DOUBLE MINT

by Gretchen Archer

  I was the only one with a gun. I clicked the safety off my Glock, the homicidal noise growing louder as I made my way toward it, clearing the King Cake room, finger on the trigger, Bradley and Mr. Sanders on my heels.

  It was coming from the fake magnolia tree.

  “What the hell?” (Mr. Sanders.)

  “Furball.” (Bradley.)

  Eleven

  Dark and early Tuesday morning I woke to see my husband standing ten feet from me, backlit by the closet, buttoning his sleeve cuffs. I’m married to this man. A shock and a thrill every morning of my life.

  He whipped his tie around and, before I could yawn, had it in a Windsor knot. He adjusted his collar around the tie. His shirts are so starched they can stand up by themselves, and the collars are pressed to a razor sharp edge.

  “Isn’t that uncomfortable?” I asked once.

  “No, Davis, I’m used to it.” He tugged a lock of my hair. “Are bras? Your shoes?”

  “Yes, hell yes, and I’m not used to it.”

  He caught me watching him and sat beside me. “Good morning.”

  I rolled his way.

  The cat followed him out of the closet and landed between us.

  “Jeremy’s already looking for you this morning, Davis.” I pulled a pillow over my head. Bradley lifted it. “Anything you want to talk about?”

  “No.” I smiled. “I’ll call him.”

  I’d been avoiding No Hair’s calls for days. Not that I didn’t miss him. I just didn’t want to talk to him. But I’d have to suck it up and do just that, because right after I woke up and remembered I was married to Bradley, I also woke up and realized everything else wasn’t a midsummer night’s dream. Missing people. Counterfeit money. No refrigerator. Fake platinum. A cat.

  We went over Bradley’s schedule, which took all of two minutes. He’d be the captain of this industry for the next twelve to fourteen hours. “And,” he gave me a game-show host smile, “you’ll like this, I’m going to drop in on the convention.”

  Now I’m up. “Can I go?”

  “No. You’ll shoot someone.”

  “Surely you don’t mean that.” I never shoot people who don’t need to be shot.

  I twisted my hair into a knot, a morning motion I perfected when I was seven years old, and Bradley, in a morning motion he perfected when he was thirty-five, passed me a pen from his shirt pocket. I put it where it belonged, in the middle of my knot of hair, and ta-dah, no more bedhead. I stood. He stood. The cat stood.

  “If you make any headway today,” he said, “platinum or otherwise, let me know. And call Jeremy.”

  “You need a gun with you today.” I fixed his jacket, where it always caught his shirt collar. “I’ll send Baylor when he gets in.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll have Bellissimo guards with me everywhere I go. Keep Baylor.”

  “You need your own gun every minute you’re with Paragon Protection until we get to the bottom of this. If you don’t want Baylor, then I’ll go with you.”

  “Nice try.” He kissed the top of my head. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  I followed him. The cat followed me. “I’m talking about a babysitter with an assault rifle, Bradley.”

  “Which is even worse.”

  “Seriously, Bradley, it’s not a good idea for you to go into the vault alone with anyone from Paragon Protection until we get to the bottom of this.” Whatever this might be. “If you have to, please let one of us go with you.”

  “Davis,” he stood in the open door. “The vault is empty.”

  Right.

  The cat cried when he left.

  * * *

  Showered and dressed before I left the bedroom, I called Fantasy on my way to the coffee pot, cat on my heels. The coffee was ready, my favorite cup waiting.

  “Hey,” she said. “What?”

  “Are you up?”

  “No. Why?”

  “We’re going to the conference. Meet me at the office in an hour.”

  “Got it.”

  Then I called Baylor.

  “Oh, my God, Davis, no. The sun isn’t even up.”

  “Get in here, Baylor. I need a favor. And bring breakfast.”

  * * *

  My ex-ex husband Eddie Crawford is a pig, the rottenest human in the state of Mississippi, a raging idiot, and he’s on the weed whacker crew at Jolie.

