by Gayle Roper
I felt a comforting hand on my shoulder and a gentle squeeze. Drew had followed me upstairs and was standing right behind me. The poor man would probably never darken our door again after tonight. If regret did teach you not to make the same mistake again, he’d undoubtedly learned not to have anything to do with emotional women.
“That looks like lots of fun, Chlo,” I managed. She was so busy trying to beat Jenna that she didn’t even hear my words, much less their forced and false enthusiasm. “And great gift, Tori. Hard to beat.” Impossible to beat.
Tori smiled that complacent smile that drove me crazy.
God, I am so terrible! I’d rather see my kid unhappy than made happy by my sister. Forgive me!
“Got anything to drink?” Drew asked quietly in my ear.
I nodded and fled to the kitchen, grateful for the excuse to escape the site of another defeat. I pulled open the refrigerator door and stood staring at the contents without seeing a thing.
After a couple of minutes I became aware of Drew moving his hand repeatedly up my arm from my wrist to my elbow in little painless pinches.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I brushed his hand away.
“Nibbling.”
I shut my eyes and shook my head. He was driving me nuts with his desire to stop me from wallowing in my melancholy. Next thing I knew, he’d be quoting, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”
He’d almost had me in the car with his little talk on regret, but Tori’s smug smile and Chloe’s joy over something I could never afford to give her threw me right back into my black funk. If I wanted to be sad and hate myself and see all the possible negative ramifications of my errors, who was he to stop me? I had a right to be unhappy. I had reason. If I wanted my theme song to be, “Nobody likes me; everybody hates me. I think I’ll go eat worms,” I was entitled.
But deep down I knew he was right. I did have to choose. Nibbled to death by ducks. Or do as Saint Paul said: learn to be content whatever the circumstances. I groaned silently. Drew even had the Bible on his side.
“Have you got anything to eat?” He peered over my shoulder. “I never did get any food at your parents’.”
I reached for the mayo and an onion. Tuna salad sandwiches would be good for a hot evening. “Poor Drew, caught up in all our family dramas.”
He shrugged. “You’ve been caught in mine, so it’s only fair.”
I grabbed a can of tuna from the shelf and quickly mixed the salad. “Whole wheat or oatmeal bread? Toasted or not?”
“I really don’t care. Just having someone make me a sandwich feels too wonderful to be particular.”
I laughed at his open enjoyment and slipped four slices of oatmeal bread in Aunt Stella’s toaster. When they popped, I buttered them, then added the tuna mix, tomato slices, and some lettuce. “Let’s sit out back.”
We carried our paper plates to the table on the little patio. “What would you like to drink?”
“Coke?”
I went inside and returned with a couple of cans and a basket of chips to find Tori sitting in my seat, eating my sandwich. With a sigh I handed her my Coke and went back to make another sandwich and get another drink.
While I worked, I tried to decide how I’d approach Tori about the diamond brooch she’d taken and about the new LAST WARNING puzzle. I felt terrible about parading more family dysfunction in front of Drew, but if I didn’t catch Tori while she was here, I might not have another chance. After all, the missing pin and the missing shoebox didn’t affect only my finances. Madge would suffer by their loss too.
And wrong was wrong whether we suffered or not.
I grabbed all four puzzles, and with them and my dinner I went back to the patio. I sat and took three bites to fortify myself before I held the most recent puzzle out to Tori.
“Eddie asked me to give this to you.”
She looked at her name printed on it. She actually pushed back in her chair as if it was a serpent about to bite. “He said no more,” she whispered.
“Who said no more? Eddie?”
She wrapped her arms around herself as if she were suddenly cold. “Luke.”
“Who’s Luke?”
“A—a friend.”
Some friend. “Is he the one you owe the money?”
“What makes you think I owe money?”
“I’ll admit it’s hard to believe the way you’re spending on stuff for Chloe, but we’ve got these.” I picked up the puzzles. “YOU ARE OVERDUE and PAY UP OR ELSE. So I’ll ask again: is Luke the one you owe money?”
She nodded as she made little sweat circles on the table with her soda can.
“And is he a loan shark?”
She glanced at me, then back at the circles. “He’s a legitimate businessman. He has a string of four paycheck loan shops here in Philadelphia with numbers five and six about to open.”
“The kind where you ask for a short-term loan against your next pay?” Drew asked, his voice hard. “The kind that charge exorbitant interest?”
“They don’t charge interest,” Tori said defensively. “They ask fees for processing and lending. There’s nothing illegal in that.”
“No, there’s not, at least in Pennsylvania where there is no limit placed on the fees charged.”
I was unfamiliar with shops like this and looked at Drew for more explanation.
