They stood on line waiting to get into the cheap lunch buffet at their hotel. Jeff unwrapped a roll of nickels. He dropped one into one of the slot machines that flanked the line. He pulled the arm. Cherries and watermelons and peaches twirled around and around and then stopped. Jeff put in another nickel. This time five nickels clanked out.
“Oh, please, Daddy,” Laura said. “Please let us play the slot machines.”
“Please, Daddy. Pretty please,” Julie said.
“Just one week’s allowance worth,” Laura said.
The line moved very slowly.
“It’s illegal for children to play the machines,” Jeff said.
“Oh, please let us play,” Julie and Laura said in unison.
“But we can play them for you,” Jeff said.
“Jeff, no,” Brenda said.
“Up to one week’s allowance,” Jeff said. “Not a penny more.”
“Oh, Jeff, what in the world are you doing?” Brenda said.
“We’ll put the money into the machines for you and anything you win, you get to keep,” Jeff said.
“It’s not fair. Her allowance is bigger than mine,” Julie said.
“Only one week’s allowance. Not a penny more,” Brenda said. She used that tone of voice that Julie knew there was no arguing with. But at least she had given in to Daddy, and they were going to play the slot machines after all.
“Well, I’m going to play with Daddy,” Julie said and was delighted with her small victory when Jeff said okay.
Laura was just as happy having Brenda play her dollar allowance for her. But they lost it right away, and Laura figured that maybe gambling was not such a good idea.
Julie’s allowance was only thirty-five cents a week. It really sucked being the younger one, she thought. Laura always got more of everything than she did.
Jeff counted out seven nickels. He put the first one in the machine and pulled the arm.
The fruits went round and round. Bells clanged. Coins clattered.
They won a whole dollar. As much as Laura got for one week’s allowance.
By the time it was their turn for lunch, Julie had two dollars and seventy cents in her pocket.
“I want to play more,” she said.
“We have to eat,” Brenda said.
A thin young man with the name Charlie embroidered over his shirt pocket escorted them to their table.
They grabbed plates at the buffet and filled them with salads and baked ziti and macaroni and cheese and chicken and turkey and roast beef and ham.
“Can we get dessert also?” Laura asked, eyeing the cakes, cookies, pies, red, green and yellow Jello molds, and assorted cut fruits on the dessert table.
“After we finish our main course,” Brenda said.
Laura ate fast. She didn’t know if she could finish all of the food she had piled on her plate, but she really wanted dessert. Especially the chocolate brownies, which were her favorite, and chocolate chip cookies, which were her second favorite, and chocolate cream pie, which was her third favorite.
Julie pushed her food around her plate. “I’m not very hungry,” she said.
Her face was flushed. Her eyes were glazed. She appeared to be feverish.
“When are we going back to the slot machines?” she said.
“Not till we finish eating,” Brenda said.
“I’m not hungry,” Julie said.
Brenda looked at Jeff.
Jeff looked at Julie.
When they finished their main course, Laura asked, “Can we get dessert now?”
Brenda nodded. “Just one dessert each.”
Julie had eaten hardly anything. “I don’t want any dessert,” she said.
“Can I have hers?” Laura asked.
“Just one,” Brenda said. “You don’t want to get fat.”
“I’m not fat,” Laura said.
“If you want to be a ballet dancer, you have to stay thin,” Brenda said.
“I don’t want to be a ballet dancer. I think I’m going to quit ballet lessons,” Laura said. She had already quit piano lessons, after two years.
Brenda had a rule about these things. Brenda had a lot of rules. If you started any lessons, you had to stick them out for two years. Laura had gone to ballet lessons for four years already, since she was six, and now she was ready to quit. She’d rather stay in the house and read.
Julie refused to take any lessons. School was bad enough.
“Can I go back to the machines now?” Julie asked.
“Don’t you want to keep all of that money?” Brenda asked. “If you play it, you might lose it all.”
