The Curious Case of the Cursed Dice by Constance Barker

Author:Constance Barker [Barker, Constance]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Constance Barker
Published: 2017-07-24T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

As urgently as I wanted answers to my questions, I could see that Lila intended to tell her story her way. She liked a good show and all I could do was give her an opening. “How about taking one step back?" I asked. "Start with the other night, when you were gambling.”

A look came over her face. "You are after the dice," Lila said. “That’s why you two are sniffing around Ulrich’s place.”

"Not me. I was after a lock, actually," Clarence said. "Cecilia was after the dice."

Lila looked away. "You are better off without them."

"Tell me about the dice."

Lila smiled. "I didn’t know about them at first. It was a heady night. The guy was winning constantly. He was greedy about it too. I knew they'd stop him sooner or later. He admitted that this was the first time he’d ever been lucky. That doesn’t happen, so I watched. He was reaching into his pocket so I finally asked him what was up and he showed them to me. His lucky dice, he said. He told me that the dice were new to him. He got them somewhere from a guy who said they’d change his luck.

He’d been around and when he started winning, when we saw that the security guys were getting itchy, he knew his run was over. That would be it for him. They'd put his name and photo into the cheater database. Even if they couldn’t catch him doing anything, since he wasn’t a high roller, after winning as big as he had, he'd never be let into a casino again. He didn't care though. He said he was going to leave the country and buy himself a place in Tuscany."

"How did you get them from him?"

"Did you steal them?" Clarence asked, sounding worried that she might've done that.

She cocked her head. "I would have picked his pocket but I didn’t have to. When he figured he’d made more than two million, he put them in my hand.”

“Why?”

“As payback. He figured it would serve the casino right if when they kicked him out, the real luck stayed behind to win more from them. So when the security moved in on him I already had them."

"But you didn't go nuts with them?"

She smiled. "It was tough not to. The moment I had them in my hand I had an urge to put a bet down on roulette. As it turned out, it didn't matter what I bet on, that was the winning bet."

"So how did you control them?"

"I play odds and angles, but I’m not a gambler.”

“Freddy said you are a con artist.”

“That’s nothing but a nasty label and not at all politically correct.”

“Really?”

“Really. What I do is give people life lessons. I teach them not to take things at face value. At any rate, once I had the dice I needed to size things up and figure out what they did.”

“Did you?”

“I saw the hook and refused to bite, I can say that much.

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