Lucky Break by Deborah Coonts

Author:Deborah Coonts [Coonts, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Deborah Coonts

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MISS MINNIE must’ve seen me coming. She met me at the door, barricading the entrance with her tiny body. Tonight she wore a silk kimono and enough jewelry to have every cutpurse salivating. Her face, clownish with makeup, her dark hair swirled and lacquered on top of her head, even in five-inch platforms she didn’t make my shoulder. Still, she wasn’t one to be underestimated. Even though a small package, she packed a big punch.

“You not wanted here. Go away.” Her voice could cut glass.

“I need to talk to Kim.”

Her face turned to stone. “No know Kim. She not here.”

I adopted a posture of exaggerated patience, which really wasn’t all that exaggerated, my well bone dry. “Minnie, I know, okay. I know. You want to leave me out here to air your dirty laundry, or are you going to invite me in to talk with your daughter? If she’s in some kind of trouble, I need to know. I can help. And I can also cause trouble; I think you know that as well.”

Minnie made her bank on not attracting unwanted attention from Vice. To have survived and not ended up on the front page of the RJ being carted to jail spoke volumes about her savvy and cunning, two things I was counting on. She’d also been around long enough to have the dirt on well over half the players in the state, from high government officials to casino bosses.

“You be quiet.” She stepped aside, allowing me past, but she didn’t look happy about it. Still, I thought I caught a hint of relief; although, with all the pancake, it was hard to tell. “Men don’t like big bossy woman.”

“Unless they have a whip and are wearing leather,” I muttered.

She gave me a haughty look. “What kind of place you think this is?”

“I know what kind of place this is. It’s a Vegas kind of place. Everything is negotiable.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You think you so smart.”

“Far from it. But I’ve been around long enough to know how to play the game, just like you.”

Miss Minnie caved. Things must really be bad. “She in the back.”

Kimberly was curled up on a cot in the storage room in the far end of a hall that had doors to smaller rooms down each side. She bolted to a seated position, her legs bent in front of her, her arms encircling them. A defensive posture. She eyed me as I grabbed the back of a chair and spun it around to face her.

Minnie looked between us for a moment. “She help. You listen,” she said to her daughter, then bowed and shut the door.

“How did you know I’d be here?” Kimberly’s voice shook with fear or fatigue, I wasn’t sure which. Probably both.

“I’ve been a part of Vegas for a very long time. Even though almost two million people live here, it’s still a small town.”

She didn’t look surprised—she’d parlayed the same kind of access and info into a six-figure income and, she’d sat at the feet of her mother.

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