with my own money. And considering what had just happened with that guy, I was uncomfortable with the whole situation.
Still, I found myself at the cashier window, pushing the chips through the little slot. While I waited for the cashier to count them, I looked around at the fake trees, the fake brownstones, the fake New York City. I missed the city. The real one. There was something vibrant about it that no other city could match.
I was distracted by my thoughts enough so when the cashier pushed the wads of money through the slot, it surprised me. I glanced at the receipt.
I’d won more than sixty thousand dollars.
I stopped breathing for a second.
The cashier grinned. “Congratulations,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said, carefully putting the bills in my bag next to the smashed bagels. I needed to get to a bank before I got mugged.
“Where have you been?” Bitsy demanded when I walked into the shop about an hour later.
I didn’t answer right away. I wasn’t quite sure how to explain everything so it wouldn’t sound like I was nuts.
My eyes skirted around the shop, my home away from home, checking everything out, sort of like when a cat goes on the prowl to make sure everything’s still where it was an hour ago. The blond laminate flooring was sleek; the mahogany desk near the door was shining. A spray of light pink orchids from Bitsy’s greenhouse gave the place elegance, as did Ace’s new paintings we’d just hung: comic-book versions of Caravaggio’s
Four private rooms were closed off in the middle of the shop, and a waiting area fitted with a black leather sofa and glass-topped coffee table was behind the rooms to the left. A staff room was to the right, and an office off that. It was classy, no flash-stock tattoos-lining the walls like in a street shop. We prided ourselves on the custom designs we created. And since Charlotte had arrived, we’d bought a new Apple computer for even more design options. I didn’t have a background in computer graphics-I was a painter-but Charlotte had been teaching herself and had begun to show us some of her tricks. Joel was getting into it more than anyone; he’d started in street shops and didn’t have formal art training like Ace and me, but he somehow managed to take his raw talent and transfer it to the computer.
“So?” Bitsy asked, following me into the staff room, bringing her small stool with her. She needed the stool to compensate for her height, but her habit of dragging it along the floor caused it to squeak in that fingernails-on- the-blackboard kind of way that made me cringe.
“I had to go to the bank,” I said, trying not to meet her eyes as I pulled the bag of bagels out of my messenger bag and set it on the small table we used for eating. We also had a light table, but that was for work.
“What happened to that?” Bitsy asked, staring at the bag, which had ripped and now bled portions of onion, poppy seed, and sesame seed bagels on the table.
Ripping the bag even further, I saw that the container of cream cheese was also a victim of my fall: It had exploded all over the bagels and the bag, leaving a white, creamy mess.
“I fell.” I lifted my knee to show her my wound.
“You better start at the beginning,” she said, shoving the stool to the side and plopping herself down on one of the chairs as I tried to clean up the bagel mess.
“Well, I stopped for bagels-you know that-and then I got a little distracted by the roulette table.” Her eyebrows went up, but before she could say anything, I continued. “There was a guy there, a guy with a queen-of-hearts playing card on his arm, and I stopped, and he gave me a fifty-dollar chip, and I put it on a square, and it won, and then I played again and again and again, and I won over sixty thousand dollars.” I sank into the chair opposite Bitsy as I took a deep breath.
“No, really, Brett, what happened?”
She thought I was kidding.
So I told her about the guy knowing my name and about running and falling because of the stroller and the woman who looked at me like I was from Mars.
“Sixty thousand?”
I nodded, unable to believe it, either.
“Remind me to go with you the next time you’re playing the tables.”
She wasn’t kidding.
“So how did he know your name?”
“I have no idea. He ran before I could ask him.”
“So he knows that he shouldn’t have known your name.”
“He might be the guy with the cork last night.”
“The guy in the picture you drew?”
“No, a different one.”
She snorted. “So there are two?”
“Maybe.”
It all sounded so far-fetched.
Bitsy got up. “Joel’s finishing up with a client, Ace has gone who knows where, probably that oxygen bar to get his fix, Charlotte called in, said she was going to spend the day with Trevor. Guess she brought him home from the hospital this morning; everything’s fine.”
But everything wasn’t fine. At least not in my world. I was sixty thousand dollars richer because of a stranger who knew my name.
And then I thought of something.
He said he’d gotten his tattoo at Murder Ink. I could call Jeff Coleman and see whether he knew the guy.
Could it be that easy?
Bitsy was picking at one of the bagels, sweeping it across some of the loose cream cheese. She stuck it in her mouth and nodded. “Good,” she said through the poppy seeds.
Nice to know they still tasted okay, even though they looked like a cement roller had run over them.
We heard the front door buzzer, and Bitsy went out to see who’d come in. I took the wad of cream cheese- covered paper towels and threw it in the trash.
“Brett?” Bitsy had returned, sticking her head in the staff room door. “Someone’s here to see you.”
I didn’t have a client scheduled for another hour, but Bitsy didn’t hang around for me to ask who it was. I followed her out.
Detective Frank DeBurra was standing by the door.
Chapter 10
He was becoming my new best friend.
I didn’t like it.
But I admittedly was curious as to why he would show up both at my house and now here, at The Painted Lady.
“Yes?” I asked. “I thought I answered all your questions.”
His ears were more pronounced now, since his hair was slicked back, like he’d just taken a shower, making him look even more elfin. But a tall elf.
