Death of a Double Dipper

by Angela Pepper

  “Then it's a good thing nobody assaulted anyone,” the man said. “I'll make sure everyone with the last name of Sweet makes it safely off the property.”

  “Good,” I said. I could feel my cheeks flushing. I'd just rattled off some facts about misdemeanors, but if the casino was on Native American land, the laws and fines might be quite different. I was certainly no expert on Tribal Council law. But I had learned, from spending time with my lawyer boyfriend, that if you talk fast and spout off a bunch of numbers, people take you more seriously. Even if you're wrong. And even if you're sopping wet and dripping fountain water on the carpet.

  The head of security checked his phone screen. “Everyone's been accounted for,” he said. “Safe and sound.”

  “I'd like to see Colt now, please.”

  “Sure. Let me arrange a meeting.” He grinned. “Do you two young ladies promise to stay out of the fountain?”

  Jessica said, “It was an accident, honestly.”

  I added, “There should be a guardrail around the base of the fountain.”

  He stared at us.

  “We promise to stay out of the fountain,” I said.

  “We do,” Jessica agreed.

  That seemed to satisfy him. He called over two security guards and gave them instructions, presumably to take us to see Colt Canuso.

  We followed the guards down a hallway.

  “Your meeting is right through here,” the smaller security guard said.

  He opened the door and shoved us through.

  It wasn't a corridor leading to Colt's office. We'd been kicked out through a side door, into the bright autumn sunshine. The crisp breeze made me shiver in my wet clothes.

  Jessica and I exchanged a look.

  She muttered, “So much for saying goodbye to Colt.”

  “We can still make a dignified exit,” I said, and started walking along the side of the building.

  Our wet shoes made squip-squip sounds with every step. So much for a dignified exit.

  Over the squip-squip sounds, I heard the security guards chuckling over how much fun it was going to be reviewing the video footage of us “frolicking like water nymphs.” They went on to say some things that were less delicate, concerning the sheerness of our outfits when wet.

  I stopped my squip-squip walking and wheeled around to face them.

  “You two chuckleheads had better watch your mouths,” I said fiercely. “My associate and I are old friends of your boss's, and I don't think he'd appreciate that sort of talk.”

  Jessica grabbed my elbow and whispered, “Stormy, your smoky eye shadow is dripping down your cheeks.”

  “So?”

  “You look exactly like a scary clown who's just escaped a carnival of nightmares.”

  “That's perfect,” I hissed back.

  At the doorway, standing in the bright sunshine and casting perfect cinematic shadows against the stucco wall of the new building, the two guards continued laughing at us.

  I lifted my chin defiantly. “Gentlemen, I believe the words you're looking for are I'm sorry.”

  The bigger and more mountain-shaped of the two uniformed men made a scoffing sound. “You two ladies don't know the boss,” he said. “You're nobody.”

  “We're old friends of Colt Canuso's. The three of us go way back.”

  The bigger guy waved one wide mitt dismissively. “You and every other lady in this town. Especially the broke ones.” He chuckled, his big voice a deep rumble. “Especially the crazy, broke ones.”

  Now he had my interest, but for a different reason.

  I changed tack, the apology forgotten. “Exactly how many crazy, broke girls? Is Colt dating anyone in particular? Maybe a blonde?”

  The two men exchanged a confused look.

  Mountain-Shaped Guy lifted his chin at me and demanded, “What's it to you, lady?”

  This wasn't my first day on the job. I already had the cash in my hand. I stepped forward and casually presented him with my offering like a professional.

  The big guy handed half the cash to the other guard, and they both tucked the bills away. Their postures softened.

  “No blondes,” the large man said. “Colt's not dating anyone, even though he could have his pick.”

  “But you said he's friends with all the crazy, broke girls.”

  “Just friends,” he replied. “Colt's all talk, like a dog who barks a lot but doesn't do nothin'. If you ask me, he's still not over Susan.” He added in a softer tone, “That's his wife who died a few years back.”

