Freezeout: A Cold Poker Gang Mystery Read online

  PART ONE

  The Game Starts

  PROLOGUE

  March 3rd, 2002

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  SANDY HUNTER KISSED her husband Rich goodbye in the modern kitchen of their apartment four blocks from Las Vegas University campus. Everything seemed perfectly normal. The morning sun through the kitchen window promised a beautiful spring day and that evening they had date night planned, with a wonderful dinner at their favorite sushi place.

  Sandy stood five-two on a good day and looked much taller because she always wore heels, slimming black slacks, and had her medium-length brown hair pulled up on the top of her head. At twenty-four, she was just finishing her second master’s degree in business. She worked part time at a securities firm and to everyone around her she appeared to be happy.

  She and Rich had many plans for the future.

  Rich still had a year to go on his second master’s in history and was working at the university. He hoped to eventually become a professor there after a number of years.

  He was short at five-five and Sandy often looked taller, something he didn’t mind in the slightest. Unlike her, he didn’t much care about his height one way or another.

  Sandy told Rich she would be home to change clothes before dinner, then went down the three flights of stairs and got into their new Toyota two-door.

  Security cameras showed that she pulled out of the apartment complex parking lot, turning toward Las Vegas Boulevard. In normal traffic, it would take her fifteen minutes to get to her office off Charleston. The morning’s traffic was normal, as far as the radio said.

  She had a meeting in forty-five minutes and had told Rich she wanted to go early to prepare. She had told her co-worker the same thing and they planned on meeting over coffee and Danish rolls thirty minutes ahead of the meeting.

  She never arrived at work.

  Just before the meeting started her co-worker called Rich to see if Sandy was sick or had forgotten the meeting. Both Rich and the co-worker were instantly worried that Sandy had gotten into a wreck.

  After three hours of waiting and calling hospitals and no word, Rich finally called the police. They could do nothing, but a friendly detective listened to Rich and believed him and then called Sandy’s office to confirm. Clearly something had happened to Sandy, so the police put out a notice to watch for Sandy’s car.

  At seven in the evening, Sandy’s car was found parked in the Bennington Hotel and Casino underground parking lot just off the Strip. The hotel security cam showed Sandy pulling into the lot seven minutes after she left home, locking her car, and walking calmly into the hotel.

  She seemed to know where she was going and was in no hurry.

  She went to an elevator, and got off on the eleventh floor. She used a key card she pulled from her small clutch purse to open the door to a room halfway down the hallway.

  The room was reserved in the name of Rich Hunter, Sandy’s husband, and paid for with his credit card.

  Rich swore he knew nothing about it and a check of their financial records showed that was the only time such a charge had been made on either of their cards.

  Sandy’s behavior was very, very unusual, to say the least. Yet she seemed to be acting normally.

  Almost as if she did this every day.

  At two in the morning, when the police knocked on the hotel room door, no one answered and the room was empty.

  The security cameras showed that no one had left that room after Sandy entered.

  And no one had gone in ahead of her either.

  The room had been reserved online.

  Sandy had left no fingerprints in the room, but the prints from the previous couple who had stayed there were everywhere. Nothing had been wiped down or cleaned beyond the normal maid service.

  There were no leads and her missing person’s case went quickly cold, with only her husband trying to find out what happened to his wife.

  No one had any idea why Sandy Hunter vanished.

  Or how a person could simply vanish from a major Las Vegas hotel room without a trace.

  ONE

  November 16th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  RETIRED LAS VEGAS Detective Debra Pickett stood sipping a cup of black coffee, without cream, in the kitchen of her penthouse condo in the Ogden in downtown Las Vegas.

  Outside her windows, she could tell the late fall day was shaping up to be another beautiful day. The forecast said the high temperature today would be around seventy.

  Perfect. She loved the Vegas spring and fall weather. Comfortable during the day, cool at night.

  She stood five-feet-four and had brown hair that she kept short and styled because it was just a bunch easier to deal with every day.

  She had on jeans, a cotton blouse, and a light sweater. She had her badge in a holder on her belt covered by her sweater and her service gun in a holster under her arm. She would hide that with a light-brown jacket when she went out.

  She and Retired Detective Ben “Sarge” Carson were headed for their normal morning walk along Fremont Street to the Golden Nugget buffet for breakfast. He owned the penthouse condo beside hers. And she had spent the night there, as was becoming wonderfully normal.

  Sometimes he stayed with her, but she liked his place even better than her wonderful condo, if that was possible, so the last few weeks they had spent every night in his condo.

  She had a fresh cup of coffee sitting on the counter beside her, waiting for him to finish dressing and come over to get her. She had gotten out of the shower first and rousted his handsome body out of bed.

  Sarge had thick gray hair and for sixty was in the best shape of any man she had ever seen or been with. Even when she was younger.

