Murder by Chance (Betty Chance Mystery) (4 page)

But the murder made such entries trivial. What could Buffet Betty say?
Forty-three out of forty-four passengers arrived safely at Moose Bay with only one DOA. For gamblers, that’s pretty good odds. Now for something really important, let’s talk Prime Rib!

She knew she would have to come up with something. Maybe a quick shower would help to clear her mind. Afterward, she’d finish writing her blog. She quickly undressed and did a quick body check in the full-length mirror. It told her what she already knew. For a fifty-five year old, doctor-defined obese broad, she didn’t look half bad.

She referred to the extra pounds on her frame as Wrinkle Puffers. They were better than any beauty cream she could buy at Macy’s. And safer than Botox. Unless someone looked real close—and no one had since her husband disappeared—not a single line was visible from across a room.

Betty entered the marble bathroom and twisted the faucet in the walk-in shower to hot. When the temperature was just right she stepped in. Water from the five adjustable heads pulsated against her body. She fiddled with the knobs, and found the setting that stung her body with needlepoint precision. It was like liquid acupuncture. Every inch of her body tingled in pleasurable pain.

Her body was tired but her mind wouldn’t rest. As the water rippled down her back, she started going over all the possibilities of what might have happened on the bus. Tillie had left the bus unlocked, allowing passengers to come and go as they pleased. But by leaving it unguarded, she had unwittingly created an opportunity for a stranger to walk on board. If there were a silver lining in that act, it was that the murderer could have been somebody other than a Take A Chance client, or employee.

Perhaps Farsi’s death was a simple case of robbery gone wrong. That would explain why Farsi’s ID was missing. A lot of people used disposable cell phones and the fact that Farsi’s owned one was hardly sinister. Even his fraudulent job history didn’t bother Betty. It wasn’t that unusual for a man to tell a white lie every once in a while. Heck, even thrice in a while.

Betty turned off the water just as the phone rang in the other room. She grabbed the largest towel, and wrapped it partially around her, and then decided ‘What the hell’ and let the useless fig leaf—unless you’re a size zero—cover up drop to the floor. She shuffled naked into the next room and grabbed her cell phone.

“Hello,” she said, water dripping down her body and into the carpet.

“It’s me. Are you okay?” It was her niece Lori. She was also Take A Chance Tours’ accountant.

“I’m fine,” Betty answered, knowing immediately why her niece was calling at such an hour. Lori must have heard what happened. Her niece seemed to worry about every little thing lately. Her aunt’s well-being was no exception. “Did you hear about our passenger being murdered?”

“Of course I did,” Lori answered sternly. “Please don’t lie to me when you answer the next question. Were you or Tillie in any danger at any point? Could it have been you that was murdered?”

Betty wanted to state truthfully
maybe
, but she knew better. She said, “As far as I know, we were in absolutely no danger. I don’t think the killing was a random event. The murderer was after Farsi and no one else.”

She could hear Lori breathe a sigh of relief.

“By the way, how did you hear about what happened?” Betty asked and did a head toss of her wet hair. Droplets sprayed across her bare shoulders. She rolled her eyes upward in a failed attempt to see the wet trickle pestering her forehead. She walked over to the oak wardrobe and opened it. Betty grabbed the complimentary white terry cloth robe from inside and slipped it on, passing the cell phone from one hand to the other as she did. She was pleased the robe almost came together in the center when she pulled it tight. Last time she was at Moose Bay, it didn’t.

“Are you kidding?” Lori responded. “The murder is being featured on every single cable news network, including CNN!”

“Oh great,” Betty groaned.

“Seems like an I-reporter on YouTube heard about it on his scanner and alerted the stations.”

“Cripes.” Betty groaned again.

Lori continued, “But I heard it first from Hannah.”

“Hannah?” Betty asked in surprise and plopped down into an armchair.

“Yeah, “ said Lori. “She’s already asked for a refund.”

