Deadly Gamble

With that, I pushed my shopping cart between them and headed for the checkout stand. I didn’t start shaking until I was safe in my secondhand Volvo, with the windows rolled up and the doors locked.

Back at Bad-Ass Bert’s, I carried my groceries inside. Eight frozen dinners, a litter box and a bag of absorbent pellets.

“I wasn’t sure,” I told Chester, who was waiting for me when I lugged the stuff through the door. “About the litter, I mean.”

Chester sniffed the bag curiously.

“Of course,” I reasoned, because I needed to hear a voice, even if it was my own, “if you don’t eat, it follows that you don’t poop, either.”

“Meow,” Chester said.

“Thanks for hanging out,” I answered.

“I wish you felt that way about me,” Nick said.

I swung around to see him standing next to my bookshelf, which was beside the computer, where I kept my sizeable collection of Damn Fool’s Guides. Unfortunately, there wasn’t one dealing with dead people—trust me, I’d looked the day before, when I stopped to get the Tarot tome, but Near Death Experiences was the closest thing—or crazy female stalkers, either.

“Now what?” I demanded, letting the kitty litter and the plastic box topple to the floor. I clutched the bag full of Lean Cuisines to my chest, like a shield.

Nick was perusing titles. “The Damn Fool’s Guide to Dating,” he mused, running a finger along the spines. “Tantric Sex. Raising Ferrets.” He paused, looked me over closely, and with compassionate concern. “Ferrets?”

“It was a passing fancy,” I said, and started for the kitchen.

He followed, of course, and so did the cat.

“Tantric Sex?” Nick pressed.

“I’m single and over twenty-one,” I reminded him, jerking open the freezer section of the refrigerator and tossing in the week’s meals, bag and all. “And what are you doing here, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Just a friendly visit,” he said. Then he opened the cupboard, took out the Oreos and sniffed them. A look of pathetic longing crossed his face.

“Here’s an idea,” I said, whacking the freezer door shut with the flat of one hand. “Go ‘visit’ your mother.”

“Your attitude is very unbecoming, you know,” Nick said. With a sigh, he put the Oreos back in the cupboard. “What did my mother ever do to deserve this…rancor?”

“Well, first of all,” I replied, ticking number one off on my finger, “she gave birth to you. Second, she stuck her nose into our business every chance she got. And third, she saw to it that I got bupkis in the divorce.” I paused. “Oh, and then there’s the way her head sprouts snakes at the most unexpected moments.”

“You don’t like her,” Nick said, sad and surprised.

“Don’t take it too hard, but I don’t like you very much, either.”

“If you knew the trouble I have to go to, to keep a charge,” he replied, quietly stricken, “you wouldn’t be so rude.”

I grabbed the coffee carafe, poured out the stale stuff I’d never gotten around to drinking earlier and cranked on the faucet. The pipes rattled. “If that little illusion gives you consolation, Nick,” I said, “you just go with it. And while you’re at it, why don’t you tell me what the hell you want? As long as it isn’t sex, I’ll give it to you, and you can move on to the next plane of existence, or whatever it is you dead people do.”

Any self-respecting spook would have been insulted enough to vanish, but not Nick. He grinned, pulled back a chair at the table and sat down. “No sex, huh?”

“Not on your—life,” I said.

“Bummer,” he sighed.

“Don’t you have something to do? In the train station or whatever it is?”

Another sigh. “I’m stuck in the depot until I deal with you,” Nick said, and he looked just earnest enough to be telling the truth.

A clear indication that he was lying through his perfect teeth.

“Are you sleeping with that biker?” he asked.

“That comes under the heading of None of Your Damn Business.” I sloshed the water into the top of the coffeemaker, spooned some Starbucks into the basket and jammed the carafe onto the burner.

“A biker, for Christ’s sake?”

“Tucker’s not a biker. He’s a cop. Narcotics division.”

“At least his name rhymes with my opinion of him.”

“Gee, and your opinion matters so much.”

“You didn’t used to be so hard.”

“Well, you haven’t changed at all.” I leaned against the counter, folding my arms. Chester wound his silky way around my ankles. “You’re still an arrogant, self-centered ass.”

“I have changed, Mojo.”

“Right,” I agreed tartly. “You’re dead.”

“That was a low blow.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“I’m trying to help you.”

