HERE’S THE THING ABOUT ATLANTIC CITY: EVEN WITH the bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-95, it’s less than a four-hour drive from Arlington. But it might as well be on another planet. Sure, the D.C. area has its share of nightlife, its movers and its shakers. But Atlantic City…

Where D.C. can be elegant and dignified, Atlantic City is bright and brash. They say the city is always turned on, and whoever they are, they’re not kidding. As we drove into town a few nights after our Texas Hold’em clinic, the sky above the city glowed, as if the whole of A.C. (as the locals call it) wore a neon halo.

The Pasqual Palace was the brightest and brashest of them all-from its garishly spotlighted towers of guest rooms to a casino decorated in rich brocades, crystal chandeliers, and carpets so plush my sandals sank as we crossed to the bank of elevators that would take us up to the exclusive penthouse. The place was all about gaudy, flashy, and fancy.

Over on our right, the light atop a slot machine flashed and swirled, and an upbeat electronic tune blared a song of gambling success. The granny sitting in front of the slot whooped and hollered while on the other side of the aisle, a scantily clad waitress called out, “Drinks, anyone?” and a roulette wheel whirred.

Truth be told, we hadn’t even been in town for a couple hours and already I was desperate for a little peace, a little quiet, and a whole lot less sensory overload. Still, I could see the appeal. There were actually people who thrived in this kind of atmosphere. Or so I’d heard. And I’ve got to say, if they were looking for overstimulation, they’d come to the right place.

I wrapped an arm through Jim’s, desperate to hang on to the calm center of sanity he represented in my life. When we passed a poker game in progress at one of the nearby tables and I thought of where we were headed and what we were there to accomplish, terror gripped the pit of my stomach. “Maybe we should have brought Peter with us after all,” I said.

Eve was right behind us and she clicked her tongue. I wasn’t sure if it was in response to what I’d said or to the way an elderly man ogled her in her white evening gown with its spaghetti straps and plunging neckline.

“Don’t be silly.” When she said this, I knew she was talking to me. Besides, she’d already warned the old guy to back off with a look that was at once friendly and standoffish. Beauty queens, apparently, are born knowing the fine art of rejecting a guy-and sending him away smiling. “We don’t need Peter to tell us how to play cards. Or to play for us. You were there Monday night, Annie. You saw us. We were awesome!”

Had Eve not been so bedazzled by our surroundings and our impending meeting with Victor Pasqual himself, she might have been more accurate. We were not awesome at Peter’s Texas Hold’em clinic on Monday night. In fact, we played pretty much like the amateurs we were. Eve, on the other hand, was awesome.

Who could have guessed that a li’l ol’ beauty queen from the South would somehow instinctively know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away, and know when to twinkle her way through bluffs so outrageous the players around her crumbled and she was left winning hands that she never should have played in the first place.

There was an attendant at the door of the private elevator to the far right, and after Eve showed him her invitation to the night’s poker game, he called the elevator and we waited.

Eve is not one to get nervous. She never has been. I remember sitting in the audience while she was onstage at countless beauty pageants. My hands shook. My heart raced. My blood pressure climbed until it felt like my head was going to pop. And Eve? Then, like now, she was as icy cool as her brilliant white gown.

“Do I look OK?” she asked.

“Of course you do. You look better than OK.” There was no denying that. Though Eve always dressed with care and a whole lot more pizzazz than I ever had or could ever hope to have, she’d pulled out all the stops that night. Besides her knock ’em dead gown, she was wearing diamonds that glittered on her ears and at her throat. They matched the sparkling rhinestone collar Doc was wearing and when I complimented her, Eve smiled down at the dog in her arms.

“You hear that, sweetie pie?” She rubbed noses with the dog. “Annie says I look good.”

“You look cool and confident, too.” She did. She was. At the same time I envied her the ability. I wondered and panicked and worried-just as I’d been wondering and panicking and worrying since the night of our poker clinic. What if we weren’t doing the right thing?

I swallowed my misgivings along with the sour taste in my mouth and told Eve, “You’re going to do great.”

“I’d better.” Eve handed the dog to Jim, who was too surprised to do anything but take Doc off her hands. Jim is not an unkind person by any means, and I know for a fact that he has a soft spot in his heart for animals. I’ve seen the way he greets every dog we meet when we walk in the park. But Jim is also not one to forget, and I don’t think he’ll ever forget the time Eve snuck Doc into the kitchen at Bellywasher’s, or the digestive disaster that resulted when she fed the dog too many rich foods. Now Jim held the tiny dog a little uncertainly, as if he wasn’t sure what it would do, or what he should do with it.

“I don’t want Doc to know,” Eve whispered, turning her back on Jim and the dog. “You know, about the c-o-l-l-a-r.”

“Doc can’t spell. And he doesn’t know what you’re talking about when you say collar, anyway.” As if to contradict me, Doc yipped. I ignored him and went right on. “The dog isn’t going to know that if you-”

“Lose tonight, I won’t be able to get his diamond collar out of hock.” Under the perfect coating of perfect pink blush that complimented her skin tone perfectly, Eve paled. “You hush, Annie. Don’t say it. Don’t even think such a thing. I pawned Doc’s collar for a good cause, so we had the stake to get me in this game. But I am not going home empty-handed.” She turned around and scooped the dog out of Jim’s hands so she could give him a hug. The dog, not Jim. “I wouldn’t do that to my sweet’ums.”

And really, I might not see the need to spell in front of Doc, but I wasn’t about to complain. That’s how grateful I was. Without Eve’s generous offer, we wouldn’t be here in the first place, not after we found out that it cost twenty-five thousand dollars just to get into Victor Pasqual’s Friday night Texas Hold’em game.

As to how it all happened in the first place…

I glanced to my left, and at the man in the tuxedo who waited for the elevator with us, and honest to gosh, if I didn’t know it was Norman under that dark, shaggy wig and behind the bushy, glued-on mustache, I never would have suspected a thing. I never argued with Norman when he said he wanted to come along. After all, he had as much right to be there as we did. More, really, since this was his chance to check out Victor Pasqual after all these years and see if the millionaire gambler looked anything like the man who walked into Très Bonne Cuisine and shot Greg.

I never questioned Norman when he said he would feel safer wearing a disguise, either. I understood exactly why he wanted to keep a low profile. Especially after Norman had finally talked to Tyler, been officially eliminated as a suspect-and officially put on notice that the killer who was still out there somewhere was probably still looking for him.

Besides all that, if it wasn’t for Norman, we wouldn’t be there at all. It turned out that he still had a few connections from back in the day. He knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who claimed he could get one of us into the game, and, true to his word (and after a goodly sum of money had exchanged hands thanks to Norman, who was more than willing to pay it), our invitation to the card game was couriered over the next day. Of course, all along, I had every intention of being the one who would sit in on the game. That way, I could get close to Victor Pasqual and make what Peter called “table talk,” in an effort to find out what he knew about Norman Applebaum-and Greg’s murder.