“I know all about them because Ruthie went to them when she first left. We had a joint account, so she borrowed against my pay two weeks in the offing. She went to several of these shops and wrote checks for the amount she wanted plus the ‘fees.’”
I could hear the quotes around the word fees.
“None of the shops lend large sums. They don’t have to. The loan is short term. Three to five hundred dollars is typical, though some shops let you borrow as much as fifteen hundred. Ruthie took the highest loan available at each shop, postdated all the checks she wrote for when my pay was due. On that date she was supposed to either bring in cash and redeem the checks or let them get cashed. Guess which option she chose? Suddenly I found myself owing over fifty thousand dollars, a good portion of that ‘fees.’”
He took a swallow of his soda. “The whole scheme is great for getting repeat customers. You have to borrow to get through to the next payday. You get your check, and now you have to pay back all the loan, plus fees, and still have enough to live on until another paycheck. Oops. If you couldn’t make it on your full pay, certainly you can’t make it on your diminished pay. You have to borrow again to meet your obligations. And again and again and again. And all the while the exorbitant fees mount. They can add up to well over four hundred percent APR! Who can ever pay that back? It’s just a good thing that the huge online paycheck loan industry wasn’t nearly as developed back then as it is today. I’d have been bankrupt.”
“You don’t have to make it sound so terrible,” Tori complained.
He looked at her like she had missed something in his story. “I lost fifty thousand dollars. It was terrible.”
“I mean the business itself. Not everyone has wild wives running around writing multiple checks.”
Drew held up a hand. “You’re right. There can be times of emergency that a loan is needed, and for some reason a licensed lending agency, like a bank or credit union, won’t help you. But it’s a system that’s just asking for abuse unless there are state laws limiting interest and fees.”
“Does this Luke have shops in New Jersey?” I asked. It seemed to me that such places would be a pot-of-gold-at-the-end-of-the-rainbow type of facility for the disordered gambler and a source of unlimited income for the owner.
Tori hesitated. “Not exactly.”
“So he is a loan shark!” How terrible is it when you feel triumphant that your sister is involved with a loan shark just because she makes you crazy? “Is that how you met him? You got yourself in debt and needed bailing out? Or wanted quick cash to gamble more?”
Tori studied her perfectly manicured,
probably false fingernails. “I haven’t gambled for several months. Luke won’t let me.”
I stared at her, momentarily speechless. She was actually letting someone tell her what to do—or in this case, what not to do? This Luke must be some man. “Does he threaten you about that too?”
Tori’s eyes went back to the puzzles, and she looked a bit lost. “But he said no more.”
I studied her face, half in light spilling from the kitchen, half in night shadows. “He’s more than a friend, isn’t he?”
“I-I thought.” Her voice wobbled a bit.
I tried to imagine a romantic relationship with a man to whom I owed a large sum of money, especially one who was threatening me, and failed.
“I don’t understand why he sends them,” Tori said, still transfixed by the sheets of paper. “He knows I’ll pay. It might take longer than he wants, but he knows I’m not going anywhere.”
“Are you certain he’s the one who sent them?” It seemed logical that if she didn’t know why he sent them, maybe he didn’t.
“What?” Clearly this was a new idea.
“Are you sure Luke sent you the threats?”
She sat back and frowned in thought. The lost Tori was gone, replaced by the Tori I knew, the one who didn’t let anyone push her around. “No, I’m not. I just assumed it since he’s who I owe. But who?”
“Does he have any business enemies?” Drew asked.
“He does.” Her face turned animated. “There’s this one guy trying to muscle in on his business in Atlantic City, maybe the loan shops too, for all I know.”
“Who?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve just heard bits and pieces of conversation Luke had on the phone or with one of his people.”
Luke had “people.” Interesting. “Does Eddie work for this other guy?” I asked.
“Eddie works for SeaSide.”
Drew leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on the table. “He may, but you’re on to something here, Libby. If this unknown other guy sent the puzzles and if Eddie delivered them, then he must moonlight for the other guy.”
Tori looked shaken. “But I asked him—” She stopped.
“You asked him what?”
“Nothing,” she said too quickly.
I knew. “You asked him to take the shoebox.” So it was Eddie sneaking around in the house. I couldn’t decide if that made me feel better—at least I knew him—or worse—it was Icky Eddie, maybe watching me while I slept.
Tori tried to stare me down, but I didn’t blink. I was too offended and she too much in the wrong for me to back down.
When she realized that for once I wasn’t going to be intimidated, she stood, all innocence. “Thanks for the sandwich, Lib.”
“Sit.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Princess collapse onto her haunches. Absently I picked up a chip and held it down to her.
