“Davis, you caught that thing on fire.”
She was right. Back in the day when our jobs were fun, Fantasy and I had been on assignment at Snifter, the private after-dinner jazz bar behind Catch, the seafood restaurant on the Mezzanine, keeping an eye on Snoop Dogg. (Rapper, actor, funny guy.) (Who’s a Guinness World Record holder in the Largest Paradise Cocktail category.) Snoop Dogg and his entourage stopped by unannounced. No Hair asked Fantasy and me to keep an eye on him. Snoop and his friends ordered a round of Playing with Fire, which was nothing but flaming cognac, into which, one of Snoop’s long thick braids landed, and I wound up playing in fire. My pinstripe suit didn’t survive. And, useless trivia, Snoop’s braids were extensions anyway.
“How about my white linen suit?”
“You sank that suit,” she yelled.
She was right. We’d been on assignment in hot pursuit of a Walker, defined as a gambler who owed the casino big money, won big money, then walked off without paying the casino back. And that man should have been walking. Not driving. We chased him through all of Biloxi, into a subdivision, took a corner too hot, and wound up in a side-yard swimming pool. The Bellissimo limo we’d confiscated and my white linen suit drowned that night. (Lessons learned: limos don’t take corners well and pools go behind houses. Not beside. Unless you want a limo floating in your side-yard pool.)
“Let’s forget the suits and shoot into Lost and Found,” she yelled.
“Last time,” I yelled. “We can’t shoot through a pack of Elvii.”
“ELVISES!”
Just then, my phone rang.
So irritating.
I took one hand off one keyboard to dig my phone out of my pocket, pulling the list of Bird numbers with it, and when I saw who was calling, my heart stopped.
It was Gray Donaldson in Casino Credit. I glanced at the time. Gray was sounding the five-million-dollar alarm way off my timeline. Hours off my timeline.
“Okay, you win,” Fantasy yelled. “I’m digging through our ID bucket. Did you say Mississippi Gaming Commission or American Gaming Association? Are we shutting them down or auditing them?”
The yelling was getting to me, but I yelled back anyway. “Hold on, Fantasy. I need to take a call.”
I took the call.
“Davis?”
“Yes?” My heart was beating out of my chest.
“I’m sorry to bother you. I called Security, they sent me to Mr. Cole’s office, and Mr. Cole’s office told me to call you.”
I took a deep breath in preparation for the news that was surely coming.
“What can I do for you, Gray?” I waited for her to say I could scare up five million dollars for her, but she didn’t. She said she’d just received a call from The Clare Estate, a memory-care facility in Mobile, Alabama. They were worried about Megan Shaw, guardian of their resident Louise Juliette Shaw, who they hadn’t seen since Friday afternoon. Was Megan at work? Was everything okay? Did Gray Donaldson know if Megan had changed her phone number? In all the years Megan’s mother had been with them, Megan had missed only a handful of days visiting her mother in and around the time of the birth of her son the year before. They were worried. They contacted Megan’s landlord, who hadn’t seen or heard from Megan. The day before, Sunday, they’d called the police, who knew nothing about Megan’s whereabouts, then every hospital between the Bellissimo and Megan’s apartment complex in Mobile, where, thankfully, they didn’t find Megan, and having exhausted every other possibility, they called the Bellissimo. Megan Shaw was missing. Did Gray Donaldson know where Megan Shaw was? Could she shed any light on what might have happened to Megan Shaw? Did anyone at the Bellissimo know anything about Megan Shaw? Should they file a missing person’s report? Could someone at the Bellissimo help locate Megan Shaw? Then Gray Donaldson said to me, “I think I should call the police.”
“No, Gray,” I said. “Let me.” I made sure she heard me. “Do not call the police. I will.” I asked her not to touch Megan’s desk, take her own work and clear out, lock the door behind her, Biloxi Police Department detectives would be there shortly, then I hung up and tried to breathe.
4-7-8.
Inhale for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight.
