guy?”

  This certainly gives us all food for thought.

  Abu lets loose with a long, low whistle. “So then, who is Sasquatch, anyway?”

  “Good question. But not one we’ll find out tonight, anyway.” Jack stands up and stretches. “Emma does have a point. More than likely we’ll find Mandrake at the Hunt Club. Here’s an idea, Dominic: why don’t you use your pass to hang in the casino tonight? You can participate in the big baccarat tournament. The winner takes home a million dollars. It’s sure to draw a crowd—including Mandrake, who loves to gamble. You and Donna should meet me in the tournament room, nine o’clock sharp.” He glances at me, sheepishly. “Boarke’s assistant asked me to go with her, but I told her I’d already asked ‘Lotta.’”

  Good boy.

  “In fact, Dominic,” Jack continues, “I’ll introduce you to Julie. See what you can get out of her.”

  Dominic’s response is a shrug. I’m sure he’s contemplating what he can get into her instead.

  I turn to Abu. “You’re part of the wait staff for the event, am I right?”

  He nods.

  “Perfect. The four of us will be wearing our eyes and ears, so that Emma and Arnie can monitor possible suspects. Class dismissed.”

  My phone hums the “Pleasure Island” song from Pinocchio—my ring chime for Janie Breck’s phone. Trisha’s message puts a smile on my face:

  LOVE YOU MOMMY! GUESS WHAT? I MADE FRIENDS WITH A PIRATE! HE IS THE NICEST ONE I EVER MET! LOVE TRISHA.

  What a girl. What an imagination. I miss her so much.

  And Mary and Jeff, too. But Mary must still be mad at me. Otherwise she would have called by now.

  As for Jeff, he must be having too much fun.

  The easiest way for a parent to get into their children’s good graces? Buy her way back in. If Dominic wins at baccarat tonight, I’ll use the money to take everyone on a shopping spree.

  But of course he’ll win. He always does.

  And if he doesn’t, what’s the worst that can happen?

  Chapter 10

  Gambling Resorts

  When playing card games on a cruise ship in international waters, a Native American reservation in the far West, a steamboat on the Mississippi, or in posh Monte Carlo, knowing when to hold them—and subsequently, when to fold them—can be fun, and sometimes profitable! So that you win more than you lose, remember these gambling tips:

  Tip Number 1: For once in your life, when someone calls you a whale, don’t be offended. It means you’ve got a fat bank account, not a fat ass.

  Tip Number 2: Don’t (a) sit beside any gambler who has an entourage of very big guys who never smile; (b) stand beside a card counter and sing “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”; or (c) yell “bingo,” at a poker table, just because it sounds like a fun thing to do. It isn’t, and you don’t need someone to bust your kneecaps to make this point.

  Tip Number 3: Your poker face is not (a) the scowl you give your children when they ignore you in public; (b) your supposedly benign grin when you run into an old boyfriend; or (c) the look you give your husband when he asks for sex.

  The Hunt Club’s casino is deep in the bowels of the lodge. Dominic and I are the only ones in the elevator, and the ride down is moving slowly. I guess this is the club’s way of building tension.

  If you want to feel important, you better look important. Frankly, tonight I could give Miss America a run for her money. I’m wearing a body-skimming sheer silver beaded halter back gown, by Naeem Khan. Granted, it was a splurge at the Eden Key boutique, but I have to look the part of a financier’s arm charm, don’t I?

  Besides, I’ve left the tag on, so that I can return it after tonight.

  “You look stunning,” Dominic murmurs, as he nudges the price tag back under my armpit. “I’m glad of that, because tonight I’ll need you to walk up behind me and kiss me on the neck, so that the players will be thinking about your neckline and not about their cards. Do you think you can handle that?”

  “I know I can, but I won’t. Tonight, you’re the decoy, or have you forgotten? Please don’t. The more you win, the more attention you get.”

  “Speaking of which, I presume Acme is funding my stake in the game?”

  Yikes. Didn’t see that one coming.

