Double Whammy (A Davis Way Crime Caper) (18 page)

“Does the landlord know you live like this?” He pushed past me and kicked the door closed with one of his dinosaur feet. “Good God.” He recoiled. “Crack a window,” he waved his hand in front of his face. “Didn’t you just finish a housekeeping gig? Did you not learn anything?”

“Yeah,” I was on his heels as he helped himself, poking his big bald head in every room. “I learned that I needed a break from cleaning.”

He finished his tour at the upright slot machine. The door was ajar and most of the insides out. Wires were everywhere. He turned to me, paws on middle. Not having eyebrows didn’t keep him from raising them.

I shrugged. “I lied.”

His face contorted in a way that made me uncomfortable.

“I need to talk to you,” I explained. In a place that’s not bugged, I didn’t explain.

He huffed, and turned toward the kitchen. I could imagine the light fixtures in the condo below Bradley’s rattling in their sockets and clouds of dust and debris falling, tracing his footsteps.

No Hair helped himself to the deep cabinet beneath the sink. He banged around and came out with a roll of paper towels, a squirt bottle of something blue, a squirt bottle of something clear, and two garbage bags. He carefully loosened, slid out of, then neatly rolled his Snoopy and Woodstock necktie. He put it on top of the refrigerator. “We’ll talk later.” He passed me a garbage bag.

Who knew? Teeth was on Jenny Craig and No Hair was on Merry Maids.

*    *    *

I thought I’d been through every square inch of Bradley Cole’s place, but I’d missed a storage closet off the kitchen. I knew it was there; I’d peeked in, but I hadn’t turned on the light, so I hadn’t seen the stacked washer and dryer. Or the broom and dustpan. Or the vacuum cleaner, the non-industrial type. It was a pleasant surprise, this bevy-of-cleanliness room, because not only were my clothes in need of a romp through the machines, so were most of Bradley Cole’s.

No Hair asked for coffee as he was transferring a wet blob of bed sheets from the washer to the dryer, then loading mine and Bradley’s underwear, separated by lights and darks, into the washer. He held up a pair of blue-striped boxer shorts by a stubby fingertip and waved them through the air like a flag. “Anything you’d like to say?”

I shook my head furiously. It was all extremely humiliating.

“What about that coffee?”

“There’s no coffee here.”

“I bet you a hundred bucks there’s coffee here.”

He won. There was a French press in one of the kitchen cabinets and coffee in the freezer. As warm coffee smells mingled with lavender-scented laundry smells—a definite improvement, I must say—I asked No Hair what was going on at work.

“Obviously nothing.” He was folding towels. Perfect rectangles. “Or I wouldn’t be here washing your clothes.”

Touché.

“Natalie is out of the office, and Mr. Sanders is in New Hampshire,” he said. “And that doesn’t happen too often.”

“I never go to New Hampshire either.”

He gave me a look. “It doesn’t happen often that they both are out of the office.”

Right.

“What’s going on in New Hampshire?”

“The Sanders’ son, Thomas? Switching schools.”

“It’s a weird time of year to switch schools, don’t you think? Why so far away? And why did Natalie go?”

He threw down a towel he was folding. “Lady. You make my head hurt. Why can’t you ask one question at a time?”

Why do people ask me that? Is it so hard to follow simple conversation? How is it that my family talks this way and we all understand each other?

A clean condo later, we were sitting at the unearthed bistro table in the dining alcove, three computers up and running, and the dismantled slot machine that enveloped us the only mess left in the whole place. No Hair’s bulk was torturing the chair; it cried out in pain.

“Tell me why you’re doing this.” No Hair was talking about the equipment that encircled us.

“Tell me about Mr. and Mrs. Sanders.”

“Okay,” No Hair said. “You first.”

“No,” I said, “you’re my guest. You go first.”

“Oh, no,” No Hair said, “ladies first.”

This went on awhile until No Hair got tired of it.

“Okay. Geesh,” he said. “This is for you to know, not repeat.” He looked at me like he’d kill me.

I held both hands up, surrendering, assuring him I wouldn’t dare subject myself to death by him.

“How much do you know about hyenas?”

