Heaven Painted as a Free Meal

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “What kind?” Elliot asked, looking very serious.

  She loved how he always listened to what she had to say. Sometimes he laughed, but he always listened.

  “In the corporate world,” Deanna said, taking a deep breath and trying to make sense of her worry, “disruption in one area is often used to soften and take the attention away from an action in another area. And the distraction often has a build-up as this has had.”

  K.J. looked up and shouted, “Laverne?”

  An instant later Laverne appeared and time froze in the buffet. She waved that everyone stay seated and she pulled a chair over.

  “Go on,” Laverne said to Deanna. “I was listening. Your first point is spot on and we’re scanning the hotel now for developing problems on all floors and into the sub-basements. So far nothing.”

  Deanna felt stunned. She hadn’t really seen Laverne since that first night. But she had been told so much about her.

  Deanna took a deep breath and kept going. “Even if there are some deaths today and the original Blackrow members are resurrected, you are completely prepared to trap them instantly and neutralize them. Correct?”

  Laverne nodded. “We are ready for that now. We were not the first times.”

  “And the person behind all this would know that. Correct?” Deanna asked. “If they knew where the ring was at in the first place.”

  Laverne nodded slowly.

  “So where is the real attack happening?” Deanna asked. “In corporate mergers and takeovers, that was always the question.”

  “And what is the goal?” Elliot asked. “In my line of work, when looking at the motive of any criminal, you always ask what is the overall goal? Usually it was money. Or revenge. Both extremely powerful driving forces.”

  “So what other major events from history are happening this evening?” Deanna asked. “Something that needs you and everyone else to be distracted.”

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Laverne said softly to herself.

  And then she vanished, dropping the time bubble around them as she did.

  “Never a good thing when Lady Luck starts swearing,” K.J. said, looking very worried.

  Deanna had no idea what to think. She just hoped she had helped some.

  They sat there in silence for a moment, then Tommy said. “We have a job to do, a hotel to protect, some lives to save. Let’s get going.”

  “I love it when he makes speeches,” K.J. said.

  Jewel kissed Tommy on the cheek. “He is cute, isn’t he?”

  “Very,” K.J. said, batting his eyes at Tommy.

  And with that, they all jumped to the Living Time Hotel and Casino.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  JEWEL DIDN’T MUCH care that Laverne and the gods and superheroes could stop the dead from creating an army. That all sounded well and good, but she was much more interested in making sure no innocent people died in the failed attempt.

  And she mentioned that to all of the team after they arrived in the lobby area of the big Living Time Hotel and Casino. All of them agreed. No one died today on their watch.

  The hotel lobby was huge, with gold and white stone floors and towering stone pillars. An expansive light oak front desk ran along one wall on the right and a waiting area with couches and chairs were on the left, along with some shops and such. Tourists came in through the front door elevated above the lobby, which gave the massive room with the towering ceilings an even grander feeling, if that was possible.

  And straight ahead, across from the front entrance was the entrance to the lower-ceilinged casino area.

  The massive lobby echoed with talking, laughing, and people having fun, combined with the sounds of the machines drawing customers forward into the depths of the hotel and casino.

  Piles of baggage were still stacked around, mostly against pillars or on carts as people checked out.

  The seven Ghost of a Chance team members stood off to one side out of any traffic area.

  “I have a question,” Deanna asked. “Can all the gods and superheroes see us?”

  “Nope,” K.J. said, shaking his head. “Very few of the gods can. Laverne gave Poker Boy and his team the ability to see us last fall, but to everyone else, we are completely invisible.”

  Deanna nodded.

  “Why?” Jewel asked.

  “Just wanted to make sure that if the gods who are planning these attacks come here,” Deanna said, “we can’t be seen. We have more value that way.”

  “Agreed,” Tommy said. “How about we go into the casino, check those there, and then float up through the hotel checking everyone as we go.”

  Jewel looked at all the people streaming in and out of the casino area and suddenly realized that would be a waste of time. Deanna had been right. This was a diversion. She understood that now.

  She touched Tommy’s arm and shook her head. “I think Deanna is right and we need a different plan. Let’s go back to the buffet for a few minutes to talk in comfort.”

  He frowned at her, but then nodded. “Sounds fine. We have a lot of time between now and six.”

  At that, they were all back at the Golden Nugget buffet in downtown Las Vegas. At some point they really, really were going to need to find a place of their own.

  The breakfast crowd still filled about half the place, mostly over by the tall windows looking out over the pool area. And the wonderful smell of bacon and waffles made her feel hungry again, even though she had just eaten.

  They quickly bussed off their ghost dishes from earlier and each got themselves something to drink and a snack before going back to the table.

  “So what are you thinking?” K.J. asked, facing Jewel as he worked on a Danish, managing mostly to not get any frosting on his face or his bright red tie.

  Jewel took a deep breath and tried to gather her thoughts. “I think Deanna is right. This is a diversion, but one we can’t ignore or let people get killed in.”

  All of them nodded, staring at her.

  “So I think we might be better served to help out by splitting our attentions.”

  “How do we do that?” K.J. asked. “This isn’t a simple three-way in my hot tub, you know.”

