Granny Undercover (Secret Agent Granny Book 2) Page 4

  Lance gave the semblance of a bow. “You are most welcome, Mrs. Gold.”

  I disliked Lance immediately. He had a reptilian look in his eyes. I’d seen that look in gangsters and hardcore thugs many a time. Not all gangsters and thugs, mind you. Most criminals were lost or lazy people who had gotten sidetracked from an honest life because of one thing or another. While they deserved to be punished, there was still some humanity in them. They could be turned around. Not so with people who looked at you like they were a lizard, and you were a big, juicy fly.

  How could someone as nice as Octavian get mixed up with someone like this guy?

  Gambling, that was how. It was an addiction for some people, and addicts don’t get picky about the company they keep.

  My senses kicked into overdrive, taking in every move the doorman made. My exterior, however, remained calm. To everyone who saw me, I was a sweet little old lady with no combat training whatsoever. I didn’t look like a threat to anyone.

  Actually, since I had left my gun at home, I wasn’t really much of a threat anyway, certainly not to a man-mountain like Lance.

  Lance closed the door to the outside, slid a dead bolt across it with an ominous air, then opened the interior door and turned to Octavian.

  “Guests have to pay a cover charge, sir.”

  The gangster tried to sound polite but failed. Courtesy wasn’t part of his manner.

  “Ah, yes.” Octavian slipped him a fifty-dollar bill. I tried to object, but he waved my concerns aside. “My treat. It’s rare I have such nice company.”

  We entered, my body stiffening at having to turn my back on the doorman. Octavian seemed oblivious. I could see his eyes lighting up with that eager gleam people get when they are about to get a fix of their drug of choice.

  The inside of Cheerville’s secret gambling den was, I must admit, a bit of a letdown. I was hoping a grand casino was hidden behind this bland façade, with croupiers in tuxedos, slinky supermodels pickpocketing millionaire gamblers, and perhaps an opium den in the back just for chuckles.

  No such luck. Cheerville was dull even when it was being illicit. What I saw was an interior about the size of a medium-sized store, all one room except for a closed door on the far wall that must have led to a back room, judging from the depth of the strip mall compared to the room I was standing in. A dozen tables were scattered here and there, most of them occupied. There was a croupier, but he wasn’t in a tuxedo. He was a muscular guy in jeans and a T-shirt, running a roulette wheel for a few men and women who were placing their bets. As the staccato click click click of the ball going around the wheel echoed across the room, I looked at the other tables. Most were occupied by people staring at one of a number of TVs on the wall, showing horse and greyhound races. Despite it being before noon, some had beer or mixed drinks in front of them, courtesy of a small wet bar tucked in one corner, manned by another reptilian.

  Senior citizens made up the majority of the members. That didn’t surprise me, considering it was the middle of a workday. I’d have to get Octavian to bring me back at night to see what kind of crowd showed up then.

  Octavian hooked an arm around mine. As much as I disliked the side of him I was seeing at the moment, I couldn’t help but feel a slight quickening of the pulse. Purely due to the hazardous situation we were in, of course.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Certainly more interesting than the senior center,” I conceded.

  We found an empty table and sat down.

  “Would you like a drink?” he asked.

  “Does he make smoothies?” I asked. I’d never been much of a drinker, and I never drank on the job.

  Octavian laughed. The reptile from behind the bar came over.

  “An orange juice for me,” Octavian said, his respectability nudging up slightly in my estimation. I’ve never liked daytime drinkers. “And anything the lady likes.”

  “An orange juice would be fine, thanks.”

  The bartender nodded and walked off without a word. Octavian pulled a racing magazine out of his pocket and began to explain it to me. There were a bewildering number of races across several countries, and the TVs here caught all the major ones. I listened and nodded to his lecture as I glanced around me. The bartender came back with our drinks and two racing forms.

  “Greyhounds or horses?” Octavian asked.

  “Horses, I think.”

