Sammy Keyes and the Showdown in Sin City (10 page)

“Wait!” Candi cries again, cutting me off at the door.

“Mom, no!” Heather shouts, like she’s scolding a dog.

Candi shoots Heather a look, then gives me a really pained smile. Like just the effort might kill her. “Let’s talk,” she says, easing me back toward the sitting area. “So … your mother didn’t include you in her plans, either?”

I shake my head.

“Hurtful, isn’t it?”

I give her a little nod and let her sit me on the couch.

But Heather and I have known each other long enough for her to be onto what I’m doing. “Mom,” she says through her teeth, “she’s working you.”

Her mom gives her a sly look back, and even though I’m pretending to look down, I totally catch it.

No, honey,
I’m
working
her
.

“So,” Candi says, sitting beside me, “tell me about your networking contact.”

I give a little shrug. “He lives here. He marries people. I met with him tonight, and he’s put the word out about my mom.”

She eyes me suspiciously. “Why would he agree to do that?”

I shrug again. “He’s a friend.”

“A friend,” she says, like I’ve just told her he’s the president.

“Mm-hmm. And he’s into celebrities, so …” I just let that drift off into the air, because I know Candi is green over my mom being on TV.

“Where’s your dad in all of this?” she asks, her eyes sort of whittling me down.

“Oh, well. That’s a whole ’nother story.” I start to stand up, saying, “Anyway, let her have it tomorrow.” I look at Heather. “I mean it. And give her some from me, too, would you?”

“Wait!” Candi says, and actually grabs my arm and pulls me back onto the couch. “Who are you here with?”

I look her straight in the eye. “Nobody.”

“Liar,” Heather sneers.

I shrug like, Whatever.

Candi looks at my backpack and skateboard. “So … where are you staying?”

“I thought I might stay
here
,” I tell her with a little laugh, “but since you don’t need my help, I’m sure I’m not welcome.”

Heather and her mother have a little tug-of-war of spastic looks, and in the end Heather just comes out and says, “No! You cannot let her stay here!”

“Oh!” I say, jumping up like I’m surprised that’s what they were having their little cross fire about. “No, Heather’s right. It was a very bad idea.”

“Could we get your cell number?” Candi asks. “In case we want to get in touch?”

“I don’t have a cell.”

“You don’t?” She looks at her daughter like she can’t believe I’m telling the truth, but Heather just shrugs like, Yeah, it’s true.

I tell them, “Well, I’ve gotta go find a pay phone and call off my friend. Sorry for waking you up.”

“Wait!” Candi says, yanking me back
again
. Then she blurts out, “Look, we
don’t
know where they’re getting married and—”

“Noooooo!” Heather wails, but her mother scolds her with, “Quit it! If we’re going to stop this wedding in time, we need to work together.”

“Oh,” I say, looking like I’ve just found a nasty bruise on my very shiny apple. “You don’t know where they’re getting married? So”—I blink at her a bunch—“what
do
you know?”

“Not much,” she says with a frown.

“So … why am I working with you?”

It’s her turn to blink at me. “Because I have a couch?”

“Well,” I scoff, like that’s no big deal. “Do you have a
car
?”

“Yes! We drove here!”

My jaw is in serious danger of clunking to the floor. I mean, it’s no secret that Candi is a maniac behind the wheel, but if they
drove
from Santa Martina? She must’ve been going, like, a hundred and twenty the whole way.

Still, I do my best to keep it smooth as I ask, “And … what about
your
cell phone? Since I don’t have one, could my friend call yours when he has something to report?”

“Of course!”

I pull the photo card of my mother out of my backpack. “I’ve been using this.… Do you have a picture of Warren?”

“Of Warren,” she says, like I’ve just crossed the line with that one.

“Well, of your ex.”

She doesn’t seem to like that any better.

“You know—Heather’s dad? My gonna-be dad? The groom-to-be? The—”

“Warren!” she snaps. “Warren is fine.”

“Didn’t mean to offend,” I tell her quietly. “This is just a really weird situation.”

“You’ve got that right.”

“So?” I ask. “Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Have a picture?”

She hesitates, then shakes her head.

But Heather’s scrolling through her phone and she says, “I do.”

