Double Jinx: A Bellissimo Casino Mystery Short by Gretchen Archer

Author:Gretchen Archer [Archer, Gretchen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Live Lucky Publishing
Published: 2024-09-09T00:00:00+00:00

Keep reading for an excerpt from Double Up, the sixth Davis Way Crime Caper, when Super Secret Spy Davis Way meets July Jackson…

I found out about July and Baylor when he called to tell me he was dying.

“Of what, Baylor?” At the time, I was trying my hardest to coax two three-month-old angels into taking a much-needed nap, House had been screaming at me all morning, and I might have been a little short with him.

“See, Davis? That’s just it. I don’t know. Cancer, maybe? Like a brain tumor? Or maybe I’m having a heart attack?”

“You’re twenty-seven years old. I doubt you’re having a heart attack.”

“You’re not a doctor.”

“Then why are you calling me? Call a doctor, Baylor.” I loud whispered so House wouldn’t dial Dr. Calliope’s office, because they were sick and tired of it. (Me too.)

“And say what?”

“What you just said to me. That you’re dying.”

“I can’t say that to a doctor.”

“Then why would you say it to me?” Like talking to the wall.

Warning him I didn’t want the gory details, I asked what his symptoms were. He told me he couldn’t sleep, think, or eat. He got my attention with eat. Baylor could put a buffet out of business. He could empty a refrigerator in twenty minutes. He had a Taco Bell Supreme Party Taco Pack every single day of his life to hold him over between lunch and dinner. Then it occurred to me it was the week after Halloween. “Baylor, did you go trick or treating?”

“What? No.”

“What did you do on Halloween? Remember last year when you drank that Devil Punch and Fantasy and I had to take you to that quack hangover doctor?”

“That man is a genius.”

“Whatever, Baylor. What’d you get into on Halloween?”

“Nothing. I worked.”

“Tell me the truth,” I said. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Davis, I worked. I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned it to you, but I’m the only one left. I worked the whole night. I mean all the way through the night. I’ll never forget it.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Do you know July, the Holiday Host?”

“Twelve years old? Big hair?”

“She’s not twelve years old.”

And just the way he said it, as if I’d insulted July the Holiday Host in the most vile and offensive of ways, I caught on. I’d been a police officer in Pine Apple for seven years before I was a Super Secret Spy at the Bellissimo, so these things didn’t slip by me too easily, babies or no babies. “Baylor? Do you like this girl?”

“Like her? Davis, I would die for her. I think I am dying for her. She might be killing me.”

And that was why Taco Bell was going out of business. Baylor met a girl.

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