How could this be? Was it some horrible joke?
But she knew it was no joke. All the pieces were right there, she just hadn’t put them together.
Her emotions were struggling to reverse themselves.
Beneath his name was another short note apologizing for the attack on her in Las Vegas, assuring her that it wasn’t on his orders and that she had nothing further to fear in Vegas. He’d made some calls.
With shaking hands, Beth folded the paper and put them both back into the envelope, then put the envelope in her purse. It was like an out-of-body experience.
She put her head on the headrest and stared into space. She thought back to her conversation with Allison and wondered if Allison had known more than she’d let on about Giambi and her father. More than anyone else, Allison knew what having a murdered parent was all about and how important it was to Beth to solve the murder.
Questions filled her head.
Was Salvatore Giambi really the mastermind behind some of the world’s most successful cheating crews? Had he played both sides of the street? Protecting his own casinos and at the same time wreaking havoc on the bottom line of the competition? Was that where a lot of the laundered money was originating? Was the crew that tried to kill her one of Giambi’s?
Beth pulled the note out once again to make sure. She, like any shocked card player who gets a big pair in the hole, had to look again.
Nothing had changed. She wasn’t seeing things.
And now she understood Giambi’s profound sadness. His regrets. How strange and ironic that Giambi had fallen in love with the daughter of the man he had ordered killed.
Life is anything but rational, Beth thought.
The worst part about it was how much she’d come to like the man.
She closed her eyes and waited for something to come to her about what she was going to do about this. She remembered again how he’d advised her to ask for justice, not revenge.
It was over. She’d found the killer. And he would, as he said, suffer every day for the rest of his life, however long that was, for he’d fallen in love with his victim’s daughter. He’d lost everything. His own daughter, his casino, his dreams and Beth. Everything he valued.
Her next thought surprised her: Justice had been served.
It was really over. It was time for her to get past her sixteen-year obsession and move forward.
She remembered the tears in his eyes and she knew now they were tears of sorrow for what he’d done. And she realized that now there were tears in her own eyes for both men, her father and Giambi. Her father had been killed because he wanted to leave the business to become a good father. And the man who had killed him lived long enough to realize what that meant. And he would die with the knowledge.
As the plane turned and the brightest city on earth came into view, Bethany James understood that she was now free to live the rest of her life.
Free to look forward and not back, forward to more rendezvouses with that Tennessee bad boy who definitely knew where the victory lane was. She smiled through her tears.
Thirty minutes after landing, she took a cab and headed to SunriseHospital to see how Curtis was doing. On the way she made a call to some friends to see if there were any big games in town. Tomorrow she would visit her father’s grave and tell him that she was free.
Stacked Deck Page 23