  “I prefer those too. Poor old Archibald preferred greyhounds. He had no luck with them, though.”

  Bingo.

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” I said. “Did he lose a lot?”

  Octavian winced and shrugged. “Yes, unfortunately he did. He didn’t know when to stop. Look, there’s a race coming up in Mexico we can do. Now, I know a bit about the Mexican thoroughbreds…”

  I decided not to ask more questions about Archibald immediately. That might raise suspicions. I’d already confirmed my main supposition—Archibald was a gambler and lost a lot of money. That was why he maxed out his credit cards. Had he lost enough that he had to borrow from the heavies who ran this place? Would that be enough to get him killed? I’d have to learn more.

  Of course, I already had enough to go to Police Chief Grimal. This was an illegal gambling parlor operating within the city limits. If he raided it, he could arrest the operators and pump them for information about Archibald’s death.

  Except I couldn’t trust him. Grimal had ruled Archibald’s death hadn’t been suspicious, even though it so obviously was. Without seeing the autopsy report, I couldn’t tell if the county coroner had made that decision as well or had been overruled by Grimal. My bet was that they both decided Archibald had magically cut his own throat with hedge clippers. But why? Were they trying to protect the murderer?

  At least I could cross off Octavian as a suspect. If he had killed Archibald, he would have never revealed this place to me. I’ve never liked it when murderers flirted with me, and I felt glad that wasn’t happening now.

  And flirting he was. If that smoothie at the senior center had been like a champagne breakfast, he acted like taking me out gambling was the equivalent of going on a whirlwind tour of the Caribbean. He kept gazing into my eyes and leaning in close, making little jokes or flattering comments. Octavian must have been a lady killer when he was younger.

  In the lulls in conversation when we watched the races—in other words, watched our horses lose time and again—I considered what I felt about all this. You can’t reach the age of seventy in a dangerous and demanding career without having a bit of personal insight into your own nature. I knew I was relishing the attention.

  For many years, James was all that I needed. There had been no other men after we got serious, and while there had been plenty of offers over the years, I had never been seriously tempted. James never cheated either, despite all those missions with Latina guerrillas. I checked. Oh yes, I checked, and it’s a good thing for him that he didn’t fall into temptation. We remained enough for each other emotionally and physically. By the time James died, I was of an age where those physical things didn’t really matter all that much anymore, so I sort of put it out of my mind. I still noticed a handsome man if I passed one in the street, and I still enjoyed any little compliment or second glance that came my way.

  Unfortunately, those compliments and glances had become increasingly rare in recent years, so Octavian’s attention came as a pleasant and unexpected surprise.

  But how did this make me feel about James’s memory? I did, of course, sense a twinge of guilt. We had always told each other that if one died before the other instead of dying together in some massive explosion, the other should move on with their life. Easy to say, not so easy to do.

  I comforted myself with the knowledge that, at the age of seventy, I wasn’t about to get swept up in a torrid love affair that would rival anything James and I had enjoyed. It had been quite the whirlwind in the early years, before settling down into a deep and trusting companionship that maintained
the physical aspect long after many couples have departed for separate bedrooms.

  So Octavian wasn’t about to sweep me off my feet. I’d enjoy the attention while honoring James’s memory. And why not? James was probably looking down from heaven with a wry smile, glad I was getting out and not turning into a crazy cat lady.

  I could also justify this because I was on a mission. James certainly owed me plenty on that score. More than once, he had to share a tent with those Latina guerrillas because they had to “travel light.” On some covert ops, he even shared hotel rooms with women while posing as a married couple. I always arranged to go to the shooting range with the woman in question before the mission started in order to show her what I was capable of if she descended into method acting.

  Just as I thought this, the mission got a whole lot more interesting. I noticed one of the heavies was pushing the tables together.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Lunchtime.”

  “They have a restaurant here?”

