Sheila Miller, blackjack dealer extraordinaire, sat at the kitchen table in her little breakfast nook Sunday morning, phone in hand. She’d dialed three times.
And just as often, pushed the disconnect button.
She had to call. If anyone would know who was behind the recent series of big wins at the tables, Arnold Jackson would.
Stomach growling, Sheila gave a cursory glance at the mass of notes and bills strewn across her table where breakfast would’ve been if she weren’t so desperate to lose weight. No matter how she looked at it, she was in deep shit.
With sweaty fingers, Sheila slowly pushed in the numbers she knew by heart.
Her friend and co-worker, Angie Madden, had asked all up and down the Strip for information on the wins. It had to be an inside scam, but no one was talking. That would make sense if Sheila’d been the one asking. She was the straitlaced fuddy-duddy among them. But not Angie. She’d been the queen of scam for years—someone another scammer would trust—or want to brag to.
The home Angie owned didn’t come from her ten-year-old divorce the way most people thought. It had been purchased, instead, with money she’d slowly siphoned off her table—and from the cut she took helping others do the same. She’d developed a solid reputation among the old-timers. Most of them had either used her help or were friends with someone who had. They didn’t take a lot. And only when they were really in a bind. The well would dry up if they got too greedy.
Most times the take wasn’t much at all by casino-loss standards—an electric bill here, an engagement ring there. More often than anything else, it covered the huge medical deductible on their health plan.
The silver-haired Angie Madden had helped more dealers on the Strip than Sheila could count, and not a single one of them was talking.
Just Sheila’s luck. The first time in thirty years she wanted to know about the seedier side of a blackjack dealer’s life, and she was coming up empty.
Arnold answered on the fourth ring, his voice more gravelly than usual.
She paused long enough to swallow. “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
“Who is this?”
Feeling the heat come up her face, Sheila stared at the floor. Though Arnold had only been around a few years, he’d quickly become known as the most sought-after bachelor among the dealers. He was smart. Good-looking. And completely true-blue honest.
Which was what made Sheila crazy for him in a way she hadn’t been crazy for a man since the end of her disastrous first marriage thirty years before.
She might be attracted to Arnold, but she wasn’t ready to deal with that. She still had ten pounds to lose.
“Oh, sorry.” She tried for a chuckle and ended up with a cough that probably made her sound as embarrassed as she was. “It’s Sheila Miller. We served together on the dealers’ continuing education committee last year.”
It had been shortly after the holidays. She’d been good and fat then.
“Sheila. Yes, I remember. You were the one who came up with the final justification that clinched our funding.”
He had a good memory. That probably meant he remembered the fat, too.
“I was just calling to find out what you know about this series of big wins. My friends and I are getting concerned. Until we know who’s behind them we’re all suspect. I figured you’d make it your business to find out, especially since most of them are happening at the Bonaparte.”
“All I know is that they’re happening,” the man said. She heard some rustling, wondered if he was getting out of bed. If he slept in the nude. Or if he’d just snuggled deeper beneath the covers.
Alone?
“I’ve been at this job for thirty years,” Sheila told him, folding back the corner of her most recent financial analysis—the one that had kept her up most of the night. If she didn’t figure out who was behind this scam—and get in on it—she was going to lose everything. “And not once in all that time was a series of wins this big ever a coincidence.”
So it had been stupid to use her entire life savings to buy some land outside the city and contract to build a little house on it. She’d thought she could afford it. And after thirty years of sucking up rich jerks’ smoke and developing varicose veins standing at a blackjack table, she deserved something more for herself.
“I’m not happy about the situation,” Arnold said. “As you said, whether it’s an inside job or not, it makes us all look bad.”
And every single night when she came home there were more messages from her builder letting her know about additional expenses. Permit fees and truss calcs and engineering expenses. She’d borrowed—twice—against the condo she’d bought twenty years before, hit up every friend and almost-friend she knew.
“At the Bonaparte they’re running extra security checks on all of us,” Arnold continued.
Shit. Just what she needed. If the Bonaparte was running checks, so would all the casinos. Her debt was going to turn up and she’d be a prime suspect. Double shit. How could she get in on the scam, assuming she found the source, if she was a prime suspect at the same time?
Sweat trickled between her breasts, gathering uncomfortably at the under-wire of her D-cup bra beneath the white blouse she wore to work.
For years she’d watched the others run scams with absolutely no accountability. But the moment I even think about it, they’re suddenly running extra security checks.
Her rotten luck.
Which was why she was a fifty-five-year-old, slightly plump single dealer in Las Vegas with the reputation of being straitlaced and definitely not up for a game.
“You want to have dinner tomorrow night?” What the hell. She was in debt. She was fat. If the wins were an inside job, Jackson would eventually find out. And for the first time in thirty years, she had the hots for a guy.
“I’m working tomorrow night.”
Yeah, well, it was as good excuse as any. At least the man was nice enough to preserve her pride.
Hanging up the phone, Sheila went over to the counter to cut up some fruit.
Sunday night, when the darkness had grown to the point that the strangers she approached on the street corner could no longer see the picture she had to show them, Francesca gave up for another day. Gave up, but couldn’t go back to the Lucky Seven as she had the previous two nights. The black spots on the walls were beginning to take on the image of climbing bugs. She had to keep getting up to make sure they hadn’t really moved, that she didn’t have to kill them. And she was wearing socks at all times in case the stains on the carpet were from something gross.
Socks in 105° F temperature.
How she ended up at the Bonaparte, Las Vegas’s newest casino, and touted as the most opulent, Francesca didn’t know. It was a fantasyland. And she needed to escape.
She’d been in the casino almost an hour, no longer aware of
