Double Dog Dare Read online

  I loved slot machines, and I loved tournament slot machines the best. Rather than the usual cherries, diamonds, and flaming sevens, tournament machines were themed. Heavily. Inside the dog house were two rows of twenty-five gigantic bone-shaped Double Dog Dare slot machines, every seat I could see occupied, and every machine barking as the players tried to line up the dogs by breed. A lady directly in front of us was playing the bonus round, Puppy Love. She was tapping the screen, selecting from a sea of dog biscuits that flipped to reveal fire hydrants, tennis balls, postal carriers, and diamond collars. Four diamond collars paid five thousand dollars. I watched until she turned over four ripped-panted mailmen, winning one thousand dollars. Someone tapped me on the shoulder. The someone was Fantasy. “Davis.”

  Urleen—a drama king to begin with—took one look at Fantasy and clutched his heart. His mouth dropped open. He took a dramatic step back. He used his best game-show host voice. “You are the most beautiful creature on God’s green planet. I adore you. You’re Venus and Serena without the bulk. You’re Rihanna without the umbrella-ella-ella. You’re Diana Ross without the Supremes. May I please examine you?”

  “Fantasy, this is Urleen.”

  “Doctor Urleen.” He reached for her hand. She jerked it away. Urleen wasn’t discouraged. He straightened his bow tie, then swept into a low bow. He rose slowly, looked into her eyes, and said, “I’ll have you know I completed my gynecological residency at the top of my class. And I’d surrender my substantial wealth to see your fallopian tubes up close and personal. Scoot down just a little more.”

  “Take a step back, fool.” Fantasy kicked him in the shin. “You’re disgusting.” She turned to me. “What the hell?”

  I sighed, closed my eyes, and put a palm to my throbbing forehead. “Fantasy, he’s all we’ve got. And I need to know how to get into your bonus room.”

  She still had a lip curled at Urleen, who was dancing in a small circle, flapping his hands like a bird’s wings, singing a warped version of “Pretty Woman.”

  “Where’d you get him?” she asked.

  “Vree. She was trying to help.”

  Urleen was still bird dancing and singing. He was attracting an audience. I kicked him in his other shin. “Take it down a notch, Urleen.”

  “How are you going to get there?” she asked.

  Urleen perked an ear. “My chariot awaits, fair lady. I’ll take you anywhere. Everywhere. The moon! Moon over Miami! Bad moon rising! Fly me to the moon!”

  “I wouldn’t go to a landfill with you,” Fantasy said. She pulled her keys out of her pocket and asked me, “Are you okay to drive the truck?” I nodded. “You’re sure?” I held my hand out. “Get him in and out as quickly as possible.”

  I grabbed Urleen by the seersucker. To Fantasy, he yelled over his shoulder, “Until we meet again, tall maiden!”

  * * *

  I didn’t drive much. I didn’t leave the Bellissimo property often, and when I did, I rode in the backseat of a Bellissimo town car, and my driver, Crisp, well, drove. I turned the key in the ignition of Fantasy’s truck, and with that simple act, it shot forward three feet, leaving half an inch of air between the front end and a concrete parking bollard.

  Urleen slapped around for a seatbelt. “I’d drive,” he said, “but I had a few nips on the way this morning.”

  “You drink and drive, Urleen?”

  “Past tense,” he said. “I drunk and drove. I don’t anymore. Now I drink and ride. My nurse, Jenna Ray, is also my driver.”

  “Jenna Ray is here? In Biloxi?” Had I known, I’d have her in the truck. She wasn’t even a registered nurse, but knew more about healthcare in her sleep than Urleen knew at eight in the morning after a pot of strong coffee.

  “Oh, a sinner of the worst sort.” Urleen’s jowls shook with disapproval. “A loose woman, a gossipmonger, and, it would seem, an addicted gambler too. She’s somewhere in the bowels of your casino. Donating her life’s savings to the one-armed bandits, no doubt.”

  “And this horrible sinner Jenna Ray drives you around why?”

  “My authorization is in question.”

