Death On the Flop Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Bee’s Buzz

  Playing for her life

  “We have to operate on the assumption that Conner is hunting down his witness—you—and that he is pretty much ruthless,” Frank said. “That means you have to stay in hiding.”

  “Great idea,” I agreed.

  “That doesn’t sound like you. You must be really scared.”

  “Sure, I’m scared, but the best place to hide is in plain sight,” I reminded him. His mouth tightened, but he didn’t interrupt me. “So first I’ll register for the tournament—”

  “Too late, entries are closed,” Frank said.

  “In Ben’s place,” I finished.

  Frank shook his head. “They won’t allow substitutions.”

  “I won’t have to be one. He registered as B. Cooley. I am B. Cooley. I’ll just adopt his address and phone number.”

  “And you’ll sure make it easy for Conner to find you.” Frank gave me a wry grin. “Bee, understand that I’m agreeing to it, but I don’t like it. And there’s one part of the plan you haven’t covered: How are you going to learn Texas Hold ’Em by tomorrow night?”

  I smiled. “You’re going to teach me.”

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  DEATH ON THE FLOP

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / January 2007

  Copyright © 2007 by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  All rights reserved.

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  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN: 9781101378977

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

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  belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  As always, thanks to my daughters who are the first readers of all I write and make all my books better. I love you.

  This book is for the members of my family who always had cards in their hands, especially my grandfather, Orlin Copeland, who would have loved that I wrote a book about his favorite game. There is a reason my first word was “pass,” after all those bridge games I had to watch from my high chair!

  I must acknowledge the help I received in researching this book. I couldn’t have done it without the assistance of so many. My eternal gratitude to all those in law enforcement, wishing to remain anonymous, who’ve shared their knowledge and to my brother-in-law, cop-in-the-family, who prefers not to remain anonymous. Thanks Mike Zimmerhanzel with the Sugarland Police Department for all the cop stories over the years. The gambling expertise came to me especially from two people: Donna Drayton, who introduced me to Las Vegas for the first time and showed me her cards (even when she didn’t have to), and Dr. Jake R. Wells, Jr., who not only gave me time off work to write but invited a neophyte to his Texas Hold ’Em table to teach me secrets behind the chips. Any errors on the felt are mine and not theirs.

  Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.

  —Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia (1832)

  One

  “Ugh. Why are you half-naked? It’s disgusting.”

  Without answering, I turned my back on my grinning visitor, leaving the front door standing wide open. Not my first mistake of the day, not by a long shot, and I could tell it was about to get worse. He caught me before I could even get out of the tiny foyer of my condo, grabbing me by the hand and the waist, spinning me around to bump and grind to AC/DC blaring out of the stereo. Trust me, Back In Black doesn’t lend itself well to dancing. That only one of my stilettos had a heel didn’t help me keep time either.

  “Ben, I’m really not in the mood,” I groused as I pushed my brother away and resumed limping my way back to the kitchen table, where I’d sat since my day went to hell.

  He danced up next to me. “Is your mood the reason you look like you’re fresh out of a bar fight? You know you have two black eyes, don’t you?” Ben observed, cheerfully, putting his hands on my shoulders and pivoting me so I could see my reflection in the hall mirror.

  Ugh. Soggy mascara ringed my eyes, left tracks on my cheeks and stained my satin camisole (thank goodness I hadn’t put on my favorite silk blouse). Who knew mascara could spread so far? So much for opting for the waterproof variety.

  My pity party was going into its eighth hour. It all started when the heel of my left shoe gave way with a crack as I tried to zip up a skirt that was perhaps a bit too snug. I lost my balance, flailed about until I heard the aforementioned skirt rip straight up the seam in back, all the way to the waistband, which induced the bottomless supply of tears, snorts and hiccups. Needless to say, I never made it to where I was supposed to go—an interview for a much-needed job.

  Ben now spun me around so I could see my backside in the mirror. And I thought I couldn’t get more depressed. He raised his eyebrows at my Hanes
Her Ways. “And the reason you have a hard time keeping a man is you wear old lady undies. The thong is the thing, you know.”

  “I don’t remember inviting you over.” I pointed out as I resumed my pilgrimage to the kitchen table where I’d sat staring out the window all day. “Especially not for an underwear appraisal.”

  “Hey, you’re the one with your ass hanging out for God and everybody to see. You’re just lucky it was me and not Ma at the door.”

