“Really?”
"Roulette table," Edgar said. "The winners were all playing roulette."
I decided it was best to humor Clarence. I wanted him to be able to focus on his own job.
The truth was that this new lead was the only thing on this trip that interested me. The lock sounded dull. The curse (attracting beetles?) struck me as insignificant. Beetle infestations weren’t a good thing, but people getting killed by artifacts was both worse and more interesting.
Also, I have to admit that as much as Clarence had been enthusiastic about seeing Las Vegas and I like to visit new places myself, it had never been on my list of cities I wanted to see. I don’t like theme parks in any shape or form. So far, I wasn't particularly thrilled with the little I’d seen of Las Vegas. My entire few hours here had left me with the impression that it had a lot of superficial glitter without much obvious or substantial city life, yet it seemed to offer what I considered the drawbacks of cities—traffic, congestion, and high prices.
All that made me eager to return home to Destiny's Point. Only the idea of another adventure, something that included a little danger and affected luck, got my blood going. I could hang around for a time to find something like that. Of course, the things that made it attractive to me were exactly what made Clarence so… to use the technical term—skittish. He was stressed by the very idea.
"Don’t worry yourself that way,” I said. “We both have some research to do. You need to find and talk to this collector. I'm going to start by making some phone calls to see if I can find anyone quoted in the articles and find out if they’ll talk to me. Then I’ll go meet them and ask about what sort of new doodads or souvenirs the victims might have acquired recently. I’ll be nosy and see if I can find any connections among the victims that weren’t reported. I can’t do anything without some background information and I'd have to be awfully lucky for that to produce anything before five. So I will be here, unscathed and hungry."
He nodded, placated if not happy. "Okay."
“Then we should get started.” He headed toward the door and I waited, impatiently, for him to leave before grabbing the phone. It's probably a good thing that my short-lived career as a wannabe journalist didn't pan out. Of course, I'd never gotten any higher than the magazine's mail room, but I once had dreams. Since then, doing this kind of research, I'd learned that you need to make an incredible number of phone calls and ask the same questions over and over before you discover the tiniest nugget of information. Even then, before you can evaluate whether that nugget you worked so hard to get has any real value, you need to set up a face-to-face meeting or do some other leg work. I’d learned quickly enough that this wasn’t my favorite part of the work. Doing it full time as a journalist didn’t seem so attractive any longer.
But it was necessary, so as Clarence went to begin his research I checked to make sure my phone was charged, got out the tabloids and a local phone book, and started to work. I copied out the names of everyone mentioned in the articles (and why they were quoted) and the names of the casinos the big wins had taken place in. It was a jumble of names to sort through.
In this instance, a couple of hours of calling got me the name of a bartender in a casino. This man, named Matt, allegedly knew the last winner/victim pretty well. He was quoted as describing him as a bad gambler who would be missed. The article gave me the name of the casino. A secretary at the casino where Matt worked was willing to believe that I was the man’s sister and coming into town to surprise him. She was happy to accept that I’d somehow lost his phone number and she provided it.
I called his house. A woman answered. “Matt’s at work.”
“Do you think he’d talk to me about his friend who died?”
She laughed. “I know he’d be delighted. And if you go down there in the next hour or so, the bar will be mostly empty.”
“Would you call him and tell him, so I don’t catch him off guard?”
“Just pop in. He’ll be bored as hell. He’ll tell you anything and everything. Getting the man to shut up is the real trick,” she said. "Say, if you figure out how to shut him up, let me know, will you?"
As a public service, I promised. “Of course.”
I picked up a business card from the nightstand. It belonged to the driver of the taxi we’d taken from the airport. When he dropped us off the driver handed one to each of us, except Edgar, of course. "Just in case," he said.
He’d seemed nice, so now that I needed to go to the casino, I thought I’d give him a call. The card said his name was Ronny Chappel. He picked up quickly and sounded delighted. "I'm actually still in the neighborhood," he said. "This is a lucky coincidence. I can be there in five minutes."
There I was running into coincidences again. I suppose if I was living with my own ghost, I had to accept the occasional coincidence could happen.
I changed out my jeans and tee shirt and into a dress. I had no idea how people dressed in casinos, but if I was going to be asking questions, I figured I should look like I was someone with a little authority or at least not a slob.
"You are going out in public in that?" Edgar asked me as I checked myself in the distorted mirror.
"What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?"
He frowned. "It’s vulgar. You are displaying a great deal of your leg. It just isn't decorous."
"It's appropriate for this time and place," I told him. "This dress is actually pretty conservative."
"Nonsense," he said. "Things like that are common sense. The standards for appropriate feminine attire couldn't change so dramatically. Why, that dress lets me see your knees."
"Get used to it, Edgar. This is how I dress when I wear fancier clothing."
"It embarrasses me to be seen with you when you dress like that."
"Then it's probably a good thing no one can see you," I said. "You can feel free to blush at will." The idea of being angry with a ghost and arguing with him over what was decent attire struck even me as weird. "I don't want to hear any more about it."
