DOUBLE MINT (6 page)

“So it was a joint operation between Casimiro and Thibodeaux.”

“I don’t know the details, Davis, and I’m sure I don’t want to.”

The less we knew, the better. We already had a moral and legal obligation to do something
about it by knowing at all, but several factors came into play. For one, four thousand
people, including us, would lose their jobs for the old sins of a few. For another,
it was history. No one was minting or printing money in here now. And lastly, both
Salvatore Casimiro and Ty Thibodeaux were out of commission. Casimiro had spent the
past year getting out of the casino game, and when he wasn’t busy doing that he was
in the hospital, and from what I’d heard, Thibodeaux had gotten his Bellissimo gold
watch, then went straight to his sick bed, where he remained. Both men were in their
late eighties, sick, and what good would it do?

My last question, and the one weighing heaviest on my heart. “Bradley, did Mr. Sanders
sanction this?”

“Richard didn’t know anything about any of this until Thibodeaux retired six months
ago and not a minute before.”

Three of us knew.

“Let me get this straight,” I whispered. “Cash was printed in this room.”

“Yes.”

“And coins were minted right here.”

“Yes.”

“But the refrigerator doesn’t work.”

“Weird.”

We went back to being married and the vaults, vault operations, counterfeiting, The
Money Room, Salvatore Casimiro, and Ty Thibodeaux were all subjects Bradley and I
hadn’t discussed one time since that night. The Thibodeauxs we discussed, but not
in this context. And here we were, nine months later, and it was the only subject
in town. Holder Darby walked away from a good job, which I’m now suspecting might
not have had a thing to do with Hello Kitty. Next, the vault was inventoried, only
to discover millions in platinum gone, replaced with fakes, and now, a guest had disappeared
and left us with a bathtub full of counterfeit money. Counterfeit money I suspected
came from a secret vault room down the hall. Of our home.

Time for me to have a little chat with Magnolia Thibodeaux.

Six

“What are we going to do with this?” Fantasy and I were waiting on elevators with
a suitcase full of counterfeit money. It’s exactly one-half of our work day, waiting
on elevators.

“I’ll take it upstairs to the Bayou Barn. Grab Baylor, if you can find him, and we’ll
meet at my place and try to track down Mr. Funny Money.” I adjusted the stiff stacks
of bills in my bra to itch a little less.

“I’m wondering if I should book a room here tonight.” Fantasy couldn’t stop staring
at the suitcase. “It looks like it’s going to be a long one.”

“You can stay with us.”

“No way in hell I’m staying at your place, Davis. I don’t have time for all that bad
juju.”

Everyone hated where we lived. Everyone. Except my grandmother.

While Fantasy took a public elevator to the mezzanine level on her way to our 3B offices
to (book herself a room in the hotel) locate Baylor, I took a staff elevator to the
lobby, rolled the money around two corners, then caught the private elevator to the
Ya Ya Haunted House. Actually, it’s a semi-private elevator. When Jay Leno’s place
is occupied, those guests have access to it too. It didn’t happen often that I was
in the elevator with anyone else, but of course it happened today. I was dressed
as Olivia Abbott, Special Events Woman, so it wasn’t a security problem running into
anyone, just an annoyance. I was against the mirrored back wall, my hand on the extended
suitcase handle, when someone stuck an arm out, caught the doors as they were closing,
and rushed in.

I was about to ask to see his passkey for this elevator when he, a tall dark man,
looked up from his phone, got an eyeful of me, then slammed himself against the elevator
wall, doing his very best to climb it. The whites of his eyes were so very white.

The doors opened on twenty-nine and the guy bolted out and ran for his life, turning
the corner to Jay Leno’s place. Which meant he must be on Dionne Warwick’s front team.
Someone always arrived days before the superstars, or, in this case, former superstar,
to inventory the honey mustard pretzels and grape Nehi soda we’d agreed to stock Jay’s
place with. The more former the star, the more detailed the contract demands. We had
a has-been ’70s rock star recently who wouldn’t agree to perform unless all the linens
in Jay’s place were blue. Towels, bedding, fluffy pillows, in slate blue. The band,
all card-carrying members of the AARP, the drummer on a mobility scooter, had one
hit a million years ago, “Blue Yonder.” The week before, Taylor Swift had asked for
nothing but enough space and time to meet her fans. And she said please.

It was only when I dug in my pocket for my front door key, one of those iron skeleton
numbers, and why wouldn’t it be, that I looked down and saw all kinds of money sticking
out of my bra and the butt of my Glock poking out of the waistband of my von Furstenberg
FBI pants. That’s why the poor Dionne Warwick guy was sweating bullets. He thought
I was going to shoot him. I thought he was one of those people who hated elevators.

I opened the front door and the zipper exploded on the suitcase. Money everywhere.
At ten o’clock in the morning.

