The Curious Case of the Cursed Dice (Curiosity Shop Cozy Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  "There isn't any association, no relationship at all between pennies and luck," he snorted. "That's an old superstition."

  His attitude surprised me. "Because it's an old superstition you, of all people, decide not to believe it? After all we've seen and been through, how can you be skeptical of anything?"

  "Okay, we are dealing with strange things, but that saying is just a children's rhyme—a folk tale to teach kids to be thrifty."

  "Maybe so, but folk tales are usually based on something. Just like tabloid articles provide clues."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Those sayings you are dismissing come from some bit of learned wisdom or perhaps something observed but not understood. In that way, it’s like when we search tabloids for things that are reported but not understood. Besides, even if that isn't the case, I'm pretty certain that you'd be hard pressed to find a reason for any clear-cut relationship between a piece of the space shuttle and antigravity either, but the fact that we are here, standing alive and sweltering on the sidewalks of Vegas, says there is one. And look at the other artifacts we know about."

  I was feeling more snide, a lot snippier than I normally do, which says a lot about the way the heat was affecting me.

  As we moved through the line, I noticed a bank of newspaper vending machines against the terminal building. “Speaking of tabloids...I'll be right back.” I walked over and found a couple that had the usual national tabloids and one that seemed to be a local paper. As I was putting my money in the machine a headline on the front page of the local paper caught my attention. That was where to start looking.

  I took my papers to rejoin Clarence in the line as our turn came. We got into our taxi, gave the driver the name of the motel, and he headed toward the strip. I showed Clarence the headline I'd noticed. "Look at this.”

  “Third Accidental Death Puzzles Authorities," it read.

  I folded the paper so we could read it together. "There have been three strange deaths in five days," he muttered.

  The taxi driver perked up his ears. "Ain’t that something? Three statistically improbable deaths, no less. That's Las Vegas for you."

  He sounded somewhat proud of the city for such a strange and newsworthy bit of mayhem. Clarence pointed to the next section. "And each of them had just won big in the casinos."

  “And there’s another amazing part of the story,” our cab driver offered helpfully.

  That got my mind buzzing. There's no such thing as coincidence – in a world where you expect to stumble across cursed objects on a regular basis that goes double. “And no one has a clue what’s going on?” I asked.

  He snorted. "Well, that sort of coincidence got some folks wondering if the casino owners were turning back the clock and knocking off big winners."

  The man interested me. He seemed curious and informed. "I take it you don't think so?"

  He shook his head. "No I don’t. While I wouldn’t put doing that past them, I don’t think they’d do it that way. Why make them die in accidents so crazy that it attracts attention?”

  “That’s a point,” Clarence said.

  “Look at what happened to that first guy… Did you read the details? How do you arrange something like that?”

  Clarence skipped to a sidebar about the first death and read out loud. “He was walking down the street, heading home, when a dog fell out of a thirty-story window and landed on a woman walking next to him and killed her. It scared him, and when he jumped back in fright, he got hit by a bus that went out of control.”

  “How does a bus go out of control?” I asked.

  Clarence skimmed ahead in the article. “It says that the bus driver had a heart attack and the bus came up on the sidewalk.”

  “See what I mean? Anyone who could arrange that little sequence of events is pretty darn formidable,” the taxi driver said. "You gotta admit that does qualify as freaky."

  “This one isn’t bad either,” I said, pointing to another sidebar. The second winner was walking home when he was struck in the face by an airborne fire hydrant. A passing car had struck the fire hydrant, breaking it. The water pressure shot the hydrant at him with enough force to kill him.”

  "Okay, that's not right," Clarence said.

  “What about the third one?” the driver said.

  “Okay, this is just crazy,” Clarence said.

  “The others aren’t?” the taxi driver asked.

  Clarence shook his head in disbelief. “This guy won big at the casino and was seen leaving with a young woman. He was found dead in her apartment in the morning."

  "A normal night in Vegas, so far," the driver said.

  "Apparently, sometime in the night they decided to make some hot chocolate and he wanted whipped cream on his. She had a pressured whipped cream dispenser and was happily squirting cream when it exploded.”

  “Just like that?”

  “It seems the dispenser was taken off the market a few years back over concerns that it could be dangerous. It's made in France and she bought it there on vacation. I guess she didn’t get the memo that it could be a problem.”

  “So it blew him up?”

  “Not exactly. Part of it hit him in the chest so hard that it caused him to have a heart attack.”

  “So is there a connection?”

  "Between the woman and the whipped cream dispenser?" Clarence asked.

  "Between a dog falling out of the window in front of a bus driver having a heart attack and a fire hydrant and whipped cream dispenser exploding."

  Clarence shrugged. "If the whipped cream thing had been hit by a motorcycle they'd all be traffic accidents."

  "It would be a neater package if the guy next to the falling dog and the one that got hit with a hydrant both had heart attacks," our driver said.

  "So the only connection among them is that they won big," I said.

