Cashed In Read online

  “Really, Howard, it’s rude to stare.”

  “Is it rude to touch?”

  My mouth dropped open, the blonde stifled a gasp and Marlboro Man looked like he wanted to puke. My mother just giggled and swung at his shoulder with the coral and green scarf around her neck. “You rascal.”

  For the first time in forty years, I could begin to see evidence of the genes that showed up in Ben. Oh, Lord, save me. It was going to be a long four days.

  Two

  I’ve heard that Texas Hold ’Em was a much smaller world until just a handful of years ago. Used to be that there were just a few greats, and everyone knew who they were, sort of like Hollywood in the 40s, before TV changed the complexion of the entertainment industry. Now, the Internet has done the same for this most popular game of poker. While there are still a few Cary Grants of poker out there—the Phil Hellmuths and the Doyle Brunsons—like today’s Hollywood and its plethora of flash-in-the-pan stars, there are so many so-called champion poker players around it’s hard to keep track. That was fortunate for me, because although the tournament I had won had been televised and rife with melodrama, I doubted many people in the general public would recognize me. I test as an introvert on those personality quizzes; I like people I already know and love my privacy. Flying below the radar is just the way I like it.

  But like I said, my karma stinks.

  “Bee Cool, is that you?” I felt a hand at the crook of my elbow and looked down to my right to see a balding man with kind eyes grinning up at me.

  “Ringo?” I gave him a quick hug as he pointed shyly at the top of my head. “You still have them.”

  My fingers reached for my silver reflective Gargoyle sunglasses, the same ones Ringo had given me when I first met him in Vegas. “Why do you sound surprised? These are my lucky charms. I couldn’t have won that tournament without them.”

  Ringo’s face glowed rosy in just a few seconds. “I saw that you were doing this tournament on board the Gambler and so my poker group signed up for the cruise.”

  “Really? You came all the way from Nova Scotia for this? How did you see I was coming?”

  Ringo blinked. “The cruise line advertised it. Your picture was pasted up on the Internet with some of the other big guys—Rawhide Jones, Rick Santobella, Denton Ferris to name a few.”

  I’m in advertising, so on one hand, I was impressed that someone had noticed that some no-name like me had bought a ticket on their poker cruise and had thought to use it to beef up sales. On the other hand, I thought Ringo had handed me the perfect way to get my own free cabin out of these cruise ship geeks. Right now, haunted by the idea of sleeping on a pool lounge for the entire cruise to avoid Ben’s hijinks, that cheered me more than the highly unauthorized use of my name angered me.

  “Ringo, I don’t know why you’d want to come see me play. You know I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re better than the greats in the game. You just go out there and do it, you feel the game, you are the game instead of a master of the game. You don’t use a standard strategy. You act like a Mouse one minute and a Maniac the next. You flow, you intuit, and you win.”

  I shook my head. I wished I thought as much about my game as he did, I might get better at it. “Ringo, it’s called luck. I won one major tournament which I had unusually strong incentive to win. I might totally tank on this cruise.”

  We both shared a wry look at my accidentally poor play on words, then Ringo patted my hand and, as is his way, made me feel less like a goober. “You’re too modest for your own good. Get out there and blast them out of the water.”

  He giggled and wandered off before I could offer to repay him for the sunglasses, which truly had been a godsend during my Big Kahuna tournament. All I’d really cared about was saving my brother’s life, which required winning, or at least making it to the final table, and the shades really helped.

  A pleasant looking man wearing a cruise ship uniform and a half smile passed me. Speaking of luck, his was bad today. I grabbed his arm and read his nametag. “Solis, from Ecuador, where can I find the Hold ’Em tournament director?”

  “We’re not in international waters, yet, ma’am, we can’t gamble yet. Besides, the tournament doesn’t begin until this evening.”

  “Yes, I am aware of that.”

  “Still you want the director?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you need her?” The half smile was gone, suddenly replaced by a slitty-eyed stare.

  For a moment I felt like I was back in Las Vegas, talking to a pit boss. What would the equivalent be on a cruise ship? Raft boss? Float boss? I sighed. “I just want to get something cleared up.” Maybe get a free room on board for the cruise line using my name, such as it was, to build up their ship manifest.