“I want to go back to the machines,” Julie said.
“Then while Laura and I have dessert, you go back to the slots with Julie,” Brenda told Jeff.
Jeff nodded.
“Lose it all, no matter how long you have to play,” Brenda whispered.
Rosa put out another tray of brownies. They seemed to go the fastest of all of the cakes. Rosa was tiny, only five feet tall. She hated being short, because she had always wanted to be a show-girl and wear those beautiful feathered costumes. But even though everyone told her that she had a very pretty face, the only job she managed to get in Las Vegas was working at the dessert table at the buffet. Just her luck. Here were all these delicious cakes and cookies, and she wasn’t supposed to eat any of them. Every once in a while she’d filch one and stuff it into her pocket. If she kept up this way, she’d be as fat as her mother and her aunts.
Oh, oh, Rosa thought. Here comes Jerry, the security guard. If he saw her pocketing the oatmeal raisin cookie, he’d report her for sure. He had it in for her ever since she refused to go to bed with him. She told him she was a virgin and intended to remain one till she married.
“Maybe you could marry me,” Jerry said.
“No thanks,” Rosa said. Not if he was the last man on earth.
He was probably too cheap to go to a prostitute, Rosa thought. That was probably the only kind of woman who would have him. Prostitution was legal here in Las Vegas. Jerry could afford one. He earned a decent wage, unless he gambled it away. Rosa thought that Jerry was crude and unattractive. He was tall and large-boned and always had a scowl on his acne-scarred face. When he did smile, showing crooked teeth, all yellow from chewing tobacco, it gave her the creeps.
A young girl and her mother came up to the buffet table. The girl put a brownie on her plate.
“Just one,” the mother said.
“That’s not fair,” the girl replied. “You let Julie go back to the slots just because she won. And you lost my whole dollar for me, right away. The least you could do is let me have a double dessert.”
The mother scowled. Then she smiled. “Well, okay,” she said, “But only two. Not more than that.”
The girl took one of the chocolate chip cookies and put it on her plate.
The mother just took some honeydew melon and a bit of Jell-O.
Rosa wondered how the girl had lost the dollar. Had the parents let her gamble? That was a really dumb thing to do. Luckily Jerry had not caught them at it. You didn’t want to get onto Jerry’s bad side.
When the girl and her mother left, Jerry came up to her. “You doing anything special tonight?” he asked.
“Look, I told you before, I’m not interested in going out with you.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Jerry said.
Rosa shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t want to offend Jerry any more than necessary, but she had to tell him something to get him off her case. She said, “I already got a boyfriend.”
“Oh, yeah?”
She should have let it go at that, but she suddenly felt the need to elaborate. “Yeah, Charlie, the guy who works at the entrance to the buffet and brings the people to their tables.”
She had never actually dated Charlie. But she wouldn’t mind if he asked her out. He reminded her of Frank Sinatra.
“Him. He’s skinny, like Sinatra. I don’t see what you see in hi
m.” Jerry flexed his arm showing overdeveloped muscles.
“Sorry,” Rosa said, and then added, just to be safe, “We’re engaged.”
It took fifteen minutes for Jeff to lose Julie’s entire two dollars and seventy cents.
Brenda and Jeff were quite relieved.
“Tomorrow we’ll go to Hoover Dam,” Jeff said when they got to their room. He needed to get away from the slot machines for a while.
They rested for an hour and then Jeff, Brenda, and Laura put on their bathing suits.
“I have a belly ache,” Julie said. “I don’t want to go swimming.”
“You can just sit at the pool,” Brenda said.
“I want to take a nap,” Julie said. Brenda felt Julie’s head. It felt warm. “I’ll stay in the room with you then. I’m not leaving you alone,” Brenda said. “You might have a slight fever.”
She had looked feverish at lunch, Brenda thought.
“You can go swimming,” Julie said. “I’m just going to sleep.”
“Poor Julie,” Brenda said. “You’re upset that you lost all that money.”