When I was almost dizzy, I stopped. I resumed a normal breathing pattern. I tipped my head back to let Fantasy know that in addition to our Gaming and Immigration IDs, she needed to dig out our Biloxi Police Department detective badges, but couldn’t answer her, “Why do we need our Biloxi PD IDs?” before Baylor stormed in. I hadn’t heard the door open because I had yet to hear anything past Gray Donaldson’s news that Megan Shaw was truly missing and had been missing since she cashed the five-million-dollar wire.
“Davis? Fantasy? What the hell is going on?”
I crept to the door of Control Central to see Fantasy had crept to the Closet door, both of us open-mouthed staring at Baylor, standing at the front door. On his left shoulder, the strap of a big blue Bellissimo duffel bag from Love. Under his right arm, upside down, chubby little arms flying, teeny little Nikes kicking, a baby boy.
Megan Shaw’s baby boy. Oliver. Who made it through five shift changes at our employee childcare center before the day, graveyard, and swing shifts, who were well versed in Bellissimo parents’ overtime, double-time, and all-the-time shifts, compared notes and came to the horrifying conclusion that the baby had been at Play since his mother dropped him off Friday afternoon. July got the call at six that morning. After exhausting every effort to locate Oliver’s mother, and having been unable to reach me, she called Baylor.
I rushed for the baby before Baylor dropped him. The second I had him upright and in my arms, his little head tipped back, he grinned wide, then his whole little body fell forward to give me a big slobbery kiss, his little hands cupping both sides of my face. He smelled like sunshine. Fantasy wanted in on the baby action. She reached for him. “Come here!” He lunged for her. She wrapped him in her arms. “You’re too cute, little guy.”
I went for the duffel bag.
Inside, I found Megan Shaw’s Casino Credit uniform.
I texted my mother. Mother, could you do me a big favor?
She texted back. If cores.
I think that was the moment I knew, just then, texting with my mother, that we’d never find Megan Shaw. We’d seen the last of her. Alive, anyway. Either Megan saw the five-million-dollar light at the end of her desolate life tunnel—her mother was too ill to know she’d deserted her, her son too young—and we’d never see or hear from her again, or someone set Megan Shaw up to take the fall for their five-million-dollar heist. If it were the latter, that someone would be difficult to find, because it would go all the way back to when Megan was a teller at Branch Banking & Trust in Mobile, Alabama. I didn’t know Megan Shaw at all, but holding her baby, all goodness, light, and four of the cutest little teeth I’d ever seen in my life, I had a sneaking suspicion it was the latter.
NINE
In unanimous agreement (which hadn’t happened in a long time) and given that (so, so, so sadly) no one was looking for Oliver Shaw, we decided that for the time being we wouldn’t call Child Services. Who would take immediate custody of Oliver just after they locked the Play doors for good. I wasn’t sure if there was a statute on the books covering “failure to realize a child was in your care for three straight days” or not. (There should be. We, especially July, were mortified, and maybe that was the underlying reason we didn’t immediately call Child Services.) In the end, right or wrong, after almost seventy-two hours straight at Play, we agreed the baby was better off at my house being rocked by my mother than he would be in the system.
Or maybe we were hoping against hope that Baby Oliver’s mother would show up for him, at which point, we might be forced to turn him over to Child Services, because his mother could very well be on her way to prison.
July raided Play for baby supplies—formu
la, diapers, and Speed Racer footie pajamas—while the rest of us settled Baby Oliver in at my house, which took dragging out and setting up a baby bed, video monitor, stroller, a Pack ’n Play, and other miscellaneous baby equipment from storage. We left the tired little guy sleeping peacefully with Bex, Quinn, Candy, Mother, Birdy, and Bea Crawford, who shouldn’t have even been there, cooing over the baby bed. Had I been able to stay, I’d have been cooing over the baby bed too. Oliver Shaw was adorable.
Two heavy hearts and one sleepwalking hot head returned to the office-office, where inside the door Fantasy and I still couldn’t open, we confessed all to Baylor. When we finished, he sat on the sofa opposite us blank-faced staring for so long I thought maybe we’d hypnotized him.
