Hearts in Vegas
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Colleen Collins
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Chapter One
IF TWENTY-NINE-YEAR-OLD Frances Jefferies had learned anything from her years as a pickpocket, it was the importance of blending in to one’s surroundings.
Today, February 5, her task was to steal a valuable brooch from Fortier’s, a high-end jewelry store in Las Vegas. To blend in with the Wednesday bling-shopping crowd, she’d put on a red-and-leopard-print top underneath a loose-fitting Yves Saint Laurent white silk pantsuit, and a pair of killer Dolce & Gabbana stilettos.
Time for one last practice run.
She retrieved two similar-size brooches from a dresser drawer. One, a rhinestone flower-petaled pin, was an exact replica of the diamond-encrusted Lady Melbourne brooch stolen ten years ago from a museum in Amsterdam. Its whereabouts had been unknown until it suddenly, and mysteriously, surfaced at Fortier’s a few days ago. She slipped the replica into an inside pocket of her jacket and set the other pin on her dresser.
Watching her reflection in the dresser mirror, she practiced the sleight-of-hand trick, deftly plucking the brooch from the pocket and swiftly replacing it with the other pin, three times in succession. Each switch went smoothly.
Now for the finishing touch. She selected a pair of antique garnet earrings from her jewelry box and put them on.
Leaning closer to the mirror, she swept a strand of her ash-blond hair off her face, tucking it lightly into her chignon. Her gaze slipped to her lower cheek. This close, she could see the faint outline of silicon gel underneath her meticulously applied makeup. For anyone else to see it, they would have to be inches away, and she never let anyone get that close.
A few moments later, she walked into the living room, where her dad sat in his favorite chair, shuffling a deck of cards. A basketball game was on TV, the crowd yelling as a player dunked the ball.
“Still working on The Trick That Fooled Houdini?” she asked.
He grinned and set the cards on a side table. “Like Houdini, I can’t figure out how Vernon did it, either.”
Dai Vernon, Houdini’s contemporary, had devised a card routine where a spectator’s chosen card always appeared at the top of the deck. Houdini, who bragged that he could figure out any magician’s trick, never solved this one.
Her dad, who’d worked as a magician his entire life, had never solved it, either. Sometimes he jokingly referred to it as The Trick That Fooled Houdini and Jonathan Jefferies.
“Going to work?” he asked.
His thinning dark hair was neatly parted on the side, and a pair of reading glasses hung on a chain around his neck. He had a slight paunch, but otherwise stayed in shape from daily walks and a fairly healthy diet, if one overlooked his love of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.
She looked at his faded Hawaiian-print shorts and Miami Heat T-shirt with its ripped sleeve, wishing he’d let her buy him some new clothes. But he liked to stick with what was “tried-and-true,” from his haircut to clothes.
“Yes, off to work. If I leave in a few minutes, I should be there by three. The owner got back from a late lunch an hour ago. He and the security guard will be the only employees in the jewelry store the rest of the afternoon.”
“Good girl, you did your homework.” He paused, noticing her earrings. “Oh,” he said, his eyes going soft, “you’re wearing your mother’s jewelry.”
Frances’s mother, Sarah, had been her father’s tried-and-true soul mate. When she eloped at nineteen with a little-known Vegas magician, her wealthy family disinherited her. If my upbringing had been happy, she’d told her daughter, disowning me might have mattered. Instead, it released me to a better life.
The only items Sarah Jefferies had of her family’s were a small jewelry collection, gifted to her by her late grandmother.
“Mom’s earrings will be my calling card today,” Frances said, touching one of them. She loved antique jewelry, especially early-nineteenth-century Georgian, the era of these earrings and the Lady Melbourne brooch.
“She’s happy to know she’s helping. We’re proud of you, Francie.”
He often spoke of his wife in the present tense, which used to bother Frances, but she accepted it more these days. Sometimes she even envied her dad’s sense of immediacy about his late wife. Frances was painfully aware it had been four years this past summer—July 15, 1:28 in the afternoon—when they’d lost her, and shamefully aware of the pain she’d brought her parents in the months leading up to her mother’s death.
