Certified Male

by Kristin Hardy

  “No idea where he went?” Gwen asked, walking over to stare out the window across to the neighboring building.

  “Nope. We don’t exactly get a lot of forwarding addresses around here.” The woman dragged a vacuum cleaner in from the cleaning cart.

  “Mind if I look in this?” Gwen asked, gesturing at the trash can.

  “As long as you’ve had your shots.” She jerked her head toward it. “A real pig, this guy. Nothing in the trash can if it could go on the floor.”

  Gwen poked gingerly through the refuse. Cigarette cartons, an empty toothbrush wrapper, a screwed-up McDonald’s bag that still held the scent of stale grease. Then her eyes widened. In the bottom of the bin were scraps of cardboard, the thin type that came on the back of a pad of paper.

  The type that could be used to make a stiff pocket for a stamp.

  She pulled some out of the waste bin, staring at Joss. In her eyes Gwen saw knowledge and acceptance.

  And a bright flare of anger.

  The woman picked up the bin. “Okay, you guys had your chance to look around. I got to get back to work.”

  Gwen nodded slowly. “So do we,” she said and turned toward the door. Her foot scuffed against something. An open matchbook. Clement Street Liquors, it said—the business next door to the stamp shop. She leaned down to pick it up.

  And glimpsed writing on the inside. Excitement pumped through her. Maybe it was nothing but maybe, just maybe…

  “What’s that?” the woman asked.

  “Matches.” Gwen held them up. “I could use some. All right with you?”

  “Sure, whatever.”

  “Thanks for letting us look around,” Gwen told her, already walking out. She didn’t say a word to Joss about it until they were outside, waited in fact until they were in the car. Hope formed a lump in her throat.

  “Jerry buys his cigarettes at Clement Street Liquors,” Joss told her.

  “Bought. Jerry’s long gone.”

  “The question is where?”

  Gwen opened up the matchbook and showed Joss the writing. “Maybe Rennie will know.” It was just a name and a phone number, but maybe it would lead them to a guy who’d know where to find Jerry. She dialed the number on her cell phone, her heart thudding.

  “Thank you for calling the Versailles Resort and Casino, can I help you?”

  Gwen blinked. “I’m looking for a guest named Rennie,” she said and spelled it out.

  “Last name?”

  Gwen hesitated. “I’m not sure. Try it as the last name.”

  Keys clicked in the background. “We have no guest under that name.”

  “Can you search under first names?”

  The operator’s voice turned cool. “No, ma’am.”

  “Okay, thank you.” Disappointment spread through Gwen, thick and heavy, as she hung up.

  Joss looked at her questioningly.

  “A hotel. They don’t have him listed.”

  “So much for our lead. What do we do now?”

  Gwen started the car. “We go home and call Stewart.”

  “YOU’RE MISSING WHAT?”

  Saying the words aloud made them more real. “The Blue Mauritius. The red-orange one-penny Mauritius. More.” Her stomach muscles clenched.

  “Does Hugh know?”

  “Not yet. They’re on their trip for another twelve weeks. I don’t know what to do, Stewart.” The words spilled out, and for the first time since she’d opened the safe, tears threatened. “He could wind up losing everything, everything, and it’s all my fault.” It was a relief to let the panic out. Stewart would know what to do. Stewart would help her.

  If anyone could.

  “It’s okay, Gwennie. It’s going to be okay,” he soothed. “Hugh has them insured, so even if we can’t get them back, he’ll get replacement value.”

  “But he doesn’t,” she blurted.

  “What?” His cool disappeared.

  “The premiums went too high. He let the insurance lapse last year except the basic policy on the store. He put all the money into the business.” And his granddaughters were the weak link.

  Stewart cursed pungently. “Dammit, what was he thinking? Why the hell didn’t he have them in a safe-deposit box?”

  “You worked with him for ten years, Stewart. You know how stubborn he is.”

  “That’s no excuse for not having them protected, though. That was the first thing he taught me—protect the clients’ holdings and protect your own.”

  “It wasn’t just financial with him. He was a collector at heart.”