  Octavian chuckled. “No, but they bring around a bunch of takeout menus and fetch it for us. That way we don’t miss any of the races.”

  “Great idea! Let’s stay for lunch.” Yes, let’s sit at a big table with a bunch of murder suspects.

  One of the workers passed out menus for half a dozen local restaurants that offered takeout. We picked Thai. I’d always liked spicy food, and so, I found, did Octavian. I might have needed reading glasses to see the sights on my 9mm, I might not walk as quickly as I used to, and my knees and back might trouble me, but I still had an iron stomach. After all the food poisoning, parasites, and diseases I’d picked up from eating local cuisine in various jungles, deserts, and slums, no Five Alarm Special from a Thai restaurant in a rich American town was going to phase me.

  As we waited for our food, we watched a couple more races and even managed to win one. You wouldn’t have known that race was the one bright spot in our losing streak by the way Octavian acted. His face lit up, and he pumped his fist in the air like some teenager who had just scored a touchdown for his high school football team.

  I was now only fifty dollars poorer than when I had come in. Octavian had been betting more and was down two hundred and forty dollars. Yes, I was keeping track.

  The food came, and everyone gathered around to eat and trade anecdotes about the morning’s luck. Octavian became his chatty best and introduced me to all of them. His arm slipped around my shoulders as he did so. Some of the older men looked on with envy. Octavian had a way with people. He certainly had a way with me.

  A few hardcore members ate in silence, placing bets with the bookies who ran this place and watching races throughout their meal. The bookies must have been making a mint. I doubted any of these obsessives had bumped off poor Archibald. I was going on the assumption that he had been killed because he owed someone money, and I doubted the hardcore gamblers would, or even could, have lent him any.

  I turned to the other candidates in our little circle, scratching off a few people as too old or physically infirm. I also scratched off one middle-aged man who proclaimed he’d just returned from seeing his parents in Florida and had come directly to the club. He pointed to his suitcase by the door as if this was something to show off. “I haven’t even seen the wife yet,” he said with obvious pride. Much as I would have liked to get that idiot in trouble, he was obviously not the murderer.

  That left only a few suspects.

  Tim Harding was a quiet man in his fifties who owned some apartment buildings in town. He was tall and lanky, with big hands and feet, and a crew cut that hinted he’d been in the army some years ago. I had actually met him before, although I don’t think he remembered me. When I first moved into town, I rented an apartment in one of his buildings for a couple of months as my new house got renovated. He was active in municipal and county politics and tried to get me to join various organizations. I politely declined. I had been active in a very different brand of politics, and I’d come to Cheerville to relax. One detail I recalled was how proud he was of the topiary around the pool of the apartment complex. I’d admired the bushes myself as my grandson splashed around in the pool. The boy had been deeply disappointed when I moved into my house and lost access to a free place to swim.

  The connection to topiary was interesting, but Tim spoke so little over lunch I couldn’t get anything else out of him.

  Cynthia McAlister I pegged as a bored housewife. She was in her thirties and already going to seed, overweight with poor table manners and dressed in a sloppy fashion. She didn’t seem to care and didn’t make much of an effort to talk to me. All through the meal, she kept looking over at the roulette wheel and shaking her head. I remembered she had spent most of the past two hours there.

  “Lose a lot, Cynthia?” Octavian asked.

  “Yeah,” she sighed in a tone that made me think that was normal for her.

  “This place is rigged, I tell you.”

  This came from George Whitaker. The man scowled all through lunch, griping about how much money he had lost. He was an accountant in his late thirties, taking a break from his private business to gamble half the workday away.

  “Oh, you’re just having a bad streak. It’ll turn around,” Octavian said.

  “No, damn it!” George said, hitting the table with his fist. He quickly looked around to make sure none of the staff had heard then continued in a low voice. “That roulette wheel hardly ever pays out, and I’ve missed five races in a row, and some of those dogs were sure things.”

