The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [27]
Chapter 6
“Under the B, twelve. That’s B-twelve.”
Nancy Martin scanned the eight paper cards spread before her, saw three spots numbered 12 under her assortment of B’s, and hit them quickly with her bright pink dauber.
Mel glanced up at her from his place across the table, having perused his own four cards without success. He muttered, “Shit—wish I could figure a way to cheat at this.” The woman beside him, with fifteen cards and a daubing hand as quick as a hummingbird, shot him a scandalized glance.
The caller at the head of the stuffy room held up another ball, extracted from the hopper by his side. “Under the I, twenty. That’s I-twenty.”
Nancy kept her eyes on her cards, hitting only one spot this time. She wasn’t having much luck tonight, and she sure wasn’t having any fun.
“Bingo,” Ellis shouted in a loud and startled voice, causing the quick-handed woman to groan under her breath. Nancy had to sympathize, despite her happiness at Ellis’s success. He had but a single card centered before him.
“Hold your cards, ladies and gentlemen. Hold your cards,” the caller droned, as one of the bingo hall attendants wormed her way through the crowd toward Ellis, who was now waving his paper card in the air so she could more easily reach it.
While the attendant read the winning numbers to the caller for confirmation, there was a muted chorus of rustled paper as everyone else in the hall ignored the caller’s instructions by crumpling up their cards to make room for new ones.
Ellis kept laughing at his moment of victory. “I can’t believe it. I never win at things like this. I’m the reason slot machines were invented.”
“Why’m I not surprised?” Mel said in a low voice, clearly irritated, dropping his wadded-up paper ball onto the floor beside him, avoiding the trash bag in the aisle.
The attendant finished confirming the numbers, extracted a twenty-dollar bill from the pouch around her waist, and handed it to Ellis.
“Congratulations, sir.”
Mel reached over and snatched the bill from between Ellis’s fingers. “You loser—you owe me at least that much for beer,” he said, and shoved it into his shirt pocket.
The smile crystallized on Ellis’s face for a split second, and then it widened paradoxically as he cut a quick look at Nancy and said, “When you’re right, you’re right, Mel. Happy to share.”
Nancy covered her smile with a hand.
“What’re you laughing at?” Mel growled at her.
She lowered her hand and pointed to a fictitious spot over his shoulder. “Just a kid acting funny over there.”
She knew he wouldn’t look, and he didn’t. “You and damned kids. Give it a rest.” He turned to the woman next to him and demanded, “When do things wrap up here?”
“Last round’s at ten,” she said, not bothering to look at him, her lips pursing afterward.
“Christ,” he muttered, and began spreading out a new set of cards.
They were at a rural bingo hall outside Bennington, owned and operated by a volunteer fire department as a weekly fund-raiser. Mel had actually come up with the idea, based on information he’d been given but wasn’t sharing. His companions knew they were “on a raid,” as he called these outings, but not its nature. The amount of cash being handled around the hall, however, pretty much spoke for itself. Someone, somehow, was going to have their stash lifted.
Nancy didn’t much care. Ever since that afternoon with Ellis, when he’d made sure she’d had three orgasms before he let her go—a gift her husband hadn’t attended to in living memory—she hadn’t been able to think of much else. She’d always liked Ellis. He’d always been polite to her, and she appreciated his quietness. But she’d also always seen him just a bit as her husband did—a loser. In a world of loud men with demonstrative habits—from her abusive father to a string of violent boyfriends, and now Mel—Nancy had