Mr. Lucky by James Swain Read Free Book Online Page A

during her life, especially during the past two years, running Tony’s business and watching him catch hundreds of casino cheaters. But she’d never seen anything as strange as the item she was now holding, a candy bar worth a hundred thousand dollars.
    She was going through the mail while sitting at Tony’s desk. Her boss had left a few hours ago for Slippery Rock, and she’d gone onto his computer and dealt with a dozen e-mails, then started sorting through his mail. It was heavy, and she put the priority letters in one pile, the it-can-wait items in another. The very last letter was a padded envelope. When she ripped it open, a giant 3 Musketeers candy bar fell out. With it was a letter from Ron Shepherd, the head of gaming enforcement for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

    Hey Tony,
    Here’s the $100,000 candy bar for your collection. The store owner copped a plea and will end up doing a year, plus pay back the government for all the taxes he didn’t pay on his ill-gotten gains. I thought I’d seen them all, but this scam takes the cake. Thanks for your help in cracking this one.
    Ron

    Mabel held the candy bar in her hand. There was a price sticker on it. It cost a dollar thirty, Canadian. Their money was worth about 70 percent U.S., which made the candy bar worth about a dollar. So what made it worth a hundred thousand times that?
    She put the candy bar on the desk and stared at it. There was an expression Tony liked to use.
In the know.
It was what differentiated the smart from the dumb. And she wasn’t in the know about this stupid candy bar. It frustrated her no end, and she picked up the phone and called Yolanda, who was across the street cleaning her house. Ten minutes later, Yolanda was standing in the study, holding little Lois against her chest while reading Ron Shepherd’s note.
    “I thought you were kidding,” Yolanda said, putting the note down. “What do you think the scam is?”
    “I have no idea. You know what frustrates me the most?” Mabel said. “Tony never told me he was doing a job for this man.”
    “He probably did it as a favor. Gerry says he does that a lot.”
    Mabel heard herself grinding her teeth. Tony had asked her to run his business, and she’d gone about it with the idea that people should be charged for her boss’s services. Yet it didn’t stop him from dispensing free advice and help whenever it suited him.
    “At least he could have told me,” she said.
    “Maybe he didn’t want to bother you. He thinks you work too hard.”
    “Well, sometimes I do. But this is so…interesting.”
    “So call him. He’ll be happy to explain it.”
    Mabel examined the candy bar again. Ron Shepherd’s note said a convenience store manager was going to serve time. Had the manager covered the candy bar with a towel and pretended it was a gun? No, she decided, it was something infinitely clever; that was why Ron Shepherd had asked for Tony’s help. She glanced up and saw Yolanda holding the phone.
    “You want me to call him?” she asked.
    Mabel shook her head. “No, I’ll do it.”
             
    Tony’s cell phone was turned off. Mabel left a message and asked him to call back. Her boss picked up his messages sporadically, which meant it might be a few hours, or even a day, before she got an explanation out of him.
    Yolanda had to feed the baby, so Mabel showed her out. Shutting the front door behind Yolanda, Mabel suddenly had an idea. She didn’t remember Tony making any trips to Canada recently, which meant he’d probably solved the candy bar scam from the comfort of his La-Z-Boy. Going into the living room, she looked through the stacks of videotapes that were scattered around the room. Tony’s handwriting was hard to decipher—Gerry likened it to the cartoon character Bullwinkle’s—and she squinted at the labels.
    She looked through every stack, then the tapes stuck in drawers and cabinets. It wasn’t anywhere to be found. Now she was getting mad. It had to