We hadn’t.
When he finally stood to tower over us, he reminded me of a bull scuffing the ground before it charged.
Baylor was mad. And not just a little.
To get us back for (among many, many other things) being mad at him since the Bellissimo reopened on Valentine’s Day, being lazy, which had him working the Elvis reception alone, the Elvis welcome breakfast alone, and the kickoff of the Double Trouble slot tournament alone, plus for not answering his texts or calls, plus for not trusting him enough to tell him that the Casino Credit cashier had run off with five million dollars, plus for wearing out the at-the-dentist excuse, when he knew good and well neither of us went to the dentist three times a week, plus for being the reason he’d had no sleep in two days, Baylor offered us a deal. He said he wouldn’t call our bosses (including my husband) in Vegas that very minute and tell them everything if we agreed to work the Elvis banquet that night so he could have a few hours off. Which sent him off on another little he’d-only-had-four-hours-of-sleep-in-two-nights tangent, something we were already well aware of because he ended almost every sentence with it. When he finally got back on track, he told us he’d give us the afternoon to find Oliver’s mother, but we had to agree to work the night shift. And that was only if we found the money by three Pacific. If we didn’t find the money, he was telling anyway. Clearly, Baylor was getting his No Hair on. Huffing and puffing. Pointing fingers. Pacing. He sounded like a military recruiter: duty, justice, truth, honor, obligation, three squares a day.
We let him get it off his chest. We sat there and took it like the soldiers we were. I only yawned once to Fantasy’s three times. And the reason we were falling asleep was because he wouldn’t shut up. When he finally sputtered to a stop, like an engine dying, we opened our mouths to protest. He cut us off.
I held up a finger.
Tired of pacing, he sat. He barely nodded, granting me permission to speak, at the audacity of which, beside me, Fantasy made a single-syllable noise I easily interpreted: Baylor was digging his own grave. We would get him back. In a big way. We just weren’t in a position to do it right then and there, mostly because we were down by five million dollars, there was a baby at my house, and we didn’t have the energy, which gave Baylor the temporary advantage. That, and most of what he’d said was true.
He pivoted around. “What’d you say, Fantasy?”
“I said way to boss up, Baylor.”
I cheered along. “We’re proud of you.”
He eyed us back and forth, questioning our sincerity.
(With good reason.)
“However.” I cleared my throat. “I think you’re missing the big picture. You’re looking at this like it’s a money problem, which it is,” I said, “but our people problem is larger. One of our people, Baylor, her innocent baby, and her dying mother.”
Fantasy weighed in. “Who do you think you are, Baylor, trying to make us work tonight when there’s a poor old woman in an Alzheimer’s hospital and a baby upstairs we need to take care of?”
With one finger, he stabbed the air. Repeatedly. And in the direction of my home. “There are enough women up there to take care of ten babies.”
I couldn’t argue with that. So I found something else to argue with. “If we work the Elvis banquet so you can sleep, Baylor, who solves the problem of the baby’s missing mother? How are we supposed to work tonight, track down five million dollars, and find the baby’s mother at the same time?”
“The baby’s mother? The Casino Credit cashier?” He shot forward on the sofa. “She is the problem. Don’t you see, Davis? It’s as plain as day. You just told me, your words, she cashed the wire and ran off with the money.”
“We’re not working tonight,” Fantasy said to no one in particular.
I said, to Baylor specifically, “I just told you she cashed the wire and lost the money, Baylor. Or someone stole the money from her. We don’t know that she ran off with it. We know for a fact that somewhere along the way, the money made it to Lost and Found.”
“Davis.” He leaned in. “Get real. The Casino Credit cashier parked the money in Lost and Found until the coast was clear. Trust me,” he said. “She’s long gone and so is the money.”
That would be a clever trick: cash the wire, stash in Lost and Found until it cooled off, saunter in Monday morning, ask Birdy James for the bag the money was in, and Birdy would have gladly handed it over. With wedding cake on top.
