A Draw of Death (Helen Binney Mysteries Book 3)

by Gin Jones

  "Happy to be interviewed. After the speech, though." Vic looked up from the bowl of M&Ms he'd been studying, as if trying to decide which of the identical little pieces he wanted and which ones were somehow not as desirable. "I don't suppose you play?"

  Helen let out the breath she'd been holding in unison with Nora.

  "Sorry," Geoff said. "Never got the hang of card games."

  Vic nodded absently and went back to studying the M&Ms while Geoff accepted his dismissal and left to get a seat in the meeting room.

  Vic carried his Gatorade and bowl of M&Ms over to the table with the stack of card sets. He opened one box, pulled out a deck, and began shuffling the cards.

  His assistant glanced at Nora, as if for permission, and then hustled Helen over to a corner. He spoke just above a whisper. "Don't worry. He's going to be fine today. Shuffling the cards helps him to relax."

  "I wasn't worried." As far as Helen had seen, Vic was a bit…lacking in social skills, but nothing worse than that. Perhaps it was just when he was at home in his proverbial castle that he was the jerk Tate and his niece had described. Some people went a little crazy during home renovations, and that could explain why he'd been "prickly" and "a crackpot" with Tate's niece. Vic seemed pretty laid-back to her.

  Except, if she was right, then why had the assistant been so eager to reassure her that Vic would be fine today? And why had someone gone to the trouble and expense of sending a high-priced PR person to keep an eye on him? Surely Nora Manning had been sent out of an excess of precaution by local members of the gaming industry. It was widely rumored that Vic had only moved to Wharton to be relatively near the new casino in Springfield. It was a mere hour away by highway, and supposedly Vic had arranged some sort of deal with its owners, trading his celebrity appeal for special considerations.

  Maybe Nora was one of those special considerations, a more expensive version of the purple M&Ms and grape Gatorade. At least he hadn't insisted that Nora wear purple. Although, to be fair, the woman would probably look gorgeous, no matter what she wore. It was just one of the many things that Helen resented about the woman, especially now that her lupus symptoms forced her to wear what she once would have considered old-lady clothes and flat shoes with good support.

  She hated feeling like a cliché, and she didn't usually indulge in any kind of negative feelings toward other successful women, but Nora Manning simply set Helen's teeth on edge. She'd had a good reason for disliking the woman the last time they'd met. Nora had been trying to seduce her then husband, Frank Faria, who'd told her about Nora's various come-ons and how amusing he'd found them. It hadn't been clear to either Frank or Helen whether the seduction had been strictly a business proposition, to gain his support for the legalization of casinos, or whether there was a personal element to it, most likely an attraction to his political power. If she really wanted Frank now, she could have him, with Helen's blessing.

  * * *

  When Helen escorted Vic and his entourage into the meeting room. The room was packed far beyond her expectations. The hundred or so chairs were filled, and the walls were lined with people leaning against them. She tried not to be too obvious about it, but as they walked to the speaker's table, she searched the room for Detective Peterson to make sure he wasn't paying attention to the size of the possibly over-capacity crowd. She finally spotted him in the center of the front row, apparently oblivious to the people packing the room all around him.

  Vic had left his purple cape behind, and he graciously shook hands with everyone he passed. He even let himself be drawn into selfies on the way to the table at the far end of the room. Art stayed behind when they reached the table and joined the audience members leaning against the side wall. Nora hovered behind Vic, never more than a couple of feet from him as he stood behind the table, waiting for Helen to do the formal introduction.

  Helen read the prepared introduction that Art had given her, and the crowd welcomed Vic with enthusiastic applause. She could pick out Detective Peterson's voice leading a chant of what sounded like "Never Draw Dead" repeated over and over. Nora slipped into one of the two reserved seats in the front row, leaving the other one for Helen to join her when the introduction was completed. Helen would have preferred to be in the back where Tate was leaning against a wall, but as the organizer of the event, she needed to be up front.