  Solis frowned suspiciously, and I lost what was left of my patience. “Look, Solis, I’m Belinda Cooley and your cruise line has been using my name and photo advertising the onboard tournament without my permission.”

  Solis whispered into an invisible communication device under his lapel, or maybe built into his nametag. He turned away when he saw me trying to figure it out. Geez. I guess I was in Vegas on the Gulf after all.

  In approximately two seconds, a pair of unsmiling extra-large cruise employees appeared at each of my elbows. They were dressed in identical short sleeve Hawaiian-style shirts in a flower and poker motif that, I suppose, was geared to make them look friendlier. It didn’t. “They will escort you to Miss Kinkaid, Miz Cooley,” Solis informed me.

  I had to remind myself I’d asked for this as I was propelled through the milling masses of sweaty poker fiends in completely unreasonable summer outfits, feeling like I was headed to the gestapo. As we descended in the elevator to the bowels of the ship, I fought claustrophobia.

  I shot a sidelong look at the less imposing of the henchmen. For some reason, he wasn’t wearing a nametag. Hmm. Maybe he just forgot to put it on this morning. “You worked on the Sea Gambler long?”

  He grunted. Okay. I turned to the other one who looked like a cross between a pro football lineman of Samoan descent and a Viking. How much worse could it get? I suppose he could spit fire out of his mouth. No nametag on him either. Uh-oh. I forced a smile. “How about you?”

  Turned out, Hans Talaupoola was a lot friendlier than he looked. He was a cruise veteran, having been in the security detail on four other ships over the past six years. Without any more prompting but an interested nod every now and then, Hans got so enthused that he imparted all sorts of fascinating inside information about our destinations.

  “Wow. You ought to work on the tour desk instead of in security,” I commented.

  Hans beamed. “That’s where I really want to work, but they always stick me with the heavies. Sorry, Phil,” he added as an aside to his partner.

  Phil grunted. I was so incensed by Phil’s rudeness, more for his buddy Hans’ sake than for my own, that I opened my mouth to chastise him only to be interrupted by a loud buzz inside the elevator. I held by breath. Not only was I going to get stuck in an elevator but I was getting stuck in one 20,000 leagues under the sea. Ack.

  “Boys,” the speaker under the buttons reverberated. “You may bring Miss Cooley to me in the conference room instead of my office.”

  “Ten-four, Miss Kinkaid,” Hans answered, pushing the number one button. We started to sink.

  “That’s creepy. How did she know which elevator we were in?” I looked around the metal box we stood in but couldn’t see any hidden lenses.

  Phil and Hans shared a look. “We gotta keep an eye on what goes on around the boat,” Hans said to me.

  They’d be getting an eyeful with my brother’s extracurriculars, that was for sure. “Do all the cruise lines do that? There have been so many unexplained disappearances off cruise ships recently, how can that be if all the ships have ‘eyes’ on board?”

  Phil grunted, shifty-eyed, but since that was his apparent nature, I didn’t worry.
But when Hans shrugged, avoiding eye contact, I got a little twinge in my stomach. The elevator door opened, they nudged me out down the hall. That was the end of that conversation.

  “Miss Cooley, I understand you are upset?”

  I looked behind us to see an extremely short, especially round woman with equally short and round strawberry blond hair, as she was bustling toward us in the pinkest getup I’d ever seen—cotton candy linen blouse, primrose capris, fuschia sandals. She held out her small fat hand and I responded with mine. She performed the world’s briefest handshake, firm if fleeting. It was disconcerting actually, like the grip of someone ready to arm wrestle.

  “As a matter of fact I am, Miss Kinkaid. I have just been told by an acquaintance of mine that you have been using my name to beef up the ship’s manifest.”

  Her penciled-in eyebrows met over her rimless rose-lens glasses. “And why is this surprising? That is exactly what the agreement stated, that we use your name and publicity photo in our ad campaigns in exchange for a free cabin and free tournament buy-in onboard ship for this inaugural cruise.”