The Igloo cooler large enough to stuff a dead body in, which is our makeshift refrigerator,
sits just inside our front door under the shade of the twelve-foot-tall fake magnolia
tree in a hundred-gallon cast iron tub, so we don’t have to lug ice all the way to
the kitchen. It made a perfect shelf for a million or better counterfeit dollars.
So we wouldn’t trip all over it. I lobbed lobbed lobbed the money. The suitcase was
shot. And by shot, I don’t mean I shot it, I mean it was history. I was stacking the
money when I got a whiff of something. Or someone.

She’d been here
again
. She might still be here. She is
so
in the middle of this mess, whatever this mess is. I am
so
sick of this woman.

“Magnolia? Where are you?” My heels clacked around the foyer. “Magnolia?” I could
smell her everywhere and I heard a rustling. It sounded like it was above me, but
the origins of noise in Muffaletta Manor were hard to pin down; the refrigerator drowns
and distorts them. I got out of my new home, locking her in her old one. Not one to
leave anything alone, Magnolia had four huge ficus trees around a black iron patio
set in the
hall
. I dragged the iron bench across the hall carpet and blocked the front door. “Gotcha.”
I dusted my hands. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I dialed Bradley’s office.

Of the masses who work at the Bellissimo, I can safely say only three outside my immediate
work circle know who I am and what I do. Maybe four. Okay, at this point, maybe a
dozen. One who certainly did was my husband’s personal assistant, Calinda Wilson.
Calinda came with Bradley from the Grand Casino, down Beach Boulevard a few miles,
where he was the former lead attorney and she was his former personal and legal assistant.
She knew me and my job way before Bradley took the casino manager’s position here.
She’s been well aware of our relationship too, having caught us on Bradley’s desk.
More than once.

I texted her:
Calinda, I need Bradley upstairs right now.

He’s covered up,
she texted back.
Four calls and five people waiting.

It’s urgent. 911.

Is it about the refrigerator?

No.

I’ll let him know.

Calinda is in her late forties, knows what Bradley needs before he does, and is armed
with a degree in paralegal studies from Georgetown University and a banana milkshake.
Calinda drinks banana milkshakes all day every day, trying to stay an ounce above
bone thin. She’s bone thin, because she has no taste buds. She can’t taste a thing,
so she cares very little about eating. Every once in a while, she says, she can taste
a hint of banana, thus the banana milkshakes instead of chocolate, or my favorite,
strawberry, but otherwise, nothing. Wouldn’t she be fun at parties? Tossing back jalapeno
poppers like they were popcorn?

I waited on Bradley’s call behind and between two of Magnolia’s ficus trees, with
an eye and a loaded gun on my front door and occasionally, the elevator. My phone
buzzed.

“Wife.” He sounded out of breath. “I’ve been out of the vault two minutes and I only
have one minute to talk.”

“Bradley. Magnolia is in our haunted house. I’ve got her cornered. Get up here.”

He ate up half of his one minute with total silence.

“And I have more than a million dollars in counterfeit cash I just took from a guest
room.”

Nothing.

“Bradley, Magnolia’s in our house.”

Nothing.

“Bradley! Two and two! Fake coins! Fake money! She’s behind every bit of this.”

I could hear him breathing.

“Davis, we’ll get to the bottom of this, and I promise you, it won’t be Magnolia.
That being said, I’ll be there in a minute. Stay put.”

I screamed when the elevator doors opened, my phone flew through the air, I accidently
shot the ceiling three times—bang, bang, bang, accident, accident, accident. Baylor
and Fantasy flew out of the elevator and drew on (me) the shooting trees, and all
this happened on the exact click of the clock as Dionne Warwick’s front man was rounding
the corner. He let out an otherworldly crazy shriek when he saw me crawling out of
the bushes with a smoking gun at the same time Fantasy and Baylor turned on him. They
trained their sights between his eyes, and that was when the ridiculous entryway chandelier,
a Smart Car-sized lead glass drippy thing garnished with bobbing jeweled magnolias
and lucky recipient of the three rounds I’d accidently fired, decided to come tearing
out of the ceiling.

Dionne Warwick’s guy passed out.

Just then the elevator doors, unprovoked, closed, scaring the living daylights out
of us. It’s nothing short of a miracle we didn’t shoot each other.

There was panting (me and Fantasy) and foul (foul) language from Baylor, the kind
of language I reserve for vehicular surprises, like when someone tries to run me off
the road, smoke and dust rising from the chandelier rubble in the floor, and it was
Fantasy who said, “Holster! Everyone! Holster your guns!” It was a good idea, but
before we could click on our safeties and maybe get Dionne Warwick’s guy off the floor,
the elevator doors opened, again, for no good reason—none of us were pushing elevator
buttons—and it was but by the grace of God we did not execute my husband.

* * *

Bradley crunched through the chandelier.

I opened my mouth to explain and he stopped me with a hand. “We’ll talk later.”

Baylor and Bradley went in first to catch Magnolia. Fantasy and I waited in the chandelier
rubble, keeping an eye on Dionne Warwick’s guy.