  "Although at two different casinos, owned by different companies," Clarence said.

  The taxi driver had a theory he wanted us to hear. “You know it’s unreasonable enough to have three regular players become big winners in a week without them dying in such strange ways right after.”

  “Is it?”

  “The casinos don’t mind winners now and again. In the long run that’s good advertising. They like the word getting out that it's possible to win large amounts at the tables or slots. They take pictures of the winners and display them because that brings in the new suckers who think they can do it too. The casinos will more than make their money back quick enough."

  "I take it you’ve been driving a taxi in this town a long time?" I asked him.

  "Ever since I lost my house at the tables about ten years ago," he said.

  “So you stayed?”

  "My wife went back to Ohio but she suggested, in a strong manner, that I probably shouldn't return home until I won the money back." He chuckled. “No one wins their money back.”

  "That's rough," Clarence said.

  "Still… I think I've got an angle now though," he said. "If it works… well, after all this time I'm just not sure I'll bother letting her know. I kind of like it here."

  "If you have a plan, I hope it isn't one that will get you killed."

  "I read them stories," the man said. "It's pretty clear what happened."

  "It isn't clear to me," I told him.

  "Those folks, the three who died, they clearly just used up all their luck winning money. They didn't have any left for staying alive. My scheme doesn't depend on having much luck. It can't. I've never had any."

  The driver dropped us off at the motel where Clarence had made reservations for us. It was nothing special, but clean and neat.

  After we checked in, we held a strategy conference in my room.

  "The tabloids seem to be convinced that these bizarre deaths were cleverly orchestrated assassinations," I told him.

  "I think that's likely," Edgar said, showing up between us. “Most likely alien interventions. They want to eliminate lucky people.”
/>
  Clarence made a face. "I think conspiracy theories sell papers."

  I pointed to the paper. "The local authorities are sure, downright insistent that they were accidental deaths. Strange and oddly in defiance of logic, but accidents."

  My resistance to his theory seemed to make Edgar lose interest. “This is a curious home,” he said as he started walking around the motel room, checking it out. “It has no personality to it. Even hotel rooms have some.”

  “Not much anymore,” I told him.

  Clarence made a noise. "I know where you are headed with this."

  I pretended innocence. "With what?"

  "With these reports. Now I agree that this sounds like an artifact at work," he said. "Maybe more than one. It’s like the cabbie said, these folks had a huge streak of luck, then it ran out. It seems to have gone negative. That sounds like the way artifacts seem to work, giving the user...”

  “...the person who is cursed, you mean.”

  “It gives him or her some benefit for a time and then extract the price. Winning and then dying in an unlucky way is the same model."

  "Exactly. See, we agree that there are artifacts being used here. The question is how do we start tracking them down?"

  "We don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Let’s not get distracted. We came for the Egyptian lock and I know, roughly, where that is. We need to get the lock and use it to secure the vault before we go gathering more artifacts."

  "We do need the lock, but why can't we do more than one thing on this trip?”

  "You want to chase them down right now?" His tone of voice told me he was sure that I had made up my mind and he wasn’t pleased.

  "Why not? Here we are and there they are… out there somewhere. It’s a marriage made in heaven.”

  “Or somewhere else. The thing is we came to get the lock. We need it.”

  “That doesn’t mean that’s the only thing we can do. If you know where the lock is then you can just go get it while I locate these artifacts, or at least find out what’s going on. Or do you need me to help you do that?"

  Clarence made a face. I’d wounded his pride. "I know that a collector in town has it. I have to get his name and then see what it will take to get my hands on it. I don't know what this collector knows about the lock.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “I found a news report that talked about an expedition that was funded by a private collector. They were searching some burial sites in Egypt, this was about a year ago. They found it on a hidden door inside a tomb and brought it back to Las Vegas. Now I have to do some leg work and get his name."

  I had to wonder about the usefulness of a lock that was so easy to remove without breaking it, but that was Clarence’s hobby horse to ride. I had come along to help. "Well that seems perfect. You can go off and flesh out your information, learn the rest of the story and find out where it is in this big city, while I look into these stories. I think you and the cabbie are right. Somehow these three people got their hands on something that let them use up all their luck, and then they died because they flat ran out of it. We have an obligation to find out what’s going on here. If there is an artifact that's causing this chaos, wreaking havoc, then we need to secure it and take it back with us too."

  "But this one is killing people. Handling it would be dangerous. In fact, accumulating more artifacts isn’t a good idea right now. I really think our priority should be to set up a secure vault before we collect any more artifacts," Clarence said. “It doesn’t do any good to gather them if they are taken from us again or if we are overcome by them.”

  "And just how will we know when the vault is secure? We don’t know what the Cabal is capable of, do we?”

  “No, but...”

  “And we don’t have a clue what might protect us from a curse.”

  “No, but...”

  “If we let this go on, we are letting people get hurt."

  “We will get it. Listen, Cecilia, if an artifact is doing this, then it's cutting a very wide swath. It shouldn't be hard to track down later on."