  Yes. I married him twice. I get really tired of explaining it.

  I also divorced him (several times), left Pine Apple, got a job, fell in love, and I’m happily married. Which is to say I moved on. Eddie Crawford, on the other hand, had only done one of those things. He left Pine Apple. And there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that situation would be corrected quickly. Bad Penny Eddie. He currently had a job, but he didn’t get a job.

  He was handed one on a silver platter by Richard Sanders, and this to reward him for being in the exact right place at the exact right time and not totally screwing up. It was, the cosmic timing of it all, a very weak moment for Mr. Sanders, and a flat-out miracle for Eddie.

  In my wildest dreams, I never thought my ex-ex-husband, Eddie the Snake-in-the-Grass Crawford, would, or even could, actually work. Much less work for the same corporation as I do. And even in my wildest dreams when hell froze, pigs flew, I won the lottery, and Eddie actually did work, and it just so happened to be under the same corporate umbrella I stood under, I’d still have never believed his job, snuffing out dandelions in Tunica, Mississippi, four hundred miles away, would interfere with my job.

  Yet, here I am.

  They hid Eddie, who has an IQ of twelve, on the new Jolie golf course, Even Money, and told him to stay out of everyone’s way. For months, the reports (I didn’t want) were uneventful—when he did show up for work, he slept the day away in the backseat of his car, a 1962 baby-food-green Cadillac Eldorado convertible with big bull horns mounted to the front grill and a sawed-off shotgun in the passenger seat.

  Have you ever?

  As the story goes, he was asked to take care of a pest problem on the fourth hole. Instead of thinning the brush along the fairway, like he was told to, he built a hunting blind. For two weeks he showed up for work at four in the morning with a Hefty bag full of cheese popcorn, sprinkled it along the fairway, then shot animals large and small. Not what they meant. The golf people were scared to death of him, No Hair hadn’t managed to catch him, and he’d been spotted with gopher skins duct-taped by their heads to the soft top of his convertible Cadillac. Eddie Crawford was driving around Tunica with gopher skins flapping around on top of his stupid baby-food-green car. The car with the bull horns. And the sawed-off shotgun.

  No Hair wanted me to do something about it before PETA did. I’d been avoiding No Hair’s calls because the last one had been so rough.

  “If you’ll wait it out,” I advised, “he’ll surely shoot himself. Problem solved.” It got quiet. “No Hair?”

  “Davis, listen.” (He said this all the time, as if most of the time I didn’t listen.) “If you’ll do me a favor, I’ll do you one back.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You say Magnolia Thibodeaux is running in and out of your place.”

  “She is!”

  “If you’ll talk to Eddie, I’ll talk to Magnolia.”

  “And say what to him, No Hair? ‘Stop shooting gophers and duct-taping them to your stupid car?’ He doesn’t listen to me. And besides, I’d rather talk to Magnolia than Eddie, and that’s saying something, because I think she needs to be in a straitjacket.”

  “Every time you call her and leave a message chewing her out, she calls me and leaves a message chewing me out. I’m willing to call her back. See what she wants. Help you get to the bottom of this. I’ll scratch your back, Davis, and you scratch mine.”
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  That was almost two weeks ago. No Hair had left me ten messages and sent countless mean texts and howler emails, and I knew there’d be hell to pay when I dialed.

  “Hey, No Hair!”

  “Don’t you hey me, young lady.”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t returned your calls. I’ve been busy.”

  “You most certainly have not been busy. I know you’re busy now, but don’t lie to me about not returning fourteen phone calls.”

  The cat’s voice was as close to microphone feedback as it got. Just as abrasive, and just as painful.

  “What the hell?”

  “Oh dear Lord, No Hair, it’s Holder Darby’s cat. Who, as it turns out, isn’t Holder Darby’s cat.”

  “Whose cat is it?”

  “I wish I knew.” I swear, the cat knew when I was talking about it. It hissed at me.