  Jewel said nothing to that and Tommy just shook his head.

  Jewel then turned to Belle and Nancy. “I’m thinking that you two find some very powerful computers and dig into who wants the Living Time corporations stock depressed. If memory serves, it’s part of a very large group of casinos.”

  “It is,” Nancy said. “We can dig into stalled projects and other money reasons that are large enough to want this to happen.”

  Belle nodded.

  “Try to figure out,” Tommy said, “who would gain vast sums if this entire town was shut down.”

  Jewel frowned at Tommy. “Think it could be something like that?”

  He shrugged. “If we’re going to look, let’s look. A war with black magic here, if we hadn’t stopped those first attacks, would have shut down this city forever.”

  “So someone might have a backup plan to shut the city down,” K.J. said, nodding.

  Jewel agreed that made sense. “Even if it is a god, they have to live here as well. Laverne and Poker Boy and his team are researching that side of things, let’s look for the business connections.”

  Jewel then turned to K.J. “I think we need you next to Laverne and Poker Boy, reporting back anything they are doing that might help us.”

  K.J. nodded. “I can do that.”

  “And we can look from the legal side,” Deanna said.

  Elliot nodded. “There might be some pretty angry people out of the past that felt wronged in some land grab or legal way that are just waiting to get even. I would imagine gods hold grudges just as anyone else.”

  K.J. laughed so hard at that, Jewel was afraid he would have a stroke, if ghosts could have strokes. When he finally calmed down, he said, “They are masters at holding grudges. I think it has to do with living so long.”

  Jewel nodded and turn
ed to Tommy, the man she loved more than anything on the planet. “That leaves the hotel for us.”

  “But we don’t start looking in people yet,” Tommy said. “We go down to that ring and see what we can find, if anything. And search the hotel from top to bottom for anything odd in the slightest.”

  Jewel nodded. “I love that idea.”

  Tommy turned to look at everyone. “We check back in here at 2 p.m. unless someone hits pay dirt.”

  K.J. nodded. He took one bite of the Danish, then dropped the remains on his plate. “Off to tag along like a well-house-trained-puppy with the gods and superheroes.”

  He vanished.

  “Courthouse,” Deanna said to Elliot.

  And they vanished.

  “Living Time corporate main computers,” Belle said to Nancy.

  And they vanished.

  “Let’s go find an ancient ring of power,” Tommy said.

  “You take me to all the nicest places,” Jewel said, laughing.

  And a moment later they were in the subbasement of the Living Time Hotel and Casino.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  DEANNA WASN’T SURPRISED that only two people were sitting deep in the Clark County Courthouse, working at computers.

  The windowless concrete room was stacked with files and seemed to go off into the distance with shelving holding file boxes. The place felt cool and Deanna wished she had worn a sweater.

  One of the two people sitting there was a woman about thirty, with short brown hair and jeans and a thick blouse that looked more suited for a winter climate. She seemed to be studying some file on her screen, almost straining and leaning forward to look at it.

  Around her she had made her area feel a little like home, with a couple plants that must have not minded the artificial light, a small coffee maker, and some pictures of a family that did not include her.

  The woman had a nice blue sweater draped over a chair behind where she was working. Deanna figured she could borrow that if she needed to later on.

  The other person was a man, wearing a t-shirt and jeans and clearly checking Facebook at the moment. His desk only had a box of snack bars on it and piles of paper and not much else.

  These two computers were the record-keeping entry points for all the legal records of the area. Luckily, both Deanna and Elliot were experts in fast research through legal documents.

  But finding anything today was going to need both of their skills since there was really no way to divide up what they were doing. They were just going to follow trails in legal documents like a hunter would follow an animal trail through a forest.

  And from the looks of the physical storage in this huge room, they were in a very, very large forest.

  “Check the woman for anything she has noticed unusual first,” Elliot said. “And I’ll check the guy for the same before I get started.”

  That made sense to Deanna. Sometimes these data computer workers saw things that were never reported, or put pieces together that never got put together in any other fashion.

  Elliot kissed Deanna. “Have fun.”

  “Actually I will,” she said, smiling at him. “I love doing research, you know that.”

  Elliot laughed, kissed her again, then turned and vanished into the guy doing Facebook.

  An instant later the guy sat up straight and closed Facebook and his fingers started dancing over the keys.

  Deanna smiled. Elliot loved the rush of danger and discovery and this assault on Vegas was giving him both.

  She turned to the woman. “Sorry to take your body for a while,” she said. “But mine seems to be in a coma up in Idaho at the moment.”

  Deanna sunk into the woman and was instantly surprised. The woman’s name was Stephanie Williams, at least in this lifetime. She had lived for hundreds and hundreds of years under many names and she was a superhero working in the area of governments.

  She loved computers and loved digging into the history of governments. Except for this cold, sometimes damp office, she loved this job as well. It suited her.

  She was married to another superhero who worked for the gods of landscaping. They had no kids and loved to travel and see and learn about history together.

  Deanna had no idea that there were so many gods and superheroes.