Nearly five years ago, Frances had been arrested on a jewelry theft. It had been humiliating to be caught, but agonizing to see the hurt on her parents’ faces. Especially after she admitted to them the theft hadn’t been a onetime deal. After learning sleight-of-hand tricks from her dad as a kid, she’d segued into picking pockets in her teens, then small jewelry thefts by the time she was twenty. At the time, she selfishly viewed her thefts as once-a-year indulgences, but it didn’t matter if she’d stolen once or dozens of times—what’d she done had been wrong.
Jonathan Jefferies blamed himself for his daughter’s criminal activities, believing she had resorted to theft because he’d been unable to adequately support his family as a magician. When Frances was growing up, the family had sometimes relied on friends for food, or went without electricity, or suffered through eviction because there hadn’t been enough money to pay the rent.
The judge, moved by Frances’s difficult upbringing and her mother’s failing health, had offered her a second chance. Instead of giving her a ten-year prison sentence, he’d suspended her sentence as long as she met certain conditions, a common solution for people with a high potential for rehabilitation.
For Frances, her conditions were threefold. One, either attend college or obtain full-time legitimate employment, including any position where she applied her skills for a positive end. Two, pay restitution to the victim. Three, do not break any local, state or federal laws.
The judge had added an ominous warning to the last one. Miss Jefferies, that means you don’t even pick up a dime off the street if it isn’t yours. As much as your suspended sentence is a gift, it is also your burden. For the duration of your suspension, if you appear before the bench for any infraction, no matter how minor, the court will evaluate your case with a more critical, censorious eye. And that’s mild compared to what a prosecutor will do.
As if she had a yen to ever break a law again.
As far as college or a job, her probation officer matched her “skills” to Vanderbilt Insurance, a company that was looking for an investigator to track stolen jewels and antiquities.
Sometimes these investigations, such as the one today, required her pickpocket skills. She would be taking back the Lady Melbourne brooch, which was the legal property of Vanderbilt Insurance, since they had already paid the fifty-thousand-dollar insurance claim from the museum.
“Remember to feed Teller around six,” Frances said. “Any later, he gets cranky.” She’d named her cat after her favorite magician.
“He gets cranky?” Her dad shot a look at the fat golden-haired Persian cat lying sprawled across the back of the couch. “That cat is so laid-back, sometimes I put a mirror under his nose to make sure he’s still breathing.”
“I know you think he has no personality.”
“I never said that. I merely suggested he might be suffering from narcolepsy.” Yells from the crowd drew his attention back to the TV. “Idiot refs,” he muttered, “calling fouls against Miami again. Might as well take off those black-and-white shirts and wear Celtics jerseys.”
With a smile, she touched her dad’s shoulder. He grumped a lot at these sports games, but she’d take that any day over those lengthy silences after he first moved in.
It hadn’t been easy convincing him to move out of the apartment he’d shared with her mom. It wasn’t long after her mother’s death, and when her dad wasn’t frozen with grief, he was going through old photo albums, cleaning or filling ink into one of her favorite fountain pens, watching movies they’d seen together, even the “chick flick” ones he swore he’d never see again.
He didn’t want to be a burden, and Frances hadn’t wanted to suggest he needed help.
“Still auditioning as an opener for that lounge act?” she asked.
He flexed his fingers. “Don’t think so. Need the ol’ hands to stop giving me a bad time.”
His arthritis flare-ups were making it increasingly difficult for him to perform magic tricks. Moving his fingers as he practiced the card trick helped keep his joints somewhat mobile and stymied the arthritis.
“Gotta take off now, Dad.”
“Meeting Charlie afterward?”
“Yes.”
She typically met with Charlie Eden, her boss and mentor at Vanderbilt Insurance, right after an assignment to discuss the case. Although it was more common for Vanderbilt investigators to only provide written reports to their bosses, her situation was unique, as Charlie submitted monthly accounts to the court on her progress at Vanderbilt.
Today, if all went well, she hoped to also hand him the Lady Melbourne brooch.
But there was more to the case.
Vanderbilt believed the thief who stole the pin had also stolen four fifth-century-BC Greek silver tetradrachm coins worth several million dollars from a New York numismatic event two years ago. Both thefts had similar crime signatures, including state-of-the-art technology to circumvent surveillance systems and cutting torches to access vaults.