“I’m all right,” Julie said. “I just have a belly ache. That’s why I didn’t eat my lunch.”
Brenda picked up her book and lay down on her bed and started to read.
Julie lay down also. A while later she got up. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.
Brenda didn’t respond. The book lay open on her chest. She snored lightly.
On the way to the bathroom, Julie grabbed a handful of change that Jeff had left on his dresser. Six nickels, three dimes and two quarters. She went into the bathroom. She wrapped the money in her handkerchief, the one that had violets embroidered on the corner, so that the coins wouldn’t jangle. She flushed the toilet. When she came out of the bathroom, Brenda was still fast asleep. Julie tiptoed to the door of the room. She opened it quietly and slipped out into the hall, closing the door softly behind her. Then she ran to the line that was waiting for the buffet.
Two weeks earlier, a child had been kidnapped and murdered. She had been a guest at the Dollars Dreaming Hotel. She was a small thing, not quite six years old, and she had roamed away while she and her three brothers were horsing around at the pool. The brothers were supposed to be keeping an eye on her, but you know how teenage boys can be.
Anyway, they didn’t find her body at the hotel, but partially buried in the sand in an undeveloped area, a few blocks off the Strip. The parents had gotten a ransom note to put the jackpot money they had won in the casino, the night before, in a paper bag and leave it at a certain place downtown and not to notify the police.
The parents hadn’t told the police about the ransom note until it was too late. They didn’t want to anger the kidnapper.
Somehow they got confused. It was their first time in Las Vegas and they didn’t know the city. They couldn’t manage to find the spot that the kidnappers had specified. A day later, the police found Amy’s strangled body.
Charlie had seen her just before she was kidnapped. She wasn’t very pretty, from what he recalled. Skinny, with stringy yellow hair and sharp features. Charlie worked at the buffet, seating the customers. He hated working there and hoped one day to wait tables at one of the dinner restaurants. There at least you got tips. And the food was a lot more expensive to begin with.
Ironic, wasn’t it? Here he came to Vegas from New Jersey, hoping to be a singer, the next Frank Sinatra, maybe, and now he was aspiring to be what every failed performer hated to be, a waiter.
He had seen the little girl—Amy, he found out her name was, after they discovered her body—hanging around the slot machines where you waited to be seated for the buffet. She was in a bathing suit, one piece, blue with pictures of colored fish. It looked like it was still damp from the pool. She didn’t seem to be with any adults. Charlie thought he should have gone up to her and brought her to one of the security guards, right then and there. But then Rosa came up to talk to him and he stopped noticing the little girl. ,
Charlie felt guilty as Hell. If he had done something sooner, maybe she’d still be alive today. But he hadn’t told anyone that he had seen her and now he couldn’t. They’d probably fire him, if they knew, or worse, suspect him of the crime.
Today there was another little girl hanging around the machines. At least she wasn’t wearing a bathing suit, but navy blue shorts and a pink polo shirt. She was small and cute, with bright red curls. She was feeding nickels into one of the slot machines. Which was illegal.
Charlie stepped away from the buffet table. This time he was going to report the child to security before anything happened.
And then Rosa came over again and informed him that she had told Jerry that she and Charlie were engaged.
Charlie wouldn’t have minded if it were true. He was attracted to Rosa and would have liked to ask her out, but he was afraid that he’d be rejected. And, frankly, he was more than a little intimidated by Jerry.
After Rosa left, Charlie noticed that the little girl was gone.
The good-looking lifeguard was not on duty that day so Laura was not upset when Brenda rushed out to the pool and told her that she and Jeff had to go back to the room right away. Laura wondered why Brenda had left Julie alone in the room by herself. She would have been in big trouble if she had done something like that. She was always getting into trouble for things that Julie had done, or not done.
But when they got back to the room, Julie wasn’t there.
“I fell asleep and when I woke up she was gone,” Brenda said.
