DOUBLE MINT
Page 1
Praise for the Davis Way Crime Caper Series
DOUBLE STRIKE (#3)
“Double Strike is special—funny, unique, and I love Davis.”
– Janet Evanovich
“Delightful and hilarious…this novel shines with its resilient and reliably acerbic heroine, and the mystery is at its strongest when it highlights and exposes the fascinating details behind gambling, casinos, and the domination of social media. This is an extremely fun and entertaining third entry.”
– Kings River Life Magazine
“Fasten your seat belts: Davis Way, the superspy of Southern casino gambling, is back (after Double Dip) for her third wild caper.”
– Publishers Weekly
DOUBLE DIP (#2)
“A smart, snappy writer who hits your funny bone!”
– Janet Evanovich
“Archer’s bright and silly humor makes this a pleasure to read. Fans of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum will absolutely adore Davis Way and her many mishaps.”
– RT Book Reviews
“Slot tournament season at the Bellissimo Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Miss., provides the backdrop for Archer’s enjoyable sequel to Double Whammy...Credible characters and plenty of Gulf Coast local color help make this a winner.”
– Publishers Weekly
“Snappy, wise cracking, and fast-paced.”
–New York Journal of Books
“Hilarious, action-packed, with a touch of home-sweet-home and a ton of glitz and glam. I’m booking my next vacation at the Bellissimo!”
– Susan M. Boyer,
USA Today Bestselling Author of the Liz Talbot Mystery Series
“Take a gamble and read Double Dip! Five stars out of five.”
– Examiner.com
“Davis and her associates, in particular Fantasy and No Hair, are back in this sophomore drama by Ms. Archer that does not disappoint in delivering delightfully charming and amusing adventures from the halls of the Bellissimo.”
– Dru’s Book Musings
DOUBLE WHAMMY (#1)
“If Scout Finch and Carl Hiaasen had a baby, it would be Davis (Way). Double Whammy is filled with humor and fresh, endearing characters. It’s that rarest of books: a beautifully written page-turner. It’s a winner!”
– Michael Lee West,
Author of Gone With a Handsomer Man
“Archer navigates a satisfyingly complex plot and injects plenty of humor as she goes. This madcap debut is a winning hand for fans of Janet Evanovich and Deborah Coonts.”
– Library Journal
“Fast-paced, snarky action set in a compelling, southern glitz-and-glamour locale. A loveable, hapless heroine Jane Jameson would be proud to know. Utterly un-put-down-able.”
– Molly Harper,
Author of the Award-Winning Nice Girls Series
Books in the Davis Way Crime Caper Series
by Gretchen Archer
DOUBLE WHAMMY (#1)
DOUBLE DIP (#2)
DOUBLE STRIKE (#3)
DOUBLE MINT (#4)
Copyright
DOUBLE MINT
A Davis Way Crime Caper
Part of the Henery Press Mystery Collection
First Edition
Digital epub edition | July 2015
Henery Press
www.henerypress.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Henery Press, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Copyright © 2015 by Gretchen Archer
Author photograph by Garrett Nudd
Bently photograph by Kenneth Munoz
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN-13: 978-1-941962-80-0
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
For Bently
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you Deke Castleman, Claire McKinney, Larissa Acker-man, Cheryl Green, Stephany Evans, and Kendel Lynn.
One
Jeep USA rewarded the top fifty Jeep dealerships in North America by sending the franchise owners and their families to Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii, where they spent two glorious weeks in private villas with names like Kamaole Estates, Hula Paniau, and Wailea Beach. Sixteen-year-old Kiki Logan, whose father owned the Jeep dealership in Jackson, Mississippi, hooked up with seventeen-year-old Austin Griffith, whose father owned the Jeep dealership in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. They lied to their parents in general, but specifically about sneaking out to meet the other. They hid on a strip of secluded beach beside a shallow saltwater lagoon and drank spiked Hawaiian Punch for most of the second week. Fast-forward eight months, and it’s Hele Mai ‘Oe I Ko Maua Male ‘Ana! (We’re Getting Hitched!) and Hāpai Kaikamahine! (It’s a Girl!) at the Bellissimo Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi.
Where I work.
My name is Davis Way Cole. I’m a redhead, a newlywed, and lead investigator on an undercover team for the casino, which is to say I, along with my partners Fantasy Erb and Baylor (just Baylor, like Batman) perform workplace duties no sane person would ever agree to. Tonight’s impossible task? The Hawaiian Jeep wedding.
The families were bitter rivals and sworn enemies from way back who couldn’t agree on anything, much less a wedding venue, so the wedding was booked on our neutral ground. Huge wedding. The $100,000 package. It was all so Romeo and Juliet.
The mother of the bride and the mother of the groom raised all kinds of hell in the weeks leading up to the wedding, which was nothing compared to the fits they pitched when they checked in and began tearing it up in person. Our special events coordinator, Holder Darby—mid-fifties, ’80s big hair, wears Birkenstock clogs every single day of the year—who’d been with the Bellissimo booking, organizing, and being paid very well for coordinating every wedding, reunion, and conference since 1996, walked off the job. She didn’t show up for work Wednesday or Thursday, and finally on Friday, the day of the rehearsal dinner, Human Resources tracked her down. Holder told them she would never set foot in the Bellissimo again, ever, she’d had it with being bullied, threatened, and strong-armed, send her last paycheck via the United States Postal Service, and don’t call back. All because of a Hello Kitty cake.
