John Miller - Smoke and Mirrors

Hamp nodded. “Yay-ah, Mr. Barnett.”

“Yes, Sheriff Barnett,” Leigh chided.

“Yes, Sheriff Barnett,” Hamp said.

“Stop playing with your food,” Leigh said.

Hamp frowned and put the spoon down on his plate.

“And you were asleep until the gunshot woke you up?” Brad asked.

“Yeah. It was real loud. I heard Estelle screaming and then I came down and she made me get in the utility room while she called nine-one-one. I didn’t see Sherry.”

“Thanks, Hamp,” Brad said, patting the boy’s shoulder.

“Leigh, why did you drive to Baton Rouge?” he asked, turning to her.

“To bring Cyn home for Christmas break.”

“I mean, why did you drive all the way to Baton Rouge instead of letting her fly home?”

“Good question,” Cyn said, frowning.

Leigh looked at Brad like he was an idiot. “Do you have any idea what it costs to fly from Baton Rouge to Memphis? The cotton is already ginned. Brad, have you ever known me to waste money?”

“There’s meals and a motel room and time away from the place,” he said.

“Motel?” Cyn said, laughing. “Mom spent the night in my room at the dorm and she made ham sandwiches for the trip.”

Cyn’s cell phone buzzed and she took it out of her pocket and looked at the display. With well-practiced thumbs she typed a message and closed it.

“Not wasting money is why I still own Six Oaks and not some damned conglomeration of suit-wearing, citified windbags who don’t know a cotton boll from a golf ball,” Leigh said flatly.

Pierce Mulvane leaned back in his chair and gazed affectionately at the framed Walter Anderson watercolors of Gulf Coast wildlife that decorated his office. Anderson’s work-sloppy and unfinished looking, in Mulvane’s opinion-had appreciated enormously over the past few years. Pierce wouldn’t have purchased them himself, and he technically didn’t own them, since they had been part of the purchase of the Castle casino. The fixtures, including all existing equipment, had remained with the structure as part of the sale agreement. He didn’t know anything about art, but the increased value endeared the paintings to him. He had made a wise choice by talking Klein into buying this marginally profitable, garishly designed casino in north Mississippi, instead of building one on the Gulf Coast.

Mulvane had been employed by Royale Resorts International for twelve years. The Castle had been his idea. He had convinced the owner, Kurt Klein, to purchase the run-down casino to see if the area was viable for a major investment in a future RRI self-contained billion-dollar casino resort-the likes of which had never been seen in Tunica County. After the new resort was built, RRI would sell the existing casino to another group and recoup their investment, plus pocket the profits it had made. Or they might even retain the casino as an operation that catered to low rollers. The Roundtable had only two hundred hotel rooms, four restaurants, five bars, and two acres of gambling floor. The new place, to be built over three thousand acres, would be the grandest operation RRI owned, and Mulvane would manage it.

Pierce’s brothers had all followed in their father’s footsteps and joined the Boston-based Irish mob. Pierce, more ambitious than the other Mulvanes, had started his career in crime as a bookie, but after three years he had been put in charge of a floating high-stakes poker game. From there Pierce had gone to Atlantic City and worked his way into casino management. After two years rising through the ranks at the Atlantic Ocean Club, he had been hired by Resorts Royale International. He had been running RRI’s Atlantic City casino when he suggested to Kurt Klein the concept for the new resort in Tunica County, an area he believed had more growth potential than Las Vegas. Pierce had targeted the Castle, a casino that would have been a gold mine except for the fact that it was being crippled by the skim taken off the top by greedy, silent-partner mobsters. Providentially, and with the help of a phone call to the right people, the mobsters had been caught and RRI had purchased the Castle at fire-sale rates. Due to Pierce’s management, an honest count upstairs, effective promotions, and a cosmetic remodeling, the place, renamed the Roundtable, had indeed become a gold mine.

The present Roundtable, originally built with a facade that resembled a medieval castle complete with battlements from which a series of long and colorful banners flew, had become so profitable that Pierce had finally convinced Kurt that the spot was ripe for a major resort operation. Pierce had promised to have the new operation ready to start construction within a year, but he had run into an unforeseen problem. He had explained the dilemma to Kurt Klein, but it was clear that any revision in the schedule would not be tolerated. His boss, a German billionaire businessman unaccustomed to financial disappointment, demanded strict adherence to his instructions.

Pierce left his office and strolled to the elevator where his personal assistant, Patrick “Tug” Murphy, waited. He looked, despite an expensive suit tailored to hide his handgun, like a professional boxer who’d been knocked out and collapsed, the side of his face landing on a pile of sharp rocks. He had not been a prizefighter, but he had been disfigured in a car accident years earlier when an explosion had sent super-heated safety glass into his face. The scars resembled acute acne, mercilessly pitting the skin on his right cheek, the side of his chin, and forehead. As a result, his facial expression gave less information than the backside of a speed limit sign.

“Time for a tour,” Pierce said.

“Yes, sir,” Tug said, looking down at his watch. Tug was intelligent, had astounding reflexes, no conscience, and executed orders perfectly. Klein’s people in New York had recommended Tug. He had only been with Pierce a few months, but Pierce trusted him as much as he did Albert White, his chief of security.

Pierce checked himself out in the wall of mirrors. His crimson hair was perfectly combed, his naturally bushy eyebrows neatly trimmed. He centered the knot of his silk tie perfectly between the stiff collars of his Swiss-made shirt and pulled down the hem of his double-breasted charcoal Armani jacket.

“How do I look?” he asked, knowing it was a rhetorical question.

“Like you stepped out from a page in GQ, boss,” Tug said.

“Anything else on that incident out at Six Oaks?”

“Nothing yet. Albert’s still trying to find out more. It was a young black girl, is all I know.”

“If it were Pablo, that wouldn’t be the case, would it? He’s the best there is, right? Mistaking his target would be impossible,” he said sarcastically.

Tug nodded. “Big fuckup for a big professional.”

“Then,” Pierce said, “it must have been a hunting accident. Still this is definitely not a good thing.”

Pierce wasn’t yet fifty, and he was at the top of his game. Stepping into the mirrored cab, he was confident that he was going to make the resort happen on schedule. The alternative was unthinkable.

“I’m not going home without you,” Sean said with a finality Winter was all too familiar with. She was holding Olivia and standing in the RV’s master bedroom while he packed clean clothes into his canvas duffel. “Your problem is you have never learned to say no.”

“If it’s Styer,” Winter said, “I have to stop him. If it isn’t, I’d like to know who wants me to think it is. If Brad didn’t know who I was, I’d be a suspect under a bright light in some interrogation room.”

“Say it is Styer. Maybe if we go home, he’ll just leave,” she said. “Maybe he’s done here and he’ll move on.”