Reunions and Revelations in Las Vegas: A Humorous Tiffany Black Mystery Read online

  Reunions and Revelations in Las Vegas

  A.R. Winters

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Untitled

  Sneak Peak: Killer Cruise

  Chapter Two

  Reunions and Revelations in Las Vegas

  Copyright 2020 by A. R. Winters

  www.arwinters.com

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental.

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  Chapter One

  I was being cruel. To my car, that is.

  I was forcing my poor old trusty Honda to bounce up and down a pothole-filled road that was more like a track for mountain goats than anything meant for modern vehicles. I’d been torturing her like this for nearly forty-five minutes. With every pothole, rock, and jolt, I felt the old girl complaining beneath me.

  “Are we nearly there? We must be nearly there.”

  I risked taking my eyes off the road for a moment to glance at Ian. He was my neighbor, friend, and I’d recently found out he was my cousin too.

  “You’re supposed to be the navigator,” I said.

  “According to my calculations, it should have been a ten-minute drive from Mount Washington. I don’t think you’re going fast enough, Tiffany.”

  I gunned the engine just to show him what would happen if we went faster than about ten miles an hour. His head smacked off the ceiling. “Oww.”

  “Do you really want me to go six times faster?”

  He didn’t respond. But Uncle Joe from the backseat did.

  “Slow and steady wins the race, kids. You go as slow as you need, Tiffany.”

  “Yeah,” said Amber, the other adult in the back. She was my second cousin once removed. Or third cousin twice removed. Something like that. It was easier to just think of her as Amber, Ian’s cousin and the mother of the willful little three-year-old girl, Angel, who sat between her and uncle Joe. “Stop bothering her, Ian.”

  “It’s just that according to the navigation system, it should be a ten-minute drive from Mount Washington. It’s only ten miles.”

  It didn’t feel like ten miles. It felt more like a hundred.

  “Beryl won’t mind if we’re a little late. In fact, she probably won’t even notice. She’s getting old.” Beryl was Uncle Joe’s first ex-wife and our hostess for the upcoming week.

  “You’re old!” Angel shouted, before collapsing into giggles.

  “Angel! I told you, stop calling people old.”

  Angel continued to giggle but did not argue back. She didn’t need to. She knew she was right.

  “You’re right. I am old. But Beryl’s even older than me. She was already thirty when we were married, and I was still just a whippersnapper.”

  “How old were you?” Ian had turned his head to look behind.

  “Twenty, almost twenty-one.”

  “That’s quite an age gap,” Amber said.

  “Age is nothing but a number. That’s what we used to say. Other people told us love makes you blind. In retrospect, it probably was a mistake though.” From my rearview mirror, I could Uncle Joe staring wistfully out of the window beside him. “But some of our greatest successes come from our mistakes. If it weren’t for Beryl, I wouldn’t have Taki. And Midori.”

  “Who?” the other four of us asked in unison.

  Talking to Uncle Joe was like that. Every time we met, he seemed to announce the existence of a new relative. Or two. Or more. He’d been married several times, and some of his exes had too. This had left him with an extended clan of children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, stepchildren, step-grandchildren, and relatives I couldn’t quite find the right terminology to label.

  “Didn’t I tell you about them? Out of sight out of mind, I suppose. Taki was our daughter. I mean, she still is. But I haven’t seen her in more than fifteen years. She lives in Japan.”

  “Her name sounds Japanese,” Ian said.

  “That’s because it is. We adopted her. Beryl said it would be cruel for us to add another child into the world when there were so many unwanted ones looking for homes. We decided not to change her name. It had been given to her by her parents before they died in a car accident. When she grew up, she married an American man, and together they decided to go to Japan for a few months to investigate her roots. But those months turned into years. I went over for a visit once. It was good to catch up, but I think in some ways she still blamed me for what Beryl did.”

  “Oww!” A particularly deep pothole caused Ian to hit his head off the ceiling again. He rubbed the site of the bump with his hand. “What did Beryl do to her?”

  “Not much. That was the problem. She left us when Taki was ten years old. Just up and left in the middle of the night. We woke to find a note, saying she was too young to be tied down. She was a free spirit that needed to soar. A bunch of nonsense. She just didn’t want to face up to her responsibilities.”

  “If someone did that to me,” Amber said, “I’d never speak to them again.”

  “I didn’t. Nor did Taki. Not for a long time. But after four decades, you begin to look at things in a new light.”

  “That is a long time,” Ian said.

  “Old, old, old!”

  “Angel!”

  “I think we’re nearly there.” Uncle Joe leaned forward and pushed his head between the driver and passenger seat. “She said it’s about a mile from a narrow pass.” He pointed. “Look!”