Brenda wanted to call the police right away, but Jeff thought they should contact hotel security first.
“I bet she went back to the slot machines,” Laura said.
“She had no money,” Brenda said.
But then Jeff noticed that all of his change was missing from the top of the dresser.
They rushed out to the slot machines outside of the buffet. Jeff and Brenda ran up to the security guard.
Laura walked over to the skinny man who had seated them at the table. The one with the name Charlie on his shirt.
“Maybe you’ve seen my sister,” she said. “She has curly red hair and was wearing blue shorts and a pink shirt. I know pink doesn’t go with red hair, but she insisted, and she’s a very stubborn little girl.”
At first Charlie thought he would say he hadn’t seen her. But then he remembered what had happened to Amy and he just couldn’t keep it to himself. “She was here,” he said. “She was playing the nickel slot machines. I was just about to report her to Jerry, that’s the security guard, when I had to take a customer to his table. When I came back, she was gone.”
“She must have lost all of her money and left,” Laura said. She hoped that was what had happened.
“Maybe she went back to your room,” Charlie said.
“I don’t think so,” Laura said. “We would have passed her in the hall.”
“Did your Daddy or Mommy win a lot of money in the casino?” Charlie asked.
“Probably not,” Laura said. “Daddy promised Mommy that he would only gamble with nickels and dimes. They’re on a budget. I don’t think you can win a lot of money with nickels and dimes.”
“I think your Mommy and Daddy should call the police, anyway,” Charlie said.
Laura started to worry when Charlie said that. If he told her to call the police, he must think that something was really wrong. She wondered if it was like one of the mysteries in the books she had read. A robbery, maybe, or a murder.
Laura decided that she would have to be like Nancy Drew or Miss Marple, even though Miss Marple was very, very old, and that she would be the one to find her sister. Or maybe she’d try to think like Hercule Poirot with his little grey cells, even if he was a man and had a mustache. Much as Julie annoyed her at times, at least Julie had been nice enough to give her one of the teddy bears that she won at Circus Circus. Laura wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her.
But she didn’t know h
ow to start. Maybe she should just walk around the hotel and look for Julie.
The security guard was yelling at Brenda and Jeff when Laura went to ask them whether she should go back to the room and see whether Julie had returned.
“You let a minor gamble? Don’t you know it’s against the law? I should have you both arrested,” he screamed. His voice was quite high-pitched for such a large man.
“We can talk about that after you find our daughter,” Jeff said. “Right now that’s our main priority.”
“If anything bad happened to her, I’m going to hold you responsible,” the security guard said.
Brenda began to cry. “What do you think could have happened?” she asked.
“Maybe she was kidnapped,” said the security guard. His name, Jerry, was embroidered above his pocket, just like Charlie’s was.
Brenda cried louder.
“And you don’t belong in the lobby in your bathing suits,” Jerry added.
“Look, our daughter is missing and all you care about is that we gambled a few coins for her and dress codes,” Jeff shouted. “I want you to find her. Right now. Do you hear me?”
All the people waiting on line for the buffet turned to stare at them.
Laura tugged at Jeff’s arm. “Charlie says we should call the police,” she said.
“Who’s Charlie?” Jeff asked.
“That bastard,” Jerry said. “First he steals my girl, and now he’s trying to do my job for me.” He rushed over to Charlie’s post and grabbed him by the collar.
“Let him go, Jerry.” Ken, the lifeguard, walked up to Jerry and pulled him away.
At first, Laura hadn’t recognized Ken because he was wearing clothes. He wore a pair of blue jeans and a red plaid shirt. He looked different than he had when he was half naked. He wasn’t as good looking either.
“Call the police,” Charlie said. “Maybe your daughter was kidnapped, just like the other girl, Amy, the one who was murdered.”
“Shut up,” Jerry said. “This is my job, not yours.” He tried to punch Charlie, but Ken pinned his arms behind his back.
“Murdered?” Brenda cried louder.