Page 42

" Y ou know I love you, but it's almost eight o'clock, and if I don't get out of here, I'm going to lose it," Max said, rubbing her eyes and yawning.

I looked up from the rough outline of the timeline I'd been sketching out, and immediately my jaw cracked open in a matching yawn. "You know, some of these entries are just not adding up for me. I mean, the — wow. How did it get so late?"

She stood up on the other side of my desk and stretched. "Gee, I don't know. Time flies when you're hiding from Jake and eating tuna casserole, I guess," she said drily.

"Hey! I wasn't hiding in the bathroom, I was having intestinal . . . issues. Each one of those women made me try some of her casserole. How could I be rude after they were kind enough to drop everything and rush down here on a Saturday?" I groaned and rubbed my still-distended stomach. "I never should have gone back for that second plate of dessert."

She laughed and shook her head. "Lessons learned. And yes, it was very nice of them, but I doubt they had a lot on their agendas to 'drop.'"

"Well, anyway. What time did Jake finally leave?"

"Around fifteen minutes after you disappeared with your intestines. He said he had stuff to do, but he'd be back with your car this afternoon," she said. Then she scrunched up her forehead. "Hey, where is he? It's way past afternoon, already."

I stood up and stretched, too, not thrilled with the creaky noises in my back. I was only thirty-two, not eighty-two, for Pete's sake. "Hey, speaking of eighty-two, what happened to Mr. Ellison?"

Max rolled her eyes. "He left around four with Stella. That man is a player, if you ask me. I wonder if Mrs. Z knows about Stella?"

"Or any of the other ones. Did you see the way they fluttered around him?" I laughed. "'Do you want some more casserole, Henry?' 'Can I get you something to drink, Henry?' It was disgusting."

"Yep. He was eating it up, and I'm not talking about the casserole, either," she said.

"On the bright side, though, we finally know what his first name is," I said, perking up.

"We knew his name," she said.

"We did?"

Max tilted her head and stared at me. "You know, D, for a genius, you sure can be a little slow. We have his full name on his employment forms."

"Oh. Right. Of course, I knew that. I was just testing you."

"Right."

As she walked down the hall, I started after her. "Bet you don't know his middle name!"

"Percival."

I stopped dead. " Percival ? Oh, I'm so gonna torture him the next time he tells me a lawyer joke."

Max crossed our small lobby, which seemed strangely empty without a couple of dozen senior citizens eating casserole, and looked out the window. "Holy fudge. I think your car just pulled up."

"Why is my car pulling up holy fudge worthy?"

I looked out the window next to her. "Holy fudge."

We both stared at the beautiful red BMW convertible as it parked in my spot in front of the building. "Nah. Somebody's just lost," I said, shaking off my momentary "they peeled off the ugly Honda paint, and it turned into a beautiful convertible" fantasy.

Max sucked in a breath. "No, that's Wrench. He doesn't get lost, trust me."

We watched in silence as Wrench climbed out of the car. Then I realized I was missing a prime opportunity. "Just who is Wrench and who is he to you?"

"Long story. Tell you later," she said, ducking away and running for the bathroom. "Don't tell him I'm here."

"Chicken!" I yelled after her, but with little conviction, after I'd hidden from Jake earlier. One of those "the chicken calling the fowl feathery" moments.

"That was just sad, Vaughn," I muttered, then unlocked the door and opened it before Wrench knocked. "Hey, Wrench. What's up? And whose car is that? And where is my car?"

He blinked. He was wearing another Brody Investigations shirt and jeans, and he was actually kind of cute in an "I just got out of the Navy and still have a crewcut" way.

"Whoa. Slow down. Okay, this is your car. Your other car is kind of history."

"What? How can my car be history? All it needed was a paint job!" I walked outside and joined him on the sidewalk, and we both stared at the Beemer. I took a deep breath. "Will you please explain why my car is 'kind of history'?"