  Just up ahead, the road—not that it was deserving of the name—narrowed significantly, hemmed in by steep, almost cliff-like hills to the side. The road had been carved between them.

  Beryl’s house was about ten miles outside of Mount Washington, which was less than an hour’s drive from home in Las Vegas. We hadn’t traveled far, but it felt like another planet out here. There were no casinos, no neon signs, no people, nothing. Just the mountains, the wildlife, the scrub, and us. We hadn’t passed another vehicle since starting down this track to Beryl’s house.

  It was hard to imagine any kind of substantial building at the end of this track. A wooden shack? Maybe. A campsite? Possibly. A large house? Nope. I couldn’t see it.

  So when we rounded the final bend and emerged from between a welcoming committee of pine trees to see a hulking stone building, it came with as much as a jolt as the last big pothole. Joe had told us the house was real, and that it was big, but seeing it in person is what finally made me believe him.

  “Old!”

  “Angel!”

  A little arm with its index finger shooting forward appeared beside me. “The house! Old! Old house.
Is it a ghost house?”

  “Don’t worry. I don’t think we’ll find any ghosts inside.” Amber squeezed her daughter’s shoulder.

  “Oh,” Angel said. She wasn’t reassured. She was disappointed.

  “That took you precisely sixty minutes longer than it was supposed to,” Ian announced as I pulled up in the driveway.

  Unlike the road that had led us here, the driveway was flat and smooth, covered with gravel that crunched reassuringly underneath the wheels of my car. A large area was set aside for parking that could easily accommodate twenty vehicles.

  We got out of the car.

  Joe whistled. “It sure is something.”

  The front façade of the looming residence was old, dark stone, mined nearby, and then aged and weathered for a hundred and fifty years into its current dull state. There were bay windows along the ground floor of the edifice, all framed with old wood riddled with deep cracks. The paint on the window frames was now just a memory.

  Uncle Joe hadn’t been here before either. He’d only recently gotten back in contact with Beryl. I’m pretty sure the only reason he reconnected with her was because of this house. He wanted an interesting location for the big family reunion he had planned for the weekend. Where better than in the giant home that was his daughter’s future inheritance?

  “Wow!” Angel ran forward, straight up the steps to the front door.

  “Angel!”

  The girl was oblivious to her mother’s calling. She lifted the huge brass lion’s head door knocker and smashed it down with glee. The crack it made was so loud I worried she’d damaged the old door behind it.

  “Angel!” Amber dropped her small suitcase and sprinted forward, snatching Angel’s hand before she could smash the brass knocker down again. Just in time. The door swung open.

  A sharp-faced woman opened the door.

  She doesn’t look bad for eighty, I thought. The woman had steel gray hair tied in a bun and was wearing a black dress with a white apron.

  “That must be Maeve, the housekeeper,” Joe said quietly in my ear.

  “You must be the relatives. Welcome.”

  Her intonation led to a discovery: simply saying the word “welcome” doesn’t necessarily make you feel the corresponding emotion. There was a certain level of iciness and formality to the word that made it sound more like a farewell than a greeting.

  Maeve came down the steps to the car, Amber and Angel trailing back down the steps behind her. A new figure appeared in the doorway. This one very much did look her eighty years. With one hand resting on the brass handle of a shiny black cane, a very pink woman appeared.

  It wasn’t just her skin that was pink, which it was, thanks to the fact it looked like a box of rouge had exploded in her face before a mischievous child had drawn on her face with far too much eyeliner. But the old lady was wearing a bright pink dress, had pink painted fingernails, and had decorated her ears with pink pearl earrings.

  “Pink and o—”

  “Angel!”

  The little girl closed her mouth before she could finish saying “old.” But she wasn’t wrong.

  The old woman marched down the steps, her cane rapping on each stone flag beneath her, then across the gravel until she reached us.

  “Joe.”

  “Beryl.”

  The old woman gave a little nod. She switched her gaze to me and lifted her eyebrows.

  “Tiffany. Tiffany Black,” I stuck out a hand. “I’m Joe’s half-grandniece.”

  She didn’t take the hand. I pulled it back.

  “Half? Which half?”

  “The top half!” Ian slapped his thigh in amusement at his own joke. For reasons I could never comprehend, he really did think he was funny. “I’m Ian. I’m a grandnephew.”

  “Half?”

  “Full.” Ian’s face scrunched up. “I think. It’s complicated.”

  “Families are. That’s why I try to avoid them.”

  Amber stepped forward, Angel beside her. “You won’t be avoiding them this weekend when everyone gets here! I’m Amber, another grandniece.”

  “And this is your offspring?”

  “Angel, not offspring,” the little girl informed her.

  Beryl looked down at the child. “You shouldn’t give yourself compliments. You should wait for other people to do it. And I very much doubt you are an angel. I know children. None of them are.”