“Hannah called you at home?” Betty was slightly irritated that Hannah hadn’t said something to her first. “How did she get your number?”

“I’m listed, remember?” Lori could tell Betty was going into her mother-protector mode so she made a pre-emptive strike: “Aunt Betty, you and I talked about that and decided it wasn’t a big deal. Besides, she’s the only client who calls me.”

“She’s called before?” Betty said exasperated.

“I didn’t want to bother you about it; there was no need to.” Lori said confidently.

“Actually,” she said, her tone changing, “I think it’s kind of funny. At the beginning of every trip, usually after she tallies up her first day losses, she calls and asks for a refund. But, after the trip is over, she never brings it up again.” Lori laughed. “Until next time!”

“You should’ve told me that she …”

Lori interrupted her. “ …No, I shouldn’t have. You hear enough complaints on the job as it is. I can bat a few of them for you. As your accountant, my job is to keep the business end of the company going. I figure Hannah’s always going to be griping.”

“Unless she’s ahead,” quipped Betty, some of the tension disappearing from her voice.

“Probably even then,” countered Lori.

That’s true,” Betty conceded. “But this time, she might deserve a refund.”

“Maybe,” said Lori.

“Maybe they all do,” Betty added, sounding defeated.

“Not if we call it a Murder Mystery Tour,” Lori joked and then gasped. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I said that. I’m sorry. It’s too early to make jokes, isn’t it?”

“Probably,” Betty answered.

She reached over and turned on her laptop that was sitting on the table next to her.

“Do you think there’s a chance it will affect Take A Chance?” Lori asked.

Betty decided to downplay her response. “If anything else happens as a result of this trip, like a lawsuit …”

“Or more bad publicity,” Lori injected.

“We could lose the business,” Betty added solemnly. For the first time, Betty regretted letting Lori invest in Take A Chance Tours. When Lori’s mother, Betty’s sister, died, Lori had inherited $200,000.00.  She told her aunt she wanted in on the action. She immediately invested $50,000.00 in Betty’s new enterprise, in exchange for becoming an equal partner. When she turned over the check to her aunt, she’d jokingly used the phrase “Let it ride”. Yet Lori insisted it wasn’t a gamble at all. She was convinced the two of them could turn the fifty grand into a travel company that would be worth millions within a decade.

Betty knew Lori had always felt the two of them could accomplish anything, even capture lightning bugs on the moon, if need be. Or at least that’s what Betty began to tell her niece when Lori was only two-years old. From the first time Betty laid eyes on her as an infant, Lori captured her heart. She’d kept it prisoner ever since. All Lori had to do was smile at her aunt, and Betty’s heart would melt.

Betty made sure she did everything she could to make her niece a part of her life. She treated her as lovingly as she did her son, Codey. If possible, she always included Lori in their family activities. When she and Larry took their son to Disneyworld, they insisted that Lori come along as well. Every weekend, Betty made sure that Lori spent some “you and me” time with her. From simply sitting at the kitchen table playing the board game Chutes and Ladders, to later in life when they shopped for Lori’s prom dress, the moments together shined.

Betty was there for her in the bad times as well. She wiped away Lori’s tears when her father walked off. She let her niece rage in anger in her kitchen while tossing cups and plates as she screamed at the unfairness of her mother’s cancer. Later, when Betty’s sister died, she held the 15 year-old disturbingly silent Lori in her arms for hours, telling her she would be okay. That her mom was watching over both of them.

Lori moved in with her aunt. There was never any question that Lori would do anything else. After college she moved out knowing she could move back at any time. Betty’s home had become Lori’s home. It always would be. It only made sense that Betty’s new business would be a family business, if Lori wanted it that way.

Lori interrupted her thoughts and brought her back to the moment. She asked, “Do you have any idea who might have killed Farsi?”

“Farsi wasn’t his name,” Betty informed her as the laptop’s screen lit up. “According to the FBI, an Alexander Farsi from Chicago doesn’t exist. Neither does Argylite Chemicals.”