“That Charlie, he’s a good man. Husband material, if you ask me.”
“Dad, I’ve told you before, I don’t feel that way about him.”
“But he’s gobsmacked over you.”
“Gobsmacked? What does that mean?”
“Astonished. Over the moon. Heard a sports announcer use it the other day.”
“Did he say he was over the moon about me?”
“No.” He picked up his cards and started flipping through them. “Don’t need to be a mentalist to read that man’s brain. He’d like to make you his Zig Zag Girl.”
Zig Zag was the name of a magic trick Jonathan Jefferies used to perform with his wife, where he appeared to cut her into thirds, yet she’d emerge completely unharmed. The secret was that the true magician was her mom, who knew when to zig and zag to make the illusion look real. Jonathan, who credited his wife with the magic that made their marriage work, liked to call her his Zig Zag Girl.
He flipped the top card over and frowned. “Plus, he’s a lawyer.”
Charlie, nearly fifteen years older than Frances, was a very successful lawyer. Women in the office swore he looked like Michael Douglas in his salad days, which was probably why Frances thought of the villain Gordon Gekko every time she saw him. Charlie had the distinguished career, dapper clothes, perennially tanned, handsome looks, but...something about him turned her off. Couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
“God help me if he were a neurosurgeon.” She leaned over and planted a light kiss on her dad’s forehead.
This close, she caught a whiff of peanut butter. The man was incorrigible, and she was ready to say as much when she caught the pain in his eyes as he glanced at her cheek.
She quickly straightened, looked around for her clutch bag. “There’s some leftover Chinese in the fridge. Maybe enough lettuce for a salad. Lay off the peanut butter, okay? I know,” she said, anticipating his argument, “it’s full of nutrients, and saturated fats are a good thing, but the doctor said one serving a day, which I believe you’ve already had.”
“Bought some Spam the other day,” he said, ignoring her instruction. “I’ll probably make a sandwich with it.”
“We’re pathetic. One of us needs to learn how to cook.”
“Yeah, your mom spoiled us. She’d never opened a can of soup when I met her, but after we got married, that girl...” He gave his head a wistful shake. “Studied cookbooks the way she did her old college books. By the time you were born, she made the best cheeseburger this side of Milwaukee. Some fancy French foods, too, when we had the money. What was that one with chicken and wine?”
“Coq au vin.”
“Yeah, that’s it. We should learn how to make that one of these days.”
But they wouldn’t. Sometimes Frances wondered if the two of them used their lack of cooking skills as a way of holding on to her mother. If neither of them replaced Sarah Jefferies’s role as family chef, then that spot would always be hers.
“Wonder where I left my bag,” she muttered, looking around.
“On the dining-room table we never eat at. Hey, baby girl, call me when you’re done? I’ll keep my cell phone next to me. I worry about you on these cases.”
“You know me, Miss Cautious. I’ll be fine. But I promise to call when I’m done.”
Her dad had never owned a cell phone before she bought him one after he moved in. He thought they were frivolous—said phones were things to get away from, not have strapped to your body at all times. But after she explained she wanted to stay in touch, especially when she was out working a case, he gave in.
Walking briskly to the dining room, Frances called out, “I should be home around eight.”
“So it’s dinner with Charlie, eh?”
“Business dinner,” she corrected, grabbing her bag. She opened it to double check that she had the key fob for her rental car.
“Valentine’s Day is next week, you know,” he yelled. “Maybe you two could—”
“No, we couldn’t,” she yelled back. “Love you. Bye!”
As she shut the front door behind her, Frances wished her dad would get off this Charlie matchmaking kick. She made good money, could comfortably support the two of them, so unless Ryan Gosling wandered into her life with a “Frances Forever” tattoo over his heart, she was fine without a boyfriend or husband.
Frances glanced at the distant dark clouds and hoped they weren’t an omen. Despite her analytical side, she had a superstitious streak. Even after days of preparation, she’d still get “preshow” jitters.
Part of her suspended sentence had been to see a therapist, a lovely older woman named Barbara. She’d suggested that whenever Frances got the jitters, to remind herself she could only control what was in her power and let everything else take its course.
