Popped Off by Jeffrey Allen Read Free Book Online Page B

success,” she said.
    “Really? How’s that?”
    “Why, he organized all the games.”
    “The games?”
    “The casino games,” she said. “Blackjack, poker, some other card games I’m afraid I don’t know much about.”
    That was interesting. “Really? He’s the guy?”
    “Oh my, yes. They had a hard time making any money at Casino Night. It’s somewhat expensive to stage, and no one here had the know-how to put it all together. So it was actually costing us money to put it on.”
    “What kind of know-how?” I asked, looking at the photo.
    “Someone who understood casino games,” she answered. “And Mr. Huber is apparently an expert.”

14
    I spent the rest of the morning and the afternoon doing my dad chores—laundry, dishes, cleaning, paying bills, and yard work. Even though our friends liked to kid me about how easy I had it, I was pretty good at managing the household. Julianne would even admit it, if she had to. I didn’t just lie around the house, eating ice cream and napping. I didn’t want Julianne coming home and feeling like she had more to do in the evenings, so I made sure the house was in shape when she got home.
    Unless I’d needed a nap.
    But as I was working my way through my to-do list, I couldn’t get my mind off Moises Huber and the money. He was accused of stealing nearly six hundred thousand dollars. That wasn’t twenty bucks out of someone’s wallet. That was the kind of money that got you sent to prison. And no matter how sneaky he thought he might’ve been, there was no way for that amount of money to go missing and people not to take notice. He had to know it wouldn’t take long for people to connect him to it, particularly when he had access to it.
    It made no sense. If he was dumb, he never would’ve been in the positions he’d been in to manage the money in the first place. So I didn’t buy the idea that he was just stupid. If you were going to blatantly steal money from right under someone’s nose, there was usually one big reason.
    Desperation.
    After I put the final load of laundry away, I still had a little time before I needed to pick up Carly at camp. I sat down at the kitchen table with a Diet Pepsi and the e-mail printouts Victor gave me.
    There were about thirty pages in the stack, with multiple e-mails on each page. I put the total number of e-mails to read at somewhere near a hundred. Most were innocuous and didn’t tell me much. Confirmations of soccer games, church events, receipts for bill payments. Nothing that raised a red flag. And that really wasn’t surprising. I figured he didn’t use his personal e-mail address for work-related business, especially since it pertained to finances.
    I was about ready to throw them in the trash when something on the next-to-last page caught my attention.
    The e-mail was from an Elliott Huber.
    Hey, cuz! the e-mail read. Looking forward to seeing you this week. I signed you up for the weekend tourney. I covered your buy-in with my employee discount. Hope you’re ready!
    The e-mail address was eHuber@comriventertain. com.
    I grabbed my laptop and used Google to search the domain name in the e-mail address. It came back as Comanche River Entertainment. There was a link to the main Web site. I knew the name but clicked on the link, anyway.
    The Comanche River Resort and Casino was one of a group of casinos near the northern Texas–southern Oklahoma border. Massive billboards advertising it dotted the Dallas landscape, offering gambling and entertainment only ninety minutes away. Comanche River was one of the biggest. It boasted a massive casino and a hotel, along with a theater that regularly hosted top-name country music acts. They billed themselves as a resort. I’d been there once, having made a Saturday night trip up with my poker buddies. It was truly a mammoth place.
    I perused the Web site for a few minutes, seeing if the name Elliott Huber popped up anywhere. I didn’t have any luck. All I could find were