DOUBLE MINT (19 page)

Here’s where they kept the secrets; I’d better take a peek. I wiggled my fingers above
the keyboard—let the magic begin—and for the next twenty minutes, I tried to get in
the front door of Paragon’s system, my phone going nuts the whole time.

I’d forgotten Baylor.

Him:
I’m going to pass out. I’m thirsty.

Me:
Has the room cleared yet?

Him:
No.

Me:
Wait.

Him:
How long?

Me:
Ten more minutes, you big baby.

Him:
I’m hot.

Me:

Him:
Davis?

Then Bradley.

Him:
Davis? Someone just walked into the bank and cashed a $5,000 check drawn off our personal
account. Did you write it?

Me:
Yes.

Him:
Why?

Me:
I bought a Cadillac.

Him:
A $5,000 Cadillac? Where is it?

Me:
Impound in Covington, Louisiana.

Him:
We’ll talk about this when I get home.

Baylor:
I’m getting hungry.

Me:
You could not possibly be hungry
.

Baylor:
I am
.

Me:

Baylor:
Davis?

When it was obvious there was no sneaking into Paragon’s website, I changed my strategy
and shot my way in. I injected a rogue code in the form of SQL (Structured Query Language)
(you can keep this from happening by always using parameterized queries, so hackers
can’t ask your system random questions and get direct answers) and asked the software
for a list of conference clients.

It looked like this:

“SELECT * FROM table CLIENT LIST = ALABAMA

+ conference + column = LIST ‘’ OR ‘1’=’1’;”

Boom. It answered me with a list of Paragon’s Alabama clients.

Next and last query, because alarms were surely sounding all over Paragon’s system
that the website had been breached:

“SELECT * FROM table MINT CONDITION WINNERS = LIST + column = LIST ‘’ OR ‘1’=’1’;”

It came back with three names. Including Cooter Platt’s.

Then, as often happens during a covert cyber romp, Paragon’s system caught me, locked
down, and I got the blue screen of death. I had my computers set up to implode rather
than give up my location or identity.

I’m hard on computers.

I still had my laptop. I turned to it and pulled up the video feed from Event Hall
B, which I’d completely forgotten while I was hacking. There was no video feed. The
five camera feeds Baylor had crawled through the air ducts to place had been cut.
Baylor did not answer his phone. It, too, had been disconnected.

Paragon had Baylor.

Twenty-One

The last thing I cared about at the moment was food. I thought of lunch only when
I looked at my watch and realized I’d hacked straight through it, leaving Baylor in
the ceiling. Time slips away when you’re paralyzing a remote operating system. I think
it flew through my brain that Baylor hadn’t checked in, but I wrote it off to him
falling asleep.

He’d fallen, but not asleep.

I ran.

When I made it home to the Mardi Gras Mansion, I still didn’t have a new key, and
it took longer for Sears to answer the door than it had for me to get there from 3B.
When he did open the door, I brushed by him and saw socks—Bradley’s Marcoliani cashmere
socks—dangling from the fake magnolia tree.

“Hey there, Mrs. Cole?”

“Not now, Sears.”

I ran down the hall, dodging stray socks, until I reached my closet, quickly changed
into a boring suit, sprayed my hair mop-water brown, and ran more.

“Hey, Mrs. Cole?”

“Later, Sears.”

There was activity at Jay Leno’s place, but I was too busy calling the elevator—poke
poke poke—to take the time to avert my eyes and possibly get a glimpse of Dionne Warwick.
I wouldn’t have looked down the hall to see Elvis right then.

I raced through the casino, took the escalator steps three at a time, and couldn’t
get past the gold furniture and to Megan with the braces fast enough, who I found
bent over her phone double-tapping Instagram pictures of baby polar bears.

“Whoa!” She grabbed the sides of her gilded desk.

“I’m with the Gaming Commission.” I waved my fake badge. “Let me in.”

She eyed me suspiciously, recognition dawning all over her face, and she opened her
mouth to argue. I didn’t want to shoot this girl; I was in enough trouble. So I ignored
her protests and pushed through the double doors without permission, while she objected
behind me. Two Paragon guards, at their posts, snapped to attention and blocked my
way. I showed them my identification. “Gaming Commission. You have my man.”

They eyed each other, then me. One of them said, “Stay here.”

They stepped away, turned their backs, spoke quietly, then one pulled up a shoulder
and talked into his radio. Back to me.

“You can check with the casino’s general manager about the man you’re looking for.”

They turned Baylor over to Bradley. Which was much better than shooting him. This
was going to be ugly. I ran.

Calinda raised a cautionary eyebrow, then waved me in.

I couldn’t catch my breath for anything.

My husband was not happy to see me. Not the least bit happy to see me.

Baylor was in a chair across from Bradley, blood everywhere, an icepack on his face.
He pulled it away and smiled his goofy Baylor smile. His nose was broken and his upper
lip was swollen, purple-black, and split.