Only problem with that thinking was that Frances liked to control every aspect of her cases. Liked to know every nuance of an investigation, every possible fact she could dredge up. It gave her confidence. Some people felt she had too much confidence, but that was their perception. Or, she liked to think, an acknowledgment of her well-crafted illusion.
But letting everything else take its course?
That would take magical thinking on her part, something even a magician’s daughter couldn’t conjure up.
* * *
SITTING AT THE DESK in the reception area at Morgan-LeRoy Investigations, Braxton Morgan read the text message from his grandmother Glenda a third time, mostly because he couldn’t believe it the first two.
I entered you in the Magic Dream Date Auction at Sensuelle on Valentine’s Day. Raise $$ for Keep ’Em Rolling & the guy who brings in the highest bid wins a car!
It wasn’t that Braxton was against raising money for Grams’s favorite charity, Keep ’Em Rolling, which provided wheelchairs for those in need. The cause was close to her heart, as she was a wheelchair user herself. And he’d love nothing more than to ditch his clunker and drive a new car. Until recently he’d avoided any activity that put him in the public eye, but he was ready to get out and about again, test the Vegas waters.
Not so long ago, as the manager of the high-end strip club Topaz, he’d lived la vida loca en Las Vegas—plush penthouse, Italian designer suits, kick-ass Porsche. At first he pretended not to notice when his boss, a Russian named Yuri Glazkov, muscled people for money or forged documents. After a while he had to admit Yuri was a thug, but Brax figured that as long as he kept his nose clean, no problem.
But like that old saying “You are what you eat,” you’re also who you hang out with.
After a few years working with Yuri, Braxton had been willing to break a law here and there for his boss, justifying it by telling himself he never indulged in violence or threats, just fudging a few numbers. Hell, everybody cheated on their taxes, right? But after Yuri got arrested for tax fraud, Brax couldn’t pretend he wasn’t on his way to being a thug, too.
But, when he tried to leave his job at Topaz, Yuri threatened to go to the authorities with evidence and witnesses to a crime Braxton had supposedly committed. All mocked-up evidence, given by “witnesses” who were Yuri’s buddies, but Braxton didn’t want to be railroaded into prison, so he stayed, waiting for the day he could make a clean break.
Which he finally got last August when he and his brother, Drake, along with a handful of Vegas police officers and a sharp arson investigator named Tony Cordova, headed up a sting at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino that resulted in Yuri’s arrest on a slew of nasty felony charges, including attempted murder and extortion. After Yuri’s defense attorney got him released on a half-mil bond, the Russian thug had been keeping a low profile. Which was fine with Braxton. No Yuri meant a happy, peaceful life, even if he had been forced to rebuild his from scratch.
At least he still had his designer clothes, but he was back living with his mom and grandmother, and drove a banged-up turquoise Volvo with two balding tires. He hated turquoise.
He looked at his grandmother’s text message again.
He’d done his best to man up, never complain about his shift from big spender to budget shopper, but no way was he parading like a slab of beef in front of hordes of women fueled by hormones and free booze.
He glanced at the grandfather clock. Quarter after three. His mother would still be at her Wednesday bowling league, but Grams was either at home or her boyfriend’s down the street. Since she’d just texted this message, she was probably available to read his response right now.
He began tapping the keypad on his smartphone.
Grams, I’m not a slab of...
The desk phone jangled. Why Val LeRoy, his brother’s wife and P.I. partner, insisted on keeping this dinosaur landline service was beyond his understanding.
“Brax,” yelled Drake from the back office, “get that? I’m on another call.”
Braxton lifted the handset, mentally cursing the tangled phone cord that tied him like a leash to the phone.
“Morgan-LeRoy Investigations,” he answered, staring at his unfinished text message to his grandmother. Sounded hostile. Not good. He punched the back arrow to erase letters.
Grams, I’m...
“My apologies,” a man said, “I thought I dialed Diamond Investigations.”
The caller had a strong Russian accent, which brought back bad memories. Although he detected a faint, almost imperceptible British lilt, which he’d never heard in any of Yuri’s crowd.
