Murder or Bust (We're Not Dead Yet Club Book 3) Read online

  Murder or Bust

  by

  Constance Barker

  Copyright 2017 Constance Barker

  All rights reserved.

  Similarities to real people, places or events are purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Sign up for Constance Barker’s New Releases Newsletter

  Clara’s Prologue

  There are some adventures that I had with the We’re Not Dead Yet Club that stick firmly in my memory. Of course, I remember our first ever case with the body in the well. And who could ever forget the mystery of the dead groomsmen at the wedding? And then there was the singular tale of the vanishing furniture, which I might tell you some time when I have the stomach to write it all down.

  Most of these investigations were solved – by and large – by the efforts of myself and my two friends: Ida May and Hazel. And – although that was still the case with the mystery of the Trophy Murder – I can hardly take all the credit and claim it to be my story. Or even Ida May’s or Hazel’s for that matter.

  No – this was one of those very rare occasions where the men in my life – and I use the word men very loosely – had more than their fair part to play in the proceedings. And, while Percy seems to always stumble into our investigations in some invariable way, I must admit – and Ida May will reluctantly agree if she knows what’s good for her – that it was his keen eye for detail and his propensity for getting himself into trouble that rather cracked this interesting, if somewhat brief, case.

  And so, I find myself in the rather unique position that – rather than simply recounting the exploits that I myself have witnessed, with occasional flourishes from the wit of Ida May and the innocent mind of Hazel, I think it would rather do it all a little more justice if I simply told it how it was.

  Who knows – it might be rather fun to talk about myself in the third person, and I have no doubt that one or two biased exaggerations may creep their way in.

  After all, I’m only human…so in all its glory, here is my story, told in third person (mostly...I have to include my own interjections) by yours truly.

  Chapter One – A Trip to Vegas

  Clara was the heart and soul of the group – everyone knew it. And she was popular too. Really popular.

  And smart.

  As she gazed out of the bus window, she could see the outlines of the great square blocks of the hotel casinos and the oddly appropriate, black mass of the Pyramid Hotel appearing over the horizon.

  The Senior Center hadn’t organized a trip to Vegas in a long time – a very long time. In fact, the last time the Center had organized such a trip was back when Clara’s Aunt Ruby was still alive. They had left under a bit of a cloud that day as Aunt Ruby – up fifty thousand dollars from the three thousand she took with her – was dragged kicking and screaming out of the casino they’d been staying in when they realized she’d been cheating at poker.

  Ever since then, they’d always been a bit reluctant to organize another trip to Sin City – I guess they were worried that one of them wouldn’t come back alive.

  And in this instance, that was very nearly the case.

  “Ha.”

  Percy’s voice erupted from the front seat of the bus. Clara slowly turned her attention to the old man at the front. He was probably the same age as her, but he looked a little worse for wear although he tried to hide it behind an immaculately pressed, white suit, in which he wore a distinctive red rose in his top pocket matching his red bow tie. With his hair slicked back and his skin rubbed with what Clara could only presume was a fake tan, Percy looked like a man who didn’t actually know what real people look like when they go to the casino.

  But Percy didn’t have a clue, the man beside him definitely didn’t.

  Cecil tugged anxiously at his moth-eaten, old army surplus jacket and flicked his ponytail out to one side as he stared in shock down at the cards in Percy’s hands. The pair of them had been playing poker for the better part of an hour and, from what Clara had heard, Cecil had demonstrated consistently that he was no good at bluffing.

  “There,” Percy announced. “That’s two packs of boiled sweets, a tin of your disgusting tobacco and your solemn oath that you won’t mention Vietnam even once on the rest of this trip…”

  Perched on the seat behind them, with her head wedged firmly between the two seats in front, Hazel peered through her glasses and let out a small yelp of distress.

  “That’s not fair, Percy,” she called out. “Cecil won’t have anything to talk about now.”

  “You little shrew,” Cecil replied, shooting a cheeky glance at my friend. “I have never spoken once about the Vietnam War…”

  “You’re doing it now,” Percy chipped in, a little smile crossing his face.

  Cecil looked ready to answer but, for some reason, the words just didn’t come to him. He glanced back towards Clara who, after making eye contact for the briefest moment, turned her head quickly towards the window and pretended to be interested in the large, black pyramid that seemed to be growing ever closer.

  It’s not that Clara was attracted to Cecil – good Lord, no. Never. I mean, seriously. It’s just that there was always something very alluring about him. Even when he’d been a chief suspect in the murder at the wedding over the summer, Clara had never quite had the heart to believe he was actually capable of it. For all his hype about trying to be one of the cool kids on the block – whatever that means – he was actually a complete and utter sweetheart.

  When she finally plucked up the nerve to look back at him, Clara was relieved to find that Cecil was no longer looking at her and was – instead – staring with complete confusion down at the cards Percy held out for him to see.

  “How’d you do that anyway?” Cecil asked, taking the cards from Percy and examining them. “We’re playing Texas Hold’em and you manage to get four Kings. And last time you had a Royal Flush. A Royal Flush and then Four Kings! And what did you have before?”