“What’s that?” asked Lori.

“The company he claimed to have worked for.”

“Wow!” said Lori, “you mean everything he said was a lie?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Can’t they identify him with finger prints or DNA?” asked Lori.

“Only if he’d ever been arrested or worked for the government.” Betty typed in her username and password. She thought she was being very clever when she initially set up
password
as the username and
username
as the password. But, according to her son Codey, a 4th grader could figure it out in thirty seconds. She’d never bothered to come up with anything else.

Lori had avoided the question but now asked, “Do you think the killer was one of our passengers?”

“I was afraid of that at first,” Betty sighed. “But if the murder occurred in Tyler Falls, the killer could have come on board and left without any of us noticing.”

“That’s what Hannah’s complaining about, by the way,” Lori added.

“That she could have been murdered?” Betty asked, as she clicked onto the Internet and accepted the hotel’s wireless access agreement.

“No, that the bus stopping in Tyler Falls” Lori answered. “If it hadn’t, she says, she’d be a multi-millionaire now.”

“What is she talking about” Betty barked. Sometimes, her clients tested her patience.

“Don’t you know?” Lori asked. “A progressive slot hit a half-hour before you arrived. Someone won $13,000,000.00 on a machine there at Moose Bay.”

“And Hannah thinks it should have been her?” Betty asked.

“She says it was
her
machine that paid out. Go figure.” Lori chuckled.

“Cripes,” Betty said as she logged into her website. “What else can go wrong?”

“Maybe I should join you at Moose Bay,” Lori suggested.

“No, I’m fine, stay in Chicago. I’ll keep you informed about what’s going on. Love you,” Betty said, and hung up.

Betty’s eyes drifted toward her webpage displayed on her laptop. She used her finger to quickly scroll down to the comment section from her readers. Even without her posting about the deadly event, her fans were already posting about the homicide.

She recognized most of the names. They were her regular passengers who also read her blog, or the many readers who never left their home but managed to “virtually” travel and eat with her across the country. These armchair travelers were kindred spirits who loved buffets, road trips and gambling as much as she did. Her readers were a constant support and inspiration to her. But there were also the unwelcomed trolls who posted thoughtless and cruel comments, even in the saddest of times.

“
Hey what’s this about a guy being murdered on your tour? Are you okay?
” – retread77

“
I just saw on Fox News that people are being killed on your tours. Do you think it’s terrorists?
” – patriotic44

“
I always get killed at a casino—usually by a dollar slot machine.
” – vegas4evr

“
Hey jerk, now is not the time to make jokes. Somebody’s dead.
” – retired hippie.

“
Betty be careful! I love your tours!
” – grannygambls

“
She can’t be safe if she eats the seafood buffet. Sorry, I couldn’t resist
.” – lenowannbe74.

Betty wanted to post, as her reply --
I was OKAY before I saw the POSTS
-but didn’t. Instead she wrote, “
Thank you for your concerns about the tragedy on our tour bus. For full information as to what happened, click on any of the many news links provided by our readers. FYI, Moose Bay is one of my favorite casinos and is home to a wonderful buffet. I am completely confident that the rest of the tour will be not only safe, but also fun for our clients
.”

As she hit the send key she realized it was the first time she’d lied to her readers. She wasn’t sure she and her passengers were safe at all.

A little after dawn, Lori checked her reflection in the airport’s bathroom mirror. Her appearance reminded her again how different she was from her mother. If it were up to her, she would have been born a brunette like her mom or her Aunt Betty. She always thought dark-haired women appeared not only exotic but also more intelligent than blondes. Brunettes did not look “movie star dumb” like the first man she dated said she did. Apparently, it was meant as a compliment.

Lori flipped her hair around a bit, just enough to test its bounce appeal. Good enough, she decided. If fate had deemed she was meant to look like she couldn’t add one plus zero, she might as well look the part.