  Vic's speech was informal but engaging, and the audience laughed in the right places. Everything was going perfectly until about five minutes in when he mentioned just how great gaming was for exercising the brain and preventing Alzheimer's in senior citizens.

  A short man with large, dark-rimmed glasses, wearing corduroy pants and a bulky sweater topped with an even bulkier down vest, jumped up and shouted, "Yeah. Instead of living long enough to get dementia, they'll just die from the effects of poverty after they gamble away their life's savings."

  "Only if they're too stupid to live," Vic shot back.

  Helen started to stand so she could intervene before things got any more out of hand, but her hip chose that moment to seize up. While she regained her balance she noticed that the younger, faster, and healthier Geoff Loring was already racing for the exit, presumably to escape the confrontational atmosphere.

  "Are you calling my mother stupid?" the man in the crowd asked.

  Before Helen could take a single step, Nora was at Vic's side, gently pushing him away from the microphone. "I believe what Mr. Rezendes meant was that the gaming industry is working hard to identify and exclude addictive personalities. There's also a commitment to fund treatment for those who still suffer from this disease. You're far more likely to go bankrupt from a bad business investment or even the state's lottery tickets than from a trip to a modern gaming resort."

  The man in the audience was vibrating with anger, taking tiny steps in place, as if he couldn't contain his energy otherwise. He didn't seem to hear Nora's soothing words. "My mother was the smartest person I've ever known. She was a teacher at an elite private school for forty years. She scrimped and saved to put her four kids through college. She made sure she still had a bit left over for her retirement. She didn't want to be dependent on anyone. Everything was fine until someone offered her a free weekend at a casino. That was all it took for gambling to take over her life. You're shilling for the people who do this. That makes you part of the problem, Vic Rezendes. You're killing people."

  Terri Greene made her way over to where the heckler stood. She had to be frustrated that she had no real leverage here at the library, unlike the power she wielded at the high school. If she punished squabbling team members and forfeited a game—or in this case, cancelled the speech—it wasn't Vic and the heckler who'd suffer, but the library. It needed the good publicity and donations that today's event was supposed to generate.

  Terri placed a reassuring hand on the heckler's upper arm. "Come on, Donald. I know you're committed to the anti-casino cause, but you really can't blame Mr. Rezendes or even the gaming industry for a few individuals' poor choices. Why don't you and I go somewhere private, and we can talk this out. No need to ruin things for everyone else."

  "There's every need." The heckler shook off Terri's hand, which was no mean feat, considering her size and strength. "People need to know what a danger casinos are, especially to our senior citizens. They're at far more risk of addiction to gambling than younger people are. The casinos know it too. They prey on our elders, wooing them just like drug dealers, with a free taste that triggers an unquenchable thirst that consumes all of their money, time, and energy. And it's not like the seniors can go out and earn more money at that point in their lives."

  Vic suddenly gestured to his assistant. "We're leaving. Get my things, and meet me at the limo." He turned to Helen. "We warned you about the whackos. You were supposed to take precautions to keep them out. I knew I couldn't trust a woman to do things right. You can expect to hear from my attorney."

  "And you can expect to hear from mine," Helen said, although she wasn't lookin
g forward to hearing Tate say, "I told you so."

  Vic Rezendes was definitely a prickly crackpot. Of course, so was the heckler. And some might even say the same thing about her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Helen spent an anxious afternoon mentally replaying the fiasco at the library. The night hadn't been any better. She'd slept restlessly and then dozed until later than she'd planned to get up, waking to a mental fog. It felt somewhat like a hangover without the headache. Her brain seemed to be slightly out of synch with her body, trying, but unable to reintegrate the two elements of herself. Struggling only seemed to make it worse, and in any event she didn't have time to worry about the odd feeling right now, since her nieces were due to arrive any minute. Figuring out what was wrong with her head could wait until Rebecca's next visit on Tuesday.