“How? By scaring me out of my wits? By undermining my sanity?”

“I brought back your cat.”

I looked down at Chester and, on impulse, scooped him up. He felt so real, and pretty chunky. Whatever they were feeding him on the other side, it was sticking to his ribs.

Suddenly, I wanted to cry. I knew I’d loved Chester once, and I was dangerously close to loving him again.

“You never got to say goodbye to him,” Nick said.

I buried my face in white, warm fur. “He can’t stay,” I mourned.

“No,” Nick agreed gently. “It’s a frequency thing. These appearances are pretty tough to sustain. But he’s not dead, Mojo. He’s alive, but in a whole different way. That’s the point.”

Chester’s fur was damp, where I’d cried on him. “It’s the same with you.” Statement, but it had the tone of a question.

Nick nodded. “The difference is, when he goes back, he’ll be able to get onto a train and go on to whatever his idea of heaven happens to be. I’ll still be stuck at the station.”

I was grudgingly intrigued, if not necessarily sympathetic. I’d loved Nick completely, and he might as well have torn my heart out of my body and backed over it with a UPS truck. “Why?”

“Unresolved issues,” he said, with yet another sigh.

I studied him, still holding Chester as close as I could without squashing him. “What kind of unresolved issues?” I asked suspiciously.

“You trusted me. You loved me. And I betrayed you. I have to earn your forgiveness.”

“Is that all?” I sniffed, reluctantly set Chester down on the floor, straightened again. “Okay. That’s easy. You’re forgiven. Now, kindly hop on the Starlight Express and stop showing up in my apartment.”

If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn Nick was being sincere. He actually looked remorseful. “Sorry,” he said. “It isn’t that easy. You can’t just toss off a platitude. You have to really mean it.”

“Shit,” I said.

He looked like a kicked puppy. “Was it that bad? I remember some really good times together.”

“Do you?” I grabbed a mug down off the shelf. No sense getting two; if Nick couldn’t eat Oreos, he probably couldn’t drink coffee, either. “Maybe you’re confusing me with your secretary—excuse me, executive assistant. I caught you boinking her in a construction trailer once, remember? Or maybe it’s that sweet young thing in the condo down the hall from ours. The one who always wanted you to fix something. Or—”

Nick put up a hand, rose wearily to his feet. “I’m sorry, Mojo. What else can I say? I can’t change the past.”

Tears stung my eyes. “Get out, Nick.”

He was gone in a blink.

And Chester went with him.

“YOU’VE BEEN CRYING,” Greer accused, when I showed up at her mansion outside of Scottsdale at five to six that night, bringing along a bottle of Chardonnay donated by Bert. A glorious Arizona sunset blazed crimson and pink and apricot on the western horizon.

“No, I haven’t,” I said. It was a partial truth, anyway. I’d spent the afternoon at my computer, coding and billing, and the May rent was a sure thing. I’d also gone through a whole box of tissues.

Greer looked rich—and skeptical—in her floaty flowered skirt and pink matching top. Her blond hair was in a French braid, and I wondered how she stood so straight, with Dr. Pennington’s diamond weighing down her left hand. I figure the jewelry alone keeps Scottsdale chiropractors operating in the black.

“Your eyes are red,” she said.

Once, I would have spilled it all. Told Greer about Nick and Chester. But Greer was different now that she was married. The change was subtle, but I wasn’t imagining it.

I had to tell her something, so I went with Lillian, the three Tarot cards, and my chat with Uncle Clive. Maybe, I thought, after a glass of wine I might even get as far as Crazy Heather and the supermarket caper.

Listening intently, Greer led the way across the brick-paved portico and through the open doors at the top of the steps. The house alone covered more than ten thousand square feet of prime desert, and the art inside was museum quality stuff. The furniture was tastefully expensive, and I could see the back patio in the distance, through a set of glass doors. Nothing but the best for Greer Pennington, world-class trophy wife.

Okay, so maybe I sound a little mean-spirited. I loved Greer, but she could have been a lot more than some old fart’s pampered wife, and that bugged the hell out of me. Before Alex, she’d put herself through art school, worked for other people for a while to learn the ropes, then gone on to start and run her own design firm. She’d been successful, too, after a rocky start.