Grabbing the handle on her Louis Vuitton luggage, she wheeled it out the door toward the ticket counter. It didn’t bother her in the least that she was disobeying her aunt’s instructions on staying put in Chicago.

Although Betty told Lori she didn’t need her, there was always the chance her aunt would. Lori needed something too: a break. She had to get away from Chicago and her day-to-day—no, make that night-to-night—activities. Perhaps breathing in a bit of frigid, fresh air would give her a chance to clear her thoughts.

Struggling as she pulled the wheeled cargo down the marble floor, she realized she’d packed too many clothes, as usual. Inside the case were a half a dozen cocktail dresses, each one a sophisticated eye-catching number that revealed very little, but promised so much more.

There were also three Donna Karan business suits, five pair of designer jeans and dress pants, six silk tops, and Ann Roth shoes. The only outrageous apparel she carried with her was a gift from Tillie, a silver lamé bikini that could double as Christmas tree tinsel in an emergency.

She hadn’t told her aunt of her travel plans because Betty would have tried to stop her. But, their company never had a client murdered while in their care. If necessary, Lori could spend part of the time sweet-talking the casino heads, convincing them that it would be advantageous to continue a relationship with Take A Chance Tours.

According to Tom Songbird, half of the male staff at Moose Bay had a crush on her. So if a sly smile and imported stilettos would help mend a business relationship, so be it. She had little choice: she was, after all, nearly bankrupt.

Everything Lori had left was riding on Take A Chance bringing in a profit until the next fiscal quarter. The extra money would help her shield the losses she’d carefully hidden from her aunt. With any luck, and a small amount of creative accounting, the company could stay afloat.

But luck hadn’t been her friend for a long, long time.

Before Take A Chance Tours was established, Lori never gambled. She’d never bought a lottery ticket or played bingo at her Catholic church. Even raffles tickets seemed silly to buy. The money could have been more wisely spent on facials or in a bookstore. There wasn’t one thing about gambling that attracted her, until she tried it for the very first time.

During their first month of operation, Take A Chance was offered a familiarization trip to one of the largest casinos in the Midwest. “Fams” were a continued and treasured perk of working in the travel industry. The entire cost of a familiarization trip was covered by the gaming establishment trying to impress the travel agencies or tour operators.  The first casino fam Take a Chance accepted provided free travel, hotel, food and three hundred dollars in chips to wager. There were only three employees at the time: Betty, Lori and their part-time, recently retired public librarian, Gloria.

Once the trio arrived at the casino, Gloria turned her chips in for cash and squirreled away the proceeds at the bottom of her purse. She headed back to her hotel room to watch
Animal Planet
on the Discovery Channel before opening up the latest Alex Kava thriller to read.

Meanwhile, Betty turned her chips into dollar bills and headed toward the penny slot machines. After three hours of gambling, she walked away twelve bucks and one free buffet ahead. Twelve bucks wasn’t a lot to most people, but for Betty it was a new used-something from her favorite thrift store. Life didn’t get better than that.

As for Lori sauntered up and down the aisles for a while, wowing nearly every male in the place. Her beauty even stopped a few of the gamblers in their tracks, though they had more of a chance getting lucky at the tables than they did with her.

Finally, Lori sat down at a three-card poker table, a game she was assured was easy to learn, play and win.

She’d lost ten dollars on her first hand, but won her second and third. By her tenth win in a row, Lori started to believe there was no way for her to lose. When she walked away from her first poker game two hours later she was eight hundred dollars ahead.

One week after, she sat at her desk inwardly fighting an overwhelming urge to drive to the nearest casino. Finally, when her anxiety was so intense that it was hard to breathe, she feigned a headache and raced out the door, straight to the Indiana border where riverboat casinos beckoned from the other side.

It took less than a year to go through the rest of her inheritance.

After that, it took only one month before she dipped into the company funds.