  “Is it a Tom cat?”

  “No collar, No Hair. I don’t know its name.”

  “Is the cat a girl or boy, Davis?”

  “Honestly, No Hair, how would I know that?”

  Five more minutes of cat, five minutes of Holder Darby, five minutes of Christopher Hall, two minutes of Baylor, and two minutes of Fantasy.

  “Why is Fantasy in the hotel?”

  “For one,” I said, “everything around us has blown up. We’re busy. And for two, her tires are slashed. And for three, Reggie and the boys are on their summer trip to Saints camp.”

  Fantasy’s husband Reggie is a freelance sports writer, covers all things New Orleans Saints, and takes the Erb boys, K1, K2, and K3—I never get the right K name, so I go by size and call them K1, K2, and K3, and even at that, I still mix them up—on a two-week summer trip every year to see the Saints at training camp. These are the best two weeks of Fantasy’s year. She calls it her vacation from family life.

  We spent the entire two weeks last summer in a Bellissimo high-roller cabana at the high-roller pool. We stretched out on lounge chairs with built-in cool water misters (napping and drinking frozen fruity cocktails) until the sun went down watching for bad guys. For two whole weeks. (No bad guys.) (Lots of pool boys, no bad guys.)

  “Who slashed her tires?” No Hair asked.

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  “Where was she parked?”

  “Behind me.”

  “Were your tires slashed?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  No Hair wanted to talk about focus, specifically me focusing, for the next little bit. We both felt an obligation to locate Holder Darby, agreeing her disappearance didn’t bode well, and No Hair said he’d use his former MBI (Mississippi Bureau of Investigation) clout to call the warden in Pollock, Louisiana, and see how Christopher Hall’s release and/or escape had gone down. He’d get back with me. We wouldn’t find the platinum missing from the vault until we found Christopher Hall, who surely was behind the manufacture of the counterfeit platinum.

  “And the counterfeit money, No Hair. Don’t forget we found a million fake bucks in his room.”

  “What’s your take on that?”

  “I think it’s a payoff to someone he doesn’t think very highly of.” I explained how good, and how bad, the counterfeit money was. “It’s the best I’ve ever seen, and at the same time, it’s a flaming red flag ticking time bomb.”

  “Do you have any idea who it was intended for?”

  “My best guess this morning is Paragon Protection.”

  “Guess again,” No Hair said.

  “What?”

  “First of all, Conner Hughes would spot it. You’re good at it, and so is he.”

  “Okay, then it’s Magnolia.”

  “Don’t you start that, Davis.”

  I started. Somehow, someway, Magnolia Thibodeaux was in this up to her voodoo earrings. No Hair strongly disagreed. Things were heating up between us when out of nowhere the refrigerator backfired. It happens every few days. Like someone walking in the front door, sneaking up behind you, and shooting a rocket launcher. It has scared us to death in the middle of the night, interrupted very private moments, and even got us up close and personal with Ray Romano when he was staying next door at Jay Leno’s place. He beat on our door wearing a red bathrobe and blue Chaco flips, thinking the building had been bombed.

  Well, the cat had never heard it.

  Airborne, it shot over my head, out the kitchen door, and straight through to Who Dat Hooters. The noise it made was that of a wide open bullet train trying to stop on a dime. I took tentative steps after the cat, wondering how I’d explain its sudden death to Bradley.

  “My God, Davis. Are you alive?”

  “Sorta,” I said. “But I’m not so sure about the cat. Hold on.”

  Touring Who Dat Hooters, I found the petrified cat hanging from the bars of a fake balcony. Disturbed Jesuses on both sides of it were dancing. The cat had clawed its way up and was hanging on by a thread and two paws. It was panting and its tongue was hanging out the side of its mouth. This cat could get itself in more predicaments. I stood under it doing the “here, kitty kitty” until it was obvious the cat didn’t intend to drop that far. I dragged a lime green crushed velvet Queen Anne chair under the balcony, climbed onto it, and held up my arms until the cat loosened its grip on the bars and fell screaming onto my head, used it as a launch pad, then shot off like a missile.

