Death Plays Poker (32 page)

NOAH

Noah watched Clare on the phone as he walked toward her. She looked upset. He slowed his pace; he’d let her be alone. He watched her wipe her cheek, smile slightly, and hang up. He gave her half a minute more and made his approach.

He sat on the bench beside her. “You ready for an exciting day?”

“Yup.” She spoke enthusiastically, but it sounded forced.

“We should stick together as much as possible,” Noah said. “We can tell everyone we made up; no one will care.”

“Okay.”

Noah took her hand. “You sure you’re cool with this?”

“I’m fine. I’m a professional. Let’s do this.”

“My handler made a good point,” Noah said. “Why don’t you suggest to your handler that the Canadian cops search bags and jackets as players arrive at the game? Then we don’t have to risk our covers breaking into rooms to find out who else has phones and computers that are set up to receive the cheating signal.”

Clare wrinkled a corner of her mouth while appearing to think. “We’re pretty sure we know who’s cheating — Joe and T-Bone and maybe George. If we raid people’s bags, we might confirm that information. But we also might tip people off that they should be a lot more careful. Searching bags looks like what it is — cop interest.”

“True,” Noah said. “It just might be the safest way to go.”

“To find the cheaters, yeah. But not to find the killer. Or is it back to you don’t care? You have your case solved, and if you can get some more free information before you get the hell out of here, so much the better?”

Noah didn’t blame Clare for mistrusting him. “I can’t arrest someone in Canada, but you can.”

“So why are you even here now? You could be kicking back in comfort while the game finishes playing itself out.”

“Are you kidding?” Noah was sitting inches from Clare, but it felt like she was a lot farther away. He remembered seeing her upset on the phone, and softened. “I want to catch this killer.”

Clare frowned.

Noah continued, “Another question Bert had: have you seen reports about personal effects found in the victims’ rooms?”

Clare rolled her eyes. “Like phones that just happened to be set up to receive secret encrypted transmissions? I think the killer would have taken that kind of evidence with him.”

“Really?” Noah said. “What if the killer doesn’t know about the technology?”

“Oh.” Clare’s eyes opened wider. “Sorry. My brain is mush today. You mean what if the killer isn’t the Dealer?”

Noah nodded. “Mickey’s angry. There must be others — maybe Elizabeth — who feel the same way.”

“So does that make Joe and T-Bone, and maybe George, potential killers? Or potential victims?”

“Right. That’s one question. Another is: if Oliver’s running the scam, which we now know he must be, because Fiona was dead and the hole card feed was still coming through, and someone else is murdering people, is there even a connection between the murders and the cheating?”

“How could there not be?” Clare said. “They started at the exact same time.”

“I agree — my first guess is they’re linked. But we have to keep an open mind.”

Clare shook her head. “It’s time to close our minds, rule things out. All this open-mindedness and my dead grandma could be the killer from her grave.”

Noah laughed.

“If you saw my grandma you wouldn’t think that was funny.”

“That’s not why I’m laughing. I just realized that for all our two agencies’ fighting, none of us have looked at the most obvious clue.”

“What clue?”

“Whoever killed Fiona had to get across the border. We can get rental car records and border crossing
ID
s.”

“We have all that.” Clare looked at him liked he’d missed the short bus that morning. “I mean, you and I don’t, but the
RCMP
is already looking into border crossing records. Anyway, when you cross the border with the intent to kill someone, I’m pretty sure you use a fake name.”

“Maybe.” Noah shrugged. “But it won’t be a fake photo.”

Clare narrowed her eyes with interest. “What are you suggesting?”

“Facial recognition software,” Noah said. “We’ll give them photos of Joe, Elizabeth, T-Bone, Mickey, Oliver, George . . . I’m sure we’ll have an answer by tomorrow.”

Clare frowned. “So should we kill our plan with the notes?”

Noah shook his head. “Because what if the killer found another way across?”

ELIZABETH

“Is someone else on the boat?” Joe said suddenly.

Elizabeth stopped what she was doing and listened. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Shh.” Joe put a finger to his lips. There was a soft thud, like a cupboard being closed. “Did you hear that?”

“I did,” Elizabeth said, in a voice just above a whisper. “But we’re on a boat. The sound could be anything. Maybe a buoy slapping against the dock.”

“Maybe,” Joe said.

Elizabeth heard a zipper. “That sounds like the canvas being opened.”

“Or zipped back up.”

“It might be another boat’s canvas.” But Elizabeth was scared. “Should we go upstairs?”

“I’ll go.” He glanced at her bare, still mostly flat stomach. “I don’t want you in danger.”

“I’m coming with you.” Elizabeth pictured Joe going into the galley alone and a gloved killer waiting for him with a piece of rope. “I’ll dial 911 and be ready to press Send.”

“Thanks, Scout.” Joe gave a mock salute.

“You’re welcome.” Elizabeth slipped on shoes and a shirt. She didn’t want to waste time putting jeans on.

“You’re coming like that?” Joe looked amused.

“Who cares what an intruder sees?”

“Okay. Let’s go.” Joe opened the stateroom door softly and looked both ways down the hall before turning toward the stairs. Elizabeth followed as silently as she could.

At the top of the stairs, Joe turned quickly to face the dock side of the boat. He motioned Liz to follow him up, and they both looked around at an apparently empty main level. The galley was intact, the deck was empty, the canvas was closed, and the poker table was as they’d left it.

After a careful search of every stateroom, they determined that there was no one else on board.

“What about the zipper?” Elizabeth said. “You heard it too, right?”

Joe nodded.