“The agency name changed to Morgan-LeRoy Investigations last October,” Brax explained, waiting in case the man had questions about the former owner, Jayne Diamond. Sometimes callers didn’t know Jayne had died last October after a brief illness or that she’d bequeathed the agency to her protégé, Val LeRoy, and Val’s husband, Drake Morgan, Braxton’s identical twin brother.
“Ah, I see. I would like to speak to Mr. Morgan, please.”
Probably meant his brother, as Braxton had only come on board recently as a security consultant. “Drake is on another call. I can transfer you to his voice mail.”
Adjusting the sleeve of his blue-striped Armani shirt, he frowned at the phone, wondering if he knew how to do that. He tapped a button on the phone console that apparently turned on the speakerphone, because when the caller spoke again, his voice echoed through the outer office.
“Braxton Morgan,” the man clarified. “I wish to speak to Braxton Morgan.”
Brax hesitated. The Russian thing... Nah, he’d let the paranoia pass. Couldn’t afford to turn down an inquiry for his consulting services. He set the handset on the desk and leaned back in the swivel chair. “Speaking.”
“Excellent! My name is Dmitri Romanov, but my friends call me Dima. I am calling on behalf of my community. We would like to retain your services to help us.”
“Which community?”
“The Russian community.”
Which was a large one in Las Vegas, at least three thousand people. Didn’t mean this call had anything to do with Yuri. “The problem?”
“We are concerned about our image and our ability to run legitimate businesses because of recent negative publicity regarding one individual. We want to know where he spends his time in Las Vegas and if he is still conducting criminal activities. His name is Yuri Glaz—”
“You called the wrong guy,” Braxton snapped, wishing he’d listened to his instincts and canned this call. “Got problems with Yuri? Call the cops. Better yet, call the D.A., who I hope skewers that bastard to the wall at his trial next month.”
Drake strode into the room. To the caller, he said, “Give us a minute.”
He tapped the mute button so he could talk to Brax privately. Dressed in dark trousers, a dress shirt and their dad’s tailored gray jacket, Drake rubbed his palm across his forehead. He wore his hair in a buzz cut, which only men with great-looking skulls could get by with, something Braxton learned when he was forced to buzz his hair, too, last August when he and Drake switched places. These days, Braxton’s dark brown hair had grown back and bad in a short faux-hawk cut, which in his humble opinion made him look like Adam Levine.
“Maybe we should hear this guy out,” Drake said.
“Over my dead body.”
“Information is power.”
Brax got the message. By hearing what this Dmitri guy had to say, they’d learn whatever dirt he might have on Yuri. If it was muddy enough, they could pass it on to the D.A. who could sling it at the upcoming trial.
He pressed the speaker button.
“Sorry, Dmitri, for my reaction,” he said, adopting a more professional tone, “although you probably understand why.”
“Certainly, Braxton. I, too, am upset with Yuri’s unscrupulous ways. I am a respected businessman, ready to fund a significant venture, and I do not wish Yuri’s reputation or his current activities to stand in my way. I am prepared to pay you well for your investigative efforts.”
Braxton looked at the north-facing window and the steady stream of cars traveling along Graces Avenue, their hum like white noise. Sometimes there was only one way out of a problem, and that was to go straight through the messy dead center of it.
“I’m interested in the case,” he said, giving his brother a here-we-go look. “Fill me in on the details.”
“As you undoubtedly know all too well, Yuri is currently awaiting trial and under house arrest. An interesting phrase, house arrest, because with a little creativity and a GPS jammer, those ankle bracelets can slip on and off like a cheap bangle. Rumors are Yuri continues to loan-shark through a check-cashing store and fence goods hijacked from trucking companies.” He exhaled heavily as though blowing out smoke from a cigarette. “We want you to investigate these rumors. If true, the community needs to distance themselves from these enterprises and advise the authorities that none of us are involved. If they are false, we can proceed with a clear frame of mind.”
Braxton leaned back in his chair, wondering why the court had thought a bracelet could stop a guy like Yuri. “This will require two investigators, my brother and myself, each at one-hundred-seventy-five an hour, plus expenses.”
Drake cocked a questioning eyebrow. At Morgan-LeRoy, the hourly rate varied depending on the case, but it had never topped $125.
After a beat, Dmitri said, “That is acceptable. Is one-fifty per diem sufficient for expenses?”