He started to say something else but then seemed to think better of it. He was still sulking a bit as Ronny pulled his taxi up in front of the motel room and we got in the vehicle.
"So are you heading off to look into these funny deaths?" He asked me as I got in.
"Why do you think I'm doing that, Ronny? Do I look like some sort of ghoul?"
He tipped his head. "You and your pal seemed pretty interested in them earlier… talking about them when you saw the stories in the papers. And now here we are, headed for the casino where two of them won big—the first two."
"Why and how do you know that?"
He laughed. "How? Because it was in the paper. Why? Because I'm a gambler. We pay attention to things like that. They are important."
"Really? And what important thing does something like that tell you?"
"Well, there are two schools of thought when you hear about any big wins, much less a series of them. The first says that if someone wins a jackpot from a machine then you should stay away from that casino for a time as they probably won't be paying off for a while. Of course, that cynically assumes casinos control the payouts, and we know that couldn’t happen. And quite naturally, the other school thinks that news suggests that the machines have gotten hot, that either the natural cycles of the machines, or the alignment of the stars is such that, the winning place is exactly the right place to put down your bets—you should get in on the streak."
"And which of those mutually exclusive schools do you belong to?"
"I'd definitely put myself in that first school. I think the machines are programmed so the casino wins long term. If that's right, a big jackpot means it’s smarter to stay away for a time. Of course, in this case, that doesn't apply."
"Why not?"
"Because those people, the ones who won big and then died, all won at roulette, not the slots. So it has nothing to do with machines or cycles or stars."
"Really?"
"
See that's another unusual factor in these cases. Most of the time when you read about big winners in casinos, it has to do with the slot machines, not the tables. I have no idea why that is, unless it's just that the winners on slots win the big money in one big jackpot that is rather noisy, whereas you usually win at roulette over time. You need to win a number of consecutive spins of the wheel, or at least a high percentage of them. It is more an evolution, win after win, than a single, often noisy event."
"And they were all playing roulette?" I remembered Edgar mentioning that. I hadn’t realized he was paying so much attention.
"According to the papers, that's all they played."
"That’s quite interesting." And it was. I was sure that them having the same game of choice factored into what had happened somehow. It was something to file away until I knew more.
"It's also interesting that you didn't answer my question."
“Your question?”
“About your interest in the deaths.”
"I was hoping you wouldn't notice," Ronny said.
"But I did."
"The truth is that I'm not interested in the deaths of those people. I'm more interested in the lucky streaks they had before they died."
"Yes! I knew it.”
“Knew what?”
“That you're a reporter."
I almost expected him to say he knew we were chasing artifacts, so this surprised me. But it was too close for comfort and I wondered what else he might know or think. Had it been a coincidence that he’d still ‘been in the neighborhood’ or was he watching us?
A quick glance at his license, which was displayed on the sun visor told me that he'd been driving taxis for a while. That confirmed his story and told me he wasn't a plant. For a moment I'd been worried. There seems to be something about hunting cursed objects that made me a more suspicious person. "Something like that, Ronny. How did you figure it out?"
He glanced at me in the rearview mirror, then smiled. "A number of things. Like I said, you were speculating about the deaths and their connection to winning… you bothered to remember my name… you don't seem to be in town to gamble… makes me wonder."
"About me?"
"About all of it. Why you came to Vegas. And the way you and your friend were so interested in the deaths..."
"And what have you figured out?" I held my breath, waiting to hear.
"First I thought maybe you were a crime reporter or PI interested in the idea that these guys were killed for something they’d done or knew, but now I'm thinking you write for Fate Magazine or one of those. Sure, that's it. That magazine says it is about 'True reports of the strange and unknown,' and if these deaths aren’t strange, nothing is."
"So you read those magazines?" I knew the magazine vaguely. It covered some of the same topics as the tabloids, such as UFO sightings, crop circles, ghosts, and ancient visitors. Clarence and I didn’t use them as source material because they were monthly publications and not timely. But we probably should be reading them.
If Ronny thought I was working for them, that saved a lot of explaining.
He was deciding how to answer my question. "I look at them sometimes. I don’t care about the alien stuff, seeing as I can’t do anything about it one way or the other, but I often think that luck is just an expression of paranormal stuff. It’s magic that we can see and experience and just decide to call it something else."
"I suppose it could be exactly that – some of it, anyway."
"And I do believe in ghosts."
"Good man, Ronny. That's the way to talk," Edgar said.
I wanted to encourage Ronny. "I have to admit I've encountered a ghost myself."
"See? Now I bet you are looking for a common thread that ties those lucky streaks together."
"I'm thinking there just might be one," I agreed. "It would be interesting to find out what it was."
"Since they were sequential winners, serial winners, and losers, you might say, you might be looking for a really potent lucky charm that passed from one to the next."