  Agreement? What agreement? I know I should’ve latched on to that immediately but instead went with a more vital priority. “I have a free room!”

  “Yes,” Miss Kinkaid had taken to using a tone reserved for the mentally handicapped. “And you have signed that room over to an Ingrid Vanderhoss. You have assigned the original room you booked to your parents, Elva and Harold, and you are bunking with your agent.”

  “My agent?!”

  “Benjamin. Your husband, I presume.”

  Ack-urgh-bleck. I must have sounded like I was in need of CPR, because two men in matching poker motif shirts poked their head in the room and looked at me with concern. Kinkaid waved them away.

  I cleared my throat, ended up coughing, and the two men reappeared. I forced a weak smile and they left shaking their heads. “So, ah, my agent. Is he the one who arranged the deal for the free room, and me in your advertising?”

  Kinkaid’s eyebrows did the mambo. “You didn’t know? Maybe you two should consider marriage counseling to deal with your communication issues.”

  I shook my head and my next words stumbled on my tongue before rushing out. “He’s not my husband. Ben is my brother.”

  Kinkaid shook her head. “Oh, well, a blood relation. There’s nothing you can do about that, now can you?”

  “No, unfortunately.” Except for murder. That was always an option.

  “I might recommend firing him as an agent, though.”

  I wonder how you fire someone you didn’t hire. I nodded once and wagged an index finger at her. “Definitely. I’ll get right on that.”

  Kinkaid’s cell phone rang and she wandered over to the long mahogany table, spread with seating plans for the Hold ’Em tournament. I peeked over her shoulder to see if I could find my name, but there looked to be thousands. Kinkaid stuck her phone back in its rainbow-jeweled case on her belt.

  “Are all the people on board registered for the tournament?”

  She shrugged. “All but about a hundred or so, which is unusual and exactly what we wanted for the Sea Gambler, especially her maiden voyage. It’s been a misnomer to call those other card player cruises ‘poker cruises,’ since poker is just another recreation option, like shuffleboard or snorkeling. Here on board the Sea Gambler, Texas Hold ’Em is everything, from the décor to the action. When one is eliminated from the tournament, never fear, because we have a whole room full of cash games going on.”

  “It sounds like you’ve hit a niche,” I said, appreciating their angle from a professional advertising standpoint. Of course, what they would do with a ship decorated bow to stern in clubs, spades, diamonds and hearts when Hold ’Em lost its heat, I didn’t know. Not my problem, I told myself; I had enough of my own to worry about. Since Ben had given my room to his new sancha and her buddies, I needed a place to bunk. “By the way, a friend of mine wasn’t able to make it, is there any way I could have his cabin on board?”

  “That really wouldn’t be my area of responsibility, but I would be happy to check on it for you.” Kinkaid didn’t seem especially happy about it but she did do it. Damn. Now I would owe her. How had this happened? I’d come loaded for bear. I would leave owing another person a favor. She walked to a wall phone and pushed in some numbers, consulting quietly with the person on the other end. She held her hand over the receiver and asked me for Frank’s name. After a few more moments she hung up. Her closed face gave me a bad feeling.

  “I’m sorry, it won’t be possible for you to take Mr. Gilbert’s room.”

  “Why not?” I asked, exasperated.

  “I am not at liberty to say.”

  Now she was starting to sound like a member of the CIA. Geez. “Why not?” And I was beginning to sound like a parrot.

  Kinkaid sighed. “Let’s just say with all the recent disappearances aboard ships, we cruise lines are forced to know more about the whereabouts of our passengers. You being in Mr. Gilbert’s room would violate our heightened tracing measures.”

  “But I paid for the room!”

  “No, actually, I’m told Mr. Gilbert had the cruiseline reimburse your credit card for the full price of the fare a couple of days ago, which is of course part of the reason we can’t let you in his cabin. We don’t have his permission.” Why the heck did he throw my gift back in my face? Jerk. Had he known he wasn’t coming days ago and just not told me about it?

  There was plenty of time to figure out what Frank was up to and less opportunity than ever to have my own bathroom for the next week. I peeked at my cell phone to give Frank a call to get his okay, but it was ‘looking for service.’