  Octavian nodded his head toward Tim. “He’s won the roulette several times. Didn’t you win six hundred dollars last week, Tim?”

  Tim smiled and gave a humble shrug.

  “Some people have all the luck,” Cynthia sighed.

  “And in any case, they couldn’t have fixed the races,” I said, wondering how anyone could be so stupid as to think betting on a race could be a “sure thing”.

  “They’re all in it together,” George scoffed.

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Luckily, at this point, someone far more pleasant started to chat me up.

  Ricardo Morales was a rarity in Cheerville—someone who wasn’t white. Cheerville was one of the whitest towns I’d ever seen, with few residents who were minorities. The lawn jockeys in the senior center didn’t count.

  Ricardo was born in Mexico City and legally immigrated to the United States when he was a young man on the strength of a degree in engineering. My antenna went up at that, and I casually asked where he worked. “So kind of you to assume I’m still of working age,” he said, nodding his lovely head with its salt and pepper hair. “I retired last year from Boeing.”

  That got my interest. Archibald had worked at Boeing. They had a big plant not far from Cheerville.

  Ricardo chatted with me the most, politely asking me what I thought of Cheerville and putting on the charm. Octavian started to get a little jealous, which I thought was amusing, and tried to steer the conversation to other people.

  Ricardo steered it right back by raising a glass of wine and proposing a toast.

  “To Archibald.”

  “He was a good man,” Octavian sighed.

  George nodded. Tim’s eyes filled, and I saw those big hands tremble a little. Cynthia’s gaze shifted back to the roulette wheel.

  Everyone raised their glasses and drank.

  “I heard you’re giving the speech at the memorial service,” Octavian said.

  “It will be an honor,” Ricardo said, bowing his head.

  The conversation lapsed.

  “I can’t believe he killed himself,” Cynthia said in a way that showed she did believe it, but it surprised her.

  “This damn place drove him to it,” George griped.

  I glanced around the table. Everyone looked sad, except for George, who looked like he wanted to launch into an angry speech but controlled himself out of consideration for the situation.

  “Not just this place,”
Ivan Dejevsky said. He was a balding man with an impressive paunch. I pegged him to be in his sixties and not well preserved. Octavian had introduced me to him, but this was the first thing he’d said since.

  Ivan and George looked significantly at another man sitting alone at a table some distance away, watching the races. He had a smug look on his face and was well dressed, although that didn’t hide his bald spot and a paunch to rival Ivan’s.

  No one seemed about to say anything, so I took a chance.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  “Gary Milner. He’s an ace with the horses,” Octavian said with obvious respect. “The best I’ve ever seen. He’ll lend you money if you’re hard up.”

  “Lend some people money,” Ivan griped.

  “Yeah, some people get preferential treatment with that guy,” George said to me, “and some people are left out in the cold.”

  “Archibald was a good man,” Tim said with an irritated tone. “An expert with topiary.”

  “I suppose,” George said with a shrug. “I have better things to do than fiddle around with plants.”

  The conversation lapsed into a grim silence. I didn’t want to push my luck by breaking it. I’d been given plenty to mull over.

  When the conversation resumed again, it was about the races. Nothing kept them off that subject for long.

  So I finally had a tentative list of suspects: Tim the topiary fan, Cynthia the depressed loser, George the angry loser, Ricardo the former coworker, Ivan the champion of gamblers’ rights, and Gary the stingy moneylender.

  But why would one of them kill Archibald Heaney? Or could it be someone else entirely, someone I hadn’t met yet? I needed to get to know these people better. That memorial service sounded like an excellent idea. I’d have to get myself invited somehow.

  Of course, these weren’t the only people who could have killed Archibald. Not all the club members were here, and it might not even be a club member. This was only a good place to start. The Cheerville Gardening Society would have to be my next stop. That was the other likely spot to find suspects. If it turned out any of the gamblers were also in that group, that would be a good lead. So far, only Tim might fit the bill on that score.