  “Ryan has given me some petty cash—for incidentals. You know, bullets, knives, paying off sources. That sort of thing.” Okay, yeah, this princess-worthy gown wasn't on any requisition order, but I can't very well walk into a casino in yoga pants, now can I?

  If all goes well, Ryan won’t find out about it until I turn in my expense report.

  I open the clasp on my Judith Leiber Swarovski-gemmed clutch purse. “Well, okay. I guess staking your place at the table qualifies as petty cash. It’s like, what, a hundred bucks or something?”

  His laughter echoes through the elevator. “Your naiveté is always so endearing! I see now why Jack sticks it out.”

  Go ahead, Dominic old boy, stick it out. See what I do with it.

  “No, my darling Donna, you’ll have to stake me ten thousand dollars.”

  Gulp. This dress was almost that much.

  My clutch slams shut. My only regret is that Dominic’s tongue wasn’t caught in it. “Wait…don’t you have the money? I know for a fact that the pay scale for an international man of mystery is more than that of a housewife assassin.”

  “No limit Tenez Les Cartes Championship baccarat tournaments cost more than your suburbanite pastimes of bridge and bingo.”

  “No shit. And I’ll bet that Rolex you’re wearing was a pretty penny, too.”

  “Omega.” He shifts the cuff of his crisp white tuxedo shirt so that I can admire it. “The sponsorship fee was too high for me to turn down. And yes, it’s around nine thousand pounds. Granted, not as much as I get for tooling around in my Aston Martin DBS, but enough for a pint or two when out on the town.”

  “Exquisite,” I coo. “It has a modified black steel-on-steel Seamaster Planet Ocean 620 millimeter, does it not? Ooooh, and look! It’s got a transparent sapphire crystal porthole! Very cool.”

  He’s in bliss by the fact that I know my Omegas. “It’s one of a kind, you know.”

  “Well then, what can I say?” I open my purse and pull out the last of my Euros. “Don’t lose. Otherwise we’ll all be swimming home. Unless that car of yours doubles as a submarine.”

  “It does, in fact.” He drapes himself over me. “But there’s only room for two.”

  While the fingers of my left hand run playfully up his tux shirt, the fingers on my right unclasp his Omega.

  It costs almost as much as Acme’s grub stake. One way or another, I’m not walking out of here empty-handed.

  The ping of the elevator announcing our arrival on the casino level distracts Dominic, and not a moment too soon. He takes one last look at himself in the shiny mirrored doors then walks out without a backward glance.

  So much for ladies first, not to mention pearls before swine.

  Damn it, we’re losing our shirts.

  Or in my case, my dress.

  Maybe it has something to do with all the martinis Dominic has guzzled—three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet, shaken over ice and served with a slice of lemon peel, yada yada. The dude bores the whole table with the intricacies of his order.

  I want to kick his stool out from under him.

  Hey, if I do, maybe he’ll play better.

  If it isn’t the drinks, maybe he’s too distracted by Julie’s generous cleavage in skin-tight whore couture, all the more prevalent whenever she nuzzles the back of his neck.

  On the other hand, I don’t dare allow myse
lf to sweat, otherwise I won’t get away with my dress return in the morning.

  To keep my mind off Dominic's poor hands, I scan the room for anyone at all resembling the measly details we have on Mandrake. Frankly, it could be at least a third of the eighty or so men in the room. They are all cut from the same cloth.

  Jack and Abu also have their eyes peeled, but thus far Emma’s and Arnie’s responses to the faces we feed them have been negative: Everyone here is either very rich if not so famous, or a known mover and shaker.

  Boarke and Battoo are also floating through the crowd. While Battoo overseas the croupiers, Boarke is ever the consummate host. He shakes hands, laughs at bad jokes, makes small talk, and compliments every woman in the room.

  When Jack introduces me, his eyes sweep over me, scrutinizing every detail. “Ah, she is a heartbreaker,” he murmurs through lips that hover over the back of my hand before grazing it gently.