He didn't look at me. "Well, turns out that whoever did the job on your car used some kind of acid on it first. Some words were, ah, etched in the metal. Pretty permanent, if you know what I mean. So the paint place is loaning you this one until they can figure out what to do. Or until your insurance kicks in, whatever. Jake figured you didn't want to drive around with those words on your car."

"Jake likes to take charge, doesn't he?" I asked.

"Hmmmm," he said, not committing to anything.

I heaved a sigh. "Fine. I called my insurance agent this morning, and they said I have rental insurance. So what do I owe?"

"Oh, no. This is on the house. Part of the paint service." He still wouldn't look at me.

"Now, wait a minute—" I began, but my cell phone started ringing. I pulled it off the clip on my shorts and answered. "Vaughn here."

Wrench stepped back toward the wall, as if to give me privacy.

"This is Emily. Are you busy? I didn't want to bother you, but are you still coming to poker night with me? I'm getting ready to go, but you could meet me there."

"Oh, I forgot all about it, to be honest. It's been a crazy couple of days," I said.

"That's okay, if you can't make it?—"

"No, I'd love to do poker night with you. Sounds like just the thing to take my mind off my troubles. Let me just finish one conversation; can you hold on a sec?"

I turned back toward the wall, but Wrench was gone. I grabbed the office door handle, but the door was locked, and anyway, I would have noticed the door opening. He was just gone. I looked up and down the sidewalk in front of my office neighbors' doors.

Nothing. Shrugging, I put the phone back to my ear. "Emily?"

"I'm here."

"I'd love to. How do I get there?"

Y ou could cut the tension with one of the cheese spreaders littering the dingy green felt table. The big man in the black cowboy hat slowly raised his head and speared Emily with his gaze. I realized I was holding my breath and forced some out of my lungs.

Emily was a tall, cool drink of water. Not a bead of sweat on her forehead. Not a frown line in sight. She was Slow Hand Joe.

Cool Hand Luke.

Doc Holliday with a minivan.

She was ice, and the cowboy was going down.

Two hours of Texas Hold'em, and I'm talking like a B Western.

I covered my mouth with my hand and turned my laugh into a cough, but neither Emily nor Cowboy – known as Vernon, the used-car salesman during the day – even glanced at me.

Finally, he spoke. "You're bluffing, Psychic," he drawled. "I call your two and raise you three."

By now, I knew that the two and three he referred to were two and three hundred dollars, which seemed to me like an awful lot to rest on a bunch of playing cards. To Emily, though, it was a friendly nickel and dime game, since she was used to thousands and tens of thousands resting on the turn of a card. The Turn was an actual term of art, by the way. It's the fourth card that goes in the middle. And the Button. It's the disk that shows who would deal if there were no dealer.

And the lake. Er, I mean, the River. It's the last card that goes in the middle (community card) in Texas Hold'em. It's the one that lets you know who wins, pretty much.

Emily distracted me from my thoughts by sliding the rest of her chips to the center of the table. The two men who'd already folded whistled. Emily just smiled that demure, PTA-mom smile. "I'm all in, Cowboy."

"Damn!" he muttered. He glared at his cards, then considered Emily, then glared at his cards some more. He stood up and walked around the table, then sat down and shuffled his cards around in his hand, then glared at them a little longer. Emily just sat there, patiently waiting, not a hair out of place.

I had to sit on my hands to hold still. There had to be nearly two thousand dollars in the pot, if I were calculating the chips right.

Two grand would buy a lot of paint for my car. Maybe I need to figure out how to play poker. Although the drive over here in that lovely sports car didn't exactly make me eager to get the Honda back.

Finally, Cowboy curled his lip and threw his cards, face down, on the table in disgust. "It's all yours. I'm done for the night," he said.

As Emily reached out to collect her winnings, I leaned over to peek at the cards she'd placed on the table. She caught my hand before I could turn them over and smiled at me. "You have to pay to look at somebody's cards, December."

"But the hand is over. You won, right?" I was just curious.