Fear gripped me. “Did you find one in here?” I jerked my feet off the floor.

He closed his eyes in a meditation sort of way. Without opening them he said, “They eat their young.”

I made choking, gagging, ach noises.

“They’re better mothers than Bianca Sanders,” he said. “And what do you know about black widow spiders?”

I wasn’t going to overreact. If he found some in here, I’m sure he vacuumed them up because he’d moved every piece of furniture away from the walls to vacuum behind, and even used the hose thing twice. Note to self: Put vacuum cleaner full of spiders outside with note: free to good home.

“They eat their mates,” No Hair said about the spiders. “And they’re better spouses than Bianca Sanders.”

“Why would Mr. Sanders marry someone like that?”

“I’m his employee,” No Hair said, “not his therapist. But my guess would be that she was a means to an end.”

“People aren’t that shallow,” I said. “He wouldn’t have married her unless he loved her.”

“Funny,” No Hair scoffed, “coming from you.”

“You don’t know a thing about me.” I stuck my chin out. “Or why I got married.”

“Whatever you say,” he mocked me.

“You probably don’t know a
thing
about being married, so don’t judge me.”

“I’ve been married to the same wonderful woman for twenty-two years, thank you. And if she kept house like you, it would have been twenty-two minutes.”

Well, now, this changed things. I tapped my loose lips for a second and wondered how to weasel out. I gave him a sheepish apologetic smile, while also wondering what his wife’s hair situation might be. He sat there daring me to say something else. So I did.

“What does any of this have to do with Natalie?”

“I don’t know that it does have anything to do with Natalie. Why do you ask?”

“Didn’t you say they were together?”

“No,” No Hair said, “I said they were both out of the office. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re together. What is it you’re really asking here? If Natalie and Richard have something going on?”

The thought had never crossed my mind. Until just then.

“All I know,” No Hair said, “is that it was Richard’s decision to get his son out of town.”

I looked to the four thousand pieces of slot machine. I was beginning to understand why Mr. Sanders might want his son far, far away.

No Hair poured himself more coffee. “Now. Your turn,” he said. “What’s all this?” His hands splayed open.

I sucked in a big breath. It was time to bring No Hair in on the big secret. “The big game? The one I’m playing in Private Gaming?”

He sniffed.

“Rigged.”

No Hair shifted positions. “I got bad news for you.”

“What?” I’m sure my eyes were saucers.

“Everybody knows that.”

“Knows what?”

“That there’s something going on with that game.”

“You know she picks who wins?”

“Bianca?” No Hair asked.

I nodded. “The black widow hyena herself.”

“Yes. We know that, too.”

“Is there any special reason no one bothered to tell me?”

“Everything’s a need-to-know, Davis. You didn’t need to know. All you need to do is get dressed up like Bianca, wait until your ex-husband’s got a few drinks in him, saddle up to him in Private Gaming, and say, ‘Now, let’s go over this again.’”

I opened my mouth to speak, closed it, opened it again.

“Why can’t you do that?” he asked.

I fiddled, picked at things, hummed, and generally let the clock tick.

“Come on, motor mouth.” No Hair tapped a big foot. “You could talk the paint off the wall. You can certainly talk about this.”

“He doesn’t know how to win the game,” I said.

“How do you know that?”

“Because there’s no money trail.”

“Go on,” No Hair said.

“Bianca’s the brains behind it. She has the key, and she’s keeping the money.”

“How’d she get it?”

“Get what?”

“How!” No Hair raised both hands to the heavens like he was begging for mercy. “How did Bianca get the key?”

“It goes back years,” I told him, “back to Vegas, and the programmer who wrote the software. Bianca must have gotten it from him, and the only other person who might know it is—” I clapped both of my hands over my mouth to keep the word
Teeth
in there. Something told me that if I tossed Teeth’s name in the ring, No Hair would knock mine out, then ring my neck.

“Who?”

“Not Eddie.”

“Who, then?”

“Who, when?”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” No Hair shot up, reached the kitchen in one big step, retrieved his tie from the top of the refrigerator, then began flipping it around in a very practiced way. “What’s it going to take for you to wind this up?”