The wedding parties checked in on Tuesday. Groom’s Mother arrived first. She burst into Holder Darby’s office to have a word about the bride’s cake. It got ugly, and Holder had to call security. Groom’s Mother, who housekeeping reported “ate rocks for breakfast” and was “mean as a snake,” incensed at having been kicked out of Holder’s office, decided to give it another go. She laid in wait, then followed the wedding coordinator out of the employee parking garage all the way to her Sunkist Country Club Road home. Groom’s Mother angled her Jeep Laredo E against the back bumper of Special Events Coordinator’s Audi S8 sedan, then climbed out of the car, dragged poor Holder out of hers, and put her in a headlock. She told Holder if she heard the words “Hello” or “Kitty” one more time in regard to her only son’s wedding, she would take that cake and shove it so far up Holder, she’d have Hello Kitty coming out her ears for six months. Holder didn’t even clean out her desk, she just stopped coming to work.
Unti
l she could be replaced, Holder’s job fell in my lap. Starting with the Hawaiian wedding. Mission? To keep the Jeep people from killing each other over a Hello Kitty cake. Here’s how stupid this fight is: The groom’s cake is a towering Minecraft number garnished with diamond, emerald, and eyeball cupcakes.
The ballroom was split down the middle. The families marked their territories with two completely different decors, menus, and live entertainment. This marriage was doomed.
We made it through dinner without incident, the Hello Kitty cake was cut and served without bloodshed, and it looked like we were home free when the very pregnant bride propped her swollen feet in a chair and the older Jeep guests began nodding off. It was the dance bands who started the war. The Groom’s band began playing Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love” before Bride’s band finished the last few measures of Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon.” A contractual infraction. The lead singers began arguing from their respective stages over headset microphones. Ugly things about each other’s questionable paternity. F-bombs all over the place. In the blink of an eye, twenty musicians were off those stages and in a pile on the dance floor, fists and bass guitars flying. Every wedding guest under the age of sixty hit the dance floor and joined in.
Fantasy and I, on opposite sides of the brawl, spoke via earpieces.
“Where’s Baylor?” I asked. “He needs to get in there and break it up.” A man’s shoe flew in front of my face. Then a bridesmaid’s bouquet.
“Need some help over here, Davis.”
I hopped on a chair and spotted Fantasy across the ballroom. She was wrestling a fire extinguisher away from a wedding guest who was trying to run out on the dance floor with it.
Good idea. I pulled my phone from my pocket, hacked the Bellissimo’s building management control system, and turned on the sprinklers. Five alarm, full blast, make it rain. The fighting stopped, but the rain didn’t. I managed to turn the sprinklers on and in the process, drowned my phone, so I couldn’t turn them off.
It took until midnight to get the soggy guests sorted and disposed of. Thirteen were hauled off to jail, including five from the Top Forty band, two from the Jazzy Lounge band, and just the one Groom’s Mother. The other guests were sent to their hotel rooms, with the bride and her family traveling via ambulance to Biloxi Regional Medical Center where she delivered a seven-pound five-ounce baby girl. The whole time, a cleaning crew pushed industrial wet-dry vacs through the ballroom. The groom was finally located in a guest room with a Hello Kitty bridesmaid, dry as a bone.
I didn’t get home until one in the morning, and when I did, I woke up my husband.
“Bradley.” I climbed into the warm bed. “You have to call Holder Darby and make her come back to work.”
He pulled me into a hug and kissed my forehead. “You have frosting in your hair.”
* * *
The problem wasn’t Hello Kitty; the problem was summer.
Summer, with its fireworks, flip-flops, and SPF fifty, is the least welcome of the four seasons in casino land. From June through August, it’s a madhouse. Diehard gamblers stay home and wait it out.
That we’re on the Gulf doesn’t help a bit, because the humidity stays at equator rainforest sauna levels. You can’t step outside without being attacked by swarms of love bugs, plus red tide rolls in, unpacks, and gets comfy.
It isn’t any better inside.
For one, the bell just rang, so it’s a playground of hot sticky children and their hot sticky parents. (“I will wear every last one of you out right here and right now, I mean it. Shut up and stop hitting each other. Get down from there. I am not playing around.”) (This is before they even have a room key.) Families are notoriously unprofitable for casinos, because they spend their vacations chasing themselves up and down the halls and around the pool, logging at least five hours a day at Plenty, our new buffet, and standing in line at Lost and Found to pick up the kids they’ve misplaced. They’re everywhere but in the casino.
Then there are the weddings. Wedding parties spend their time and money at photo shoots, spa parties, all-day golf and fishing excursions, bridal luncheons, and tux fittings. Weddings keep the hotel, catering, floral, the salon, all eight bars, and in the case of the Hello Kitty, local police, fire house, and hospitals busy, but they don’t get anywhere near the casino.