“This is Vegas, Dima, not Boise.”
Dmitri chuckled. “Boise, my friend, is poised for a new era of entrepreneurship. Did you know China is establishing a state-of-the-art technology zone south of Boise?”
No, Brax didn’t know. But he was catching on that this Dmitri fellow was knowledgeable, educated and loaded. As in money. Lots of it.
“Three hundred a day for expenses,” Braxton said, making a rolling-dice gesture to his brother, “plus an additional two hundred each for vehicle rentals.”
For the next few moments, he listened to the faint tapping sounds over the speaker, which he guessed was Dmitri adding up numbers on a calculator. Drake leaned against the far wall, his arms crossed, a look somewhere between amusement and incredulity on his face.
Hot dog, he mouthed.
Although the brothers’ relationship had been frosty during the six years Brax had worked for Yuri, these days they shared their old camaraderie. Often they picked up on the other’s thoughts, sometimes even finishing each other’s sentences.
Brax grinned. When he’d accepted his brother and Val’s offer to work as a security consultant at Morgan-LeRoy Investigations, he’d told them his number one goal was to bring in the bucks, so he was always pushing for higher retainers, bigger cases. “I want to be the agency hot dog,” he’d told them.
Like him, Drake and Val were rebuilding their lives. Drake’s home had been destroyed in a fire last summer, and Val, after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina, had started over in Las Vegas a few years ago.
Dmitri finally broke the silence. “On days when there are two investigators, we’re talking one thousand for expenses, plus a three-fifty hourly fee. You are expensive, Mr. Morgan.”
For a moment, Brax thought about explaining how chasing Yuri could get complicated and costly, fast. Plus, if he pulled up to a five-star restaurant or a high-end casino in his turquoise Volvo, he might as well spray-paint on it Gumshoe Tailing Somebody.
Instead, he said politely, “You’re welcome to hire another P.I., Dima, but gotta tell ya...no one in town knows Yuri the way I do.”
Val, wearing a simple black dress, entered the room from the hallway that connected the agency to her and Drake’s living quarters in the back. The overhead lights caught streaks of violet in her bobbed brown hair.
When she heard the name Yuri, her brown eyes grew wide. She sat in one of the guest chairs, her hand on her bulging tummy.
“I accept your terms,” Dmitri said over the speaker, “with the understanding that we review your progress at the twelve-thousand-dollar mark. That is the amount of the retainer check my associate will drop off at your agency tomorrow morning at nine.”
Val mouthed Twelve thousand? to her husband, who gave her an acknowledging nod.
“Braxton,” Dmitri said, “I have an urgent appointment, so I must end this call, but I have something else I would like to discuss with you. May I speak with you later?”
After giving Dmitri his cell number, Brax ended the call and looked at his sister-in-law and brother, cupping a hand to his ear in a let’s-hear-it gesture.
“You are the hot dog,” Val said approvingly.
“Agency hot dog,” Drake corrected.
Brax flashed them an I’d-try-to-be-humble-but-it’s-so-true smile.
“As much as I would so love to be part of this case,” Val said, “My feet are starting to swell somethin’ fierce—no way I could keep up on a foot surveillance.” With a sigh, she looked at her left hand. “Fingers are swelling, too. Dropped off the family heirloom ring with Grams this morning so she can wear it for a while.” She looked back at the brothers. “Since I’m out, you two split the retainer.”
“You’re the lead investigator,” Drake said to Braxton, “plus you’ll be working more of the case, so...sixty-forty?”
Brax racked up the numbers in his mind. “Seven thousand, two hundred...sounds like enough to get my own place.”
Finally. His own bachelor pad. Not as posh as before, of course, but a place where he could play his music loud, toss a shiny new black satin cover on a king-size bed, invite a special lady over for his renowned spaghetti alla puttanesca, a bottle of Chianti and a homemade tiramisu dessert that would make an Italian mama weep.
Ah, a pared-down version of the life he left behind was almost his again....
He looked down at his cell phone.
Grams, I’m...
He didn’t mind, much, paring down when it came to his new life, but forget stripping down, as in going shirtless, which was what he’d heard guys did in these date auctions.
