Double Agent

by Gretchen Archer

  Then I heard the noise that wasn’t.

  The thirty-five-foot-tall Bellissimo fountain.

  Were the Storms already at work on the exterior of the building? Had they already turned off the main water breakers? Surely not. It was barely dawn. Was the wind louder than the fountain? I walked to the iron rail, Candy at my side, and looked down to see something very wrong. The dim underwater fountain lights were on, but the fountain jets were off, or malfunctioning, and the water, instead of clear, was dark. Particularly dark. Dark to the point of black. There were two big black somethings in the fountain pool.

  The helipad telescope was (a) filthy, (b) freezing, and (c) hard to focus.

  I aimed it at the fountain, adjusted the stiff focus dials, and found the black cargo pants and black windbreakers of the gaming agents. At first glance, I thought I was looking at their clothes floating in the fountain. At second heart-stopping glance, I knew I was looking at their clothes. On their bodies. One facedown, the other face up, one wedged at an odd angle along a concrete curve of the fountain pool, the other, arms and legs splayed, both very clearly dead.

  I clapped my hand over my mouth and stumbled back.

  It was too much.

  And it was time. Ten o’clock? Change of plans. We needed to leave that minute. Leave the Bellissimo, the dead bodies, and the missing money in our rearview mirror so we could get our family to safety before anything else happened. Let the police and Hurricane Kevin sort it out. And that’s exactly what might have happened had the strobing lightbar of a service vehicle, the only vehicle in the reversed southbound lanes of I-110, not cut through the stormy dawn and caught my eye. I found it with the telescope. It was a white Police Interceptor, Ford’s law enforcement modified SUV, a car I knew well, driven by a man I’d loved since the day I was born.

  * * *

  Behind the locked and guarded doors of Disaster, while everyone, as far as we knew, was either asleep, at breakfast in the cafeteria, or trying to summon enough sobriety to figure out where they were at all, which was to say the entire Weather One crew and their friends from Michigan, Bradley helped Mother get the girls ready, including a quick trip to our home on the twenty-ninth floor to fetch a large bag of kibble. He radioed, asking if I’d seen his mother, then radioed right back he’d found her. She was sharing banana crepes with FEMA in the great room.

  (What?)

  No Hair and Baylor went fishing for the gaming agents in the fountain. We’d already relocated one dead body. Biloxi PD—supposedly on their way—instructed us to move the new bodies too, before Hurricane Kevin moved them for us. I stood under the portico of the main entrance to the hotel beside my father and watched.

  “Don’t tell Mother.”

  “Never,” he said.

  “Do you have enough room for Candy?”

  “Of course, Sweet Pea.”

  “What about Eddie and Danielle? And their pig?”

  Daddy shifted his weight. “Do I want to know?”

  He didn’t.

  “Where are they, Davis?”

  “I’m not exactly sure,” I said, “but if it means getting them off the property, I’ll put out an all-points bulletin and track them down.”

  “They don’t have a car here?”

  “They rode with Jug,” I said.

  “Where is Jug?” Daddy asked.

  “That’s a very good question.”

  Daddy asked if we had a car we could lend Eddie and Danielle. And the pig.

  “Would you lend them a car?” I asked. “And who knows if Danielle remembers how to drive.”

  “Is he in any shape to drive?”

  “I don’t know, Daddy.” And I didn’t want to know.

  “Your mother has packed everything our granddaughters own, but we could probably fit one of them,” he said. “I’m not sure about the pig.”

  “Take Eddie, Daddy. Please take Eddie.” But then it occurred to me my children would be in a car with Eddie the Idiot for at least two hours. It could scar them for life. “Take Danielle.” But then it occurred to me I probably shouldn’t let Danielle go. At that point, she could have total recall of the events in the casino when we suffered our first Hurricane Kevin casualty. And I needed her memories two dead bodies more than I’d needed them the day before. Not to mention I had no idea where she was to send her with Daddy.