  Deanna looked back at Stephanie’s memories and only found one or two references to even knowing there was a part of her world where ghosts existed in a team. She had heard only a few mentions of that, mostly from last fall when K.J. and the others had worked with Poker Boy to save the world.

  Stephanie knew about the coming problem, had met with her boss, a woman named Claire, who was also a superhero, just more powerful and older. So she had already started the search back through records, looking for anything that seemed odd, to see if she could help.

  Deanna moved off to one side in Stephanie’s mind and spoke to her.

  “Hi, Stephanie. You are not hearing things or making things up. My name is Deanna and I’m a Ghost of a Chance agent.”

  To Deanna, that sounded very weird, but she liked the sound of it a lot at the same time.

  Stephanie swung around quickly, looking in both directions, then frowning and being surprised that Adam, the guy she worked with, was actually working.

  “My partner, Elliot, is inside Adam running searches,” Deanna said. “I didn’t know you were a superhero.”

  “You are inside my head hearing my thoughts?” Stephanie asked, without saying anything.

  “I am,” Deanna said. “Elliot and I believe that the attacks at the Living Time Casino might be distractions for another attack or takeover or something happening at some other place today.”

  Deanna could see that Stephanie was pleased. “I was working on that same theory. And really nice meeting a ghost agent, if you call this meeting.”

  “About as close a meeting as it gets,” Deanna said.

  “It is,” Stephanie thought back. “So where do you want to start?”

  “I can see what you were thinking about the early land grabs,” Deanna said. “And the fact that so much of the land to the north of Las Vegas is off limits.”

  Deanna could tell that Stephanie didn’t know why that land was off limits, but it worried her. It seemed that one man named Warren Numa had made many legal attempts to acquire the land to the north, but the county always stopped him cold.

  “Let’s get a picture of this Numa guy,” Deanna said.

  Deanna was pleased she didn’t have to take over Stephanie and run the search. Stephanie was fast, very fast, maybe faster than Deanna would have been.

  They pulled up a picture of Numa. The guy looked handsome, with the standard square chin and an expensive suit. He had dark eyes, perfectly styled brown hair, and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  “He’s not the dating kind,” Stephanie said, shuddering.

  Deanna could tell that Stephanie was repulsed by the guy.

  “Not a normal reaction to a picture,” Deanna said. “But I feel the same way. So how about a picture of a business person who tried to get land to the north back in the 1950s?”

  Again Stephanie’s fingers flew over the keys as Deanna watched her exact thought process in the search, only suggesting one change.

  Within ten minutes they pulled up a picture of William Numa. He had been trying to buy the land under another company, but there was no doubt it was the same guy. He had just changed his first name, more than likely pretending he was just family.

  “We’re dealing with a god or superhero there,” Stephanie said.

  They spent the next thirty minutes going back into the 1930s and discovering the same man trying to buy the same land, and then they discovered that at one point he had owned a bunch of it, considered it family property, but it was taken from him and he was forced to move off his family ranch.

  That was when all the attempts to regain it started and escalated for the last eighty years.

  “So why is that property so protected?” Stephani
e asked in her mind at the same time Deanna was thinking it. “It is vast amounts of land, actually, with only roads going through it.”

  Neither of them had an answer to that question.

  The two of them spent the next hour digging into everything they could learn about Warren Numa. They discovered he was very, very rich and diversified under many companies. But he owned little land in Las Vegas. Very little, actually.

  Only the land to the north of Vegas interested him in the slightest.

  It wasn’t until they found the corporate structure of one of his well-hidden corporations that Deanna suddenly got very worried. It seemed he owned an explosives corporation.

  And a cutting edge medical research corporation.

  And a corporation specializing in drone advancement.

  “Oh, no,” Stephanie said.

  Deanna could feel the panic starting in the superhero. And Deanna wasn’t sure if some of that panic was hers as well.

  “I’m leaving you now,” Deanna said. “Then I’m going to call Laverne for help.”

  “Lady Luck?” Stephanie asked, now even more afraid.

  “Yes,” Deanna said and gave Stephanie a calming feeling and stepped out.

  Then as Stephanie stood, Deanna said to Elliot. “Found a huge problem. Put that guy to sleep and come on out.”

  The guy slumped over his keyboard as Elliot stepped into sight.

  “Laverne!” Deanna shouted into the air. “I think we found something.”

  An instant later Laverne appeared and smiled at Stephanie, who looked like she was about to faint.

  Laverne stepped toward Stephanie and stuck out her hand. “Nice meeting you, Stephanie. You’ve done great work over the years.”

  Stephanie nodded, shook Laverne’s hand, then managed to say, “The pleasure is all mine.”

  Laverne turned to Deanna and suddenly it was clear that Stephanie could now see Deanna and Elliot.

  Deanna smiled at her. “Wonderful job you did there.”

  “Nice having you along for the ride,” Stephanie said, smiling.

  “So what did you two find?” Laverne asked.

  “Warren Numa is his current name,” Deanna said. “He has been angry and frustrated he hasn’t been able to acquire land to the north of Las Vegas since Las Vegas was only a train stop. His family settled out there and then were forced to leave their ranch.”