“Oh God, Baylor.” I reached out and grabbed something furniture to hold me upright.
“I am so sorry.”

“Ith’s cool. Third thime.”

I touched my nose. Which has been broken no times.

“I’m so very deeply profoundly sorry, Baylor.”

“The falling parth was cool,” he said. I took a seat on the other side of him and
placed a hand on his knee, not yet making eye contact with Bradley, who hadn’t said
a word. He would. He just hadn’t yet. “Catching a sloth machine with my fathe wasn’th
cool.”

“Davis.”

My world stopped spinning.

“Take Baylor and both of you go home. If you would, stay there until the conference
is over. Home, Davis. Stay home.” His words were measured, delivered verdict style.
“Go upstairs and don’t leave the residence, unless you’re leaving the property, until
our convention guests and vendors have checked out tomorrow.”

“Bradley—”

“I don’t want to hear it, Davis.” He stood. “Not one word.” His arm shot out and he
showed us the door. “Don’t call me twenty times and ask if I still love you. Of course
I do. But today is the last day we’ll work together.”

* * *

There’s crying, there’s talking, and then there’s cry-talking. When I called my father,
I was off the chart cry-talking.

“Are you home, honey? Did you go home?”

“No.” I gasped for air between bawling and sobbing. “Baylor wanted a
doooooonut
. How was I supposed to say
noooooo
? I broke his
noooooooose
!”

“Honey, you need a vacation. That’s all. You’ve been working too hard—”

“I have
noooooot
, Daddy. I haven’t worked all
suuuuummer
until
nooooooow,
and it’s been the worst week of my
liiiiiiiiife
.”

I reached a whole new level of hysterical communiqué, on and on about platinum and
Long John Silver, and I didn’t stop until Baylor yelled at me from the bullpen.

“Dathis! Thake it thown a nohth! I can’th ethen eath my donuths!”

“You have to calm down,” my father said. “I don’t understand what you’re saying, honey.
You’ve been out of high school a long time and I’m not good at this anymore.”

I scaled it back to a hiccupy drivel.

I used my sleeves to mop my face.

“Daddy, when you fired me, you still loved me, right?”

“Of course, Davis. Of course I did. And Bradley’s not going to fire you. He just needs
some time.” He went on to tell me I was his sunshine, his only sunshine, and he promised
me Bradley would love me for the rest of my life too, no matter how many legs Baylor
broke.

“His nose, Daddy. He broke his
noooooose
.”

“There you go, Sweet Pea. It’s not nearly as bad as it could’ve been.”

“You didn’t see Bradley’s face, Daddy.”

And here I had a little relapse, but I soon regained my composure. After Baylor screamed
at me again. (“Shuth uff!”)

“Daddy, can we talk about Cooter for a minute?”

(Sniff sniff.)

“Cooter Platt?”

My first truly comprehensible words since I’d dialed: “How many Cooters do we know?”

“I see your point,” he said. “What about Cooter?”

“He’s here.”

“At the Bellissimo? I knew he was out of town. I’m keeping an eye on things at the
bank for him, but he never said where he was going. You know how Cooter keeps to himself.
Just part of banking, Sugar. He doesn’t tell his or anyone else’s business.”

“Well, he’s here. There are five hundred independent bankers from Alabama here.”

“Davis, sweetie, there aren’t five hundred independent bankers
in
Alabama.”

A fact, having escaped me all week, that now had my full attention. He was right.
If they weren’t all Alabama bankers, who were they? Daddy interrupted me forming yet
another conspiracy theory—alien bankers!—my new hobby.

“Cooter’s at the Bellissimo. And?”

“I’m going to ask this gently, Daddy, because I’ve been so wrong all week long, but
is there any chance Cooter crossed over to the dark side?”

“Did I hear you right?” my father asked.

“Something’s going on, Daddy, and Cooter’s in the middle of it.”

“Cooter isn’t mixed up in anything criminal. He’s as honest as the day is long.”

And these have been some very long days.

“His was one of the three names I turned up on Paragon’s website,” I said. “Is there
anything going on at the bank? Anything unusual? Strangers? Big deposits or withdrawals?”

“I wouldn’t think so, honey, because Blanche hasn’t said a word. I meet her there
in the morning to unlock and I go back at five to help her lock it down.”

Blanche Osborne. Pine Apple Savings and Loan’s bank (and secret) teller. Insufficient
funds at eleven in the morning, the whole town knew by lunch.

“Blanche hasn’t said a word?”

“She complains about her hips and Earl.” (Earl is Blanche’s third husband. Not throwing
stones, just sayin’.) “That’s it.”

Odd that Cooter’s name would be on the short list I’d found, but having known Cooter
all my life, I had to agree with my father.

“Be careful at the bank anyway, Daddy. The Paragon people are up to something. The
chances of it having anything to do with the Pine Apple bank are—” I hated to admit
it, but I had to—“slim, but it’s Friday. Payday. And just be careful, Daddy.”

“You too, Punkin.”

“One last thing.”

“Shoot.”