  “Your authorization to drive? Do you mean you lost your license, Urleen?”

  “A bone I pick with your father daily.”

  “Let me get this straight.” I put the truck in reverse, remembering to engage the clutch that time, but let it go too soon. We shot ten feet back, kissing the bumper of a Gulf Coast Laundry truck.

  “Lordy, help.” Urleen crossed himself. “Our Father. God bless us, every one.”

  I put it in D and lurched forward. Urleen gripped the dash with both hands. “Explain this to me, Urleen. Daddy arrested you for driving under the influence, you lost your license to drive, but you still practice medicine?” Maneuvering the parking lot, I was getting the hang of the truck, which was to say I didn’t plow into anything, and thank goodness, because Bianca would have a cow if I showed up at the dog judges’ table wearing a whiplash collar.

  “I don’t practice medicine, Davis. I excel at it.”

  “Whatever.”

  Navigating Beach Boulevard traffic was tricky, and I was honked at heartily from all directions.

  “How far are we going?” Urleen asked. “Is the raving beauty’s home within walking distance? Walking is the medicine of life, you know, and it occurs to me I need a dose. Walk this way? Walk the line? A little walk on the wild side?”

  “We only have two turns left, Urleen, and the raving beauty is twenty years younger than you, a foot taller, and married.”

  “What a lucky man.” Urleen smacked his lips. “Those long brown legs.”

  We finally made it to Fantasy’s.

  The security door to the bonus room was wide open.

  Doris Harrington’s body was gone.

  In its place, Bootsy Howard’s dogeared book: The Tale of the Body Thief, by Anne Rice.

  Bootsy had the dead woman.

  She’d cooked up a new plan that involved the body and returned for it. Either she had witchcraft business with it, or the dead woman was Booty’s new bargaining chip, which she intended to sell to me for a million dollars.

  Great. Just great.

  * * *

  Jenna Ray, Urleen’s scandalous chauffeur, was nowhere to be found. She didn’t answer her phone, a zip through the main casino didn’t turn her up, and neither did a loudspeaker page. I didn’t have time to track her through the surveillance system, nor did I have time to babysit Urleen until she surfaced, so I checked him into a Bellissimo guest room, telling him to wait there, quietly, until it was time for him to go. He asked when that might be, and I said as soon as I found Jenna Ray. He said he was in no big hurry; I told him his patients in Pine Apple needed him. He asked when he’d see tall, dark, and gorgeous again—dinner, perhaps? I said he’d see her never, then pointed him to the guest room’s minibar and ran. To July’s. On the twenty-fifth floor. Where I gathered Bex and Quinn, telling July I’d bring them back in an hour. The girls and I rode the VIP elevator to the mezzanine level, where I waited at the back door of Snacks for a to-go picnic lunch for three. The waitress asked me what we’d like, and I was so tired of making decisions, I told her to think Lunchables. The girls and I played the Quiet Game through our front door on our way to the playroom, sneaking in without Vree knowing I’d returned—I wasn’t ready to share the latest devastating development—or reminding Bex and Quinn of Princess, who was probably busy with Madeleine Albright anyway. I spread a quilt on the playroom floor, then watched the girls trade squares of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, stack orange slices, and blow milk bubbles through straws.

  In the quiet safety and haven of the playroom, I reminded myself I didn’t have anything to do with Doris Harrington’s death or disappearance. That was all Bootsy.

  Then I dialed my sister.

  I didn’t want to drag her into it,
but at that point, I had to.

  “Are you comfortable?”

  “Are you kidding, Davis? This hotel is as nice as yours. And you should see this dog. She has her own bed, her own blanket, crystal food bowls, and every two hours, a pet concierge takes her for a walk in the pet park. She has her own room-service menu from a restaurant downstairs called the Barkery.”

  Bubblicious.

  In the excess of dogs—dogs, dogs, and more dogs—I’d forgotten Vree’s.

  “I sent her to the spa yesterday.”

  “Four Seasons has a dog spa?”

  “It’s so cute. If Vree saw it, she’d move here.”

