“ALOHA!” AVA CALLED, WHEN SHE spotted Letty and Joe approaching the rec room with Maya. “Oh, if y’all don’t look too stinking cute!” She whipped out her phone. “Joe, stand right there with those girls, and for God’s sake try to smile. Put your arm around Letty. No, closer. Maya, sweetheart, look at me now.” She quickly snapped half a dozen photos.
The motel owner was dressed in a floor-length fuchsia flowered muumuu, with a flower crown balanced on her graying blond curls and half a dozen leis draped around her neck.
“You look pretty cute yourself,” Letty said.
“Are we done yet?” Joe asked, deliberately baiting his mother. “This shirt itches. What the hell is it made of? Aquarium gravel?”
“Quit your bitching and get inside and start working the bar,” Ava directed. “We’re gonna have a full house tonight. Letty, can you sit by the table and sell bingo cards?” She looked over at Maya and smacked her forehead. “Oh Lord. I am getting senile in my old age.” She leaned in closer to Letty and lowered her voice. “I’m so sorry, hon. I completely forgot. We can’t let Maya stay. It’s illegal for a minor to be on the premises when gambling is going on.”
“She’s right,” Joe admitted.
“But it’s only bingo,” Letty protested. “Who’s going to mind?”
“Vanita Dunn,” Ava said promptly. “The bitch who owns the Islander. A couple years ago, Joe arrested Vanita’s son for stealing from her hotel guests, and ever since then, she’s always trying to make trouble for me. I wouldn’t put it past her to have one of her spies here tonight. She’d rat me out in a heartbeat. It wouldn’t be so bad for me, but Joe’s a cop. It could look bad for him.”
“I’ll keep Maya tonight.”
Letty turned to see that Vikki Hill had joined the small group clustered around the four-year-old.
The FBI agent was dressed in jeans and a pale pink button-down blouse, with a plastic flower stuck behind her ear as her only concession to the evening’s theme.
She nodded at Joe. “Nice shirt, DeCurtis.”
“Oh no, Vikki, I couldn’t ask you to babysit,” Letty said, uneasily. “You’re sweet to offer.…”
“What? You don’t think I could keep a kid alive for three hours? I’ll have you know I had a pet goldfish in a bowl on my kitchen counter for three years. That’s longer than either of my marriages lasted.”
“You don’t want to play bingo?” Ava asked.
“Nah. I just came out because those four walls in the crummy efficiency were starting to close in on me—no offense, Ava. Plus I was hungry.”
“If you’re really serious, you could watch her at my place,” Letty offered.
“And you can eat dinner from the buffet,” Ava added. “We won’t start the first game for another fifteen minutes.”
“Good deal.” Vikki squatted down until she was at eye level with the four-year-old. “Hey Maya. Wanna hang out with me tonight? We can eat some sweet-and-sour meatballs and, uh, watch Hawaii Five-O on television, okay?”
Maya focused her huge blue eyes on the agent for a moment, considering the offer. “PAW Patrol?”
“Huh?” Vikki wrinkled her nose.
“It’s sorta like Five-O, but with cartoon dogs,” Joe advised.
“Okay, cool. But let’s eat first.” Vikki extended her hand and Maya took it.
As Ava predicted, the motel’s regulars were already streaming toward the rec room, and the parking lot was filling with cars. “Big crowd, huh?” Letty observed.
“Word gets around,” Ava said, showing her the metal cash box containing stacks of one-, five-, and ten-dollar bills. “Of course, it’s mostly snowbirds and retirees. Where else are folks gonna go for a night out where they maybe spend ten or twenty dollars for an evening of entertainment like this—they get as much food as they can eat, cheap drinks, and maybe even win a jackpot.”
“And it’s legal to gamble like this?” Letty asked.
“As long as you do it for a nonprofit,” Ava said. “We partner with the Legion of Mary, from the Catholic church. We don’t make any money on this. After we pay for our operating costs, all the rest of the money gets paid out in jackpots. Good clean fun, right? Our regulars look forward to this all year long. It’s a tradition, and lesson one here at the Murmuring Surf is, you don’t mess with tradition.”
“And it looks like everyone is really into the aloha theme,” Letty said, marveling at the array of loud flowered shirts, plastic leis, and muumuus flowing through the door.
“There aren’t any costume prizes, but still, it’s a real cutthroat competition,” Ava said. She nudged Letty. “Even the Feldmans want to play.
