DOUBLE MINT

by Gretchen Archer

  “Miss Baldwin? This is Animal Control. I’m calling about your sister’s cat.”

  “That cat is not my sister’s, lady. Someone dumped that cat on her and she doesn’t want it. It has anger issues. Put it up for adoption.”

  Gotcha, Holder. You’re on the run. And you might be right about the cat.

  Holder Darby might be in danger, or some kind of trouble, but she’d contacted her sister, so she wasn’t dead and stuffed in a dumpster and probably wasn’t being held at gunpoint. Terrorists don’t let you make fourteen-minute phone calls about cats.

  Five minutes later, I was two for two pinging my missing people, because Christopher Hall may have run out of his guest room leaving (millions in funny money) his wallet, but someone used his credit card, the one issued by a Baltimore bank. The same credit card Bill Dollar had used to check into the Bellissimo. The credit card had been swiped last night at Langolis on Pauger Street in New Orleans. Dinner. A big dinner. More than five hundred dollars of dinner. So I had loose evidence of Holder Darby’s and Christopher Hall’s mutual safety and welfare. Granted, they weren’t exact locations or explanations, but they were steps in the right direction. And the best news of all? Who lives in New Orleans? That’s right. Magnolia Thibodeaux.

  (I knew it.)

  Baylor dragged in with a gallon of Mountain Dew and breakfast burritos from Taco Bell. Before he could offer me an enchilada pancake, I said, “Get that out of here, Baylor. It smells like the cat’s food.”

  He brushed by Fantasy on her way in the door. She clapped a hand over her nose and mouth. “Baylor! How do you swallow that stuff?”

  “You two are so damn picky.” He went into the hall with his Taco Bell.

  I gave Fantasy a look.

  “How was your spa day?”

  “Davis, it’s my vacation.” That was quickly followed by, “Are we working all day?”

  “Why?” I asked. “Is today your pool day?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Have you seen your car?”

  Her brows drew together. “No. Why?”

  “You need two new tires.”

  “I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.” She smiled.

  “You’re going to a bankers conference.”

  From the hallway, mouth full of nacho waffles, “Cool.”

  “Not you, Baylor. You’re going to Tunica.”

  Twelve

  The Bellissimo banquet uniform was ugly and uncomfortable, cut straight from cardboard. We were in our dressing room. Dressing.

  “We need cash,” I said. “How much do you have on you?”

  “Not much. Ten bucks, maybe.” Fantasy adjusted the knot of her banquet tie. “We’ll stop by the casino for a minute and you can get all you want.”

  “That’s not true.” But it was a good idea.

  “You know it’s true.” Fantasy tied her black apron. “You’re lucky. You have the gift that keeps on giving.” There was no denying I had a special knack for the slot machines. “I don’t care what you’re playing, you win.”

  I found a twenty in my purse; I stuffed it in my apron pocket. On our way to the main kitchen behind the Plenty Buffet, we made a casino detour and stopped at the first slot machine we came to, Pink Diamonds. On my third spin, I lined up three blue diamonds and won $200. Fantasy threw her hands in the air. We zipped to a cashout machine, traded the payout ticket for two crisp hundreds, then hightailed it to the main kitchen, because employees aren’t allowed to gamble at the Bellissimo in the first place, especially in uniform.

  “There they are.” I spotted the crew preparing the bank lunch. I passed Fantasy one of the hundreds. “Find one who looks hungover.”

  “They all look hungover.”

  “And they all look stupid in these hats.”

  “No,” Fantasy said, “that’s just you.”

  My red hair, all of my red hair, was stuffed in the black banquet beret, so it looked like I had a squirrel nesting in mine. Everyone else’s sat flat on their heads. I tried to smash it down.

  We found two waitresses filling tea glasses and offered them cash for their lunch shifts. They took the money and ran.