Fortunately, no one knew of her little vice, not even her aunt. As Chief Financial Officer, Lori was in control of the company finances. It was easy for her to raid the cash box or write checks to her personal account. After all, no one was looking over her shoulders.

As she reached the airport’s ticket line, exciting yet frightening thoughts about letting herself take yet another financial risk started to jet ski across her mind. Maybe she should gamble a dollar or two at Moose Bay? What harm could it do? Hitting a jackpot could be the answer to all her woes.

Besides, there was no way she’d risk more than, say, twenty bucks. Or forty. If she’d put off having her hair styled for a month, she’d save two hundred dollars right there. If she did that, she rationalized, she wouldn’t be losing money if she chose to gamble. Not a dime. And that meant she could actually wager a hundred and still be even and …

“May I help you?” the female voice sounded, dislodging her ruminations.

She stepped up to the front of the queue and laid her ID and MasterCard on the counter.

The agent entered the information into the computer. “You’re booked on Flight 271 to Minneapolis, Miss Barnes. From there you’ll take the Northern Wind Charter and arrive at the Moose Bay airport at 9:37 A.M.”

“Thank you,” Lori answered, taking back her ID and charge card—the only one with available credit. She didn’t bother to confirm the price of the trip she’d booked an hour earlier online. She couldn’t afford it, anyway.

Except for the fifty grand she’d invested in Take A Chance Tours, she’d lost every dime she had. Plus, she’d taken out $19,000 for an “advance on her salary” from Take A Chance. She wouldn’t see another paycheck for five months.

The agent asked, “Miss Barnes? Is there anything else? Would you care to purchase a flight back?”

“No, thank you,” Lori responded, and headed toward the security checkpoint. She didn’t need a round trip ticket since she’d ride back on the Take A Chance motor coach. Her aunt always kept one seat available.

Lori placed her bag onto the security conveyer belt. She stepped up to the TSA agent and lifted her arms as his wand navigated her body. As she stepped backwards, she instinctively felt someone staring at her from behind.

She did a quick turn around and found herself staring into the puppy dog eyes of a thirty-something year-old man. He looked as if he were her devoted pet, one who was waiting to be fed, petted, pampered, and controlled. His black business suit was cut so well, Lori recognized it as custom made. His yellow silk tie glistened against a pristine white shirt. His watch contained more gold than her jewelry box.

She didn’t know his name, but it didn’t matter. She’d already decided his nickname would be Mr. Gorgeous. She half-smiled at the look he was giving her. It suggested she’d never again have to open a door, pull out her own chair, or pump gas if he were with her. He’d do everything for her that she ever needed done.

Men were like that around Lori. There was always a man waiting on the sidelines or standing nearby wanting to help, pleading to be of service. Her mom told her once that being beautiful made life too easy for Lori.

You won’t know what to do once life gets hard
, her mother had warned. The minute she started her first panic attack, she realized her mother had been right all along.

Mr. Gorgeous stepped behind her and asked hopefully, “Are you heading to Minneapolis?”

“Just to catch another plane,” she answered and walked away knowing his eyes were following her every move. To taunt him even more, she adjusted her normally slow, seductive wiggle to rapid.

Lori chuckled bitterly to herself. She easily attracted most men and quite a few women. Everyone wanted to be near her, except for the one woman she really wanted—Lady Luck.

Long legs and green eyes didn’t mesmerize Lady Luck. Nor did the Lady care that fate took Lori’s mom away from her when she was just a teenager. Or that Lori’s father had disappeared without a word when she was eleven years old. Or even that Lori was a survivor of childhood leukemia. Lady Luck didn’t give a damn that Lori often woke up in the middle of the night, sweating through her clothes, woken up by the recurring nightmare of cancer genes eating her alive. Nightmares reminding that neither DNA, nor luck, were in her favor. To Lori, everything ended far too quickly. There was even the chance that Aunt Betty would just vanish, just like her mom and dad. And then what would she be left with? Nothing, except for the chance to finally win at something.