I’ve seen pictures on Heather’s phone before, and let me tell you, they’re not the kind you’d want to share with your mother.

But this picture was different.

It was sweet.
Innocent
.

It was Heather at about ten, hugging her dad—both her arms thrown around him while he had one wrapped around her. They both looked so happy. And what’s funny is, even if I hadn’t known either of them, I’d have known that this was a picture of a dad and his daughter. Not a dad and his niece, or a coach and a player, or a couple of actors.

This was a dad who adored his daughter, just like the daughter adored her dad.

In that moment I felt almost sorry for Heather. Somewhere along the line she’d lost the joy that was obviously there in that picture, and now she was just … sour. But I also felt sorry for me. Seeing the joy of Heather being with her dad made me realize that I would never, ever have a picture like that of me and my dad.

And then Heather pulls her phone away and says, “What are you staring at, loser?” which brings me back to the realities of dealing with an evil psychopath instead of finding excuses for why she’d become one.

Candi hadn’t even looked at the picture. Instead, she’d been fixated on me. “Are we agreed, then?” she asks.

“Sure,” I tell her, like I could go either way.

She hands me her cell phone. “Then call your contact and set it up.”

So I dig up Pete’s number, punch it into Candi’s phone, and when he answers, I say, “It’s Sammy. The number I’m calling you from is the number to reach me at. But it’s not my phone, and we need to come up with a password, okay?”

“A password?”

“Yeah.” I eye Heather. “I’ve made a dangerous alliance, and it’s possible someone might pretend to be me.”

Heather flips me off, which doesn’t seem to faze Candi at all.

“So what’s the password?” Pete says in my ear.

“If you call me or if I call you, the first thing you need to do is list some Elvis songs. I’ll say no to anything but the right one. And only you and I know the right one.”

“So what’s the right one?”

“You tell me.”

“How about ‘Love Me Tender’?”

“Perfect.”

“So I go in random order?”

“Right. Mix it up every time we talk.”

“Got it. Oh, and hey—I’ve got help out there. The Elvis Army’s rallyin’.”

“You’re serious? Cool!”

“Later, gator.”

“No, really?”

He laughs and hangs up.

“Very clever,” Candi says as I hand the phone back to her.

I give her a little smile. “I do want to survive the night.”

So they go back to bed, and I curl up on the couch, and the truth is, I’m hugely relieved. I have a place to stay, I have two people helping me—one with the most determined mind I’ve ever gone up against—and there’s an Elvis Army out on the streets of Las Vegas rallying.

Whatever that means.

I put my head down on my backpack pillow, too exhausted to care.

I had a really frightening dream that night.

Heather Acosta was being
nice
to me.

It was one of those total anxiety dreams. You know—like when you’re searching for something and can’t find it?

I was searching for her angle.

What was she up to?

Why was she being so nice to me?

I knew it was a trap. I mean, it
had
to be a trap. But where was the trapdoor? Why couldn’t I see it? Any second I was going to step into it and
—aaaaahhhh!
—I’d fall into a deep, dark abyss, and she’d be laughing at me from above, going, “Loooo​ooooo​oser!” as I tumbled down, down, down to my death.

So I kept trying to figure it out, and she kept being nice to me.

And then, like a nightmare within a nightmare, I hear, “Loooo​ooooo​oser! Hey, loooo​ooooo​oser.”

I couldn’t see her; all I could hear was her voice. “Hey, loser!”

I flailed around, looking, looking, looking.

And then she was shoving me.

Hard.

I flailed around some more.

Why couldn’t I see her?

And then I realized—oh yeah, my eyes are closed.

They popped open, but everything was still dark.

Only not
as
dark.

And then all of a sudden it was super bright and there was Heather, holding back the curtain, blinding me with white-hot Las Vegas sunshine.

She was still wearing her silky pink pajama shorts and her sneer, and she was holding out a cell phone.

I guess I was having a little trouble transitioning from dream to reality because she finally says, “Take it!”

So I take the phone and put it up to my ear. “Hello?”

“ ‘Suspicious Minds’?”

“Huh?”

There was silence for a second and then, “Sammy?”

“Yeah.”

“ ‘Suspicious Minds’ is an Elvis song.”

“Oh!” I finally sit up and snap to. “Right! I mean, no, wrong!”