  Ten minutes later, Fantasy and I were in a kitchen service elevator on our way to the convention dining room one floor up, a cart with four metal shelves of lunch, Savings Ratio Salmon Caesar Salads, wrapped in cellophane between us. We looked at each other across the Savings salmon.

  “Tell me what we’re doing,” she said.

  “We’re going to see the conference slot machines.”

  “Why?”

  I studied a salad. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Funny feeling?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Me too.” The service doors opened and we wrestled the food cart through the doors. Fantasy said, “But my funny feeling might be these salads. They smell nasty.”

  * * *

  We claimed the two tables closest to an emergency exit at the back of the banquet hall, slung Savings salads at bankers, sloshed water in their glasses, and Fantasy told her table we were out of pepper, all of the Bellissimo and not a flake of black pepper in it.

  “How are we going to get away from these people?” Fantasy asked. “I’ve got one lady who’s lost three napkins. How hard is it to keep up with a napkin?”

  We waited until no one was looking, then slipped out. By slipped out, I mean we left our lunch tables to fend for themselves, tiptoed out of the dining room back to the food cart, rolled it to a mop room, climbed on top of it, popped an air vent, hoisted up, then crawled down an air duct to the events hall.

  (Four miles. Four feet wide, two feet tall, and freezing.)

  “This is filthy,” Fantasy said. “Why doesn’t anyone clean these things?”

  Creeping along on elbows and knees is slow travel, but we finally reached Event Hall B. We peeked through a vent to see a twenty foot drop. We kept creeping along until we got to the game.

  “Holy moly,” Fantasy said. “Can we get one of these in my car?”

  “We can’t even get ourselves in the room, Fantasy. How are we going to get one of these in your car? And news flash, it might not be real money.”

  “It sure looks real.”

  Yes, it did. One look at Mint Condition, the conference tournament slot machine, and it was easy to see why they didn’t want anyone in the room.

  Seating areas were stretched along both walls, and the long room held three full bars, plus the slot machines through the middle. There were five circles of machines, ten to a circle, so fifty in all, and from above they looked like arcade games slash slot machines. They had properties of both. There were armed Paragon Protection security guards in the four corners of the room and two at the entry doors.

  Fantasy sneezed twice, and we froze in place.

  “Security guards are worthless,” she whispered.

  “Would you feel better if they heard you sneeze and shot us?”

  “Probably not.” Sneeze. “Why is there so much damn dust up here?”

  We crawled to an air vent almost directly above a gaming kiosk to get a better look.

  Mint Condition had a bonus round, my favorite kind of slot machine. On a standard slot machine, the player knows they’ve lost before the last reel stops spinning, but with a bonus round, the last reel can land on the bonus symbol and they’re right back in the game. The play screen of Mint Condition was your basic three-reel slot, but the third reel had a surprise. It looked like a gold combination lock, like a vault lock. If it landed on the payline, the bonus round ensued. The bonus round was played above the machine—think big wheel on Wheel of Fortune slots. Instead of a wheel, Mint Condition had a clear cabinet full of money. Row after row of money.

  The player used a joystick to guide a metal grabb
er to stacks of cash, and by cash, I mean moola, green stuff, major bucks. Line up the metal claw just right and close it just so, then pull away a stack of money. That dropped. Right into the player’s lap.

  I’ve never seen a cash game. Ever.

  “That is a lot of money,” said Fantasy.

  “That is a fantastic game,” said me.

  We bumped elbows for better views.

  “The bottom row looks like one-dollar bills,” I whispered.

  “Yeah, but it’s an inch thick,” Fantasy said. “It’s probably a hundred dollars, and that’s not a bad bonus.”

  There was a time element. I knew this because of the digital countdown clock beside the joystick. The goal was obviously to win enough time to maneuver the money grabber to the second row and grab a stack of five-dollar bills before the joystick timed out. Or the third row, with a fat stack of ten-dollar bills. The fourth row, guess what, twenty-dollar bills.