  Angel stared up at her, confusion on her little face. She wasn’t sure what Beryl had said, but she knew she didn’t like it much.

  “No, Angel is her name.” Amber pulled her daughter closer.

  “How strange.” Beryl nodded toward the woman who had opened the door. “This is Maeve, my housekeeper.

  “Are you the only two people here?” Joe asked.

  “No. Roman is inside, my ghost. With Yumi, his partner.”

  “Ghost?” Angel’s face lit up.

  “Ghostwriter. He’s assisting with my memoirs.”

  “Ghostwriter.” Angel smiled in excitement. I was pretty sure she had a different idea of what a ghostwriter actually was.

  “Maeve, go and fetch them. They should be here to greet our guests.”

  I went and collected my things from the trunk of the car, Ian beside me. We returned to stand in front of the vehicle, not having been invited inside yet by Beryl. It seemed she didn’t want us to go in until we’d been greeted officially by Roman and Yumi.

  Beryl looked at me holding my suitcase. “Yumi’s a lovely girl. I hope you’re as nice.”

  How do you respond to that? It didn’t seem fair to compare myself to someone I hadn’t met.

  “Is she?”

  “Yes. Very exotic. Eyes like an Irish meadow.”

  “Big and wet?” Ian asked.

  “What? No. What a stupid thing to say. You’ve been to Ireland, I take it?” She addressed the question to us all.

  We all shook our heads no.

  Beryl shook her head in disappointment at us. “Why not? You must go before you’re thirty.”

  “They already are—” Ian received a pair of elbows, one to each of his sides, from Amber and me.

  That made Beryl smile. “Never comment on a woman’s age. That’s a lesson you’d do well to learn.”

  “But—”

  “No buts.”

  Ian snapped his mouth shut sullenly.

  “Hello!” Called a friendly voice. Emerging from the main door was a beaming couple, hand in hand. They each waved at us with their free arm as they descended the steps. They didn’t let go of each other’s hands until they reached us.

  “Yumi,” said the girl, offering me a hand. I went to shake it, but then she changed her mind and hugged me instead. I don’t usually like to jump to conclusions, but she sure seemed nicer than Beryl or Maeve.

  Yumi had long bleach-blonde hair and deep brown eyes flecked with gold. I figured I needed to look up what Irish meadows look like because I wasn’t expecting that.

  “Roman.” He stuck out a hand. His grip was warm and firm. “Writer.”

  When we’d finished introducing each other, Ian stopped Yumi.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Japan,” she said. Her English had a slight accent, but she spoke naturally and seemed to be fluent.

  “Knew it. We have a cousin in Japan, don’t we, Uncle Joe?”

  “You do. A second cousin. And a third. Or is it a second cousin once removed?”

  None of us knew the answer, but Ian was already continuing his train of thought.

  “Maybe you know her. She’s—”

  Ian got another pair of jabs from Amber and me.

  “There are nearly a hundred and thirty million people in Japan, Ian. She’s not going to know them.”

  “She might.”

  Yumi shook her head. “Better odds of winning the slots in Las Vegas.”

  Ian pursed his lips and did the math. “I was only making conversation.”

  “Maeve, show them to their rooms.”
r />   Maeve gave Beryl a curt nod.

  “Follow me. You’ll have to carry your own bags. I have a bad back.”

  “I thought Beryl might carry mine,” Joe said, swinging his suitcase in her direction.

  She gave it a whop with her stick.

  “Keep dreaming, Joe.”

  We followed Maeve into the grand old house to find our assigned rooms.

  Chapter Two

  My room was small and neat, with ceilings that seemed very high to me but were apparently all the rage a century and a half ago. The furniture in my room did not look like it had been replaced since it was first fitted out, but it was all sturdy wood, and though tired, it was functional.

  We took a little time to unpack and settle, then it was time for dinner.

  Ian and I met on the wide landing of the second floor of the house. We walked down the grand staircase together.

  “Angel!” Called a voice downstairs.

  Ian frowned. “Sounds like Amber beat us.”

  I slid my hand over the smooth wooden banister to my side. I wondered how many hands had done the same thing over the years. It was slick with more than a century of polish and smooth from being gently abraded by countless people running their hands over it just as I was as they walked down to the ground floor.

  “This sure is a change from my normal Monday night.” Las Vegas already felt like a distant memory.

  “What do you normally do on a Monday?”

  “Work, Ian. Remember that?”

  “Oh. Right.” Ian didn’t sound convinced that my job dealing blackjack hands at The Treasury casino actually counted as a real job. “It’s good to have a break, isn’t it?”

  Since he worked precisely half as many jobs as me, I wasn’t overly sympathetic to his need for a break.