  Stewart let out a sigh. “I know. Come on, it’s still going to be okay. We’re talking about world-famous issues. They’re not going to be easy to unload, especially if your thief is someone who doesn’t know the stamp world.”

  “Oh, I have a good idea who the thief is,” she said grimly. “We hired on a new clerk, Jerry Messner, about a month ago. As near as I can tell, he’s bolted.”

  “Coincidence?”

  Gwen laughed without humor. “He had motive, he had opportunity. Security wasn’t compromised from the outside. You tell me.”

  “You called the police?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Good. Keep it that way for now. The last thing you need on this is publicity.”

  Gwen nodded. “That was my thinking. I’m hoping we can get them back before we have to tell anyone.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Maybe. The prize issues aren’t the only stamps missing. There’s another twenty or thirty thousand in value gone from the store inventory. Common issues he can unload pretty easily, get himself some money to tide him over.”

  “Well, isn’t he a greedy little bastard,” Stewart said, an edge of helpless anger in his voice.

  “I put out a few feelers on the loop, asking if there’s any action out there with the low-cost issues. I’m keeping quiet on the high-value ones for now.”

  “Smart thinking.”

  “If it is, it’s the first smart thing I’ve done since Grampa left.”

  He sighed. “Don’t beat yourself up, Gwen. There’s no point. The thing to focus on is getting them back. I’ll tell you what, e-mail me a list of everything that’s gone. I’ll make a couple of quiet phone calls to a few people I trust, just to see if they’ve heard any word of some of the issues coming on the market.”

  “As soon as we hang up,” she promised, reaching over to switch on her computer. “And Stewart?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks. I feel a lot better knowing we’ve got some help.”

  “It’s going to be okay, Gwen. Trust me on this.”

  And for a moment, as Gwen hung up the phone, she felt as if it actually would be.

  Joss stared at her as Gwen logged on to the Internet. “So, what did he say?”

  “He’s going to ask around, see if anything’s surfacing.” Gwen sent Stewart the file she and Joss had compiled earlier.

  “Is he going to tell people why he’s asking?”

  “Stewart understands the situation. He’ll keep the theft quiet.”

  Joss rose to pace around the office. “You know, I’m surprised. I would have picked you for the first one to run to the cops.”

  “Normally I would have been,” Gwen told her, clicking on her e-mail in-box. “These are different circumstances.” She scanned the contents of the messages that popped up in her preview pane. “I just don’t want to blow—” The thought evaporated from her brain as she stared at the words on-screen.

  Joss crowded up behind her. “Did you get something?”

  It took her a couple of tries to speak. “It’s a dealer. He just bought a Ben Franklin, same perf, very good condition. It sounds like one of ours.”

  “Well, call him.”

  “I am.” Gwen scrolled down, searching for the contact signature at the bottom of the e-mail. And then suddenly she was yanking open the desk drawer and pulling out her purse.

  “What? Where is he?”

  �
��Las Vegas.” The blood roared in Gwen’s ears as she pulled out the matchbook and compared it to the numbers on-screen. “It’s the same area code as where Rennie is.”

  Joss’s gaze took on a particular stillness. “Call it,” she ordered, her voice barely audible.

  Hands shaking, Gwen dialed the number and listened to the tones of a phone ringing hundreds of miles away.

  “Versailles Resort and Casino,” an operator answered crisply.

  Gwen resisted the urge to cross her fingers. It couldn’t just be coincidence the stamp had surfaced there, it couldn’t. “Jerry Messner, please.” She crossed her fingers. All she needed was a chance.

  There was a clicking noise in the background. “How was that spelled, please?”

  Gwen told her.

  The keys clicked some more. “One moment, I’ll connect you.”

  And the line began to ring. Gwen banged down the handset hastily and stared at Joss. “He’s there.”

  3

  LIGHT, COLOR, NOISE. SLOT machines chattered and jingled in the background as Gwen walked through the extravagance that was the Versailles Resort and Casino.