  Above the rows of money, and obviously the grand prize, was a big fat stack of hundred-dollar bills, and perched on top of the inch of cash was a round Lucite roll. Full of something.

  Coins. Big coins. Coins the size of silver dollars. But they weren’t silver dollars.

  “What in the world?” Fantasy whispered.

  “It’s platinum. Platinum coins.”

  “No!”

  Yes.

  “The hundred-dollar bills add up to ten thousand. Easy,” Fantasy said. “And no telling what those coins are worth. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered, “another ten thousand? Fifteen?”

  “So, make it to the top and a twenty-five thousand dollar payday drops in your lap? I want to be a banker.”

  We’d come full circle. Platinum coins missing from our vault; platinum coins in the conference slot machines. I didn’t know if the coins in the game were fake or real. I hadn’t gotten that far yet. I had, however, gotten this far: It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence that the very thing we were missing was the grand prize of this game. I asked the burning question: “How in the hell does Magnolia Thibodeaux even know about this conference?”

  Fantasy’s head dropped. She let it hang there for a dramatic moment, then she cut her eyes at me. “What? Davis! Have you lost your mind? Magnolia doesn’t have a thing to do with this conference! There’s no way we’re going to find the platinum, Holder Darby, or the money guy, if you don’t stop blaming everything on that old woman, who has nothing to do with anything.”

  “Whose side are you on, Fantasy?”

  It’s hard to make good points when you’re whispering in an air duct dangling above slot machines. She geared up to sneeze again, a big one this time, and I think I broke her nose a little, slapping my hand over it. Then there was some poking, a few loud-whisper threats, and some rude name calling. The security guards didn’t move a muscle, and the aftermath of her sneeze was totally averted when we heard a scuttle. Just a little scratch. Somewhere near our legs. Our wide eyes met, and we proceeded to get the hell out of the air ducts. Fantasy wasted no time backing up, but I grabbed for her, getting a handful of hair. “Wait a second.”

  “Owww, dammit!”

  I turned my phone upside down and eased it between two slats in the vent to snap a picture of the machines, specifically the platinum coins in the machines, while she grumbled her way back to me. She got there just in time for us to watch the doors to Event Hall B open—and my husband walk through.

  We froze.

  “I thought you said we had until two.”

  “I thought we did. Be quiet.”

  I barely had a grip on my slick phone with my thumb and index finger. Most of it was dangling below the vent. Fantasy held her breath and I did my best to hold my phone as Bradley and a man in a suit walked to the middle of the room.

  “Who is that?”

  “It’s Bradley!” I can scream and whisper at the same time.

  “The other man, Davis. Who is the other man?”

  “He must be the Paragon Protection man, Conner Hughes, and I’m going to drop this phone.”

  “Do not drop that phone.”

  “Help me catch it. It’s slipping.”

  “I can’t help you catch the phone, you goof. You’re taking up all the arm space. Do not drop your phone.”

  I pinched harder, which did nothing but propel it out of my fingers. It dropped straight down and landed on the carpet with a muffled thud, ten feet from my husband and five feet from Conner Hughes. Fantasy and I stopped breathing.

  “What was that?”

  Conner Hughes’s head snapped and he turned in the direction of the noise. A few of the security guards woke up. Hughes spotted my phone on the floor, then looked up. At us. Frozen in place. He marched directly under the vent we were above.

  My heart was beating out of my chest already, when Conner Hughes bent down and picked up my phone.

  “Where could this have come from?” He stood, turned my phone over a few times, then tilted his head back and looked hard. For us.

  “Let me see.”

  Bradley took it from him—he knew exactly where it came from. How many people have phone cases with I (Heart) Pine Apple? He dropped it in his pocket, steered Conner Hughes the other way, then swung his head back and gave us a hellacious dirty look. I hadn’t taken a breath yet and I hadn’t moved a muscle.