"That possibility has occurred to me." He was basically on the right track, just seeing it from a gambler's point of view and calling it a lucky charm. I liked that. Here in Las Vegas looking for a lucky charm would be more acceptable to people, more understandable than telling them I was looking for a cursed object, even though they seemed the same to me.
"You better be careful." In the mirror, I saw him scowl thoughtfully.
"Of what?"
"If that tabloid is right, it could be nothing supernatural at all. There might have been some kind of cheating. Or, if there's a lucky charm, someone might be killing whoever gets their hands on it and starts winning."
"It's curious though."
"What?"
"If someone is killing people to get this lucky charm, how is it that they never manage to hang onto it? It keeps popping up and quickly. If you were trying to keep people from using it, once you had it, why let it go, especially if that meant you had to keep killing people to take it out of circulation? Once you got it, however you got it, why not just lock it away?"
"You reporters," he said, chuckling. "You got them instincts. You know what questions to ask." When he pulled up at the casino and I paid him, he smiled. "Mind if I hang around?"
"Hang around?"
"Wait for you. I'm off now, but all that I got at home is a television with crappy shows on it. If it's okay, I'll wait for you. You can tell me what you learn. I can be a sounding bounce."
"A sounding board?"
"That's it. And if you got to go anywhere heck, I know Vegas like nobody should have to know it."
"Do ghosts ride free?" Edgar asked.
"What will it cost me? I'm on a budget."
"For the rest of today, nothing more than what you've already spent. Like I said, I'm off and now I'm real curious about what you find out."
The offer was tempting and Ronny seemed friendly. I didn't want to seem too eager. "Well, I won't hold you to it, but if you're here when I come out I'll take you up on that offer."
That pleased him and I felt good as I went inside to find The Corner Bar, where Matt Murphy tended bar.
Matt was a tall, thin man, with nervous eyes that relaxed a bit when I ordered a martini and told him that his wife had sent me to him. "Evie does that stuff," he said. "You aren't a PI, are you?"
"I'm a reporter for a magazine that covers strange things," I said, deciding that Ronny had suggested the perfect cover. "I'm interested in how your friend suddenly got so lucky. If the article in the paper quoted you correctly, he never was a particularly lucky person."
"Not at all," Matt said. "The old blues song said it… 'if it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all,' is how it goes. That was him. And then, he gets this streak, and when it ends, his bad luck was ten times worse than it had been. Poor slob."
"Any idea what might've changed for him?"
Matt gave me a sly look. "If I tell you, can I get a free subscription to the magazine?"
"Why not?" I handed him a piece of paper. "Write down your name and address and I'll see that you get signed up."
When he did and pushed it back toward me with a satisfied grin, he said: "The guy bought his luck."
"In what form?"
"Form?"
"I assume you mean he bought some sort of lucky charm."
"One that worked."
"What is it?"
"Dice. He bought a pair of dice. He was all excited about them."
"Where did he get them?"
Matt shrugged. "He didn't say… he just waved them under my nose and said he was going to win big. I thought it was just talk. He was always coming up with some new system or idea about how to win. But this time he did it."
"And he gambled using those dice and won?"
He glanced at me. "You aren't a gambler, are you?"
"Not for money. Not this kind of gambling."
"You aren't going to get a chance to use your own dice.
The casino provides them and changes them often so they know there's no cheating. Besides, he was playing roulette, not craps. Roulette is betting on the spin of the wheel, not dice."
"Oh right." I pretended I'd just forgotten.
"No, he said that he just needed to touch them once in a while. He had those dice in his pocket and started winning."
"Coincidence maybe?"
Matt arched his eyebrows. "Gamblers don't believe in coincidences. No one should."
"I suppose you are right. Any idea where the dice are now? I'd like to see them."
He shook his head. "His wife said they weren't with his effects." He grinned. "I asked because I thought they might be worth something to the right person. I called the police on her behalf to see what happened to them, but they claim he didn't have them on him."
"You don't believe them?"
He winked. "It's cops, you know? There are good ones and then there are cops."
I thanked him and went back outside. The air seemed fresh after the canned air in the casino. Ronny was waiting for me.
"How did it go?" he asked when I got in.
"Actually it was a bit of a dead end," I told him.
“That’s funny,” Ronny said.
“An accidental pun. I talked to a friend of the guy who won. He says the guy was a lousy gambler until the other day.”
“Then he won.”
“And died.”
“Better to have won and died, than to have never played at all.”
“If you don’t play, you don’t lose, Ronny.”
“Spoilsport. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I guess I get it from a different kind of fix.”
“I bet you are a bungee jumper,” he said. “Me, I’d have a heart attack jumping off something high.”
“It’s a rush,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d never even consider jumping off a building or bridge. It just made no sense at all.
Chapter 6
Clarence was exactly on time. I expected that from him, but it was oddly more annoying than reassuring. That tells you what kind of mood I was in.
The Curious Case of the Cursed Dice (Curiosity Shop Cozy Mysteries Book 2) Page 4