“You think someone was looking for something, and they left when they heard us downstairs?”

“Possible.”

“What would they have taken?” Elizabeth said. “Do you have your computer and phone?”

“They’re in our stateroom. You have yours?”

Her laptop was on the galley table, where she’d left it. She checked her purse and found her phone. “What else could they have wanted?”

“Maybe to leave us this.” Joe fingered a piece of paper that had been fixed to the fridge with an Ace magnet.

Elizabeth’s stomach felt weak. “You think someone left that here?”

“Wasn’t here before, was it?” Joe pulled the note from the fridge. “It looks like the other note you got. The one about mystery sex. Same font, same kind of paper, I’m pretty sure.”

“What does it say? Let me see it.”

Joe shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

He didn’t look like he planned to pass Elizabeth the page, so she took it.

Tiffany James is your Dealer. Instructions will follow. Follow the instructions.

“I knew it!” Elizabeth stomped her foot in what would probably be a comical gesture under lighter circumstances.

“What did you know?” Joe looked at her oddly.

“Tiffany. She’s not a little trust fund princess. I knew she had an angle.”

“What do you think her angle is?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know. I just knew something wasn’t right.”

“How?”

“Her father doesn’t own any furniture importing company in the English-speaking world. I even checked China, just in case. But no.”

Joe took a Coke can from the fridge. “So what does this note mean?”

“I don’t know. But I know it’s real. I know it means something.” Elizabeth’s nausea was getting worse. She sat down.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She was glad she hadn’t eaten breakfast. “It’s a big chance to take, breaking onto our boat just to leave a one-line note. The Choker wouldn’t do that. My guess is someone’s trying to warn us that we’re in danger.”

Joe laughed. “Okay, Liz. I’m glad to hear your take on how the criminal mind works.”

Elizabeth took a Sun Chip from the bag on the counter, and immediately recognized it as a mistake. She chewed it anyway, and swallowed. Hopefully it would stay down. “I’m the one who figured out Tiffany.”

“Clearly someone else did, too, if they’re warning us. But this doesn’t look like a warning note to me. It looks more like a statement of power. As in, Tiffany’s going to give us some orders now. Or someone pretending they’re Tiffany.”

Elizabeth wondered if whoever had left the note was outside listening to them. She decided they probably weren’t — it would be dumb to hang around on the dock once the message had been delivered.

“Hey,” Joe said. “I looked up those bags. You know they’re not biodegradable anymore?”

“What are you talking about?” Elizabeth picked up the Sun Chip pack and looked at the back. “Yes, they are. That’s what this little symbol means right here.”

“That’s just the Canadian bags,” Joe said. “In the States, the eco-friendly bags were too loud and crinkly for the average consumer. So Frito Lay went back using to the old kind.”

“That sucks.” Elizabeth felt herself getting angry. The poison, which had been gone for almost a day, started to creep back in. She stood up and threw the nearly full bag in the garbage. “That’s, like, knowing you can do the right thing, and choosing not to. I’m never eating another fucking Sun Chip again in my life, Canadian
or
American.”

“Wow,” Joe said. “I can see you have a strong sense of justice.”

CLARE

Clare slunk down the hallway, which was ridiculous because if someone saw her slinking it would make her look even more suspicious. She straightened up and walked like a normal person. She came to George’s room, slipped a new note under his door, and hurried for the stairwell.

She practically leapt down the two flights of stairs to Mickey’s room. She hoped the killer wasn’t Mickey, but you couldn’t run an investigation based on who you’d like to see in jail. She slipped his note under his door and rushed toward the stairs once more.

The next room was T-Bone’s, one level down. This filled Clare with dread, because despite her bravado, she was scared of the man. Even in his seventies, he looked like he could squish her with his muscles. So when Clare left the stairwell and saw him swaggering away down the hallway, she hurried back inside and held her breath.

She looked at the envelope in her hand and tucked it inside her jeans. She counted to a hundred and figured that T-Bone must be either inside his room or in the elevator on the way to somewhere. She heard a door open somewhere above her in the stairwell.

She pushed into the hallway once more. Thankfully T-Bone was nowhere to be seen. But she didn’t know what to do. Her escape route was blocked — she couldn’t go back into the stairwell, because someone was in it, and she couldn’t afford the time to wait for the elevator. But she didn’t want to give up on the plan — what if T-Bone was the killer, and this was the note that solved everything?

She saw T-Bone’s room, across from the elevators. She pressed the Down button and waited for the elevator to arrive. When it came — thank god — there was no one in it. Clare slipped the note under the door, ran into the elevator, pressed G, and stood away from T-Bone’s peephole’s sightline.

When the elevator dropped her in the lobby, Clare was drenched in sweat, but her breathing had returned to normal. Not trusting herself to say anything to anyone, she made a beeline for the cab line and headed to Noah’s nearby hotel.

He’d given her a room card. She let herself in and called him.

“I’m three seconds away,” he said, before opening his door. He ended the call and eyed Clare up and down. “You look fucking terrible.”

“I have makeup with me. How did your end of the note drop go?”

“Good, I think.” Noah lit a smoke. “The boat was fucking hard.”

“Hard as in difficult?”

“Hard as in stressful. They were having sex in a stateroom. Sorry if you thought what you had with Joe was special.”

Clare felt stupid for even beginning to stress about her own close encounter. “Thanks for taking the hard part.”

“It’s all the hard part. And Oliver’s room was a piece of cake. I saw him leaving the lobby before I even went upstairs.”

“Is there anyone we’ve forgotten?” Clare asked.

“The only other two are dead.”