“Ruth! Billie!” Ava called, as the couple approached the table. “Where on earth?”
The two women wore matching traditional Hawaiian women’s long muumuus, with wide puffed sleeves and gathered, ruffled necks, along with flower crowns woven with bits of palm fronds, vines, and yellow frangipani blossoms. They wore necklaces of cowrie shells and puka beads.
“Billie designed and made our dresses herself,” Ruth said proudly. “I only made the necklaces.”
“Those are works of art,” Letty said. Before she could say anything else, Billie handed her two twenty-dollar bills. “How many cards?” Letty asked.
“Forty,” Billie replied, hefting a large straw bag onto her shoulder. “We came to win.”
More players crowded into the room. Trudi and Merwin Maples arrived, he dressed as a beachcomber with tattered shorts and straw hat, she in a blouse with a pattern of golden pineapples. The guests swarmed the food table, and Ava was kept busy, ferrying more platters of meatballs and fruit trays from the kitchen.
Joe stood at the front of the room on a makeshift plywood platform with a bar-top table and a large lit-up screen where the bingo numbers would be displayed. He tapped the microphone, resulting in an eardrum-piercing static squawk. “Five minutes, everybody!” he boomed. “Get your cards and take your seats.”
People rushed her table, holding out money, and Letty dealt out the bingo cards as fast as she could.
“One-minute warning,” Joe called. “Letty, go ahead and close the doors. Anybody not in the house sits out the first game.”
She was in the process of closing the door when a slight figure in a grass skirt came barreling down the breezeway in her direction.
“Wait! Don’t lock me out,” Oscar Jensen yelled.
She looked at Joe for approval. He shrugged. She held the door ajar.
Had there been a costume prize, Oscar Jensen, Letty thought, should have won it. His South Pacific–inspired costume consisted of a crudely made bra constructed of coconut halves strung together with duct tape and bungee cords, the grass skirt, and a sailor hat worn at a rakish ankle. He’d smeared his pasty-white chest, face, and torso with a cheap orange bronzer, and was barefoot. He thrust a handful of bills at Letty, still out of breath from his dash to the door. “Gimme twelve cards.”
Ava edged Joe away from the microphone. “Aloha everyone, and welcome to our twenty-eighth annual evening of Aloha Bingo at the Murmuring Surf. I’m Ava DeCurtis, sole owner and proprietor of the Surf, and my handsome son Joe here is your caller tonight. That beautiful young lady at the back of the room, my assistant manager Letty, will be circulating the room and checking numbers and solving any issues. I assume y’all know the rules, but let me repeat—the first person I recognize as calling out bingo will be the winner of that game. Prizes will not be awarded until the numbers of each card are verified and approved by me. Also, and please remember this point, don’t piss me off. Play nice, or go home.”
Joe reclaimed his place. “Okay, we’re gonna start off the evening with a straight bingo. First to cover five numbers horizontally, vertically, or diagonally wins.”
Ava spun the wire cage holding the numbers, and the game was off.
“O-72,” Joe called.
Letty circled the room, greeting the regulars and smiling at newcomers.
“Hey Letty.” Merwin Maples summoned her to the table where he and Trudi were seated. He and his wife had four cards assembled on the tabletop.
Ruth and Billie Feldman sat across from the Mapleses. They had twelve cards neatly lined up in rows. Billie Feldman presided over a colorful village of rubber troll dolls. She had an array of fat plastic felt-tip bingo markers and was glaring at Merwin, whose plastic cup of Hawaiian punch was bumped up against the troll village.
“N-43,” Joe called.
“Got two, Billie,” Ruth said, pointing to the card with those numbers.
“What’s up, Merwin?”
He gestured at the dolls. “Can you tell her to move those creepy damn dolls? She’s taking up the whole tabletop. I can’t even concentrate on my cards with all those things.”
Billie Feldman didn’t look up. She was using a marker to slash N-43 on her cards. “Shove it, Merwin,” she said. “You don’t like it, move to another table.”
“G-54,” Joe intoned.
“Bahahahaha,” Ruth chuckled, pointing at the corresponding number on one of the cards Billie had just colored.
“There are no other tables,” Merwin complained. He gestured around the room. “It’s a full house.”
“O-63,” Joe called.
Trudi stabbed at one of their cards with her forefinger. “We got one, Merwin. Pay attention.”