Cowboy laughed, all signs of annoyance gone. "You never, ever look at another player's cards, rookie. If we let our opponents see our cards when they didn't pay to look, they could figure out our strategies."

One of the more cautious men at the table spoke up, patting his few strands of wispy white hair down over his mostly bald head. "That's right. How you bluff, how you bet, all the stuff that makes each poker player unique."

I nodded. It made total sense. "I get it. It would be like allowing opposing counsel to see my trial notes. They get all the facts, by reason of civil procedure. But if they know my strategy, I'm screwed. Same here. We all know what cards are in the deck. But you each play them very differently."

I looked at Emily and grinned. "Is the rookie catching on?"

She looked like a proud mama. "Definitely. Ready to try a hand of your own?"

A huge yawn escaped before I could catch it. "Oh, wow. I think I'd better give high-stakes poker a try when I'm not dead on my feet. Especially with you card sharks," I said, grinning at the man on my left, who didn't look a day over ninety.

He flashed a huge toothless grin at me. "Good thinking, cutie. If I was only twenty years younger?—"

"If you were twenty years younger, you'd still be old enough to be her grandpa," Cowboy boomed. Then everybody started laughing. I shook my head and stood up, still laughing, and Emily stood up, too.

"I'd better go. PTA bake sale in the morning, and my brownies still need frosted," she said, which stuck me as surreal considering the fact that she was matter-of-factly sliding a mound of chips in her purse. "I'll cash this in next time. Thanks, boys."

They all stood up. "Thanks, Psychic. We'll get you next time," said Grandpa.

She smiled at him and gently patted his cheek as we walked past. "You always do, Mr. Spicey. You always do."

As we walked away, I heard them talking about her. "I love that girl. She puts the 'sweet' back in poker," Cowboy said, not bothering to lower his voice.

Emily's lips twitched, so I knew she'd heard it, too. After we finally weaved our way through the room, waving and chatting a bit with everyone, we walked out into an only moderately stifling night. It had to be down to at least ninety degrees.

Practically a cold front.

"How do you do that?" I asked.

"Do what?"

"Take all of their money, but leave them still happy and liking you. Trust me, lawyers would pay huge money for that secret," I said, only partly kidding.

She laughed. "It's a matter of dignity."

"Dignity?"

"Yes. I try never to lose mine, and I always leave them theirs. Have you ever watched poker tournaments on TV?"

We stopped at her minivan, since I didn't really want to explain the BMW. Especially since I didn't quite understand it myself, and I'd wimped out on calling Jake for an explanation.

"Well, no offense, but watching poker on TV sounds about as exciting as watching bowling. Or golf."

She laughed. "Yeah, I understand. Although Tiger Woods is a serious hottie. But, anyway, there are always the hot dogs, just like in football or baseball or any other sport. Trash talkers, people who over-celebrate their wins, the guys I call the Balloons."

"I know exactly what you're talking about. But balloons ?"

"Balloon-headed. It's all 'me, me, me' with them, and they make other players feel badly about themselves. I never, ever do that, and so most people like to play with me." She looked around, then whispered. "Even when I beat their pants off."

"What about the Psychic part? I watched Cowboy nonstop and didn't notice anything. He liked to touch the brim of his hat, but he did that whether he had a good hand or a bad hand."

She hesitated. "Okay, but I tell you this under attorney-client privilege, right?"

I put my hand over my heart. "Cross my heart."

"He touches the left side of the brim more when he's bluffing."

My mouth fell open. "That's really subtle. You're good. Will you please come to court with me? Just for jury trials, seriously."

She laughed, and we said goodbye. I pretended to fumble for my keys and waved to her to go ahead, then I walked over to the gorgeous little convertible that was so sweet to drive.

Twirling the remote door unlocker thingy around like a magic wand, I said, "Abracadabra! Open Sesame!" and grinned at the lovely beeping sound that signified a car classy enough to have a remote door unlocker thingy. "I love that sound."

Then something really hard smashed into the back of my head, and I didn't hear anything else for a while.