“Megan Shaw may very well be a thief,” Fantasy said, “I’ll give you that. And she might be a liar, because we know she never worked at Harrah’s, but she wouldn’t run off and leave her baby. Who does that?”
Baylor leaned all the way in and answered as if English weren’t her native tongue. “How do you know that’s really her baby and not someone else’s baby?” he asked. “How do you know she’s not faking us off with a stranger baby?”
“Baylor, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about a criminal mastermind, Davis.” His bloodshot eyes were bugging a little. “She set this whole thing up. The baby at your house may very well be a fake baby.”
“Baylor,” Fantasy said, “there’s no such thing as a fake baby. That’s a very real baby. Have you lost your mind?”
“Where does her Alzheimer’s mother fit into your fake baby theory, Baylor?” I asked. “Did you not hear me say Megan Shaw was her Alzheimer’s-riddled mother’s guardian?” (Try saying that five times.) “If I’m hearing you right, you’re suggesting Megan Shaw found a baby, oh, let’s say on the street, substituted it for her own baby at Play, and ran off with the money. Are you adding a fake Alzheimer’s patient to your sneaking suspicions? She’s run off with five million dollars, her own baby, her own mother, and left subs in their places to throw us off?”
“It could happen,” he said. “For all you know the three of them are in Tahiti with the five million dollars.”
“Baylor?” I narrowed my eyes. “Have you been watching Hallmark mysteries?”
He shot off the sofa. “There’s nothing else to watch!”
I really hoped he wasn’t right, but having personally watched almost every Hallmark mystery filmed, I knew firsthand that crooks went to great lengths to cover up their crimes and make clean getaways. (Hallmark mysteries, and I’d worked in law enforcement my entire adult life.) I should check flight manifests on the very off chance Hallmark and Baylor were right. And just then, he-who-might-be-right stood. “I have work to do.” He turned for the door. “And so do you.”
Yes, I did. I’d missed four calls from Bradley’s assistant, Colleen. Four calls and a text message. Davis, I’m sorry to bother you, but we have a dessert problem. Something’s wrong with the ovens at Danish. The convection part of the ovens has stopped working. If we don’t get them repaired right away, the buffet and seven other restaurants Danish bakes for won’t have desserts.
I didn’t have time to text Colleen back and point out that we were saving waistlines and teeth. I did text Maintenance: Fix the ovens at Danish.
They texted back. No one speaks German, Mrs. Cole.
What that had to do with broken ovens, I had no idea. Find a tra
nslator. I had way bigger problems than dessert. I had baby problems. I texted July. Are you okay?
She texted back. I’m still shaking.
July, I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.
Davis, we need tighter security at Play so this doesn’t happen again.
Do you know how it happened in the first place?
She texted, Five different staff members were responsible for him. It wasn’t until one had him twice that the log was checked. And that wasn’t until this morning. Have you found his mother?
Not yet.
I texted my mother. Is Birdy awake?
Mother texted back. Know. She wasp but fill sloop. Thin she waked UPS with staff trees. Put hers in whippoorwill tab with episode salt. She butter but now she’s gnat awake.
I’d begged my mother to stop using voice-to-text.
Begged her.
She wouldn’t, because she had better things to do than poke on her phone, so I’d learned to interpret. At some point, Birdy was awake, but fell asleep again. She woke the second time with stiff knees. Mother put her in a whirlpool bath with some manner of bath salts, and afterward, knees better, she fell asleep again.
How is the baby? I asked.
Tootest bobby boy tether.
(Cutest baby boy ever.)
I took a moment to cover my face with both hands and groan.
Then I covered Megan Shaw with additional cyber alerts after checking my surveillance watches already in place (nothing), pinging her phone (more nothing), scouring traffic reports in and around Biloxi (even more nothing), then checking flight manifests near and far, I netted a whopping nothing again.
Where was Megan Shaw?
I tried to breathe.
“Do your fourteen-ten breath thing, Davis,” Fantasy, beside me, said.
“It’s four-eight-seven.”
Double Trouble Page 11
