Double Dose by Gretchen Archer

Author:Gretchen Archer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cozy mystery, mystery series, humorous mystery, casino heist, female sleuth
Publisher: Live Lucky Publishing
Published: 2023-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

Friday, 1:30 P.M.

She had amnesia. She had a form of amnesia. Ponytail could recite the periodic table, sing a song of states and capitals, alphabetically, and knew the books of the Bible, in order, but she couldn’t tell us her name. She said she didn’t remember ever being in a casino in her life, she didn’t know the clothes she was wearing, she had no idea what might have been in the crossbody bag before Cotton ate it, and she’d never heard of Good Pills Biopharmaceuticals. “Do they make Hello Happy gummies? My mother eats those by the handful. My mother!” Her face lit up. She shook her closed fists in excitement. “I have a mother!” Her face fell. Her hands went back to her lap. “I don’t know her name.”

“How can you remember that Olympia is the capital of Washington and not remember your mother’s name?” Fantasy asked. “Or your own, for that matter?”

“I can see her in my brain, but that’s it.”

“Well, in your brain,” I said, “what’s she doing?”

“Eating Hello Happy gummies.”

I poked around Safari on Starling’s cloned phone looking for a plausible diagnosis. “It’s either retrograde, anterograde, or transient global amnesia,” I announced. “Maybe. The good news is they’re all temporary.”

“How does that help us?” Fantasy asked.

“I don’t know that it does,” I said.

“How temporary?” Ponytail asked.

“I don’t know that either.”

Nothing about Ponytail felt threatening. She was pleasant, cooperative, and polite. But we kept our guard up just the same. We introduced ourselves from a safe distance on the porch and explained where she was, who we were, how we’d found her, and gave her a bare-bones rundown of our predicament. Then we gently told her the role we believed she might have played in it.

Her face was blank. And pale. She shook her head slowly. “I didn’t do any of that.” She followed up with, “At least I don’t remember doing any of that.” Then, “Why would I do that?” Finally, “If I did any of that, I am so sorry.”

Clearly, we were up against a monster.

We just didn’t know who or what the monster was.

It didn’t appear to be Ponytail.

Fantasy and I untangled her from the packing tape and ushered her inside. She chose water over coffee, gulping down two glasses. While she splashed water on her face and tightened her ponytail, from which long strands of hair the color of honey had slipped loose, she yelled through the open powder room door, “I recognize my face in the mirror, but I still don’t know who I am!”

We recognized her face too—the almond-shaped hazel eyes, the small sharp nose, the full lips—but didn’t know who she was either.

After quickly poking through what was left of the contents of her purse with two kabob skewers from my kitchen, not finding ID or any indication that she was a guest at the Bellissimo, just a Bobbi Brown Bare Pink lip balm, a very smart watch Cotton had snacked on, and fifty or more mangled and tainted twenty-dollar bills, Fantasy and I lugged my dog inside.

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