  On the floor at her feet, a young black and white kitten she affectionately referred to as Nose worked on her morning treat. Nose stayed the night with her at Sarge’s place, sometimes sleeping on the bed with them, sometimes running through the condo playing with his two kittens, Pete and Ree. Ree was short for Repeat.

  Both his cats were orange tabbies and they looked a lot alike. He had started from the moment he picked them up at the pound calling them Pete and Repeat until he thought of better names. She couldn’t save them from the original names no matter how many names she suggested, so at least they had shortened the little one’s name to Ree.

  And Nose hadn’t been her cat’s name to start with either. She had called her Cleo, but she had the cutest little white button nose and sometime during the first week after they got the cats, Nose stuck that white button nose into a place it shouldn’t be during a human sexual moment.

  It seemed the nose was cold and wet and made Sarge shout and then laugh and from that moment onward the cat was stuck with Nose as a name.

  Last night, at the Cold Poker Gang poker game, she and Sarge and Pickett’s partner Retired Detective Robin Sprague had gotten a new case to work on.

  At this point, there were fourteen retired detectives in the Cold Poker Gang, but only about ten showed up for the game on any given Tuesday. She and Sarge and Robin had decided they wouldn’t miss a night, they loved it that much.

  Before the tunnel case last month, Pickett and Robin had been partners. All through their detective years and afterwards they had been partners and Pickett could never imagine that changing. But with the tunnel case and meeting Sarge, he had become the third member of their team

  All three of them loved working the cold cases and working together. Before they retired, none of them seemed to have enough time for many cold cases. That’s why the Las Vegas police chief had given the Cold Poker Gang special status to work on cold cases. They could all still carry th
eir guns and their badges. They just didn’t get paid.

  Having an unpaid group of experienced detectives volunteering to work cold cases freed up the on-duty detectives to do the more pressing work and allowed Las Vegas to now have one of the top-rated levels of closing cold cases in the entire country.

  Besides that, no member of the gang had to do any paperwork. And none of them wanted the credit, so they often gave the credit to the working detectives, which kept the working detectives on the side of the Cold Poker Gang as well.

  Pickett considered all this the best of both worlds. She could work at her own pace, do the job she still loved, and not have to do paperwork.

  She had retired and gone to police heaven, or as Sarge liked to say, “a police fantasy world.”

  She liked the fantasy, especially working with Robin and now the man she was falling completely in love with.

  This week, Retired Detective Andor Williams, the Cold Poker Gang’s official contact with the chief of police, had given the three of them a cold case disappearance from March 2002. Pickett remembered something about it being one of the stranger cases she had heard about, but it had been a University Station case and Sarge remembered more about it since that had been where he was based at the time.

  Normally, after a Cold Poker Gang meeting, she and Robin and now Sarge went out for dinner to discuss the case, but Robin had a late dinner party she had to go to with her husband, Will, and had to leave the game early. So Sarge and Pickett had promised her they wouldn’t even look at the case until they met her at breakfast this morning.

  So it was going to be a fun morning. New cases always excited Pickett.

  Nose was finished with her morning treat, so Pickett picked up the dish and washed it off, then picked up the kitten and scratched her ears until she purred.

  A new case to solve, a new kitten to pet, and a wonderful man in her life. Just didn’t get much better.

  TWO

  November 16th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  RETIRED LAS VEGAS Detective Ben “Sarge” Carson finished dressing and made sure that both of his cats had eaten some of their morning treats. They had and were now safely in his living room stretched out on the floor in the sun.

  He had really come to love those two and Pickett’s cat as well. Wonderful personalities that filled what had been a large, empty condo. Of course, having Pickett in and out and staying over every night made this place feel like a home, of that there was no doubt.

  He had dressed in his normal jeans and dress shirt. He kept his badge where it always had been, on his belt on his right hip and his gun in a carry holster under his arm.

  For a few years after retiring he hadn’t had his badge or his gun, but now that he was back with the Cold Poker Gang, it felt like he was again fully dressed. His entire identity was being a detective and he loved the fact that he didn’t have to change that identity now that he was retired.

  He put on a light jacket to cover the gun and the badge and then told the two kittens to behave. As cats do, they didn’t even notice he was leaving as he went out into the penthouse foyer and then into Pickett’s condo. The building had three penthouse condos. His was the largest, with an upstairs area that gave him almost a three hundred degree view of the city and the surrounding hills around Las Vegas.

  After he had discovered that Pickett lived next door to him, he had looked into who owned the third one. It was owned by an older couple in Boise who only came to Las Vegas twice a year. The best kind of neighbor.

  Pickett had gotten the money for her condo when her husband had a midlife crisis and left for Los Angeles with his thirty-year-old secretary. Sarge had gotten the money for his condo as just a tiny part of his inheritance when his father died four years ago. For retired detectives, they both lived in style. But except for the condos, you could never tell they both had money.