  I nodded. I knew about Susan. Jessica and I had gone to school with her as well, though she was two years younger than us. The Mountain-Shaped Guy's words rung true. The last time I'd seen Colt before today, he'd been wearing his wedding band. The ring had not, however, been there today.

  The other security guard piped in, “I always try to get him to open up and talk to someone about his pain. Grieving doesn't have to be something you go through alone. But Colt's one of those tough guys who doesn't know how to talk about his feelings. I don't know what to do. If he doesn't get it off his shoulders, I'm worried he might crack some day.”

  I sniffed. “Some day? You mean like just now, when he punched an unarmed man in the stomach?”

  The big guy puffed out his chest and fixed me with a serious glare. “You didn't see anything like that. You couldn't have seen nothin' while you were swimming in the water feature.”

  The other guy said, “Today wasn't the first time Colt lost his temp—”

  The big guy elbowed his buddy to shut up. And then he gave me a stone-faced look I recognized. The interview, such as it was, had ended.

  I thanked them and started walking away. I'd gotten what I wanted to know.

  Under her breath, Jessica asked me, “Now you're bribing people?”

  “Would you prefer it if I'd challenged them to a two-on-two kung fu battle?”

  “Oh, Stormy.”

  It was a long, soggy walk back to the car with our shoes going squip-squip the whole way.

  My heart felt heavy for Colt. I wondered if he had many friends to talk to about his feelings. I did worry, like the smaller security guard, that his pain might cause him to lash out or find trouble.

  Chapter 9

  My boyfriend, Logan Sanderson, hummed to himself as he scraped the carbon off the barbecue racks. We were in the backyard, enjoying what might be the last Sunday barbecue of the year.

  I sipped a beer from a can and checked my phone for messages from my roommate.

  “No veggie burger,” I told Logan. “Jessica's having dinner with her mom.”

  “What?” He hadn't heard me over the sound of his scraping. I started to repeat what I'd just told him, but he impatiently started scraping the racks again before I could answer.

  I yelled, “No veggie burger!”

  He paused long enough to say, “Does she want it well done? I never know how long to cook these stupid mushroom-oat-bran-quinoa things.” And then he tossed one of Jessica's veggie burgers onto the grill with a sizzle.

  I got up from my patio chair and went to hug him from behind. He pushed me away. “Hot grill!”

  I took a step back and bit my tongue. Logan had been working long hours, and today had felt like the first time I'd seen him in years. But with that treatment, I was feeling like a stranger in his life. I wanted to yank the spatula out of his hand and paddle his butt with it for not listening to me, but you know what they say. Violence is not the answer to relationship problems.

  “Jessica's not coming home for dinner,” I said.

  He gave me an indignant look. “Why didn't you tell me? Now this lemongrass-tofu burger is going to waste.”

  “I'll eat it,” I said. “And it's a lentil-cashew burger.”

  “It smells like wet cardboard,” he said. “If you eat this, who'll eat your steak? Will your father eat two of them?”

  “Dad's not coming tonight,” I said. “Which you would know if you actually listened to me.”


  “Oh?” He returned his attention to the grill, turning his back to me, but there was no mistaking the fight in his voice. I could imagine the facial expression that went with it.

  The urge to hit him with the spatula returned. I retreated back to the picnic table and my beer.

  Logan glanced back over his shoulder at me, eyebrow raised. “That's it? You're not going to talk to me?”

  “I'm letting you grill in peace.”

  After a few minutes, he asked, “Is it just the two of us tonight? What are the neighbors up to?”

  “Dean and Eve? Beats me.”