When Alex snapped his fingers, though, she’d sold the company without even a mild protest. In fact, she’d seemed relieved. And that was what bothered me. Not that Greer was set for life, at least financially. I was happy for her. No, it was the way she’d given up on her own dreams. Put on a costume, learned the lines and played the second wife as if she’d never done all that hard work to make something of herself.

We settled ourselves in cushioned patio chairs, under a sloping tiled roof, near the sparkling pool. Greer checked out the wine label, smiled charitably and carried the bottle into the kitchen by way of yet another door.

When she returned with two crystal glasses, I figured she’d pulled a switcheroo, probably dumping Bert’s Chardonnay down the sink and filling the goblets with something French or Napa and ridiculously expensive.

“Should you be drinking if there’s a chance you might be pregnant?” I inquired.

Greer looked away for a moment, then looked back. “Not to worry,” she said, reaching for her glass. “I am definitely not pregnant.”

I knew she wanted a baby, to make her happy home with Dr. Pennington complete, and I felt a pinching sorrow behind my heart. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it.

Greer downed a couple of sips—more like gulps—of her wine, and gave a gurgling, disjointed little laugh. Nothing was funny, and we both knew it, but Greer liked to pretend. Maybe it was a survival mechanism.

“You told me on the phone this morning that you didn’t feel well,” I said. “Have you been to a doctor?”

“I’m married to a doctor.”

Didn’t I know it? “You have shadows under your eyes, and I think you’ve lost weight. What’s going on, Greer?”

She sucked up some more wine before answering, and when she did, she ignored my question entirely and presented one of her own. “Do you think it’s because of—well—things I did when I was young?”

I scrambled to catch up. “You mean your not being pregnant?”

Greer looked around nervously, as though the editor of the country club newsletter might be crouching behind the cabana, taking notes, or lurking on the other side of the towering stucco wall enclosing at least an acre of backyard. The windows of the guesthouse, opposite the pool, caught the colors of the sunset and turned opaque. “Yes,” she said, and it seemed to me that she’d gone to a lot of trouble, scoping out the landscape, just to say one word.

“Lillian had you checked out at a free clinic in Vegas, remember? You were fine. No STD’s, no residual effects whatsoever. It wasn’t the hooking, Greer.”

She tensed, and what little color she’d had drained from her cheeks. “Keep your voice down!”

“Sorry,” I said, chagrined. I always felt out of place at Greer’s, and I tended to put my foot in my mouth. “You’re alone here, aren’t you? Carmen is gone for the day?”

Carmen was her housekeeper—a very nice woman, but not much for overtime.

Greer nodded miserably. “I didn’t mean to snap,” she said.

I patted her hand. “It’s okay.”

She fortified herself with more wine. I decided it was probably cramps that made her look so woebegone and beaten. “Nothing in my life,” she said, “is ‘okay.’”

CHAPTER 4

I’d love to report that Greer and I got right to the heart of things, over our dinner of thinly sliced smoked salmon, gourmet bagels and cream cheese with capers, and settled all our collective and individual problems, but we didn’t. Greer drank wine—first hers, then mine. She shook her head when I told her about Heather and the supermarket incident, and said I ought to move to a civilized neighborhood.

What one had to do with the other was beyond me then, and I still don’t exactly get it.

I tried to communicate. I really did. I told her about Lillian and the Tarot cards, and running into Uncle Clive at the nursing home.

She recalled that he was a state senator and wondered aloud if he and his wife would ever make the trip up from Cactus Bend to attend one of her gala parties. It wasn’t so much that Greer was uncaring; she just couldn’t seem to get any kind of grip on the conversational thread.

I would have been better off talking to Chester, and I don’t think the evening did much for Greer, either, except perhaps to provide some brief respite from whatever was weighing on her mind.

At eight-thirty, I thanked my sister for her hospitality, said my goodbyes and left. Greer was a lonely, shrinking figure in my rearview mirror, standing in her brick-paved driveway, watching me out of sight.

I was too restless to go straight home. I knew the cat was gone, and if he’d come back, the chances were all too good that Nick was with him. I wasn’t up to another dead-husband fest, so I headed for one of my favorite places—the casino at 101 and Indian Bend.

Talking Stick was doing a lively business that night, its domed, tent-shaped roofs giving it a circus-type appeal. I parked the Volvo at the far end of the eastern lot and trekked back to the nearest entrance, my ATM card already smoking in my wallet.