  Headlights from the parking garage entrance ramp flashed across our faces as Fantasy rolled my mother’s Chevrolet Impala to a stop behind Daddy’s patrol car just as No Hair and Baylor lifted the first gaming agent from the fountain. She parked, climbed out, blew an air kiss at Daddy—he caught it—then she turned for the fountain.

  “Any idea what happened here, Davis?”

  No Hair and Baylor disappeared behind the landscaping to our right lugging a lifeless waterlogged gaming agent between them.

  “It looks like the gaming agents ran into whoever was trying to rob us.”

  No Hair and Baylor returned to remove the second body.

  “Or whoever has already robbed us,” I said. “Either way, two Mississippi state gaming agents are dead.”

  Daddy put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me in. “It’s all about the money. Find the money and you’ll find the killer. I can promise you this, Sweet Pea, when your mother and I leave in ten minutes and you’re no longer worried about your daughters, you’ll be able to think clearer, and the pieces will begin falling into place.”

  I hoped, with everything I had, Daddy was right.

  “The most important thing, Davis, is that you weather the storm.”

  To mark his words, a gust of wind out of nowhere swirled around us.

  “That was, oh, a twenty-five-mile-an-hour burst,” he said. “In two hours, the wind will be twice that and steady. You won’t be able to stand in it. By noon, the rain will be here.” He stepped in front of me, placed his hands on my shoulders, and bent to look me in the eye. “Whatever you’re going to do, have it done by noon and be safely in the storm shelter. I’m taking your daughters and mothers to safety, and I need your word that you and Bradley will do everything you can to stay safe.”

  “Just take care of the girls, Daddy. Just take care of our daughters and we’ll take care of ourselves.”

  “I’m not going to call you, Davis, because I know you’ll be busy. I’m counting on you to stay in touch with me.”

  I loved my father so much.

  From the thick landscaping circling the fountain, Fantasy yelled, “Yo!”

  She held up my missing gun.

  Maybe Daddy was right and the pieces would begin falling into place. Fantasy was holding a big piece. Before I could decide if it was a good thing that my firearm was secure or a bad thing that it was found so close to two dead bodies, my two-way radio squawked. “Coast clear?” Bradley asked.

  “It is.”

  “We’re on our way.”

  We stuffed my mother, our daughters, our dog, and enough little girl trimmings to last until Christmas into Daddy’s patrol car. Bex and Quinn said, “Lights, Papa! Lights, Papa! Lights, Papa!” Then, “Horn, Papa! Horn, Papa! Horn, Papa!”

  We hugged, kissed, elicited promises of being good girls, especially from Bexley, then buckled our ponytailed blonde babies in, our furry blonde pup between them. We hugged my parents and promised to stay out of harm’s way and in constant contact. Then we turned to Mother’s car.

  FEMA, wearing his federal jacket again that morning, stood at attention beside the driver door. He held up a clear cup of murky water.

  “Brad.”

  Eucalyptus fumes blew our way.

  “This fountain water specimen needs to be tested for iron, magnesium, pH, nitrates, sulfates, lead, and a host of other contaminants.”

  It had been less than twenty-four hours since my children played in the water FEMA was sloshing in our
faces, and less than fifteen minutes since two dead men had been pulled from it.

  “Let me get this lovely lady to safety, then I’ll call and walk you through.”

  The lovely lady, my mother-in-law Anne Cole, leaned in. “I wish you’d come with us, honey.”

  She wasn’t talking to me.

  “You’ll need baking soda, vinegar, yeast, a latex balloon, four push pins, and a digital meat thermometer,” FEMA said. “Once you’ve secured those, call me, and we’ll test the water to see if any bacteria in the fountain contributed to their deaths. For that, you’ll need vegetable oil, food coloring, a torch, instant rice, and a ping-pong paddle. From there, we’ll isolate any specific microbes that may or may not have been factors. You’ll need—”

  Bradley stopped him. “You won’t be completely out of the wind for thirty miles. You need to get going.”

  “Right.” FEMA climbed into Mother’s car. “Right.”