  I grunted and reached for the remote on the side table to turn the music up. Ben beat me to it and silenced it. I felt bereft without the CD that had accompanied my sobs. I think AC/DC and I had become codependent. Ben cleared his throat and sounded about ten years old as he said softly, “Hey, I heard about Toby.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Obviously, considering your ultra-sensitive ‘unable to keep a man’ comment.”

  “Hey, Bee Bee, I’m sorry.” Ben snatched me in a quick hug and kissed me on the top of my head. “I’m a jerk, which is the reason I can’t keep a woman.”

  If I were feeling like myself, I would’ve jumped on that open invitation to dispense some love life advice, which incidentally, he sorely needed. Instead, I wiggled out of his grasp, plopped into the chair, pressed my face to the tabletop and peered down through the glass and wrought iron design at the chipped Tangerine Trouble nail polish on my big toe peeking out of the wounded footwear. I had a brief automatic urge to grab the polish remover and repaint it before Toby could see it—he hated when my polish chipped. He’d even given me a gift to celebrate our recent engagement; a year’s worth of weekly visits to his pedicurist. But then I remembered Toby McKnight wouldn’t be seeing my big toe, or any part of me, ever again.

  Grrr. Sniff.

  “Wow, you must really be depressed, I just declared open season on Bad Boy Ben and you didn’t even fire a single shot,” Ben said, ruffling my hair.

  When I still didn’t respond, Ben leaned over to open the refrigerator. I heard him slide open the hydrator. A cellophane bag full of carrots slapped down next to my face on the table. Ben eased into the seat across from me. I stared at his denim knees. “You could’ve called me, you know,” he said reproachfully, now sounding about eight years old.

  “Why?” I raised my head. “So you could say I told you so?”

  Ben raised his eyebrows over devilish green eyes, ran his hand through his longish silken black hair, blew a breath out of lips surrounded by a carefully crafted day old dark stubble and gave me every reason to start crying all over again. After all, it wasn’t fair. He was older by ten minutes and looked ten years younger and ten times sexier than I did. Ben could be Colin Farrell’s twin and instead he was mine. Go figure fate on this one. Somehow I ended up with pale freckled skin to his suave olive complexion. Somehow I ended up with soft curves that resisted every fitness machine known to man while he got six-pack abs simply from breathing. Somehow he had an endless supply of lovers when I couldn’t even hang on to the only one I’d had for the last five years. Somehow, I thought, as I watched him gnawing on his third carrot, he ended up with a maniacal drive and I was so laid back I could barely get up and get dressed in time to make it to work.

  When I had a career, that is.

  “Belinda Cooley, you don’t need me to tell you.” Ben pointed at me with his half of a carrot. “You know very well that having a fling with your boss was a mistake.”

  “It was more than a fling; we were engaged.” I corrected.

  “Worse mistake.” The carrot waggled. “Although the biggest one of all was quitting your job. Why the hell did you do that, Bee? You know that if you had kept your famous cool, the prick wouldn’t have been able to stomach seeing you day in day out. Guilt would’ve driven him to leave before you’d have to.”

  “It wouldn’t have been guilt, the chipped nail polish would’ve done it,” I quipped.

  “Huh?” Ben paused in midchew and cocked his head.

  Sometimes guys just don’t get it, even twin brothers, so I didn’t try to explain. “Inside joke. Listen, Ben, I had to quit to maintain one iota of pride. You didn’t expect me to keep taking orders from Toby over the intercom while he was boinking his new twenty-two-year-old assistant in his office?”

  “She’s just twenty-two?” Ben asked, wiggling his eyebrows up and down. “Ooolala.”

  “Ben . . .” I warned.

  Winking, he tapped the carrot to his temple thoughtfully. “You’re right, Bee. I guess you had to leave. Still, it’s all for the best. You’ll end up at another advertising firm where you can kick ass. Stick-up-his-butt Toby was always so worried you’d show him up he never gave you free rein anyway. Now, before you go pounding the pavement, you’re due a getaway. Also, I owe you a birthday present and I had a great idea . . .”

  Uh-oh. The last time Ben had a great idea I was thirty, and we ended up in jail in Bermuda.

  “Hey, Miz Cooley.” Ben deepened his voice to a fakey broadcaster level. “You’ve just won your life back. And, where are you going?” Ben swung the carrot around to hover in front of my mouth. I stared stonily at him. He shoved it closer. I didn’t move a muscle, just threw a little more acid in my stare, hoping it was approaching a glare. But as usual my brother was impervious. He wiggled his eyebrows once more in invitation, then slid his head next to mine and shouted into the carrot microphone with his voice now two octaves higher than usual, in a lame attempt to sound like my soprano. “I won, Mr. TV Announcer Man, and I’m going to Vegas!”