  If my mission were no issue, I’d smack him black and blue for allowing Reems to harm Angie and countless others. Instead, I simper and preen, then murmur, “I’ll take that as a compliment. Besides, you know as well as I do that all men deserve what they get.”

  My answer has him scurrying off under the pretext that there are so many guests to greet and so little time.

  Soon he will make time for me. He has to know Mandrake’s whereabouts. I’m sure of it now.

  One face which has already been scanned, analyzed and cleared stops me short. There is something familiar about it, but I can’t seem to place it. “Arnie, what about the man sitting opposite Dominic, at the table?”

  “Abu spotted him first, yesterday. Our facial recognition software has cleared him. His name is Lee Chiffray. He’s a Canadian financier who makes his money in software—a single guy, here with his girlfriend and her kids.”

  I can see why he’d interest Abu. The man is the right height and age to be Mandrake. And the fact that he sits across the table from Dominic in this high stakes game says something about his mathematical aptitude.

  But he’s got a mug that only a mother—or a desperate golddigger—could love: his nose is flattened, and there is a large, ragged scar on his cheek. The only handsome feature on his face is his deep blue, piercing eyes. They remind me of Dominic—

  Who—heaven help us—is suddenly having a stroke of great luck. Suddenly the chips are piling up in front of him. The way things look now, Acme will be a million Euros richer.

  Julie, tickled pink, squeals with delight. I don’t blame her. I’m tempted to do a cartwheel myself, but if I tear this dress, I own it. Hell, I’m trying hard not to breathe in it, and I’ve been walking like a mummy. So much for any attempt to look sexy.

  How many gowns would a million Euros buy—minus Acme’s initial stake, of course? And I wonder: would Jack want a submarine Aston Martin? His birthday is coming up. Maybe it’s worth checking into.

  Oh hell, what’s wrong with Dominic? His face has turned white. He leaps up from the table, spilling what’s left of his martini on the baccarat table. He lunges toward the elevator doors, clutching his collar as if he can’t breathe.

  I run after him, and reach the elevator just as the doors are closing. “Dominic, what’s wrong?”

  “Going into…anaphylactic shock…must have been something in…in my martini. I’m guessing Digitalis.”

  “Oh my God! What should I do?”

  "Get me to my car. There’s a MediPack in the glove compartment.”

  “Your car—it’s here on the island?”

  “Part of the deal, ducky. It’s written into my contract. Brought over on the plane.” A feeble shake of his head registers his disdain at my apparent naiveté.

  Once again the elevator moves so slow that I’m afraid he’ll die on me before we get out. It doesn’t help that the doors open midway to the ground floor and a couple of hunters, still in camo, hop in.

  They don’t realize I’m propping Dominic up and slapping his face to keep him from dying. They just think he’s got himself a redheaded tart who loves to play rough.

  If only they knew.

  I fumble with the electronic lock on the Aston Martin. Finally the door opens. I shove Dominic into the driver’s seat, then reach across to open the glove compartment. Yes, the MediPack is there. I grab it and rip it open—

  Spilling its contents all over the floor—mostly colored vials, crowned with tiny surgical needles. I scoop up what I can and put it on the passenger seat beside Dominic.

  “We’ve got…less than two minutes.” His words come out in fits and starts. “Rev the engine, so that you can…charge the portable defibrillator…which has to be attached to my chest, by the leads.”

  My hands shake as I rip open his tux shirt and attach the wires to a waxed and tanned chest that has elicited its fair share of ooohs and aaaahs.

  “The combipen—the needle connected to the blue vial—holds Lidocaine. You’ve got to jab it into my jugular vein, in my neck. But right before you do, you’ll have to hit the red button on my defibrillator.”

  “Got it. Red vial, blue button.”

  He nods.

  I get ready to stab him—

  But then I see that he’s shaking his head, agitated. “No, no! Other way around! Blue vial, red button!”

  The needle stops a hair’s breadth away from his vein. I drop it, and scramble frantically to find the blue combipen. Where the hell is it?

  On the passenger seat floor.