  Our best decision so far since the National Hurricane Center woke us up the morning before, and thanks to my father, was sending our girls, my mother, and our dog to safety. Our second-best decision was taking CSI’s Number One Fan up on his offer to follow Daddy in Mother’s car, sending Bradley’s mother to safety too. Head Storm Mark Perry was right—we had too many people. And FEMA was too big a distraction, a distraction I felt certain my father could handle.

  Round Two of goodbyes and good lucks were exchanged.

  My heart hurt as I watched the cars pull away, and I didn’t know if it was relief that my daughters wouldn’t have to ride out the storm on Disaster in a building with three dead bodies, or if I was just so sad I couldn’t stuff Eddie, Danielle, and the pig into the empty backseat of Mother’s car. Which I’d only do if I wanted my mother-in-law to go straight to Child Services and file for custody of our daughters after spending two hundred miles with Eddie, Danielle, and the pig, claiming I wasn’t fit to raise them by hometown association.

  And I’d just met the pig.

  I had no association.

  Daddy hadn’t even pulled out of the Bellissimo driveway onto Beach Boulevard before one of the girls, probably Bex, talked him into the sirens, whoop-whoop, and FEMA in Mother’s Impala was only a car length behind on their way to higher ground when Bradley popped the plastic lid off the fountain specimen and donated the contents to a row of boxwoods. From the waistband of his jeans, he produced a nine-millimeter Glock 19. He passed it to me, barrel down. “Are you ready?”

  (No.)

  My eyes were on the Ford’s lightbar, fading into the sooty sky, and my ears were trained on the cry of the siren, being swallowed by the wind. When I could no longer see or hear our family, I took the weapon from my husband. “Let’s do it.”

  * * *

  If ever Chip Chapman needed his sunglasses, it was Friday morning, the thirteenth of October, broadcasting live from the lobby of Bellissimo Resort and Casino as Hurricane Kevin ravaged the open Gulf waters a little more than a hundred miles to our south.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Chip-Chip-Chiperoos. We’re going to be slammed. Washed out to sea. Wiped off the map. Just not as early as I thought earlier. Than this. I mean earlier, like before right now.” Chip slapped himself. On air. “Earlier yesterday. Before today. Before now.” He stopped to shovel a large bite of Filet’s Bloody Mary Jell-O into his mouth. On air. “Just, you know—” celery crunched “—sometimes hurricanes, like a lot of women I know, take their own sweet time.”

  From what I’d seen, Chip danced, hurdled, or cartwheeled his way through broadcasts. We ran into him and his crew in the lobby outside of Beans, the coffee shop, and not only was Chip sitting—sprawled out was more like it—on a tall stack of burlap bags, ten bags long and four bags high, each containing two hundred pounds of raw coffee beans, everyone with him was down too. The light man was lying on the floor, the hood of his Weather One jacket pulled over his face, the light he was in charge of aimed at the dark window of Danish, the pastry shop next door. Jenn Chojnacki and Summer Shugart had rallied enough to ride the elevator down from Disaster with their hero Chip, but their efforts at sobriety seemed to have stopped there. They were wearing the same clothes I’d seen them in every time I’d seen them, and while they were somewhat seated in chairs, they were also heads-down mouths-open asleep on a Bistro table directly in front of Chip for all the world to see. One would think the producer might take issue with two passed-out slack-jawed women on live television, but he was at his own Bistro table, cap pulled low, chin to chest, feet propped in a chair, asleep too.

  Bradley reached for his radio. “Perry?”

  Head Storm Mark Perry answered, “Go for Perry.”

  “Who let Weather One out?”

  “They have a passkey.”

  “Who gave them a passkey?” Bradley asked.

  “Ah.” We heard a beep. “The girl with the bruised head.”

  Danielle.

  A: She’d surfaced. A bigger part of me than I wanted to admit was relieved she wasn’t wandering the streets of Biloxi. B: Where’d she get a passkey?

  Chip Chapman was confusing high pressure with low pressure, explaining it to himself both in stumbling speech and clumsy gesticulation, live, on air. He gave up, leaned into the camera, then said, “It doesn’t even half-ass matter, Chipsters. We’re all going to die here anyway.”