  “Meredith, I’ve lost Bootsy Howard.”

  Bex and Quinn said, “Boo, boo, boo.”

  “What?” Meredith said. “Under what circumstances did you have Bootsy Howard to lose her?”

  “She showed up ten minutes after I read the email from Gully Saturday morning.” I went on to hit the highlights. “I had to get her out of here, Mer. I couldn’t think with her witching around. At the time, it seemed like a good idea to lock her up at Fantasy’s until I could trade her for you, but the next thing I knew, Fantasy’s car was gone, there was a dead woman, and the housekeepers were missing. I think Bootsy Howard killed a woman and made off with two housekeeper hostages. For all I know, she might have killed them too, if she didn’t turn them into lizards.”

  After the longest pause, Meredith said, “Davis? Have you been drinking?”

  “No!”

  “Start at the beginning. Slower this time.”

  I went through it again in more detail. In the end, Meredith had three things to say: “Why are you just now telling me this?” And, “Did you let Bex and Quinn have the carnival suckers? We’ve heard it all our lives, Davis. Skip Bootsy’s house on Halloween and don’t eat anything she brings to potluck unless it’s straight out of a Kentucky Fried bucket.” And, “Why do you think the book in the chair was some kind of message from Bootsy? What if the dead woman had been sitting on the book the whole time?”

  “Meredith? What does it matter if the dead woman sat on a book? I’m going to prison for the rest of my life. My husband will divorce me, then my mother-in-law will move in and have my daughters in saddle oxfords until they’re old enough to run away from home. And you’re defending Bootsy Howard?”

  “I’m not defending her. I’m just saying you’re assuming a lot. I can’t see Bootsy doing all that. She’s odd, she’s creepy, and there’s no denying strange things happen when Bootsy’s around. But kill a woman, make off with the body, and turn housekeepers into lizards?”

  Well. When you put it that way.

  “Where do you think she is?” Meredith asked.

  “I thought she was on her way there, but it looks like she turned around to come back here. She’s either here, there, or somewhere in between with a body strapped on the roof of Fantasy’s car with housekeeper hostages and I need to find her.”

  “Davis. This is horrible.”

  “Meredith, this is worse than horrible.”

  “How can I help?”

  “Get in touch with Gully. See if she’s made contact. Ask him if she’s there or on her way.”

  “She’s not. He calls me every hour on the hour. He says he’s calling to pray with me, but he’s really calling to make sure I haven’t flown the coop. He hasn’t said a word about Bootsy except that he hasn’t heard much from her. Between hospital visits with Greene, he writes sermons. So far today, he’s written, ‘Stop, Drop, and Roll Doesn’t Work in Hell’, and ‘If You Would Shut Up You Could Hear Jesus’, and ‘If You Don’t Sin, He Died for Nothing.’”

  “Nice.”

  “Nervous energy,” she said. “He’s writing sermons to keep from writing his brother’s eulogy.”

  “What’s Gina doing?”

  “Praying. Out loud. Very loud.”

  “Anything about safe travels for Bootsy?”

  “Just Greene. If you could see him, you’d be praying out loud too. He has so little time left, Davis. His skin is ghost gray. His lips are blue. His toenails are black.”

  “I’d cover up those toenails.”

  “I covered up my eyes.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “This morning. Visiting hours. From ten until ten twenty.”

  “And Bootsy wasn’t there?”

  “Tenth time, Davis. Bootsy isn’t here.”

  Where was that witchy woman?

  “Davis, you don’t really believe she killed anyone, do you?”

  “I don’t know what to believe,” I said. “I know she helped kidnap you. I know she wants your blood pumping through her boyfriend’s veins, and she wants it bad enough to have triggered a spiraling crime spree. If that’s the case, there’ll be no witching her way out of it, and I have to find her before anyone else gets hurt.”

  Meredith and I shared a moment of spooky sister silence.

  She broke it. “Davis, do you feel bad about Mother and Daddy?”

  “Of course I do. What if, down the road, our children kept something this big from us?”