  Helen barely managed to get dressed and boil some water for tea—decaf, in keeping with the four-months-pregnant Laura's obsession with proper prenatal nutrition—before Lily's sports car rumbled down the cottage's gravel driveway. The girls usually brought the brunch food, and Helen hoped that this week's pregnancy diet trend was something more appetizing than last week's kale-themed menu. Fortunately for Helen, Laura had found that the smell of cooked kale in her sister's quiche triggered morning sickness, so that particular experiment wasn't likely to be repeated. Less fortunately, Laura had used raw kale in the smoothie, which didn't nauseate her, so it was probably going to be a part of every weekend visit for the next five months.

  Helen fumbled with the knob of the front door, knocking her cane off its perch. She kicked it aside and managed to pull the door open. Laura Gray came through first, carrying a small cooler and a blender, which, as Helen had feared, promised another round of kale smoothies. Lily Binney followed, carrying a more promising canvas bag from a popular Boston farmer's market.

  The girls were both short, small-boned, and dark-haired like Helen and their father, Helen's brother. Beyond that, the girls were nothing alike. Laura's face was still soft and round years after she outgrew her baby fat, while Lily's face had always been as sharp as her brain. Laura was a stay-at-home spouse, determined to become the mother to a large brood, while Lily was equally determined to succeed in the business world.

  As Lily and Laura unpacked their contributions to brunch, Helen climbed into one of the seats at the kitchen island that doubled as the dining table. She tried to think of some conversation starter, but it felt like the traffic in her brain's pathways was in a rush hour backup. Her thoughts were taking ten times as long as usual to transform themselves into words.

  Wait. Traffic. That was something she could ask about.

  "How was the…" Helen struggled to remember what it was she'd planned to ask about. "The traffic? On the Mass. Pike?"

  Laura turned around from where she'd just plugged in the blender next to the refrigerator. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine." Those two words were pretty much on autopilot whenever either her nurse or her nieces were visiting. Especially now. The last thing Helen wanted was to give her nieces anything to exacerbate their worries. Lily could handle anything, but Laura's obsession with following the best possible practices during pregnancy had her stressing over avoiding stress.

  Lily peered at Helen. "No, you're not fine. Something's wrong."

  "I'm just a little tired," Helen said, truthfully. "I haven't been sleeping well. Anxiety over an event I organized for the library yesterday."

  "The celebrity poker player," Laura said, unpacking the yogurt, flaxseed, strawberries and, yes, raw kale from her cooler. "How was his speech?"

  "Short," Helen said. "He stomped out before he really got started. After you two leave, I'm going to talk to him about rescheduling the event."

  "You do know it's Sunday, right?" Lily said. "Not Saturday when we usually visit."

  "Of course." Helen had tried to catch Vic before the limo left the day before, but by the time she'd gotten to the driveway, he and his entourage had disappeared, and only a couple of homeless people were anywhere in sight. She'd been able to reach his profusely apologetic assistant afterwards and arrange to visit after Vic had had a chance to calm down. She was hoping to reschedule the speech to a time when she could make sure the heckler was unable to attend. "Vic lives right here in Wharton, and his personal assistant said he was free until about 4:00 this afternoon."

  The blender's motor cut off Lily's interrogation, giving Helen a reprieve. Vic's aborted speech and its aftermath weren't things she wanted to rehash with her nieces. Terri Greene had been apologetic for not recognizing Donald in time to head him off. He was well-known as a local leader in the anti-casino movement, still stinging from the failure of the referendum to repeal the legislation allowing casinos in Massachusetts, and it would have been nice if Helen had had some advance notice of the potential problem. Still, it wasn't Terri's fault that both Vic and the heckler were short-tempered. If anything, it was Helen's fault, for bringing a controversial character to speak at the library without investigating whether he had any dedicated enemies in the area. She needed to fix the situation, and she would, right after brunch.

  The blender's motor was still fading when Lily said, "Have you considered rescheduling the meeting until tomorrow? You really don't seem yourself today."

  Helen would never understand how she could be related to such worrywarts. "I'm just a little tired."

  "Does Rebecca know about your insomnia?" Lily asked, correctly translating "I'm a little tired" into what her aunt was really experiencing.