  "And how many unfortunate people do you want to let it kill while we make ourselves safe?"

  Clarence glared at me. I was being unfair, making a moral and ethical issue out of things, but as usual, he was trying to find a safe path along a mountain ridge that I didn't think had one to follow. Every footstep we took along that ridge was precarious.

  "So you intend to go off and chase down this lead?"

  "I don't intend to do that. Not exactly. But I'm suggesting it would be a productive use of my time, since you don't really need me right now, to scout it and find out what the deal is.”

  “But...”

  “Clarence, you are going to be tracking down this collector and arranging a meeting. Then you’ll size up the situation, right? I’ll see if I can find out what’s going on with these deaths. Maybe it isn’t an artifact and then we don’t need to pursue it any further." I was trying to take Enid's advice and be more… agreeable and easier to work with. I’d make that effort, but I didn't think that meant I had to concede every point.

  Clarence let out a breath. “I suppose that makes sense. We both do research and once we know more about what has to be done...”

  “Exactly.”

  "Then fine. We haven’t been helping each other much lately and I suppose we could both use a little time alone. Plus, dividing the search would be efficient.”

  “But you are still worried.”

  “I am. I just worry about you poking around without even knowing what you are looking for. Sometimes, lots of times, you see something and just react and that makes me nervous.”

  “I’ll use restraint. I promise.”

  “Where will you start looking? How will you find out anything?"

  "I’ll need to start talking to people and see if they knew each other, or had any connection. I’ll ask if and see if they shared something, a common trinket, or a totem—anything that might bring good luck, but then takes it back," I said.

  “At the risk of seeming paranoid, the other alternative is scary too.”

  “What alternative?”

  "Assume the tabloids are right and it isn’t an artifact. If that’s true then something these people knew, or saw, or had got them murdered. Sticking your nose into a mess like that could get you killed too."

  "The thing about those tabloid stories is that all you can be sure of is that something strange happened. What it was you need to find out for yourself because they usually get the analysis pretty wrong. They opt for the most sensational conclusion. So we shouldn’t put any stock in that.”

  “I suppose so, but we shouldn’t ignore that possibility either.”

  “No. But you know we can't stop looking for artifacts because it might be dangerous, or because of the possibility that something bad happens. You are the one who reminded me that we have an obligation, that we need to think about what happens if we don’t find them and tuck them safely away."

  He scowled and it twisted up into a stern look of concern. Often as not Clarence was overly protective of me, like he thought he was my big brother or something. None of that would stand much scrutiny, so I did my best to ignore his motives. "Will you promise to call me if you need any help?" he asked finally.

  I patted his arm. "I will, if you'll do the same. We both have to be willing to admit it when we could use a hand, don’t we? It can’t be a one-way thing."

  He gave me a relieved smile. "Okay then. It’s time to divide and conquer."

  I tried not to look too pleased that he was giving in even though I really wanted to pump a fist in the air. Even Enid would have to approve when I’d clearly involved Clarence in the decision making, getting him to buy in.

  Chapter 5

  "I’d like for us to arrange a time and place to meet later today," Clarence said as we prepared to set out on our separate quests.

  I grinned. "So you can know when it's okay to start
worrying about me?"

  A twitch told me I’d struck a nerve. "I just think that it would be a good idea to sit down at the end of the day and compare notes, that’s all."

  "That’s a good idea. And the easiest thing is to agree that, unless we make other arrangements, we can meet back here, in the hotel bar. It’s cool and comfortable.”

  “What time?”

  “How about five? I should be ready to get something to eat by then, and if we haven’t learned what we need to know by then it’s time to call it a day anyway."

  He found that a reasonable plan, probably more because I was willing to agree to his idea. "Will you also agree to promise that this trip won’t be anything more than a reconnaissance mission?"

  "As opposed to what?"

  “As opposed to launching a full out attack on your artifact. I’d like to know that, for today at least, you promised to restrict your activities to locating and identifying the artifact without trying to get it yet. Please. I’d like it if you didn’t try to swoop in and capture the thing.”

  “Why? I mean, if I spot it and see an opening...”

  “To make me comfortable. I’d like to know that you will agree to do the research you talked about, and find out what we are dealing with. Then please wait until we talk about what you learn before jumping in with both feet. I’d like us to have a chance to consider various plans. Then I'll at least know what you are up to."

  “No surprise there,” Edgar said, expressing my thoughts rather succinctly. “You do love your plans. Too bad about the way they never work out.” He shook his translucent head. “The curses and the Cabal keep throwing you unexpected curves.”

  Clarence snapped him a shut-up look and waited for me to agree.

  I sighed at this excess of caution. Already he was trying hard to slow me down, tie one hand behind my back. But I doubted I’d have any reason to do more than talk to people today. "Okay you have a deal. Unless I find the artifact sitting on a blackjack table in plain sight I’ll come back and tell you what I find before I leap into action." He scowled again, not quite trusting my promise.