  “You want to tell me what I’m doing here again?” she asked Joss over her cell phone as she walked across the plush carpet patterned with mauve, teal and golden medallions. Ornate marble pillars soared to the ceiling overhead, where enormous crystal chandeliers glittered. Waitresses dressed in low-cut bodices and not much else hustled by carrying drinks trays. The casino had the sense of opulence, a decadent playground for the wealthy, though it was open to all comers.

  Under the luxury, though, was the reality of gambling. The air freshener pumped into the cavernous main room of the casino didn’t quite dispel the lingering staleness of cigarette smoke. The faces of the gamblers held a fixed intensity as they hoped for the big score. Or hoped just to break even. She couldn’t have found anyplace more unlike herself if she’d tried.

  Then again, she couldn’t have looked more unlike herself if she’d tried.

  “You know why you’re there,” Joss said. “You’ve got to find Jerry.”

  A balding man in his thirties glanced up from his computer poker machine as Gwen walked by. “Hey, baby,” he said, toasting her with a plastic glass that held one of the free drinks handed out by casino waitresses. After a lifetime of wanting to be unremarkable, Gwen had gone the other way completely. Exit Gwen and enter Nina, the bombshell.

  “I look like a tart,” she hissed, tugging at her tight, low slung jeans and her scrap of a red top.

  “You don’t look like a tart. You just look like a woman who’s not afraid to flaunt what she’s got.”

  “Yeah, well, the flaunting part’s working.” A bellhop walking by tripped over his own feet and stumbled up with a grin. “Joss, this is not my style. This should be your job.”

  “It had to be you,” Joss told her. “Jerry knows me too well. He’d recognize me in a second.”

  “Like he’s not going to recognize me?”

  “All Jerry’s going to register is blond, tight and built. I doubt he’s going to think much beyond his gonads. Anyway, you were always in the back room. He hardly saw you. And no way would he expect you to look like this. You’re different head to toe.”

  “Tell me about it,” Gwen muttered, resisting the urge to pull up her neckline. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you took my regular clothes out of my suitcase.”

  “I didn’t want you to be tempted to backslide,” Joss said smoothly. “You’ve got to be Nina through and through.”

  Joss had effected quite a transformation, Gwen thought, catching sight of herself in one of the enormous gold-framed mirrors that hung on the wall. Gwen—tidy, understated Gwen—was gone. In her place was Nina, whose Wonderbra-induced cleavage alone was likely to distract Jerry from recognizing the person underneath. How Joss had managed to get her into a good salon without notice, Gwen had no idea, but her brownish hair was a thing of the past. Now it had the same streaky, sun-bleached blond look it had had in Africa, only better. The makeup artist had made her eyes more vivid, her smile more bright, somehow without making her look as if she’d troweled on the makeup. She was undercover and, she had to grudgingly admit, she looked good.

  Just not like herself. Still, the sooner she got the job done, the sooner she could turn back into Gwen. “All right, well, I’m in the casino, so it’s time to get to work,” she said briskly.

  “What’s the plan?”

  “Haven’t a clue. Wander around and get the lay of the land. Watch for our friend. I’ll figure something out and call you tomorrow.”

  “Have fun,” Joss said a little enviously. “Put a five spot on red for me. I’ve always liked red.”

  “Right.”

  Gwen switched off the phone and tucked it into her pocket. She was here. She was incognito. Now she just had to find Jerry, cozy up to him, figure out where the stamps were and spirit them away from him, all without being recognized.

  Piece of cake.

  Gwen drifted steadily through the ranks of slot machines and computer poker games, scanning the players. No Jerry in sight, but then he didn’t strike her as the type for a sucker’s game. He’d want cards, where he could influence the outcome.

  She resisted the urge to yawn. Between the shopping, the styling, the packing and the flight to Vegas, it was nearly eleven—about the time she usually clocked out for the night. Since it was a weeknight, the ranks of the players had thinned out some. Maybe Jerry had gone to bed, too.

  Yeah, right. She snorted at herself as she passed the croupiers at the craps tables. Jerry was more likely to stay up all night, sure in the knowledge he was going to hit it big, throwing away her grandfather’s money all the while.

