"No comment. Did you take the key?"
"No, I did not, as your father might then wonder what had happened to it. Or are you ready to go upstairs?"
"With Dad not there? I don't think so," Maggie said. It would be odd enough, seeing her father in a bachelor apartment. Invading that apartment without him there was just plain creepy.
"Excuse me, please. A crown?" Sterling said, quite predictably, from the backseat. "That doesn't mean what it should mean, does it?"
Maggie put the car in gear as she explained that, no, her father wasn't about to become royalty, and then told Alex her brilliant plan. They'd drive up to the Borgata, only eight miles away. Sterling could play the nickel slots, Alex could try his hand at baccarat again, and Maggie, who didn't gamble, could wait patiently until they were ready to go to the buffet for prime rib and coconut macaroons.
"A capital idea, my dear. Directly after we stop in at your mother's house, to assure her you actually have made an appearance rather than running off to join the circus."
"I'm not even going to ask what that means," Sterling grumbled from the backseat, clicking on his seat belt.
"Yeah, right. A drop-in visit with Mommy Dearest, only three hours after she called to tell me that she's being run off her feet—her words—because I'm not there to help her and won't be able to help her when I am there. Go see her now? Uh-uh, that's not going to happen until it has to happen, thank you. And tomorrow's soon enough to see everybody else, too," Maggie told him, stopping at the red light. She watched idly as three cars went past her along Wesley Avenue, and then leaned forward as a long black limousine entered the intersection, the back window rolled down. "Oh, would you for crying out loud look at that!"
Alex, who had been unfolding a map of New Jersey he'd taken from the glove compartment, looked up and smiled as the limousine glided out of the intersection. "Why, hello, Tate."
"He hired a limo. He hired a freaking limo," Maggie said, shaking her head. "And Ninth Street is the way in from the Expressway—Wesley is the way to Atlantic City. He was in Atlantic City, dollars to donuts. Lording it in the casinos with his important friends, whoever they are, and now he's on his way to sponge off my mother. A limo, Alex. And I'm going to arrive in a rented Taurus. There is no justice in this world."
"Hesitant as I am to point this out, Maggie, you could have employed a limousine service. If you weren't," he smiled, "so economically prudent."
"I am not cheap," Maggie said, turning the corner once the light turned green, and probably stepping too hard on the gas with her good foot. "I'm buying a mansion, for crying out loud."
"True. And a bargain, at that."
"I would have paid full price," Maggie said, holding out her hand for change for the toll. "Maybe. And I'm still wondering why I got it so cheap."
"It could be haunted. I must say, I like that idea better than thinking about poor drains or small insects gnawing on the floorboards, and all of that," Sterling supplied from the backseat, earning himself speaking looks from both his friends.
Alex handed over a dollar bill even as he surveyed their surroundings, low marshland to their left, the fairly dark waters of the Atlantic to their right. "I seem to recall that we're to bear to the left once we're beyond this bridge, and then quickly to the right."
"I know where I'm going," Maggie told him, even as she squinted a bit in the deepening dusk. "You don't need that map. Why does Jersey insist on making all its route markers so small? It's almost like they don't want you to know where you're going."
"I'll read the signs for you, Maggie," Sterling said helpfully from the backseat.
True to his word, Sterling read every sign as they passed through several small towns, until they were at last in Atlantic City.
"We could use the tunnel, Maggie. I think we're fairly close now," Alex said, pointing to a small sign—a ridiculously small sign—vaguely labeled Marina, when anyone knew the smarter thing to do would be to have the sign printed with the word Tunnel on it.
Traffic was slow, impeded by the light blue jitneys that seemed to stop wherever and whenever the driver felt like it.
"Where do I turn? Sterling? You're reading the signs, remember?"
"Oh, my, yes. And they're all so big and pretty, aren't they? So many lights. Look! Do you see that sign? Sir Elton John is coming to town? How wonderful it would be for you to have a nice visit with a fellow peer, Saint Just. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could—"
"You missed the turn, Maggie," Alex pointed out quietly as the Taurus was cut off by a tour bus with a Pennsylvania license plate. "Let's see. Next up would be Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard. I believe that if you were to turn left at that intersection we would have no problem in—ah. Sterling, wave a fond farewell to Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard, would you?"
"If you'd only talk faster," Maggie groused as she switched on the windshield wipers to swipe away the light snow that had begun to fall. She was pretty sure their next stop would be the ocean, if she didn't find somewhere to take a left turn. "And this is stupid, anyway. Just another one of my very bad ideas. I can't hop through a casino. I should just turn the car around and face the music—no, Sterling, don't say anything else!"
"I won't. Except that we just passed a small purple fingerpost with the name Borgata printed on it. If-you-were-to-quickly-turn-left-we-might—that's the ticket, Maggie! Just like Nascar. She feathered that corner just like an established whip, didn't she, Saint Just? That's probably why automobile aficionados speak of horses beneath the hood, yes?"
Alex retrieved the map from the floor and replaced it in the glove box. "I must remember to apply for a driver's license the moment we return to the metropolis. Either that, or take up daily prayers. Ah, and there it is, the Borgata, shining golden in the distance. Sterling, I believe we're in for some fairly spectacular good luck. The omens are all there."
"They are?" Sterling scrambled out of the backseat with the folded-up walker as Maggie pulled to a stop in the valet parking line, having decided that people who can qualify for a three-million-dollar mortgage probably have left the self-park garage behind, at least on Christmas Eve. "What omens, Saint Just?"
Alex handed a ten dollar bill to the attendant before Maggie could pull a one dollar bill from her purse, and escorted his friends inside, explaining, "We survived to arrive here, didn't we? I consider that a good omen."
"Bite me," Maggie said, hopping through the opened door and then sagging against the walker at the sheer vastness of the casino floor in the distance.
"Excuse me, miss? Might I suggest a motorized cart? We rent by the day, quite reasonably."
Maggie looked up at the casino employee, ready to refuse. After all, she wasn't even going to gamble. But she'd only hopped about thirty feet, and she was already exhausted. "It's a deal."
Ten minutes later, with only a short tutorial on the thing, Maggie was zipping ahead of Alex and Sterling, still giggling over the idea that, when she put the cart in reverse, it beeped like she was backing up a semi.
"I could get used to this," she told Alex, unfortunately taking her eyes away from where she was going as she neared the end of a double row of spectacularly tall slot machines.