  Dean and Eve Lubbesmeyer had just moved into the house next door in August. They'd arrived on the day of the town's annual Forest Folk Run, a charity event that people walked or ran while wearing costumes ranging from furry Forest Folk monster suits to zombies. The zombie look had been increasing in popularity lately. Dean and Eve had been driving their moving truck, which was packed full of all their earthly possessions, when a volunteer stopped their vehicle to let a group of zombies cross the street. Dean and Eve had looked at each other in horror, doubting their decision to move to Misty Falls. Did people in the town normally dress in tattered clothes and walk at a shuffling pace? Wave after wave of zombies surrounded the moving truck, all moaning and groaning. A few muscular troublemakers came up with the fun idea to shake the moving truck, so they did. And the squeaking of the truck only spurred the zombies on. Now, the Lubbesmeyers didn't have a Forest Folk Run where they came from, and they'd never seen zombies outside of Halloween, so what were they to think? Confusion turned to panic. After a few terrifying minutes of having their truck rocked by zombies, Dean leaned on the horn. The zombies all jumped back. That was when Eve noticed the blood and falling-off body parts were just makeup and monster effects. The whole spectacle was all in good fun. They rolled down their windows and congratulated the zombies for giving them a good scare. After the zombie horde cleared away and let them continue on their way, Dean and Eve laughed the rest of the way to their new home.

  Other than their colorful entry to the town, I didn't know much about Dean and Eve Lubbesmeyer, except that they were empty nesters whose kids had all left for college, and they'd been flirting with the idea of early retirement when they discovered that the factory that made their favorite potato chips was for sale. They visited Misty Falls in the spring of that year on a zombie-free day, toured the factory, and soon became the new owners of Aunt Jo's Crispy Spuds. The first time I met Dean and Eve, we bonded over our shared love of the chip company's logo featuring Aunt Jo, with her curls freshly set from the hairdresser, and her good pearls worn proudly around her neck.

  “We should see if Dean and Eve want these other steaks,” Logan said. “We can't let them go to waste.”

  Suddenly, a face appeared over the fence separating my backyard from the Lubbesmeyers'. It was Eve, with her spiky, pale purple hair. She must have climbed a ladder to peer over at us with comically good timing.

  Logan laughed. “Speak of the devil!”

  She asked, “Did I hear somebody talking about steaks going to waste? That's a crime where we come from. Punishable by public shaming in the local newspaper.”

  Logan replied, “Were you doing some gardening just now?”

  “No,” she said with a straight face. “I always kneel on this side of the fence and listen in when you two lovebirds are back here. Between your law practice and the private investigation business, it's my best way to get all the local gossip. Then I go down to Ruby's Treasure Trove and sell the intel to Ruby piece by piece.”

  Logan laughed again. I couldn't help but notice he found Eve's antics far more amusing than my own. I sipped my beer and watched him chat with Eve. She called for her husband to come outside, they negotiated with Logan on side dishes, then they disappeared into their house to rustle up a salad. Logan finished grilling the three steaks and lone veggie burger without saying a word to me.

  I got the sense I'd done something to upset him, but I couldn't think of what.

  I recalled what one of the security guards had said about Colt, about how he was the kind of guy who bottled up his feelings. Was Logan bottling something? I watched his careful movements as he set the platter of grilled food on the picnic table. He barely even glanced up at me. He could have been alone right now, for all the interaction he was giving me.

  Jeffrey appeared in my lap as if by magic. I was petting his head before I even realized he was there.

  “You're like smoke,” I told him. “You waft in on a breeze, don't you?”

  He looked at the steaks and licked his lips. “Just one little piece,” I said, reaching for the platter.

  “Don't,” Logan said. “Steaks need to rest after grilling, or the juices will leak out.”

  I looked down at Jeffrey. “Sorry. You heard the grill man. Stop trying to ruin dinner.”

  Logan sighed. “Now you're making me the bad guy.”

  “He doesn't speak English,” I said. “He's a cat.” I tilted my head. “What's gotten into you?”

  Logan didn't get a chance to answer—not that he looked like he wanted to.

  “Knock, knock,” said Dean Lubbesmeyer as he entered the backyard from the back of the house. Grinning, he said, “We should cut a hole in our fence to make it easier to get over here for the free food!”

