Betting on Hope by Kay Keppler Page A

“What are you doing, Sweetie?”
    “Just looking something up quick,” Hope said.
    “Before breakfast? What’s so important?” Faith asked, pulling up the cover of the waffle iron and turning out a perfect golden orb, fragrant with butter and sugar.
    “I met a card player yesterday,” Hope said. “I think I must have met him before. He said no, but his name is so familiar.”
    “Tanner Wingate?” Faith asked.
    “He said he met you,” Amber said, perking up.
    Hope looked at them, astonished. “How did you guys meet Tanner Wingate?”
    “He was in the Desert Dunes when we were delivering the veg,” Faith said.
    “He got a snack from Kenji. He’s the chef,” Amber said. “Unagi. I had some. It was fantastic. He’s cool. Tanner, I mean. And Kenji is, too.”
    “Tanner’s cool?” Hope typed Tanner’s name into the search engine and saw more than a dozen hits scroll down the screen. She clicked on the first one. “He’s a card player.”
    “He’s very cool,” Amber said. “He knows stuff.”
    He knows how to cheat at cards , Hope thought . She started to read the first article, a news story from a Detroit newspaper. “College Student Arrested in Card Scam” the headline read. She skimmed it, then went to the next one, as the story came back to her.
    She’d been just a kid at the time, thirteen or fourteen years old, but in Vegas, the story had been all over the papers. Back then, she’d admired the daredevil teenaged card shark who’d taken his tricks on the road to Atlantic City and Las Vegas, cheating the casinos and card rooms out of almost a million dollars. His sleight of hand had been so subtle that it had taken the security systems months to catch him. But finally, they did.
    The kid’s high-priced lawyer had used his client’s youth to play on the judge’s sympathy, and ultimately William Tanner Wingate had received only probation for his crimes, plus restitution to the casinos. The restitution had been the easy part. He hadn’t spent any of the money.
    The probation would have been harder. Twenty years. Hope looked at the date on the news story. It had all happened nineteen years ago, and Tanner Wingate was still on probation—would be on probation for another year, it looked like.
    He was probably still cheating, too. She’d seen him practicing those card tricks at the bar, and in her experience, once a cheat, always a cheat. A leopard couldn’t change his spots.
    At least that explained why she’d recognized his name. As a nineteen-year-old, he’d probably been the most famous card player in the country.
    “Breakfast is ready,” Faith said, putting a platter on the table.
    Amber put the pitcher of maple syrup on the table. “What did you find out about Tanner?”
    Hope switched screens before Amber could see any of the headlines.
    “Not much. Come on, let’s eat.”
    There wasn’t any reason to sully Amber’s heroes. After all, she’d probably never see him again.
     
    Hope was back at the casino, ready to play, by eleven a.m. That would give her a solid four hours before she had to take Baby shopping again at three-thirty. Her remaining chips dug in her jeans pocket. She would not fixate on the two thousand dollars she’d lost yesterday. That was old news. Today she’d start fresh.
    She met Marty at the gaudy floral arrangement in the hotel lobby as they’d arranged. When she arrived, he was already there, sitting on one of the hotel’s small, gilt chairs, drinking coffee out of a paper cup and looking as out of place as a bookie at a dance recital.
    “Little Hope,” he said, when he saw her. He patted her shoulder and smiled affectionately. “Hey. Let’s go.”
    “Weary told me about last night,” he said as they entered the casino and headed for the card room. “Sorry I couldn’t make it. I was in the middle of something.”
    A straight flush, Hope thought, smiling. It was probably just as well Marty hadn’t seen her meltdown, too. Fortunately the