  “Who gave her a passkey?” Bradley asked the radio.

  “I assumed you did,” Perry said.

  “I did not.” Bradley looked at me. I shook my head no. I didn’t give her a passkey. “Where is she now?” he asked the radio.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Find her,” Bradley said.

  “Copy.”

  I pulled my phone from my pocket and called No Hair. “Can you get to the control room?”

  “I can.”

  “Would you pull up surveillance and track down Danielle?” Something I’d been trying to do since Bradley’s and my pleasant chat with Eddie the night before. He said he’d let me know, just as Chip Chapman posed a question to America: “Do any of you Chipperoonies know if caffeine can be absorbed through osmosis? Your buddy Chip’s butt is ting-ting-tingalinging. I’m going to throw it back to the studio in Atlanta and see what’s going on in my britches.” He closed his eyes, then bonelessly slithered down the burlap bags into a heap on the floor, the cameraman bent over double laughing, slapping his leg with his free hand, and filming every bit of it.

  Just then, the lobby doors opened, and Fantasy’s husband, Reggie, entered, followed by their three tall skinny boys. Reggie, spotting the lights, camera, and meteorologist on the floor, held an arm out to stop the boys. Duffel bags dropped from six teenage arms. “Do you know who that is, boys?” Reggie asked. “Chip Chapman.”

  The lobby elevator doors parted and Fantasy stepped out. “Oh, good. You’re here. Did you bring my clothes?” She caught my eye. She yelled over the Weather One crew. “I told them about the lobster.”

  Summer Shugart’s head popped up. She tried to focus. “Is there more slobsters?” Then she went right back down.

  So, as it turned out, it looked like I’d ride out the storm on Disaster with my real husband, my best friend Fantasy, her husband Reggie, their three teenage boys, Bianca Sanders, the Storms, the liquor-loaded Weather One crew, two hammered women from Michigan, twenty-five megatower slot machines, my ex-ex-husband and his pig, but not the gaming agents. Because they were dead. And probably not with Danielle Sparks. Because No Hair called back to say he found her on surveillance being admitted to the casino during the wee hours of Friday the thirteenth, just after we signed the Gaming paperwork with the agents in Bradley’s office and were on our way to the strange Disaster bed.

  “Who let her in the casino?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” he said. “I can only see her knocking, one of the front doors opening an inch, then her slipping in.”


  “Can you see anyone else entering or exiting the casino in or around that time?”

  “No,” he said. “Just her.”

  “The agents were probably killed in the casino,” No Hair said, “and your girl Danielle was in on it or knows about it. Which means she either has our money or at least knows where it is.”

  Danielle was a lot of things. A lot. But it was so very hard for me to believe she was a grand larcenist and a murderer.

  Bradley and I sat alone on a bench outside of Plethora, the casino buffet, for five quiet minutes after No Hair broke the Danielle news. Bradley bounced our held hands on my thigh. “While we slept, people ran in, out, and died in our casino, Davis.”

  Where was Danielle?

  “You’ve known her all her life,” he whispered. “Could she possibly have killed two gaming agents and left here with fifty million dollars? We need to call your dad. He needs to keep an eye out for her on the road and in Pine Apple.”

  My head was tipped back to the wall. My eyes closed. “Trust me, Bradley, if she killed two gaming agents and made off with fifty million dollars, she’ll never show her face in Pine Apple again.” I opened my eyes. “We don’t need to worry about it anyway.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “She’s still here. I can feel her.”

  What I couldn’t feel was a connection between the dead fake officer and the dead Gaming agents. And I hoped the connection wasn’t Danielle.

  ELEVEN

  “David. I need someone to draw my bath.”

  I pressed my lips together, looked up for divine fortitude, then unclipped the radio riding shotgun with a Glock from the waistband of my jeans. “Bianca. You’re on the wrong channel.”

  “Is that an Alabama colloquialism I’m unfamiliar with? If not, is that any way to greet me, David? Have you no manners left? I secured my own coffee this morning, thank you—”

  “Excuse me.” It was Head Storm Mark Perry.