Free DOUBLE MINT by Gretchen Archer Page B

head, which had hardly healed from
     the cat’s last dance on it, then scraping its way down my back with its claws.
    When it happened, I didn’t know if Magnolia Thibodeaux was slashing me with a butcher
     knife, if I was being sucked into a mulching machine, or if a bomb had gone off and
     I was full of shrapnel. I wound up spread eagle on the floor, panting. I could taste
     metal, and all I could see were stacks of fake money.
    Footsteps pounded behind me. I heard gun safeties click. Fantasy, after some sailor
     language, helped me to a sitting position. Baylor, after some kitty kitty baby talk,
     cradled the cat, petting long strokes down its back.
    The cat’s eyes were closed, its thick tail whipping back and forth, and I asked if
     I had any hair left in the back of my head.
    “Your jacket’s not going to make it,” Fantasy inspected, “but your hair is fine.”
    “You can’t scare cats, Davis. Haven’t you ever heard ‘scaredy cat’?”
    “Thank you, Baylor.” Fantasy helped me up. “Your cat tips are invaluable.”
    I sat on the Igloo refrigerator, still trying to catch my breath, holding up a finger:
     Give me a minute. Fantasy opened the bottle of water, which had rolled across the
     floor, and passed it to me. I took a long pull. I found my voice.
    “Baylor, find something to pack up this money in, hide it somewhere out of the building,
     and get the cat settled down. When you’re finished, get us lunch. Something decent.
     Do you hear me, Baylor? Edible. Fit for human consumption. Not Taco Bell. Fantasy,
     take care of Dionne Warwick’s guy.” My temples felt like someone was hammering both
     sides of my head. “I’ll check on the conference, then nose around Holder Darby’s office.
     We’ll meet downstairs in an hour and look for the man who brought the money.”
    And Holder Darby.
    And four million in platinum.
      
    * * *
      
    When I got it together enough to move on with my life, granted, from here on out with
     post-traumatic cat syndrome, I changed into a different suit. One that hadn’t been
     in a catfight. I hid behind Chanel sunglasses the size of kiddie pools, then stepped
     out the front door of Beignet Bungalow and around the crew clearing away the chandelier
     remains. Multicolor wires dangled from a big black hole in the ceiling. For the next
     eighteen minutes, I traveled from the Gumbo Garage Sale to the Alabama bankers. Three
     elevator changes, through the lobby, and all the way through the casino.
    As the escalator rose to the convention level, the gambling din faded. When I stepped
     onto the gold floral carpet, it was as if the casino below me didn’t exist. I walked
     the length of the room, past Impressionist oils in gilded frames, twenty or more seating
     areas scattered to my right and left, where gold pendant lights dangled over round
     settee sofas with recessed buttons forming diamond shapes in the gold upholstery,
     all the way to the reception desk, gilded too, where a girl was bent over her phone,
     double tapping Instagram pictures of hedgehogs. I cleared my throat. She finally looked
     up.
    “I’m the new Holder.”
    She smiled. Braces. She had to be thirty, with a mouth full of hardware. “Right. I’m
     Megan.”
    “Olivia.”
    “Nice to meet you, Olivia.”
    Her voice and diction matched that of the girl who’d called me this morning.
    “How’s it going?”
    “Oh, it’s going,” she said. “They’re all locked up back there.” She tipped her head
     to the double doors behind her.
    I took a step past her desk. “I’ll go check everything out.”
    “Wait.” She pushed her phone aside. “You can’t go back there.”
    This again.
    “Isn’t it my job to make sure everything’s okay?”
    “Yes,” she said, “but we can’t wander in and out. There are men right through those
     doors and if you don’t have a badge, you can’t get past them.”
    “Let me borrow your badge.”
    “I don’t have one,” Megan said. “We’re