Inside, I pulled some money at the handy-dandy cash machine next to the guest services desk. A security guard gave me a welcoming wave; I won a lot, though I was usually careful to keep the jackpots small, so I wouldn’t attract too much notice, and it had gotten to the point where everybody knew my name.

“Cheers,” I told the guard as I breezed by, weaving my way between banks of whirring slot machines beckoning with bright, inviting lights. I passed the Wheel of Fortunes, with their colorful spinners up top, and the ever popular Double Diamonds, which were always occupied. I used to play them a lot, but then the powers-that-be cranked the progressive jackpot down by a thousand bucks, and it became a matter of principle.

I passed the gift shop and the bar and came to the black-jack tables, lining either side of the wide aisle. A shifting layer of cigarette smoke hung over everything like a cloud. I’m not a smoker, but hey, the poor bastards have to have somewhere to hang out.

Brian Dillard, one of the blackjack dealers, stood idle. My jerk-o-meter went off like a slot machine on tilt, but I stopped anyway. Discretion may be the better part of valor, but discretion, like truth, sometimes gets more hype than it really warrants.

Brian checked out my jean jacket and cotton sun-shift, as if there were a dress code and he got to decide whether I met it or not.

“I saw your ex-wife at the supermarket today,” I told him.

Brian made a visible shift from lascivious to nervous. “Heather?” he asked weakly, keeping his voice down lest a pit boss overhear. Personal exchanges are not encouraged in any casino I’ve ever been to, especially if they have dramatic potential. If you want to get the bum’s rush, just make a scene.

“Unless you’ve been married and divorced again since last time I saw you, yes. If she’s not on medication, you might suggest it.”

He looked anxiously around, then met my gaze again. “What happened?”

I don’t think Brian was concerned about my personal safety. He just wanted me to spit out whatever I was going to say and get away from his table.

I told him about the cart ramming, and the death threat.

He paled.

I wondered what I ever saw in the guy.

“You have four kids, Brian,” I said, bringing it on home. “They’re living with a crazy woman. You might want to revisit the custody agreement.”

The pallor gave way to a flush. “I can’t take care of four kids,” he shot back in a hissing whisper. “Hell, two of them aren’t even mine.”

Double what-did-I-see-in-this-guy. “Okay. Then maybe some concerned citizen—like me, for instance—ought to call CPS and get a social worker to look into the situation.” I got out my cell phone.

“Wait,” Brian rasped, as a pit boss glanced our way. I could have played a hand or two, for cover, but blackjack isn’t my game.

I raised an eyebrow. Didn’t put the cell phone away.

“I’ll talk to Heather, okay?” Brian blurted. “I’ll tell her to leave you alone.”

I must not have looked satisfied.

“And I’ll make sure the kids are all right.”

“You’re a shoo-in for Father of the Year,” I said dryly, but I dropped my weapon. I was by no means reassured that the innocent offspring were out of the parental woods, but I wasn’t Lillian, and I couldn’t snatch the mini-Dillards and take to the road. I had a life.

Well, a semblance of one, anyway. I hadn’t completely given up.

I left Brian to his dealing and headed for the “car bank,” a group of slot machines just inside the main entrance. There’s always a gleaming new vehicle parked on a high platform in the middle; you have to hit three of something, on the pay-line, to win it.

I’ve seen it happen, so it’s legit. Sometimes, the same rig sits there for weeks on end, and sometimes they give away two of them in a day. I’d have worked my mojo and snagged one for myself, but I liked my Volvo well enough and, besides, I didn’t want to pay the taxes and license fees.

I sat down at my favorite, a certain twenty-five-cent Ten Times Pay machine, shoved in my comps card—hey, I could eat free for months on the points I’ve racked up, and you never know when you’re going to get poor all of a sudden—fed a fifty dollar bill in to buy two hundred credits.

I drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, and tried to align myself with the Cosmic Flow. Even the best casinos are energetic garbage dumps, with all that greed and desperation floating around, and it’s important to get Zen. Lillian taught me the trick, and when I play, I usually win.

If I get the mindset right, that is. I had to shake off the Brian influence.

That night, I’d burned through seventy-five credits before I got a hit. Ten Times Triple Bar, nine hundred virtual quarters. I rubbed my hands together.

“Come to mama,” I said.