  "Not yet," Helen said. "I was planning to talk to her about it during her last visit, but she had some forms that needed filling out, and that went on forever. You two wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

  Laura turned away as if the blender needed her immediate attention. Lily looked her aunt directly in the eyes and said, "Rebecca works for you, not for us."

  "I might pay Rebecca, but she's far more in your pocket than in mine." Rebecca was a vast improvement over Helen's previous visiting nurse, who had driven Helen to distraction and another person to murder. "It's a good thing I don't have anything to hide from you."

  "Nothing except insomnia," Lily said. "Plus, we can't forget the death threats that you seem to attract from time to time."

  Helen glanced at Laura, intent on pouring out three kale smoothies, before saying, "I don't want either of you to worry about me. I'm fine. I can handle a little sleeplessness."

  Lily paused in the act of unveiling what promised to be something better than kale quiche, and frowned. "What about death threats? Had any of them lately?"

  "Absolutely no threats." Helen's life had been fairly dull for the last three months. "No dead bodies, no missing persons, nothing whatsoever out of the ordinary."

  "Okay." Lily unpacked a loaf of artisan multi-grain bread and an assortment of farmers' market jams. "So what are your plans for the coming weeks, other than rescheduling the poker player's speech?"

  "There's Charity Caps Day at the nursing home on Thursday." Helen nodded at the yarn bag next to her recliner. "I've actually gotten the hang of crochet at last. The basics anyway."

  "Hand-made baby booties are so adorable." Laura slid a glass overflowing with green-speckled sludge across the island to her aunt.

  "I'll have to ask Josie if my skills are up to making booties. But no smoothie for me, thank you." Helen had practiced this particular speech last night so she could recite it without conscious thought. "Did you know that raw kale can adversely affect the thyroid glands? I've got enough health issues already, so I'd better not risk it."

  "Thyroid damage?" Laura peered suspiciously at her own half-drunk glass.

  "Only in susceptible persons, like women over fifty, which you're nowhere near," Helen said. "But I'm getting closer to that age with every passing day. Just a little more than four years away now."

  "I'd never do anything to hurt you," Laura said, staring at the smoothie as if it were poison.

  "I know," Helen said. "Let'
s eat. I'm starved, and I bet Lily's anxious to finish here and go see Adam before you leave town." Now that Lily and Tate's nephew, Adam Bancroft, had admitted they were more than "just friends," they were struggling to find time to be together. Their long workdays precluded making the four-hour round-trip between Boston and Wharton very often.

  The girls shared another glance that seemed suspicious, but was probably just their normal sibling mind reading. Then they shrugged and turned their attention to slicing the bread and slathering it with jam.

  Much as Helen loved her nieces, she was anxious for them to eat and run. She wasn't sure how long Barry, the local cabbie that Jack grudgingly admitted was an acceptable driver when neither he nor Jay and Zee were available, would wait for her call to drive her to Vic's house. She didn't want them to worry, and there wasn't anything serious wrong with her. She was fine, and she was determined to convince them of that fact, even if it killed her.

  * * *

  Barry was skeletally thin and enough taller than the average man that his height was obvious even while he was sitting in his cab. He was an ex-monk, and he spoke in a slow measured way that, even when he was just confirming the passenger's destination, sounded like he was chanting a Latin prayer.

  With Helen in the front passenger seat, Barry drove down a dead-end street with marshy conservation land on the left and a row of McMansions on five-plus-acre lots on the right. He turned into the driveway at the very last house. There was a six-foot-high, stone-faced wall about thirty feet from the road, and it ran along the entire front of the property. A wrought-iron fence spanned the opening in the wall for the driveway.

  Barry stopped the cab with its nose practically touching the closed gate. Much like Helen's own cottage, Vic Rezendes's house was set back far enough on a lot with both evergreen and deciduous trees to not be visible from the street. A white van with Reed Security written on the side was parked just inside the gate, and there were a couple of pick-up trucks just past it, including the one she recognized as belonging to Jack and used by Jay and Zee.