  Percy shrugged, letting loose a sly smile. “I forget…”

  “A full house,” Hazel said, helpfully – or unhelpfully… You can never quite tell with Hazel. “Jacks full of Queens.”

  “A Full House!” Cecil repeated, his voice becoming more high pitched with every word he spoke. “A Full House, a Royal Flush and then Four Kings! How is that even possible?”

  “It isn’t,” a voice muttered from the other side of the aisle.

  Ida May, with her hair as red as dawn and her nails immaculately kept and styled, leant across the aisle and handed back her cards along with the rest of the deck.

  “Of course it is, Ida May,” Percy replied. “Anything is possible. It’s just highly unlikely that’s all…”

  “Highly unlikely and impossible.”

  “Oh?” A small smile crept across Percy’s face. “And why do you say that?”

  “You know why…”

  “I don’t…”

  “You do…”

  “I don’t…”

  “Oooh,” Hazel squealed clapping her hands with glee. “This is just like watching tennis…”

  “Only more irritating,” muttered Cecil, shoving his finger in his ear as though he were trying to claw out his own eardrum.

  Clara couldn’t help but laugh.

  “I don’t, Ida May.”

  “You do…”

  “Ida May, I really don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  �
�Oh, you do, Percy. You know that you were cheating.”

  “I was not…”

  “Was too…”

  “Was not…”

  “You were…”

  “Out,” cried out Hazel. “Foul ball…”

  Percy let out a small agitated scream. “I wasn’t cheating, Ida May…”

  “Ah, but you were, Percy.”

  “Oh yeah? And how do you know that?”

  Ida May’s eyes glistened cheekily. “Because those weren’t the hands I dealt you…”

  Clara was glad when the bus finally pulled up outside the casino they were staying in. It wasn’t that she disliked her friends – in fact, she often thought of her friends at the Senior Center as the closest companions that she’d ever had in her life. But there was something about being confined in a long, metal tube on wheels for hours on end with them that not only made Clara feel awfully claustrophobic, but also made her want to scream out in horror and murder someone right there just to give them all something else to do.

  She stood on the sidewalk and stared up at the front façade of the building. It was a quaint, little place – not exactly on the same level as the bustling hotels and casinos that occupied the main strip, but it was just right for their purposes. Small, out of the way and quiet enough that nothing untoward could ever happen to spoil their break in the big city.

  Clara felt Ida May stroll up beside her. She joined her friend in examining the front of the building before giving a low whistle followed by a gentle nudge in Clara’s ribs.

  “Not exactly Caesar’s Palace, but it will do…”

  Clara turned to her, raising an eyebrow as her face morphed into a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Ida May replied. “Just looking forward to the weekend.”

  There was a look of mischief in Ida May’s eye, and Clara didn’t like it one bit. She raised a finger to her friend and, despite wanting nothing more than to burst into laughter, she fought hard to create the sternest expression she could muster.

  “Now you promised, Ida May…”

  “What?” Ida May did her best impression of someone pretending to be shocked – it was actually reasonably convincing.

  “No poker on this trip for you.”

  “Like I would…”

  “We don’t want a repeat of the Aunt Ruby incident.”

  Ida May looked put out, although her queer smile spoke of the unspoken schemes that were rattling inside her old, yet unbelievably sharp, mind.

  “That was different,” she replied. “Aunt Ruby and I are not the same person…”

  “Aunt Ruby got caught cheating at poker, and looked what happened to her…”

  “There’s the difference,” Ida May replied, snapping her fingers. “I don’t intend to get caught.”

  This time the smile seeped through. Clara tried her hardest to give Ida May a stern look, but she could already sense her skin cracking and moving apart to make way for the stretching of her lips as they formed into the most enormous grin. Pleased with her work, Ida May gave a little smirk before shaking her head and holding her hands up in surrender.

  “I’m joking,” she muttered. “I’ll leave the poker alone. Although I don’t know why I bothered coming in that case – it just takes all the fun out it…”

  “Why don’t you try the slots, Ida May?”

  Hazel had finally wrenched her ridiculously large suitcase and equally gargantuan handbag out of the bus hold and had dragged both over to where we were standing.

  “The slots?” Ida May scoffed, turning to our friend. “I might as well give my money away if I’m going to do that. Gambling without skill is just so impractical…”

  “There is skill in slots, Ida May…”

  “Oh yeah? How?”

  Hazel thought for a moment. “Well, you have to pull the lever…”

  The look on Ida May’s face was a picture to behold. It is a very rare thing to be able to pull off a look of absolute disgust, unsettling disbelief and utter bemusement at the same time – but Ida May managed it.

  “Oh goodie…”

  Chapter Two – Gathering at the Bar

  By the time the girls had made their way up to their rooms and unpacked their belongings, Cecil had been waiting down at the bar for a good forty minutes. He eyed a pretty young woman as she strolled past and doffed an imaginary cap at her as she gave him a slight smile.