I didn’t focus on the guy who dropped into the seat at the machine next to mine right away, though I got a glimpse of him in my peripheral vision as soon as he sat down.

He was good-looking, probably in his late thirties, with a head of sleek, light brown hair and the kind of body you have to sweat for, often and hard. I wanted to ignore him, but I could tell by the way he kept shifting around and glancing my way that he wanted to talk.

Shit, I thought.

“I’m just waiting for a spot to open at one of the poker tables,” he said.

“Mmm-hmm,” I replied, hoping he’d take the hint and leave me alone. Watching the reels spin is a form of meditation for me, and I like to focus. It unscrambles my brain in a way nothing else does, except maybe really good sex, and even on a generous gambling budget, it’s a lot cheaper than therapy.

Come to think of it, it’s cheaper than really good sex, too, from an emotional standpoint.

“I think I’ve seen you somewhere before.” Mr. Smooth.

I suppressed an eye-roll and pushed the spin button with a little more force than necessary. He wasn’t even pretending to play his slot machine anymore; just leaning against the supporting woodwork, with his arms folded.

“I get that all the time,” I said tersely. “I must be a type.”

He chuckled. It was a rich, confident sound, low in timbre, and it struck some previously unknown chord deep inside me. It could have been fear, it could have been annoyance. All I knew was, it wasn’t anything sexual; I’m a one-man woman, even when the man in question is thoroughly unavailable. “And not a very friendly one, either,” he observed.

I gave him a brief look. Ever since the first Nick episode, I hadn’t trusted my own eyeballs. “You’re not dead, are you?”

He shrank back, but with a grin, and extended one hand. “What a question,” he said. “Do you run into a lot of dead people?”

I ignored the hand, took in his boyish face, his wide-set, earnest gray eyes, his strong jaw. In the next moment, I leaped out of my chair and backed up a couple of steps. I know my eyes were wide, and my voice came out as a squeak.

“Geoff!”

My parent-murdering, cat-killing half brother contrived to look affably mystified, and threw my own line back in my face. “I must be a type,” he said. “My name isn’t Geoff. It’s Steve. Steve Roberts.” He actually fished for his wallet then, as though prepared to show me his driver’s license or something, and prove his identity.

“Maybe now it is,” I retorted, snatching up my purse so I could get out of there. I didn’t even push the “cash out” button to get a ticket for my credits, that’s how rattled I was. Still, I couldn’t resist asking, “When did you get out of prison, Geoff?”

He sighed. He had one of those give-your-heart-to-Jesus faces, good skin, good teeth, neat hair. And there was a cold knowing in his eyes that bit into my entrails like a bear trap.

“You must be mistaking me for somebody else,” Geoff said sadly.

I turned on my heel and bolted.

Midway through the casino, I turned to see if he was following me, but the place was crowded, and even though I didn’t catch a glimpse of him, I couldn’t be sure. I found a security guard, told him I’d won a major cash jackpot, and asked him to walk me to my car.

Even then I didn’t feel safe.

I locked the doors as soon as I was in the Volvo, and my hand shook so hard as I tried to put the keys in the ignition that it took three tries before I got it right. I screeched out of the parking lot, checking my rearview for a tail every couple of seconds, and laid rubber for the 101, hauling north.

My heart felt as though it had swelled to fill my whole torso, and my blood thundered in my ears like a steady thump on some huge drum.

Geoff.

Parent killer.

Cat murderer.

He hadn’t turned up at the casino by accident, that was too great a coincidence, so he must have deliberately followed me there. How long had he been watching me, keeping track of my movements? Did he know where I lived?

Was I on his hit list? And if so, why? He’d already done his time. What did he have to fear from me?

He killed Chester. The reminder boiled up out of my subconscious mind. What other reason could he have had, except pure meanness?

My dinner scalded its way up into the back of my throat. I swallowed hard. I might have been scared shitless, but I wasn’t about to vomit in the Volvo. You can’t get the smell out.

I got back to Cave Creek without incident, and for once, I was glad to see Tucker’s distinctive bike parked in the lot. I sat there in my car, with the engine running and the doors locked, and felt frantically around in the depths of my purse for my cell phone.

It eluded me, so I upended the whole bag on the passenger seat, scrabbled through the usual purse detritus until I closed my hand over high-tech salvation, and speed-dialed Tucker’s number.