“What’s in Horn Hill, Alabama?”

I could hear my father thinking. “Nothing.”

“That’s what I thought. Would you mind nosing around anyway? Just take a peek at their
tax records, real estate transfers, any unusual activity.”

“Why?” Daddy asked. “What are you looking for, specifically?”

“This company, Paragon, has a recently acquired facility in Horn Hill.”

“I don’t know what they would’ve acquired. There’s not a thing in Horn Hill but an
old sock factory, Davis. They probably don’t have more than two hundred people in
the whole town.” He said it as if Horn Hill wasn’t even a dot on the map, while Pine
Apple was the hot spot of Alabama. “But I’ll look. I’ll let you know if I turn up
anything.”

“Thank you, Daddy, and my last one last thing.” I was beginning to feel like my old
self again, my marriage probably in no better shape than Fantasy’s, but at least I’d
stopped blubbering. “Does anyone in Pine Apple have anything in the bank worth stealing?”

“Now, Davis.”

“I know. I know. I’m not asking you to spill anyone’s secrets. I’m just looking under
every rock.”

“Stop worrying about rocks,” he said. “I have that covered.”

* * *

Baylor, his face, particularly around his eyes, taking on a deep red hue in broad
circles that went up to his eyebrows and dipped down on his cheeks, was asleep on
the sofa. I pried the chocolate frosted donut from his sugar-coated hand, dropped
it in a bakery box, then stacked the three boxes and threw them away. He’d go into
a sugar coma if he woke up and found the donuts in front of him again.

At our little kitchenette smashing the boxes, the coffee pot spoke to me. It said,
Give Bradley some space. Save Conner Hughes quietly, and in doing so, you just may
save yourself.
Then it said,
Make coffee
.

Baylor slept, with one little outburst requesting everyone leave his turkey shoes
alone. I watched the coffee drip, poured myself a cup and sipped it slowly, putting
(off my next chore) a plan of action in place. I wanted to curl up on the sofa across
from him and take a nap myself, because we needed to be in top form tonight. It would
be the three of us against the three Paragon techs. Because with one sip of caffeine
it hit me, like a slot machine to the face, exactly where I could find Fantasy. She
had a date. My partner, married with three kids, had a date, and she’d be at the Dionne
Warwick concert along with everyone else, including my husband. I’d nab her from
the concert, and somehow, someway, the three of us would extract our valued business
partner, Conner Hughes, from the three men in black. And maybe then this feeling of
impending doom, this cloud of apprehension I’d had following me since Monday, would
lift.

If I’m wrong again, Bradley won’t have to fire me. I’ll quit.

I stepped into the dressing room while Baylor napped. I ditched the Gaming Commission
outfit, shampooed back to red, and dressed to sell my soul to the devil. Or Bianca,
as it were.

* * *

“I need to speak to you, Mrs. Sanders.” I’d been talking to her bedroom door for ten
minutes. “Please let me in.”

“Go away, David.”

“It’s Davis.”

“I don’t care. Go away.”

The two wet black button noses of Bianca’s little dogs, Gianna and Ghita (they’re
of Yorkshire, England descent, but with Italian influences, because Bianca is so Italian,
thus the ridiculous Italian names) peeked out and sniffed at the bottom of the door.
They must not have known it was me, because there was no deep-throat growling, or
it was possible they were distracted by the smell of the cat.

“I really need your help, Mrs. Sanders.”

“Not my problem, David. Get your tall black girl to help you.”

There was something so whack-a-mole about the dog noses under the door—one, then the
other, then none, then both.

“That’s who I need your help with.”

The door flew open so suddenly I almost fell through it. Recovering my balance, I
wondered if I might’ve been interrupting a photo shoot for her Victoria’s Secret Shape
cover. Bianca stood there, tapping a feathered foot, arms crossed, dressed in a head-to-toe
mint green silk pajama set. In the middle of the afternoon. Ruffled cami over short
shorts, a floor-length matching silk jacket, and kitten-heeled slippers with feather
pompoms at the toes. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a low ponytail and she looked
pale under her perfect makeup.

Bianca was an exquisite woman who wore that dipped-in-money demeanor like skin, and
with her it wasn’t an act, but who she was. I felt a teeny tug on my heartstrings
that she was wasting her forties worrying about her fifties, and I felt a deep-seated
fear about how all our lives would change when Bianca heard the news that Paisley
would soon deliver. And just like every time I let myself feel something for her,
she opened her mouth and ruined it.

“Do you not understand your job? It’s to help
me
. Under what circumstances would I help you?”

I leaned on the doorframe and sighed, a bone weary end-of-my-rope sigh. This was why
I didn’t waste too much time feeling sorry for Bianca. I was here for three reasons:
One, it was my fault she’d locked herself in the bedroom; two, I told my husband I
would and Lord knows I needed a few points with him; and three, I really did need
her help. With all I do for her, you’d think she’d at least hear me out. “Five minutes,
Mrs. Sanders? Just five minutes?”