  Eve said, “Or dig a tunnel underneath!”

  Logan looked right at me. “You'll have to discuss it with the land owner herself. I have no stake in this property.”

  Eve and Dean looked at each other for a moment before bursting into laughter. That was the great thing about the two of them—they took everything as a big joke, whether it was or not. Given Logan's cranky mood, I was happy to have them there.

  Later, when Dean cut a piece of his steak into tiny cubes and “accidentally” dropped them on the concrete patio pavers, Jeffrey was even more happy to have the Lubbesmeyers there.

  “These are great steak knives,” Dean commented. “Laguiole. If you ever need them sharpened, let me know. You have to sharpen each serration separately.”

  “Thanks for the offer,” I said.

  “Oops. Dropped another piece,” Dean said.

  Jeffrey pounced on the chunk of steak. He was well beyond trying to appear cool and practically begged like a hound dog.

  “Butter fingers,” Eve said with a tsk-tsk.

  As the sun set and the air turned chilly enough for us to bring out blankets to drape over ourselves, Dean and Eve regaled us with tales from the potato chip factory. In the short time since they'd taken over as owners, they'd cycled through a number of shift supervisors and support staff. Even their management team had been fighting with each other like unsupervised children.

  “Some people can't handle change,” Logan said. “They're acting out because they're afraid.”

  Eve batted her lashes. “Afraid of little ol' me?”

  Dean patted his wife on the shoulder. “You and your army of robots,” he said.

  I leaned in. “Robots?” Now he had my attention.

  Dean explained, “The old owners still had staff hand-picking out the chips with brown spots. We brought in a machine that scans every chip visually, sends the imaging to a computer, which then controls these nifty little hot-air jets that remove the flawed chips. The burned ones, and the green ones that contain trace amounts of solanine.”

  Eve grinned. “It's an incredible piece of equipment. Very expensive, but it will pay for itself in saved labor.”

  “What do you do with the flawed chips?” My mouth watered at all the discussion of potato chips. My cashew-lentil burger hadn't exactly filled me up.

  “We're debating leaving a few in,” Dean said. “One or two per bag gives it that authentic artisanal quality people enjoy.”

  “Plus it gives you a target for Last Chip Standing,” I said. They appeared to be perplexed by this, so I explained, “When you're eating chips, you always have that one you think you won't eat at all, but then the
perfect ones are all gone, and you think, oh what the heck. You eat the grisly brown one. But then you have a burned taste in your mouth, so you have to get something else to snack on.”

  Dean and Eve stared at me in stunned silence then burst out laughing again. Eve declared me to be the Funniest Person in Misty Falls.

  I said to Logan, “Did you hear that? I should write down all my many thoughts and adventures and get a big TV series on HBO.”

  “Leave me out of it,” he said moodily.

  Eve said, “Speaking of HBO, did you see that crowd at the casino yesterday? You'd think they were giving away buckets of money to everyone with a cute kid. I tell you, someone's going to be coming into a few bucks real soon.”

  Dean patted his wife on the shoulder. “My wife isn't materialistic. She just loves money, and she's a whiz with it.”

  Eve smiled. “I do love money. But not in a materialistic way.”

  Dean gazed lovingly at his youthful-acting, purple-haired, fifty-something wife. “And I love seeing you scheming about money, babe.”

  “I love that you love my scheming.”

  They leaned in and touched their noses in a sweet gesture that was almost too sweet.

  My heart buoyed as I witnessed the Lubbesmeyers' everlasting love. I looked across the table at Logan.

  He was reading the ingredients on the bottle of barbecue sauce.

  Chapter 10

  Sunday night, I crawled into bed feeling like a bag of junk with no handle. The cashew-lentil burger sat low and heavy in my stomach, plus I hadn't smoothed things out with Logan. I didn't get a chance. He'd excused himself for bed at the same time the neighbors went home.

  I tossed and turned so much that even Jeffrey abandoned me.