  As she crossed the broad carpeted avenue that separated the slots floor from the green tables of the real games, the suffocating crowd and noise lessened, replaced by a steadily rising sense of purpose. The people playing at these tables still relied on chance, but they knew their games, and the knowledge gave them a sense of confidence.

  Gwen ambled casually down the aisles between tables, as though she couldn’t quite decide where to stop. No point in telegraphing to everyone that she was on the hunt. A tall, ebony-skinned dealer smiled at her. “Baccarat, lovely lady?”

  Gwen shook her head, a faint flush tinting her cheekbones.

  A burst of giggles rose from the blackjack tables behind her. “Oh, come on, Rennie, you know you’re a winner,” said a woman’s voice.

  Gwen whipped her head around to see two female dealers laughing with the player sitting at their table. A single male player.

  Rennie.

  What were the chances that two guys named Rennie would be at the same hotel as Jerry? Coincidence? Maybe, but Gwen didn’t much like coincidence. She was a bigger fan of probabilities. Odds were that Rennie might very well know Jerry, and if he did, he could just lead her to him. And that was enough to make him her new best friend, she decided as the dealer going off shift walked away.

  Gwen sat down next to Rennie and slid some twenties across to the dealer.

  “Change a hundred,” announced the current dealer, an ample redhead with laugh lines liberally marking her middle-aged face. She slid a stack of chips across the table and used the paddle to push Gwen’s money into the bill slot.

  Gwen studied Rennie out of the corner of her eye. His brown hair was a bit long on top, disordered, she imagined, by a long night at the tables. Even as she watched him, he ran a hand through it again, pushing it out of his eyes. He didn’t hunch tensely like the gamblers she’d seen at other tables or sprawl with exaggerated confidence. He just sat loose and relaxed, a glass of what looked like whiskey at his elbow, next to the stacks of chips that attested to a combination of luck and skill. He wore jeans and a pine-green shirt patterned in faded burgundy and gold. Clearly he’d chosen more for comfort than style.

  Then he turned toward her, and she understood why the dealers had been giggling with him.

&n
bsp; He looked as though his habitual expression was one of wry amusement. A startling green, his eyes held a glint of devilry that invited her to join in. His sideburns were just a bit long, making him look a bit like some nineteenth-century rake. A day’s worth of beard darkened his jaw.

  And his mouth…

  Adrenaline skittered through her veins.

  “Welcome to the fun house,” he said.

  The dealer shuffled the decks and refilled the shoe.

  Flirt, Gwen thought feverishly. Keep him talking. Nina wouldn’t be struck dumb by his looks. Nina would be enjoying herself. “You looked like you could use a little company.”

  “What I could use is luck. Did you bring any with you?” He looked her over.

  Gwen glanced at his stacks of chips. “You don’t look like you’re having any problems with Lady Luck to me.” Lady Luck probably fell for that killer grin just like every other woman he met. She couldn’t be thinking about that now, though. She had to strike up a relationship with Rennie—and fast. If she let him walk away, she gave up her link to Jerry.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” A waitress stood at Gwen’s elbow, tray in hand.

  What to choose, Gwen wondered. She’d prefer white wine, but that didn’t really fit with her profile. A martini, maybe? Or… “A cosmopolitan, please.” At the expectant look of the dealer, Gwen pushed out two five-dollar chips. Her natural leaning was to bet a dollar at a time. Nina, though, wouldn’t do anything by halves. Nina would take chances.

  With brisk efficiency the dealer laid the cards out. Gwen worked to concentrate. It wouldn’t do her any good to have found Rennie if she wound up broke and leaving the table in fifteen minutes. And she wasn’t about to put up another hundred. She’d already dipped into her savings account to finance the trip; she was going to make it last.

  Her hand held an ace and a two, for a soft thirteen. The dealer had a seven showing and Rennie had a four. He took a sip of his whiskey and tapped his cards to indicate a hit. Gwen couldn’t tell if the three he got satisfied him or not, but he didn’t bust. He took a sip of whiskey and glanced over at her with interest. “Waitin’ on you, darlin’.”