  “You’re welcome.” I rubbed my head.

  “Are you there?” I picked up my cell phone, conversation, and coffee cup.

  “Davis, you need to move.”

  “Boy, don’t I know it. But before I move, I need to sneak into the conference.”

  “Why?”

  “To nose around.”

  “You can get to the meeting rooms from the service hall behind the main kitchen,” he said, “but bring a pillow.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll fall asleep. Conferences are boring, Davis.”

  “I want to see their slot machines. I need in the exhibit hall.”

  “There’s only one door in and out of the exhibit hall. No sneaking in. You know that. And why do you want to see their slot machines?” he asked. “There are thousands of slot machines in the casino. Go look at them and stay away from the bankers’ game. Don’t you have enough to take care of? It sounds to me like you have a full-time job taking care of your cat.”

  “Not my cat, No Hair, and stop changing the subject. Did you know the bankers have a cash game?”

  “That’s what I hear,” No Hair said.

  “What if Paragon Protection teamed up with Christopher Hall, and the slot machines are full of counterfeit cash?”

  “No. In a million years, no. And you need to make up your mind, Davis. Which is it? Who are you after? Magnolia or Paragon?”

  “Both.”

  “Neither,” he said. “Find Holder Darby. Find Christopher Hall. Find the platinum. Leave the conference alone, including the game, leave Paragon alone, and leave Magnolia alone.”

  “It’s all connected, No Hair.”

  “None of it’s connected, Davis.”

  “I’m going to see that game.”

  “You’ll never get in the room. Your best bet is to watch live feed of the surveillance video. Wait a minute,” he said. “It’s an exhibit hall on the conference floor. You’d better check. There might not be enough surveillance in there to do you any good.”

  He was right. Not a high-risk area, the conference facilities. I’d already scanned surveillance video trying to catch a glimpse of the techs who’d set the game up yesterday and came up empty. There might be twenty cameras total in the entire conference area, unlike a blackjack table, with three dedicated camera for every five feet of game. (Don’t ever scratch anything when you’re playing blackjack.) “I’ll check, No Hair. If there’s
not enough surveillance to do me any good, I’ll get in.”

  “You’re not getting in, Davis. You don’t have a badge. You can’t just show up.”

  “I’m going.”

  “How?” No Hair asked.

  “I’ll come up with something.”

  “You could have come up with something a week ago. If you try to pull a fast one right now and show up on the conference doorstep, you’ll do nothing but cause trouble. Your goal should be to stay out of trouble.”

  (Pfffffft.)

  “Now, Davis. About Eddie.”

  Bang, bang, bang, my head against the wall.

  “I’m happy to take care of it for you,” No Hair said, “but I’m just giving you a heads up. If I handle it, word will get to Richard. And Brad. Where one little phone call from you might do the trick without either of them the wiser.”

  In response, I asked, “Do you think it’s okay for Bradley to go into the vault with the Paragon people?”

  “Yes. The vault was emptied yesterday, Davis. He’ll be fine. And stay away from the conference.”

  I called Calinda.

  “Mr. Cole’s office.”

  “Hey, Calinda, it’s me.”

  “Good morning, Davis.”

  “Good morning. Calinda, do you know when Bradley will be at the bankers conference?”

  “Let’s see,” she said. “Two o’clock.”

  “Thanks.”

  Don’t want to get caught.

  * * *

  Somehow I made it downstairs to 3B before Baylor, who lives two minutes away and can be ready to go anywhere in five, and Fantasy, who was taking a vacation from her family in a guest room upstairs. I flipped on lights and computers, then checked on my missing people. First, I listened in on Holder Darby’s sister’s phone, which I’d bugged. Lady Man took a fourteen-minute call last night from a burner phone. Bingo.