  As I crawl over him again to get it, Dominic pats my backside and whispers, “A few pounds less, and you’d have a perfect ass.”

  I take great pleasure in stabbing him in the jugular.

  As he passes out for a second, I debate if I should hit the red button on the defibrillator that will bring him back to life.

  Okay yeah, I hit it. But only because we’ve still got a seat in the tournament, and we can still win it.

  Suddenly Dominic’s eyes pop open. He sits up, spewing me with bile.

  This dress needed something, but I had a bauble in mind, not my flop sweat and Dominic’s fixings for a designer martini.

  At least he’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed again, as frisky as a pup on Christmas morning. He rewards me with a broad smile. “Tell me, was it as good for you as it was for me?”

  “Heart-stopping, to say the least.” I take his arm and lead him back into the Hunt Club. “Shall we?”

  Something tells me his luck won’t run out this time.

  Wrong. I am so wrong.

  Dominic is losing again—and badly, to the only player still left in the game: Lee Chiffray.

  Finally Dominic takes my high sign:

  This hand is his last.

  If it’s a loser, he’ll have to throw in the towel—preferably over me, now that this dress is ruined.

  He turns over his cards—

  Four kings. Yes! Yes!

  I’m about to break out in my happy dance when Chiffray flips over his hand, revealing—

  Four aces.

  What are the odds of that?

  I need a drink.

  I’ve just taken the last empty barstool when my cell phone rings. The Caller ID reads WICKED WITCH.

  It’s Penelope. Oh no, what did Jeff do now?

  Quickly I hit the TALK button. “Penelope, is everything okay?”

  She’s sobbing. “No…they’re….horrible!”

  Oh my God, has something happened to Jeff? “Who? My son—is he okay?”

  “My God, Donna, don’t be so dramatic!” She practically snickers. “The Yosemite park rangers, that’s who! Listen, there’s been a slight change of plans, which I’m sure you won’t mind at all, since it works to your benefit.”

  “Oh?” My spidey senses are tingling. Whenever Penelope claims that something will work to my benefit, invariably it means I’m about to get screwed.

  “Turns out the Yosemite Park service ‘conveniently’ lost our reservation.”

  For once, it’s nice to hear the sarcasm in Penelope’s voi
ce aimed at someone else.

  “They claim it was some kind of technical glitch in the reservation software,” she sniffs. “Frankly, I think they did it on purpose, what with all the brouhaha last year. You remember, don’t you? Something about Cheever coercing the other boys to carve a peephole into the woman’s shower room—as if they were little pervs, or something! Can you imagine?”

  I can, actually, although I wouldn’t dream of saying that to Penelope. In her mind, Cheever is still four years old, and mommy is the sun to his moon.

  “In the meantime, we’ve been sleeping in some odious recreational vehicle for the past few days in the hope that a cabin opens up, but the park is booked solid,” she continues.

  “So, you’ll take the boys home, I presume?”

  "That was the original game plan—until we heard that you went off to some tropical paradise—Fantasy Island, right? In fact your hubby—how you ended up with such a sweet, generous man is a miracle, I swear!—came up with the brilliant idea that we join you there! He even suggested that the two of you would take the boys for a few days, in Kamp KidStuff, so that Peter and I could spend a few romantic nights in Eden Key.”

  “How thoughtful of him.” I crane my neck until I find Jack. When I catch his eye, I crook my finger at him.

  He smiles and walks through the casino toward me. Unwitting fool. If he were smart, he’d run in the opposite direction—and fast. I’d have a helluva time catching him in these heels, but I’ll do my damnedest.

  “We’ll be there, bright and early tomorrow—and not a moment too soon. The boys are getting antsy—not to mention gassy. Such active little bodies! But the boys’ seats are in coach, while Peter and I will be up in First Class—away from the firing range, as it were. See you in the morning!” Penelope hangs up without further ado.

  I guess the Stones are checking into Kamp KidStuff for a few days after all.

  Or maybe Jack is, by himself. Something tells me the Hunt Club is where all the action is.