“Figuring out the software.” I did
ta-da!

“What then?”

“What when?”

“After you figure out the software. What then?”

“I’ll test it.”

“How?”

“By winning the game.”

No Hair half laughed. “That could be dangerous. Two of the three people who’ve won it are dead. Your ex is next in line.”

And there it was, what I’d been gnawing on, and the reason I ordered Chinese food I couldn’t choke down, and why I could only log two or three pillow hours in twenty-four: How far up my list should saving that rat bastard’s life be? Should saving his sorry butt even be on my list?

“Man, you guys set me up.” I let out a long frustrated puff of air.

“You were a perfect storm for the job.” We sat in complete silence until he said, “And no one set you up. It’s my understanding there’s wording in the contract you signed that covers all this. Apparently you didn’t bother to read it.”

That damn phone book again. “If I’d known this had anything to do with my ex-husband,” I said, “I wouldn’t be here.”

“Why?” he asked. “People get divorced every day of the week. No one’s asking you to get back together with him.”

I thought it best to push my cuticles back instead of respond.

“Does the guy bite?”

Which made me think of Teeth again.

“Your indignation is hard to understand, Davis,” No Hair said. “You act as if you laid all your cards out on the table. You did
not
. You could have said, ‘By the way, my ex-husband hangs out here and he doesn’t like me much’ but you didn’t. Maybe if you had, some of this would have been explained to you.”

“By whom?” I asked. “Who is running this show, No Hair?”

My hand flew to my mouth. Now we sat in dead silence. Oops.

“What did you call me?”

There is a God, and he called No Hair on the phone right then, keeping the oversized bully from squashing me like a bug. He listened, grunted, then stood. “I’ve got to get back.” At the door, he turned to me. “Where does the old man fit in?”

“What old man?” I asked.

“The old guy you ride around with.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Give me a break,” No Hair said. “You think the rest of us are idiots?”

My mouth dropped open. I thought the I-Spy-Davis program had pretty much ended. “Do you guys know when I shave my legs?”

“Nobody cares when you shave your legs.”

Sadly enough, all too true, except Bradley Cole might care because it was his razor.

No Hair wasn’t going to leave until I answered him, and I was ready, ready, ready for him to get going.

“I think his son went down first.”

“The guy’s a cab driver in south Mississippi. What could his son have to do with anything?”

“No,” I said, lowering my voice. “The guy’s a former Las Vegas detective. And his son is the one who wrote the glitch into the software.”

“Where’s the son?”

“Six. Feet. Under.”

No Hair’s eyes narrowed. “Do Natalie or Richard know any of this?”

“I don’t know who knows what or what knows who.”

His phone began ringing again. “Check those sheets,” he said over his shoulder.

“What sheets?” I asked. Time sheets? Data sheets?

“The
bed
sheets.”

FIFTEEN

No Hair’s visit ate up the afternoon, most of it cleaning. I didn’t go to the casino and play video poker that night, because Eddie Crawford was a registered guest at the Bellissimo, so I gave myself a pass. I’d drop-kicked Eddie out of my life twice already, both times of great personal loss, and figuring this out without having to clean up after his exit a third time was my goal.

Oddly enough, though, part of me wished I were going in to work tonight, certainly not to breathe the same air as Eddie the Ass, but because a shower, expensive clothes, makeup, and two lemon drop martinis would feel good. Who was I kidding? I wanted to play the video poker machines. I played with the equivalent of Monopoly money; no one, certainly not me personally, was losing real money when I discarded two cowboys (kings, remember?) and held the lone ace hoping for the miracle of three more on the second draw. I’d played the game long enough, including my first stint weeks ago with the retired-teacher-sisters, to be challenged by it. I knew what the cards were capable of, and wanted to be sitting there when they lined up. I wanted to hit a royal flush, and I hadn’t even come close. The best I’d done on the Monster Machines in Private Gaming was hit a full house four different times. I was stunned by how intense the game was, to the point of losing track of the job, the luxury, and the green contacts. It was just me and the game.

Two long blasts from a car horn in the parking lot had me raising the mini blinds an inch, then all the way. George. The software. I beckoned him up with my hand.