So Holder Darby, to offset all this unprofitability and keep the marketing people off her back, spent her winters booking summer conventions. Trade shows. Professionals Behaving Badly. Holder booked and planned the conferences singlehandedly and in my three years, there’d never been a bleep on the conference radar. The Bellissimo loved summer conferences for the warm body and bottom line contributions, and until now, by all accounts, the Bellissimo had loved Holder Darby. Because if it weren’t for the Tiki Torch Researchers of New England, Ostrich Farmers United, and Flavored Dental Floss Reps of America, this place would go flat broke, and all because of summer. She had the summer packed out with fraternity, family, and Friends of Fleetwood Mac reunions, twelve conferences, countless weddings, then ran off and left it with me.
* * *
By noon Sunday I’d (shampooed the frosting out of my hair) taken fifteen Holder Darby calls and put out fifteen Holder Darby fires, including ordering $28,000 in replacement wedding banquet chairs and tracking down a wayward load of lobster. Is this what she did on her day off? No wonder she quit.
Half of the people checking in for the next conference didn’t like their rooms. (What’s not to like? It’s a five-star resort on the beach.) The Massey-Ortiz wedding planner and her team arrived to prep for next weekend’s nuptials and they weren’t happy about the soggy reception hall. (I got chewed out in rapid-fire Spanish when I suggested we move the wedding to the outdoor pavilion. “¡Los insectos del amor!”)
The Wagner Family Reunion needed a pediatrician, or four, because half of the Wagner preschoolers woke up with an odd purple rash on their feet, and the other half had bacterial swimmer’s ear. (Take them home.) So at one o’clock on my day off, a day Bradley and I try to spend being married, the only day of the week he doesn’t work twelve straight hours, I called Holder Darby myself. I didn’t care what it took, we needed her back.
At three, when she still hadn’t answered, I walked out my front door, hopped into my car, and drove to her house. My front door is on the twenty-ninth floor of the Bellissimo. My car is four elevator rides and a long dark walk through a tunnel away. And driving to Holder’s Sunkist Country Club Road home didn’t do me any good, because she was gone.
The house, a white brick and stucco Mediterranean with a circular drive and a professionally-decorated lawn, was pretty. Maybe ten years old, one level, big square windows all across the front, on a wide lot in a nice quiet neighborhood. I parked in the circle and eyed the newspapers strewn around the front porch. I marched up three porch steps and rang the bell. I heard an insane scream coming from inside.
I beat on the door. “Holder! Holder! Are you in there?”
More insane screaming.
I dodged azalea bushes on my way around the house, tried the door that led to the garage, a car inside, but it was locked. I pushed through a white waist-high gate to the backyard, nice infinity pool, long and skinny with a stone fountain on one end, and hopped across round terracotta stepping stones to the back porch. I pounded on the French doors.
“Holder? Holder!”
I ducked out of sight when I heard the screaming round the corner and head my way. I peeked. It was a cat. A fat, yellow, flat-faced cat, with a long thick tail, bared teeth, and terrific lungs. I could see down its throat. I don’t speak cat, but the cat’s dining room was on Holder’s kitchen counter, a fish-shaped rubber mat, and it was obvious what the yelling was about. Two silver bowls were tipped over, both empty. I shook the doorknobs; the cat shrieked.
“Hold on, cat.” I dug in my Super Secret Spy
bag—think doctor bag, full of tools I need for my trade, but much nicer, because Michael Kors made mine. The cat, screaming bloody murder and racing back and forth against the French doors, was making me nervous. I dumped out my spy bag on a patio table. From the pile, I grabbed my new gun, a G42, the brand new .38mm and the smallest Glock pistol ever made, and my Quik-Piks, a set of universal bump keys. The only doors I can’t get in with my Quik-Piks are cockpit, White House, and my mother’s. (She’s on to me.) Where did I get this amazing tool? Amazon.
I wiggled past the lock, stepped into Holder Darby’s kitchen, and the cat began weaving in, around, and through my legs, still breaking the sound barrier with its asylum noises. With my eyes and gun everywhere, I inched to what looked like a pantry, reached in, blindly grabbed a box, then dumped a small hill of cat crunchies on the counter. The cat hopped up and, thank goodness, shut up. I filled a coffee cup with water from the kitchen sink and put it beside the crunchies. “Chew your food, cat.” That cat had absolutely no use for me now that it had food. “You’re welcome,” I whispered. “Where’s Holder?”
Leaving my shoes in the kitchen, I cleared Holder’s home room by room (nice master with patio that led to the pool, closet large enough for four QVC-addicted women), and Holder Darby was not here. Odd lights were on—nightstand, front hall, patio—so she’d probably left at night. An assortment of prescription bottles were lined up, smallest to largest, along the bathroom vanity. Wherever she’d gone, she hadn’t packed, and she had high blood pressure, something I completely understood, because the woman had the world’s worst job. And she’d left in the middle of a movie. I sat on the first of three steps that led down to a media room, where a Blu-ray logo swam across the television screen and a full glass of wine on a small table beside a lounger had been collecting fruit flies, another fun summer Gulf amenity.