  Pickett was holding her cat Nose when he came in. She smiled at him and nodded to the cup of coffee waiting for him on the counter. This was part of their routine that had developed in just a few weeks of knowing each other. She made them coffee in her place and then they walked the four blocks up to the Golden Nugget buffet for breakfast.

  He liked the routine a great deal.

  He scratched Nose’s ears, then leaned against the counter and sipped his coffee. On the counter behind him was the gray folder with the details about their new case.

  “You didn’t peek at it, did you?” he asked, smiling at Pickett.

  “I wanted to, but nope,” she said, putting Nose on the ground. Nose stretched and then headed for the tan cloth couch in the living room area to stretch out in the sun.

  “I’m kind of excited about this one,” he said.

  And he was. He remembered it being a real puzzle from his days on the force when it came up. He hadn’t caught the case, but the two detectives who had been assigned the case wanted to bang their heads against a wall at times.

  “What do you remember about it?” she asked.

  “Sort of a locked room mystery,” he said. “I remember a woman who had no business in a major hotel going into the room and never coming out. No sign of her ever being in the room was ever found. Or something like that.”

  Pickett smiled and looked at the folder. “Robin would kill us if we opened it without her.”

  Sarge laughed. Robin Sprague had been Pickett’s partner for years on the force. They were known as two of the best detectives ever. Robin was married to Will Sprague who owned and ran the city’s biggest private protection firm. Robin was an expert on computers and she also had all of Will’s people to back her up when needed. And on some cases they really needed the computer work. The three of them were lucky to have that kind of power at their disposal, that was for sure.

  When on the regular force, Pickett had liked to do the legwork while Robin did the computer work. Sarge joining them had just given Pickett some company and cover when out knocking on doors and interviewing people. That was how he had done things as well.

  He downed the rest of his coffee and rinsed out his cup in the sink, then turned to Pickett. “Let’s get to breakfast before one of us opens that file.”

  Pickett rinsed out her cup and picked up the file. “How come I feel like a kid at Christmas about ready to open a present?”

  “Because we’re both warped, that’s why,” Sarge said, kissing her lightly and then helping her on with her jacket.

  Now, walking down the street, they would look like a younger retired couple out for a walk. And Sarge liked the fact that they were a couple a great deal.

  THREE

  November 16th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  PICKETT ENJOYED THE morning walk in the cool air. It made her feel alive and being alive and happy at the age of sixty-one would not have been something she would have bet would happen ten years earlier.

  And walking with Sarge just made it all the better. Their strides seemed to match and she found she laughed a lot while with him.

  At the top of the escalator going into the Golden Nugget buffet, she could see Robin already seated and eating at their favorite morning table.

  The buffet was separated from the escalator area by a wall of plants and fake windows. The dining area was huge with at least seventy or more tables in three sections. Everything was decorated in brown and brass tones. Not gaudy like some restaurants in Vegas. Pickett thought it was comfortable, actually.

  And the smell of ham and omelets made her instantly hungry.

  It was her turn to pay and she did, then headed for Robin who looked up and smiled.

  Robin had been her best friend for longer than Pickett wanted to think about.

  Robin was solid, with square shoulders that showed all the time that she spent in a pool exercising. She had short, silver-gray hair and always wore a baseball cap that was now sitting on a chair beside her. She had on her dark windbreaker that Pickett knew concealed her gun and badge.

  Robin was the smartest woma
n Pickett knew. But what she loved about Robin was that she didn’t show the fantastic intelligence unless needed and never flaunted the fact.

  Pickett dropped the file on the table near Robin. “No, we did not look, but you can while we get something to eat.”

  “Oh, fun,” Robin said, pulling the file toward her.

  Sarge laughed. “As I said, we’re all strange.”

  “And that’s news how?” Robin asked, smiling at them.

  Ten minutes later Pickett had her slice of ham, scrambled eggs, and orange juice and was back at the table sitting across from Robin. Sarge was waiting for an omelet to be made. He usually had an omelet and a small waffle and orange juice.

  They both had another cup of black coffee waiting for them at the table that Robin had signaled the waitress to bring.

  Robin looked like she was about halfway through the report and her food was going untouched.

  “Better eat,” Pickett said.

  “Wait until you read this,” Robin said, surfacing and taking another bite of her scrambled eggs. “It’s going to be damned impossible unless we get a really lucky break.”

  “Oh, great, one of those,” Pickett said.

  Actually, that excited her. Challenges were frustrating, sure, but great fun now that their entire careers didn’t depend on solving the case.

  “This case was cold from moment one,” Robin said, shaking her head.

  “What’s Will up to?” Pickett asked, changing the subject off the case until Sarge got there.

  “He and his people have a big convention to help protect some special guests,” Robin said, shrugging. “But it’s going well so he’s been home every evening this last week.”

  “Can your marriage stand that?” Pickett asked, laughing. She knew that Will and Robin’s marriage was about as strong as it came.

  “Thank god for this case,” Robin said, patting the paper in front of her. “Just what the marriage counselor ordered.”