  “You know they will,” she said. “But in a way, don’t you look at it like we’re protecting them? Mother would have a stroke. I don’t know what Daddy would do. Lock Gully and Bootsy up, for sure.”

  “Gully and Bootsy need to be locked up.”

  “If Bootsy’s gone off the deep end and actually taken a life, yes. But not Gully so much. The only thing Gully is guilty of is trying to save his brother’s life, and this is how far he’s willing to go to do it.”

  An orange slice landed in front of me.

  “I’d do it for you, Davis.”

  Which put an entirely different spin on things. Because I’d do it for her too. In a heartbeat. I looked at my own daughters, willing them to love each other the same way.

  * * *

  At two o’clock, I tiptoed out my front door and returned Bexley and Quinn to July. On the short ride from the twenty-ninth floor to the twenty-fifth, they fell asleep, Quinn, then Bex. I kissed their warm blonde curls goodbye, passed them one at a time to July, who kissed their warm blonde curls hello.

  I knew one thing Nashville didn’t have—July.

  Another thought that flew through my brain as I parked the girls’ double stroller to the left of July and Baylor’s door—I’d have to take Bex and Quinn with me to the cage count at four that afternoon. Because the stroller would be the only way to get out with the money.

  * * *

  No.

  I’d have to think of something else.

  I couldn’t let my daughters watch me steal a million dollars.

  FOURTEEN

  There was no avoiding Vree when I walked back in my own door five minutes later. I had less than an hour before my blind date with the oil sheik, and I needed to spend it online. Which meant my office, and there was no other path to my office than through the doggy daycare that was my living room. And I wasn’t trying to dodge her so much as I didn’t have time. Saying good morning to Vree took until afternoon. Asking about lunch took until dinner. She could talk about sunset ’til sunrise.

  I caught a break. They were asleep—Vree on one end of the sofa, Harley on the other, and Princess was snoring in the patched playpen.

  I tiptoed.

  First, I checked the three phones on my desk—my two, original and cloned, and Bootsy’s confiscated phone. I had a text message from Bradley. About eyedrops. (What?) I put on my everything-here-is-just-fine hat and dialed. His phone immediately went to voicemail. Before I could leave a message, another text dinged in.

  I’m in a Responsible Gaming Awareness breakout session. So far, nothing I haven’t heard before. Davis, my eyes are red and they itch. The only thing they have in the lobby shop are Blink Better eyedrops, which I’ve never heard
of. How are you and the girls?

  Blink Better? I’d never heard of it either. I googled. They were lubricating drops for contact lens wearers, of which, Bradley wasn’t. Don’t get the Blink Better drops. What’s wrong with your eyes? Is it one eye or both eyes? If it’s one eye, maybe you scratched it? Accidentally? Do you need to go to an eye doctor? We’re fine. The girls are being little angels. We miss you.

  From him: I don’t need to go to a doctor. It’s just irritating. Both eyes. It’s probably the 1,000 watt LED lights all over this hotel.

  Me: So your eyes don’t hurt outside?

  Him: Now that you bring it up, they’re worse outside. Although, that might be the humidity.

  Me: Bradley, first the sneezing, now your eyes. Either you’re coming down with something, or you and Nashville aren’t a good match.

  Him: This session is ending, on my way to the next. Talk later? I love you, Davis.

  I rubbed my eyes.

  * * *

  There was nothing on the surface of the internet about Hiriddhi Al Abbasov. And by nothing, I meant not one thing—no Facebook, no Instagram, no Snapchat. I couldn’t find public records of a deed in his name, a divorce, or a DUI. Either the man lived an unusually quiet life, or obscure immigration laws allowed him to keep his business to himself. A deeper dig netted me the basics. He was forty years old, single, a graduate of Riverdale Academy for the Blind in Buckhead, a suburb of Atlanta, where he’d been an international boarding student from the age of eleven. He was granted dual citizenship at age twenty-one. He had a BBA in Financial Analysis from the University of Georgia, go Dogs, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Go…Harvards. He was president of the United States operations of SourceOil Petroleum, producing the equivalent of two million barrels of oil per day.