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“My lips are sealed forever,” he yips.
Once my supersensual powers began to grow, so did the skills of the dead that came back to help me. Not only can they communicate and move objects in the material world, but they’ve achieved the most treasured ability of all—they can eat food—lots of it.
I don’t know where it goes, I don’t want to. But suffice it to say, my sweet treats have been more than a hit with the dead.
Lucky for them, calories don’t count in the hereafter, so they can eat my bakery out of every last crumb and have nothing but a smile on their face to show for it.
I punch in the code on the wall and enter into a dark door that is painted the same umber shade as the wall.
There’s a curtain over the entry, and unless you prod around in the dark, you would never know that there’s a portal to a mini Las Vegas casino on the other side.
Sinatra belts through the same shared speakers as the restaurant proper, but in this dimly lit establishment, poker tables are set out, there are dozens upon dozens of one-armed bandits, blackjack tables, and there’s a full-fledged bar that lines the south wall as well.
There’s a door in the back of the room that the patrons of this den of illicit activity can use as an exit. But while the Rizzo sisters were living, they insisted their dicey clientele enter from the front.
I suspect that was in hopes to garner more patrons for their fledgling restaurant. But the patrons of the casino can certainly leave the back way. I’ve kept the rules the same, but only because I don’t want a rear entry to the place lest Carlotta and Charlie get wise to my shady antics—among other people I’d like to keep in the dark.
A smattering of young professionals mingle about the room. Mostly men, each with an amber-colored drink in hand and an expensive suit on their person.
This might be the devil’s den, but each of these devils is well groomed.
It turns out, the Rizzo sisters weren’t afraid of going toe-to-toe with Jimmy Canelli in more ways than one when it came to business. Not only did they join in on the illegal casino fun, but they allowed some nefarious entity to push illegal substances through the place.
The bartender and the three other casino workers all give me a slight nod, acknowledging my presence. I made it clear they could keep their jobs if they wanted once I took over. Come to find out, they’ve been on payroll as waiters and waitresses at this place for years.
And then there’s Jed. Him, I have to pay under the table. He’s the one I hired to manage the casino, seeing that manager who was running it before was arrested for murder.
“Where is he, anyway?” I mutter to the tiny pooch in my arms.
“Where is who? Are you looking for the man with a teeny weenie?”
“Heavens, no.” I shudder at the thought. “Believe me, it would be a huge disaster if Noah Fox ever learned of this place—or the nefarious dealings running through it.”
A white takeout box catches my eye as it sits at an empty blackjack table nearby. It’s tucked under the dealer’s end of the table on a shelf that sits just below the waist so it’s hidden out of view to the people on the other side.
“What in the world?” I say, heading over and Teeny Weenie floats beside me. “We don’t use these takeout boxes at the restaurant. We use foam clamshells. It looks like someone left their dinner behind,” I say to the tiny ghost as I pick it up and note it’s light as a feather, clean as new, and yet gives an odd rattle as I shake it. “Cookies, maybe?”
I open it up and gasp at the sight.
There’s not a cookie in the bunch. Instead, I find an entire array of small plastic bags, each of them filled with nominal amounts of white powder, some with solid chunks of the same looking matter.
Cocaine? It’s just a guess since I’m no pro.
But if it is cocaine, then it’s the same poison that’s been filtering all through Honey Hollow as well, particularly the high school. And that alone was worth the risk of this place to me. I have to stop this filth, this evil from destroying anyone’s life, especially a young impressionable life.
“This is it,” I pant. “Now all I have to do is figure out who’s pumping this junk through the place. And why in the world would they leave it unattended?”
A loud crash emanates from the front as the door bursts open with a blast, and an army of men in black explode into the room all at once.
Large yellow letters glow off their dark jackets, but those guns they’re pointing at the entire lot of us have me too afraid to glance down and read a single word.
“Everybody freeze,” a deep voice riots at us and half the patrons bolt out the back door.
Guns go off, bullets fly, but I don’t move a muscle.
I stand there holding a box of cocaine with my gaze set on a pair of verdant green eyes I am all too familiar with as he points the barrel of a gun every which way before pausing in my direction with a look of horror.
Another round of gunfire goes off.