Billie colored numbers on her cards. “Yeah, Merwin. Quit yer bitching and pay attention. Not that it’ll do you any good.” She pointed at her cards. “I got the winning combination right here.”
Letty peered over her shoulder. She saw three cards that only lacked one more winning number.
“Come on B-7. Or G-48,” Ruth chanted, rubbing her hands together. She held out one of the troll dolls to Billie, who kissed the top of its head for luck.
“I-29,” Joe called.
Oscar Jensen erupted from his chair the next table over. “Bingo!” he yelled, waving his hands in the air. “Bingo, bingo, bingo!”
With one hand, Billie swept her losing cards off the table, knocking over Merwin’s half-full cup of punch in the process. The sticky red liquid dripped off the table and onto his lap.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, dabbing ineffectively at the mess with a paper napkin.
Letty hurried away from the simmering feud to check Oscar’s card, matching the numbers on the screen against the numbers on his card. “We’ve got a winner!” she called to Ava.
“Oscar, you get a six-pack of Sprite and a free round of putt-putt at Island Golf,” Ava said.
“What? I don’t want no stinkin’ Sprite,” Oscar griped. “What about the cash?”
“Sorry, you won the warm-up game. Next game is a cash prize,” Joe answered. “Ten dollars and a genuine Murmuring Surf souvenir tote bag. This one is a postage-stamp game. Cover any four numbers in a contiguous block on your card. Okay, let’s roll. O-75.”
The next hour passed in a flash. The bingo players were a raucous, rowdy bunch. They cheered and booed and played blackout, four corners, black diamond, and half a dozen other variations of the game that Letty had never heard of before. In between games they bought cards and claimed prizes and argued (in vain) with Ava over who was first to call bingo.
At eight, Joe called for a fifteen-minute break, and people surged toward the buffet and the bar.
“How’s it going out there?” Joe asked, offering Letty a glass of lukewarm white wine.
“It’s crazytown,” Letty reported. “I never knew people could get this worked up over winning a Pancake House gift card. Merwin and Billie Feldman almost got in a fistfight because Merwin bitched that Billie was invading his territorial imperative.”
“Bingo is serious business,” Joe said. He looked up and grinned as Oscar Jensen approached. “Speaking of loony tunes…”
“Joe, Joe,” Oscar said. He tugged at the cop’s arm. “I was taking a smoke break just now, and I saw some guy, skulking around outside, peeking in windows.”
“Where?” Joe said.
“Out there. He was looking in the window of the office. I saw him.”
“Show me,” Joe said. He looked over at Letty. “Tell Mom she needs to take over calling numbers. It’s probably nothing, but stay here, and don’t let anybody leave.”
He bolted out of the room, with Oscar trailing behind.
Letty looked out at the darkened parking lot, where the Murmuring Surf’s cheerful neon sign blinked off and on, spilling pink and green and blue reflections onto the pavement. She retrieved her purse from beneath the card table and called Vikki Hill.
“Hi,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Just checking to make sure you guys are okay.”
“We’re fine,” Vikki said. “Your kid’s still alive. We’ve had Popsicles and popcorn, and watched a lot of PAW Patrol. I tried to convince her of the moral superiority of Scooby-Doo, but she’s a stubborn little thing. Just put her to bed and she’s already snoring. How’s it going with Aloha Bingo?”
“It’s okay.” Letty hesitated. “One of the regulars thinks he saw somebody lurking around outside, peeking in the window at the office.”
“Shit,” Vikki breathed. “Does he need me to go out there? Or call the local cops?”
“Not yet,” Letty said. “The old guy who reported the prowler is kind of a kook. Easily excited. Joe’s out there now, checking things out. I’m sure he’ll call you if he needs you. He made me promise to stay in here for now, but the minute he comes back, I’ll head home.”
With the break over, Ava resumed calling numbers. Letty continued patrolling the room, glancing out at the parking lot every chance she got. Ten minutes later, Joe returned.
“If there was anybody out there, he’s gone now,” he reported. “I got my flashlight, checked under cars, around the pool, down by the beach. Everything’s quiet. I called it in to dispatch too, and they sent a unit by. Nothing. Fina promised she’d have night watch roll through here on the hour tonight.”
“Did Oscar give you a description of the prowler?”
“Tall guy, but everybody looks tall to Oscar. He was dressed in dark clothes. And a baseball cap.”
“Rooney,” Letty said, feeling her scalp prickle.