Viva Las Vegas with Davis Way by Gretchen Archer

Welcome to the Bellissimo Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, where dreams come true, especially if you dream of going flat broke at a five-star resort on the beach. If that’s your dream, come see me, but be warned: For every sane person who walks into this casino, nine crazies follow.

My name is Davis Way, I’m a Super Secret Spy for the Bellissimo, and my job is to keep the crazies at bay. A tall order most days. For the last twelve days, our team of three—me, my partner Fantasy, and our man-child Baylor, who Fantasy and I have joint custody of—have been chasing down Crazy Hat Lady. Three of us, one of her, twelve long days. CHLady has been loose in the casino (freaking everyone out) bewitching gamblers and taking their good luck. (Eighty years old, has outrun us seventy-nine times.) (She’s back at Sea Breeze Elder Care where she belongs and this time with an alarm in her hat.) It got to the point of humiliating that between me, Fantasy, and Baylor, we couldn’t catch the old bird. One day we came close. We had her cornered in a gift shop.

“Ma’am,” I said, “you can’t go around the casino pulling people’s good luck hair out of their head. It hurts and it’s rude.”

“And kicking total strangers with those hiking boots of yours doesn’t knock the good luck out of them either,” Fantasy told her.

While we were distracting her with our sage advice, Baylor was bringing up the rear to tackle her. That old woman had eyes in the back of her crazy hat. She grabbed a ceramic fish serving platter off a display shelf and tried to beat the stew out of Baylor with it, cracking it over his head. So here’s some advice: If you’re in the casino and you suspect the person beside you is cra cra, nine out of ten times you’re right. And if you’re playing a slot machine, minding your own business, and all of a sudden one strand of hair is painfully plucked from your head, it means Crazy Hat Lady has chewed through her Sea Breeze Elder Care leash. Again.

More Bellissimo advice? You got it.

*Never split tens. For one, you already have a winning hand. For another, everyone at the blackjack table will be mad at you.

*Don’t try to beat up slot machines. Really, don’t.

*For the last time, no, the casino can’t cash your Home Depot gift certificate.

*You people out there stealing all the hotel pillows, please, think about it. Why do you want a pillow 400 people have slept on?

*The best sandwiches at the Bellissimo are at Shakes, the ice cream parlor. I’m not sure what a chipotle is, but it’s very good on a sandwich.

*There is no positive outcome to a casino scenario that includes Red Bull and vodka.

*Baccarat is a violent game. Those Baccarat players have anger issues.

*Anything can happen. We had a girl here last week who’d been left at the altar. It was to have been a small wedding, then a three-night honeymoon at the Bellissimo. I met her when the brakes went out on her 1992 Ford Festiva hatchback; the girl and the car wound up in the Bellissimo front fountain. Across the hatch window, in black spray paint, it read, Hit that Bubba. The poor girl, standing in water up to her knees, wearing a wedding dress two sizes too big, mascara everywhere, had twenty-seven dollars to her name. Fantasy and I kept her company while her Festiva was being airlifted out of the fountain. We calmed her down, cleaned her up, and pointed her to the casino. First, she won a car. A brand new Range Rover Sport. Then she was dealt a mini royal in spades at a three-card progressive poker table, netting her a cool $672,480. By Sunday, news of our jilted bride’s good fortune spread around her hometown of Iuka, Mississippi. Bubba showed up, found her in the Bellissimo salon as the finishing touches of her head to toe makeover were being applied. Bubba changed his mind; he was ready to get married. She gave him $500 and a pat on the back. “Bubba, I hope to never lay eyes on you again,” she said, “but try your luck in the casino. Anything can happen.”

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You can read more about Davis in Double Strike, the third book in the Davis Way Crime Caper Series, published by Henery Press. The first book in the series is Double Whammy.

GIVEAWAY: Leave a comment by 6 p.m. eastern on October 24 for the chance to win a copy of DOUBLE STRIKE plus a swag pack. The giveaway is open to U.S. residents only. Three lucky winners will be selected at random.

Meet the author
Gretchen Archer is a Tennessee housewife who began writing when her daughters, seeking higher educations, left her. She lives on Lookout Mountain with her husband, son, and a Yorkie named Bently. Double Whammy, her first Davis Way crime caper, was a 2013 Daphne du Maurier Award finalist and hit the USA TODAY bestsellers list.

You can visit her at www.gretchenarcher.com, on Facebook or Twitter.