  “Isn’t it supposed to be Disneyland?” I deadpanned.

  “Disneyland?” Ben bit off the top of the carrot and chewed as he slid back onto his chair across from me. “Why would you want to waste that terrific poker face of yours on some kiddy park when you can use your rare talent to take suckers’ money left and right in the city that never sleeps?”

  “Uh, maybe because I don’t know how to play poker?” I rolled my eyes and tried to resist the tears that suddenly threatened again.

  “That, my dear sister, is easily remedied.” Ben jumped up, grabbed my shoulders, pulled me to my feet and guided me to the computer that sat in the small office adjacent to the kitchen. He shoved me down in the chair and signed onto the internet over my shoulder. “Bee, someone with your God given gifts for the game shouldn’t waste any more time in not playing.”

  “What, pray tell, are ‘God given gifts’ for the game of poker—the ability to sit stock still for hours, inhale cigar smoke without choking and mainline martinis without passing out? Look, Ben, I’m a forty-year-old spinster now, I can’t afford any more butt spread.”

  “Bee, Bee, Bee . . .” Ben took a moment to tsk-tsk over-dramatically. “You are imagining old-fashioned poker. The new game is so different. Texas Hold ’Em is edge-of-your-seat hip.”

  “One has to be on the ‘edge of your seat’ when one’s hips are the size of the Lone Star State from sitting too much.”

  Ben’s eyes were unnaturally bright. It was beginning to make me nervous. “Bee, really, this game will leave you breathless.”

  “What? You poker players do spin aerobics while you’re dealing and Pilates in between bets?”

  “Better than that.”

  “Better than Pilates? So you have . . .” I paused weightily before saying, “sex when you play then?”

  Ignoring my attempt at sarcasm and not running with my invitation to tease, Ben shifted into what the family called “focus mode.” Uh-oh. He leaned over my shoulder and began to manipulate the mouse. In a few moments, he was signed onto an online poker game, one of eight players in a game of Texas Hold ’Em. I didn’t know there was such a thing as online poker, but I was so wary of interacting with strangers from the internet that even lurking in chat-rooms scared me, much less participating in one. Gambling online seemed akin to kamikaze behavior. I knew he played in a Friday night face-to-face game with his buddies every week but apparently he was brushing up his poker skills online too. I felt Ben’s body electrify with tension. He began muttering at the
computer screen, oblivious to me. It reminded me of the time he’d gotten addicted to Pac-Man and flunked out of engineering school. “Horse Doc, you’d better watch it. Sara90210 is going to take you out.”

  “Ben?”

  He looked at me, blinking blankly. “How can Judge and Jury be so stupid? He’s gotta know what she’s got in her hand. Look at that bet, would you?”

  I followed his index finger to the screen. What did “raising” mean? I’d barely mastered Old Maid, how was I supposed to learn a game where the stakes had dollar signs attached?

  Ben must have forgotten he was supposed to be teaching me what was going on. He whistled under his breath at the cartoon icons sitting around the simulated table on my seventeen-inch screen. A new bet popped up. Horse Doc was “all in.” Someone named Take a Chance Chuck folded before the last card was dealt, which I thought ironic just based on the nomenclature.

  The dealer, an intimidating looking dude that reminded me of Samuel L. Jackson as a bad guy, turned over the first three community cards the screen was calling “The Flop.” Suddenly there was a Queen of hearts, three of diamonds and King of clubs face up on the table. Everyone had two cards down, but it seemed they shared the three cards up.

  The next round of betting began. Everyone else at the table folded except a player named Lucky Lula who pushed all her chips into the “pot.”

  “Lula, you are going to lose it all, girlfriend!” Ben whispered tensely.

  “Ben,” I tugged on the sleeve of his golf shirt as the hand ended, and she did indeed lose it all when the dealer flipped a Queen of spades that made the Doc’s other two Queens unbeatable. Lucky Lula wasn’t so lucky after all. Being a natural tightwad myself, I felt her pain.

  Ben began typing rapidly on the keyboard and it took me a minute to realize he was in the game of now six players as Rotten Irish Rogue. As I watched him play a half dozen hands, I was surprised to find out I understood the mechanics of the game already. It was that easy? Not quite. I played a hand in my head and found mechanics wouldn’t get you far with Hold ’Em. It was a game of strategy. It was a game of luck. It was really scary. I wondered how many people a day were suckered in by thinking they knew how to play, thinking the next hand would be a winner. I guess plenty since Ben thought I could take their money without knowing the game.