“Did I wake you up?”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“I can tell that’s you—can we cut to the chase?”

“No. Make sure. Always make sure.”

“All right, all right,” he says like Elvis. “ ‘Love Me Tender.’ ”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Miss Sammy.”

“So what have you got?”

“They do not have an appointment at any of the bigger chapels and—more important—they haven’t applied for a license in the state of Nevada.”

“They—how do you know
that
?”

“I told you I was on it,” he says with a laugh. But then he adds, “That doesn’t mean they can’t be walkin’ up to the counter right now, though.”

“Is it open already?” I look around for a clock but don’t see one anywhere. “What time is it?”

“Bedtime for me, ten-thirty for you.”

“Ten-thirty?”

“Guess you had the dark shades drawn?”

“Yeah.”

He laughs. “Welcome to Las Vegas, little mama.”

It sounds like he’s about to hang up, so I blurt out, “Wait! Where’s this counter?”

“The marriage counter? At the Marriage Bureau. It’s downtown.”

“You think I should stake it out?”

He hesitates. “I knew you were smart. Yes. If they’re coming to Vegas to get hitched, they have to get a license first. That’d be
the
place to stake out.”

“Thank you!” I tell him. And then, because he always said it to me when I bought stuff from him at Maynard’s Market, I do my best Elvis impersonation and add, “Thank you very much.”

He laughs and hangs up, and since I’m feeling pretty psyched, I’m laughing, too, when I click off.

And then I see Heather.

She’s standing there with her angry arms crossed and
her signature sneer. “So? What did he tell you? Huh, loser?”

I study her a minute. “Can you mix it up a little with the insults? You know, throw in an ‘idiot’ or a ‘dimwit’ or a ‘lame-brained bozo’? The ‘loser’ thing is really getting old.”

She snatches the phone from me. “You can’t tell me what to call you, loser!”

I scratch my head. “Just a suggestion, sis.”

“Shut up!” she screeches.

Candi comes over and snatches the phone from Heather and says, “You’re making this way harder than it needs to be.” Now, at first I think she’s talking to both of us, but she keeps her eyes on Heather. “Just drop the name-calling altogether. We have work to do!” Then she turns to me and says, “Please tell us what you found out.”

A “please”?

Wow.

I sit up taller on the couch and tell her, “They’re not registered at any of the bigger chapels—”

“But what if they’re going to a small one? And they could walk up at any time!”

“Right.
But
they haven’t applied for a marriage license yet. Not in the state of Nevada, anyway.”

“But … they can do that at any time, too! There’s no waiting period or blood tests or any of that in Nevada. That’s why people come here!”

“Right, but they haven’t done it
yet
, which means that if we stake out the Marriage Bureau, we can confront them before they even get their license!”

Now, I’m actually really excited about this breakthrough, and for a second there I’ve lost track of the fact that I’m talking to my archenemy’s nasty-tempered mother. So I’m, like, bouncing a little and, you know, wide-eyed and happy.

Like I’d be if I were talking to a friend.

But then it registers that her face is all pinchy and her eyes are like little laser beams, staring at me, so I stop bouncing and start thinking about diving for cover. And then out of her pinchy, laser-beamy face comes a loud, hard hiss.

A hiss that it takes me a minute to realize is her saying, “Yes!”

Now, even though I
think
this means that she’s excited, too, it’s creepy enough that I’m not actually sure. So I say, “Good, huh?”

“Exxxcellent!” she says, hissing again.

Which, let me tell you, is more than a little scary.

“You’re doing it again, Mom,” Heather says under her breath.

Candi snaps out of it. “I am?”

“Yeah,” Heather tells her. “It’s really creepy.”

Candi turns to me. “Was I … hissing?”

I look at her, then sort of glance at Heather, thinking it might be really wise of me to just not say. But Heather gives a little smirk with a one-shoulder shrug, which is pretty much universal for, Go ahead—tell her.

So I tell her. “Yeah. You were hissing.”

She blinks like she has no memory at all of going snaky on me. “And it was creepy?”

I glance at Heather again, and again I get the little smirk-shrug thing.

“Yeah,” I tell Candi. “Kinda.”

“Not kinda,” Heather snaps. “Tell her!”