  Still got it, he thought, taking a large swig on his beer.

  A moment later, the same woman passed him by again, this time a little closer. As she moved past him, she fluttered her eyelids and pouted her lips, but didn’t stop to talk with him. Cecil could smell the sweet scent of the lavender in her perfume and it lingered in his nose for more than a short while afterwards. His eyes followed her around the room as she made her way over to the slot machines and took a seat at the machine on the end nearest to him. His eyes carefully lingered on her tight top and leggings and, for a moment, Cecil considered going over to join her.

  He’d meant to be meeting up with a friend of his, one of the local talents who sang in the lounge most evenings. But Cecil was sure his friend wouldn't mind if Cecil was late for such a pretty creature. Robert would understand.

  Robert above all others would understand…

  As she glanced in his direction once more, Cecil pulled his tattered, olive green jacket closer around his chest, got to his feet and sank the rest of his beer. He then reached up and checked that his ponytail was nice and secure, and was about to stroll on over when…

  “Coo-eee, Cecil?”

  The girls had arrived.

  Cecil often thought of himself as the cool dog amongst the pack. But the arrival of Ida May and Clara, heading over to him and swamping him in an instant had done nothing for his street cred. It was like a child being mollycoddled by his parents when he was trying to impress a girl – horribly embarrassing and frightfully inconvenient.

  “Hey, Cecil,” Clara said, leaning against the bar in that sassy way that she always did. “What’s cooking?”

  Cecil wasn’t paying her any attention, his eyes were still firmly fixed on the nice blonde at the slot machines. To his surprise, rather than being put off by the sudden appearance of his two friends – which was particularly surprising given Ida May’s startling choice of wearing a bright blue collar that made her look like an Egyptian princess that had been dyed in the wash – the woman was still watching him.

  Not only watching him.

  Watching him with interest.

  Ida May was first to notice that Cecil wasn’t entirely with them, and turned to follow his eye line. As her own eyes fell on the young woman, she gave a short grunt of laughter and turned back to him, shaking her head.

  “You want to watch that one, Cecil,” she said. “Girls like that would give you such a wild time that you’d wake up feeling like you spent a million dollars…”

  Cecil’s eyes widened and fell instantly on her. “You know her?”

  Ida May shrugged. “I know her kind. Girls like that know how to show you a good time.”

  “You mean, she has a reputation?”

  Clara and Ida May giggled. “Something like that,” Clara replied, leaning in closer to whisper into Cecil’s ear. “She’s a call girl.”

  “A what?”

  “A hooker, Cecil,” Ida May explained, raising a cheeky eyebrow. “Guaranteed to give you a good time, but you’ll probably leave Vegas broke.” She clapped him hard on the shoulder. “They don’t call it Sin City for nothing, you know…”

  The pair of them burst out laughing. Whatever plans Cecil had for wooing the young woman vanished in an instant, and he slumped back into his chair with a great huff. He began picking at the label on his beer bottle, mumbling something about not enjoying the trip when suddenly, almost out of nowhere, Hazel appeared.

  “Hi Girls. Hey Cecil.”

  She had at least lost the giant suitcase, but still had tucked under her arm the rather large loo
king handbag. As she set it down on the ground, Clara and Ida May eyed it with interest – as did a number of the other guests around them, one or two of which seemed to be under the impression that some sort of magic show was about to start.

  “What’s with the bag, Hazel?” Clara asked.

  Hazel smiled triumphantly. “It’s for my winnings. I’m going to do an Aunt Ruby and take this place to the cleaners.”

  “You do know Aunt Ruby cheated, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but she still won, didn’t she?”

  Ida May scoffed and took a seat on the bar stool next to Cecil. “It’s a fool’s game, Hazel. The slot machines are rigged, the odds on the roulette table are too high, they watch for card counting on Black Jack and you are terrible at poker. You’ll be lucky if you break even.”

  “And skillful if I make a profit, which is what I’m intending to do.”

  Hazel seemed pretty adamant enough. On any other day, Ida May might have spent a good long while trying to convince her against it, but with the promise of no poker games firmly in her mind, she had to entertain herself somehow that week. Watching Hazel flit away her money seemed as good an entertainment as any…

  She raised her hands in mock surrender. “Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She turned to Clara. “What about you? What’s your sin?”

  Clara chuckled. “Oh, I’m going to try my hand at Black Jack. I always seem to beat Milton when we play…”

  “Milton always seems to fall asleep when we play…”

  The girls burst out into a quiet fit of giggles. Beside them Cecil sighed deeply and gestured for the bartender to bring him another beer. It was going to be a little while before he was meant to meet up with Robert, he might as well do something to pass the time.

  Percy was the last to join the group. And the first to leave, funnily enough. He trotted down the main stairs and, upon seeing the group loitering by the bar, strode straight over to them and slid to a stop.

  “Right, let’s get this party started,” he announced, shimmying his shoulders so that the back of his white suit jacket swayed behind him like a short, stunted tail. “I’m heading for the poker room. Who’s game?”