But it wasn’t an issue to be discussed in text messages. He needed to talk to Grams in person, offer a compromise, like his donating some money from his hefty retainer instead. Yeah, that might fix this problem.
He looked back up at Val and Drake. “Guys, mind if I take off early?”
Val did a double take. “You finally have a date, Brax?”
“Sorta.” More like a sit-down negotiation with one of the grandest old ladies who ever graced this planet.
“That didn’t come out right,” Val continued. “Sounded as if you can’t get a date when that’s so far from the truth. Why, with your stud looks, you could be courtin’ a different girl every night, so it’s just odd you’ve been livin’ like a monk for months now.”
“Honey,” Drake murmured, “you might be stepping over a line.”
She looked at her husband, all innocence. “Because I mentioned an obvious fact? Why, even Grams is worried about him! That’s why you—” She pursed her lips.
Braxton leaned back in his chair and checked out his brother, who was scratching his eyebrow. Which he always did when he was uncomfortable. Or guilty. “What’d you do, bro?”
“I, uh, paid the entry fee.”
“Entry fee,” he repeated, not liking where this was going. “To this brawn fest.”
“Magic Dream Date Auction, yes.”
Brax rocked forward on his chair, the front legs hitting the floor with a thud. “You think I can’t get a date?”
“Hey, Brax,” Val cut in, making a placating gesture, “it’s not like that, really. It’s just that ever since you moved in with Mama D and Grams, you stay home every night, get to bed by ten, never answer your former girlfriends’ calls. You seem, well, defeated, flat...nothin’ like my former bro-in-law.”
“I don’t stay home every night,” he muttered, wondering if it were Mom or Grams who’d snitched about his not returning those calls. Probably both.
“Right,” Drake said, “one evening you drove to a convenience store and bought a quart of milk.”
Brax blew out an exasperated breath. “I can’t believe this! I spend years being estranged from my family for hanging out with thugs, dating questionable women and skirting the Nevada criminal justice system, during which time Mom banned me from our childhood home. But now that I’m law-abiding, and yeah, okay, so I haven’t been involved with a woman for a while, but that’s my choice, by the way...” He gave both of them an and-you-better-believe-it look. “Where was I?”
“A law-abidin’ citizen,” prompted Val.
“Right. Now that I’m an upstanding citizen, my family can’t hear enough about my uneventful, boring life? I suppose Mom’s spilled that I still watch cartoons sometimes, too.” He jabbed an accusing finger at Val, then Drake. “Maybe it’s you people who need to get a life!”
“Brax,” Drake said, “don’t take it the wrong way.”
“What’s the right way? To joke about my do-nothing, go-nowhere, get-nothing life?”
“It’s all right, dawlin’,” Val said, drawing out the word dawlin’ like a slow pour of molasses. “It must be awful bein’ a former playboy. Like bein’ an ol’ James Bond sent out to pasture.”
As if he needed that mental picture. An old Bond bull with a bunch of over-the-hill Miss Moneypennies.
“Look,” he said, “I know you two mean well, but let’s put the brakes on the matchmaking, ’kay? That includes any blind dates, Craigslist ads, surprise walk-ins, you get the picture.”
Val frowned. “Surprise walk-ins?”
“Some hot blonde walks into the detective agency, needs to talk to a P.I. He falls for her story and her, and that’s when his real troubles start. It’s in every clichéd private-eye film.”
“F’true,” Val said, her eyes lighting up, “I recently saw Chinatown, and just like you said, the trouble started when a blonde walks into private eye Jake Gittes’s office.”
“I dunno,” Drake said. “You’ve been a monk so long, maybe you need a little blonde trouble.”
“Monk.” Braxton snorted. “Now you’re stepping over the line, bro.”
“Yeah?” Drake countered. “Well, since I’m already there, gotta ask...still watching Donald Duck cartoons?”
“I don’t need this.” Brax picked up his phone and stood. “I’m heading home to tell Grams that as much as I appreciate her—and your—concern to find me a date, I’d prefer not being auctioned off to the highest bidder.”
He started walking to the door.
“Good luck saying no to Grams, bro.”
“I never claimed to be a wise man,” he said over his shoulder. “Just a savvy, determined monk.”