“Some people just can’t handle the least little bit of excitement.”

I fanned him with a branch I’d snapped off a ficus tree.

Fantasy said, “He’s cute. Corporate cute. I like his socks.” His socks were mint green,
with little black birds on them. She kneeled down and checked him again. “Strong pulse.
He’ll be okay. He smells good.” She looked up at me. “What in the
world
is going on here? Holder Darby, the vault, Mr. Funny Money, this guy laid out on
the floor. It’s summer, you know? We’re supposed to be taking a breather.”

“The only thing I know is that Magnolia Thibodeaux is behind every bit of it. That’s
all I know.”

“Davis,” Fantasy said. “You have to stop with that.”

“She’s going down.”

But maybe not today. Bradley and Baylor claimed she wasn’t there. They also claimed
to have inspected under every bed, in every closet, and even the refrigerator. They
were back in five minutes, which isn’t enough time to find an elephant in the French
Quarter Freak Show, much less Magnolia, who’d lived here almost twenty years and knew
where to hide.

“I’m telling you, Bradley, she’s in there.”

“And I’m telling you, Davis, she’s not.”

Past the twelve-foot-tall silk magnolia tree and the Igloo fridge smothered in counterfeit
cash, then through the King Cake tearoom, is the great room of the Jambalaya Junkyard.
Think high-school-gymnasium-slash-Hooters. This is where the Thibodeauxs, big LSU
fans, watched football with two hundred of their closest friends. The room had a total
of sixteen sofas and thirty-two club chairs, all arranged around big screen televisions
in the four corners of the room. And by big screens, I mean you could park RVs in
here and call it a drive-in theater. The fake Bourbon Street balconies closest to
the entertainment pits were football themed. Jesus and Tigers, Tigers and Jesus. Bradley
and I claimed one of the corners as our own, the one closest to the kitchen, and stayed
as far away from the rest of the stadium as we could.

Bradley and Baylor lugged Dionne Warwick’s guy to one of the many, many magnolia sofas,
and Baylor accidentally banged the poor guy’s head as they lowered him onto it.

“Oh. My bad, dude.”

I said, “I don’t think he can hear you.”

Fantasy slipped a pillow that said
Geaux Tigers
under his head. “How do we know this guy is on Dionne Warwick’s front team?”

“I rode up with him earlier,” I said. “He’s got to be on Dionne Warwick’s front team
or he wouldn’t have a key to Jay’s place.”

She shrugged. I shrugged. There are tens of thousands of people in this building at
sunrise on Easter morning. We can’t know, or keep up with, every single one of them.

Baylor fell into a green velvet loveseat that sprouted six-inch gold rope tassels
from every seam and started singing, “Here, kitty kitty.”

I’d forgotten all about the cat.

Fantasy and I sat across from Baylor in side by side matching purple pleather recliners.
Bradley, who generally keeps a cooler head than the rest of us, stepped into the kitchen
and returned with a drippy kitchen towel. Fantasy took it from him and put it across
Mr. Dionne Warwick’s forehead. Next, Bradley Cole poured three generous shots of breakfast
bourbon from a crystal decanter and passed each of us one. We made quick work of it.

He paced. Back and forth. “Who is this man?”

Three huge shrugs.

“What happened to the chandelier?”

Baylor and Fantasy pointed at me. (Thanks a lot.)

“It was an accident, Bradley.”

“Of that,” he said, “I have no doubt.”

We sat quietly as Bradley paced. After five minutes of wearing the magnolias off the
rug, he said, “Stay with him,” to Fantasy and Baylor. “You.” He pointed. “Come with
me.”

The man on the magnolia sofa could have been in a medically-induced coma wearing noise-canceling
headphones and Bradley would still want to step out of his hospital room rather than
discuss anything in front of him. I followed my husband to the kitchen, where the
big red monster made enough cover noise to give us privacy.

“What is going on, Davis? First the wedding, which was a disaster, and now this. We
have to, at the bare minimum, keep the doors open. So far,” he looked at his watch,
“two hours into this work week, and we’re not doing so well.”

“Did you see all that money?” I nodded in the direction of the foyer. “Number one,
it came from a guest room. Number two, it’s counterfeit. And number three, the guest
is gone. Poof, gone. As in Holder Darby gone.”

“I saw the money. I tripped over the money. And the first thing I need you to do is
get the money off the property. I don’t want it anywhere near the conference game.”

A conference perk: Conferences get private slot tournaments in the events hall of
the conference center. Last year, we hosted a cupcake conference, and their slot machines
were all cupcakes. Fortunes and Frosting. So cute. (Not real cupcakes. You can’t get
a cupcake inside a slot machine. The slot machine graphics were cupcakes. When the
players hit the right combination of cupcake and frosting, they won. The jackpot was
three birthday sprinkle cupcakes in a row. The candles lit and the player won $25,000.)