  Conner Hughes turned back too, craning and straining to see in the vent, while Bradley did everything he could to direct his attention elsewhere.

  It’s not like we could get out of there. Or even blink.

  “Has anyone been in this room, Brad? Your people? Gamblers from the casino?”

  “No, Conner.” I could hear Fantasy’s heart beating and I’m sure she could hear mine. “Absolutely not.”

  Bradley led Conner Hughes in the direction of the door, but not before he threw one parting nasty look at us. I don’t know how long we stayed that way before Fantasy began crawling backwards again. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Not me,” I whispered. “I’m staying here for the rest of my life.”

  “No, you’re not. Come on, Davis.”

  It was a good decision to stay, paralyzed with fear of divorce and pending unemployment, because three men dressed in solid black picked that moment to file into Event Hall B. I reached for Fantasy, got another handful from the top of her head, and it became clear to me that Bradley might not be able to kill me for crawling through the air ducts and spying on the bankers, because Fantasy was going to beat him to it if I didn’t stop yanking her hair.

  “What. The. Hell?”

  “Hush.”

  They looked like Navy Seals. All three wore black cargo pants, long-sleeve black t-shirts, and black ball caps, and all three were all the way around big, burly, and mean. One spoke up. “We got this, boys. Take a break.”

  The Paragon security guards left their posts and filed out the door.

  The man who dismissed the guards toured the floor in a loopy figure eight, weaving in and out and bending to look in the general vicinity of the play area on every Mint Condition machines. He stopped in front of one. “This one.” He bounced a fist off the top of the game cabinet. He took four more steps. “This one.” He did it again. “This one.”

  “What the hell are they doing?” Fantasy asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  The men in black stood at the three chosen machines, opened the cabinets, sat in the chairs, and went to work. From our vantage point, we couldn’t see exactly what they were doing, but I had a good idea.

  “What is going on?”

  “They’re switching out the data chips in three of the Mint Condition slot machines.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re rigging the game. Give me your phone.”


  “So you can throw it at them?”

  * * *

  With no room to turn around, we crawled backwards the whole way to the mop room, at least five miles, where we dropped onto the food cart and, in the process, knocked it over, which sounded like the building imploding. We scrambled up, knocked as much of the dirt off each other as we could, then stepped into the service hall as if all was well, if all was well means filthy, breathless, and in big trouble with our boss. Double trouble for me, because I’m married to the man. A waiter carrying a tray of waxy cheesecake spotted us and was so busy staring, he almost ran into a wall.

  “Is there another way out of here?”

  Fantasy’s head darted around. The three doors in front of us led to the dining room, where the bankers were having dessert and someone at a microphone was keynote addressing them. To our right was the main kitchen, but it was the long way. On our left was nothing but solid wall.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” I said. “We’ll have to go through the dining room.”

  We slipped in quietly, hugging the back wall, until I spotted a very familiar face. One I’d grown up with. Cooter Platt. I stopped cold to make sure it was him, and Fantasy ran into me. What in the world was Cooter Platt doing here? A man seated at one of the banquet tables asked Fantasy if he could have more coffee.

  “No,” she said. “You’ve had enough.”

  Clearing the dining room, we made our getaway. We ran past Megan with the braces, down the wide conference corridor, thump thump, bounced down the moving escalator skipping steps until we reached the casino, sprinted through it, then took the lobby staircase two steps at a time to the mezzanine level, where we dashed around Scoops, the ice cream shop, scanned ourselves into the Super Spy elevator, raced down the dark hall, and only after we’d coded ourselves into our 3B offices did we stop for air.

  My phone was on the table in front of us, the screen busted into an intricate spider web—thank you, rotten Apple—and under it, a note: Dammit, Davis.

  I passed the note to Fantasy. She read it and said, “Ouch,” then she sent her banquet beret sailing across the room. After ten minutes of total silence, we dragged our sorry feet into Control Central, where I reached in a bottom file drawer and got a new phone from the stash.