  “Good luck getting cell coverage during the voyage,” she told me with raised eyebrows.

  “I know!” I said, struck with an inspiration. “I’ll go ahead and buy Frank’s cabin back right now.”

  Kinkaid was already shaking her head. “It’s too late once the ship has sailed, so to speak. The manifest is closed. No one can move cabins now.”

  I was getting lightheaded. I think I was hyperventilating. I pulled out a chair and plopped into it, shoving my head between my knees and sucking in a breath.

  “Seasick?” Kinkaid asked.

  “Mansick,” I answered, heaving in a few more fortifying breaths.

  She didn’t respond and I waited until my blood pressure had stabilized before I lifted my head. When I did, Kinkaid was studying me with quixotic wonder. “Are you this volatile and unpredictable at the Hold ’Em table?”

  “Umm . . .”

  Truth was, I didn’t have any Hold ’Em table habits. I learned to play poker a few days before the big tournament I won in Vegas. Since then I’d played a weekly home game hosted by a pro in the Woodlands, a half-dozen brick-and-mortar games in the back rooms of local bars, and been dabbling on the Internet, where I’d won a tournament or two, and figured out it was a lot different playing with your computer between you and the other folks with hands than it was playing face-to-face. Considering my records on the Internet and in person (discounting what I knew was an aberration in Vegas), I was still a lot better face-to-face, although I wasn’t sure why.

  Kinkaid waved her pudgy hands in the air, bubble-gum pink nails flashing. “Okay, okay. Be that way. You don’t want to give away your secrets to mere plebeians.”

  Really, I didn’t have any secrets to give away, that is, compared to guys who’d played their whole lives. I barely knew what I was doing and I would readily admit to that. I had, in fact, to several poker mag reporters who, for some reason, refused to include it in their articles. Or perhaps it was their editors who cut my quote. My friend Shana claimed it would pain those who’d devoted their lives to learning poker to know I went after it with such a disorganized, cavalier attitude. I think, like Kinkaid, they couldn’t wrap their minds around the possibility that I was just lucky. In cards, not life, as was my lot, apparently.

  Kinkaid was still waiting. I had to say som
ething. I remembered how Ringo had categorized my game. “I, uh, use a lot of intuition.”

  Apparently, Kinkaid thought this a nonanswer. Snorting in disbelief, she nodded to herself and continued: “Since you didn’t know about the publicity/cabin deal we struck with Benjamin, I assume you don’t know about the other commitments either?”

  Other commitments? Uh-oh. It could get worse than sharing a cabin with my self-appointed skirt-chasing twin/agent, running into my parents around every corner and having my face plastered all over creation as a poker expert?

  Forget murder. Suicide was a definite possibility.

  Three

  With my list of “commitments” (including a half-hour seminar on The Softer Secrets to Winning at Hold ’Em—who came up with that?) tucked into my cream leather and gold catchall Michael Kors bag, I marched with deadly purpose in search of Ben. Kinkaid had apprised me of “Ingrid’s” cabin number (once I reminded the tournament director that it was really mine), which would be the second place I looked after checking in at our cabin. I jumped in the elevator, reviewed the map inside and chose the floor with the most bars. The elevator eased to a stop at five and a guy with blond chest hair curling out the top of a muscle shirt and tight tan legs, from his sexy running shorts all the way down to his size eleven Pumas, strode in. His obvious lack of crow’s-feet told me he was at least ten years younger, and the undulating six pack visible through the huge arm holes told me he was ten times more fit, than I was. I edged my saggy rear end to the corner of the elevator. He nodded at me. I nodded back, forcing my gaze forward before I started drooling.

  “Do I know you?” he asked, cocking his head as the doors slid shut.

  I stole a look at him. Hmm. Though I might like to have known those biceps, I didn’t yet. “I don’t think so.”

  Frowning in puzzlement, he shook his head. “No? I guess you remind me of someone, but I think she’s younger.” He must have heard how that sounded because his face flushed and he stammered, “I mean, you’re older than she looks. I mean—”