“I beg your pardon?” Tori was all insulted dignity.
“Sit, Tori. I mean it. We have to talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Then I’ll have to call the cops.”
“Like that threat scares me. You’re not going to report stolen goods stolen.”
I’m sure my mouth was hanging open. “What are you talking about?”
“That shoebox was full of stolen jewelry.” She looked at my shocked face. “Don’t bother to pretend, Lib. I’m onto your game. You pretend you’re the perfect little Christian and use it as a cover for fencing stolen stuff. I always knew your act was too good to be true. I bet your God-is-my-friend Madge is in on it too.” Her scorn could have stripped off my skin.
I thought back to the estate sale where I’d bought the jewelry. “It was in the barn in an old manger. I just assumed it had gotten there by accident in the rush to prepare for the sale.” I gave a hollow laugh. “And here I thought I was so clever and had made such a wonderful find.”
“You want me to believe you didn’t know the stuff was stolen?”
“Of course I didn’t know!”
“Of course she didn’t know!” Drew’s denial was louder and more impassioned than mine.
I looked at him in surprise and grinned. He grinned back.
Tori took another step toward the door.
“I said sit!”
To my amazement, she did. While I was enjoying the unusual but delightful feeling of power, Drew said, “So you asked Eddie to take the whole box after you somehow learned that the brooch you stole from your own sister was stolen?”
She had the decency to look chagrined at his cutting tone. “I only borrowed the pin.”
“Then you have it with you to give back?”
She shifted uncomfortably. “Well, no.”
“That means, by any measure, that you stole it.”
Tori was once again studying her nails too intently to answer.
“And you gave it to Luke to help pay your debt.” Drew could consider a career as a prosecuting attorney if he ever tired of Ben.
Still no response.
“Did he ask you to take the rest of the jewelry? Or did you think of it on your own?”
Those fingernails were absolutely fascinating.
“Did you steal those earrings to help pay Luke too?” I pointed to the diamonds dangling on their thin chains of gold.
She jumped as if I’d poked her with a sharp stick.
I stared at her in amazement and consternation. “Tori! What is wrong with you? Do you want to keep up the Keating family tradition of incarceration?”
“She just left them lying on the coffee table.” Tori’s voice wasn’t quite a whine.
“And someone being sloppy is a viable excuse for taking their belongings?”
She still wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“What I want to know,” Drew said, “is how Mick figures into all this.”
This time it was Drew who used the sharp stick, though I don’t think he knew he held such a weapon or that it was sharp until Tori jumped. “Mick?”
“You know,” I said. “The dead guy. He was tasered and had a heart attack.”
“A heart attack? Mick?” Her voice was disbelieving. “But he was a huge guy, very fit.”
“Apparently he had a preexisting heart condition.”
“He never mentioned it.”
She knew him well enough that he’d tell her something like that? “Maybe he didn’t even know.”
“How did you find this out?”
“I called Detective Holloran.”
She seemed impressed. “But how do you know Mick?” she asked both Drew and me.
“He’s Ruthie’s boyfriend,” Drew said.
“I know Ruthie,” Tori said. “Skinny, whacked-out blonde, right? I never understood what Mick saw in her. But how do you know her?”
“She’s my ex-wife.”
Tori fell back in her chair, poleaxed. “You are kidding.”
His sad smile said, I wish.
My brain synapses were firing so fast I could hardly keep up with them. “Okay, so Mick—whom Tori knows but forgets to mention to me or the police—is found dead on our doorstep. On his chest is one of four threatening puzzles. Two other puzzles are hand-delivered by our good friend Eddie. How did you get the fourth, by the way, or should I say the first?”
“The first was shoved under my suite door at the SeaSide.”
“Right. Probably by Eddie.”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Probably. So we’ve got four puzzles, Eddie alive, and Mick dead. Eddie works at the SeaSide but has a second job with this unknown party who is trying to squeeze Luke out of his lucrative business as a loan shark in Atlantic City and maybe as a legal loan shark in Philadelphia. Big question: is Eddie merely a messenger boy, or did he have something to do with Mick’s death?”
“You mean is Eddie a hit man?” Drew asked.
Tori hooted at the thought.
I nodded. “Can I pick them or what?”
; But he knew as well as I that my bluster was a cover for the fear of what all this would do to Chloe and how deeply involved I would find my twin.
The sliding glass door opened, and not a moment too soon for Tori. This intense Libby was a creature she had never dealt with. She’d been so busy on her Chloe Quest that she hadn’t noticed Lib was no longer the easily-pushed-around sister she grew up with. Somewhere in the past few years she had become a woman of substance.
Tori frowned as she pondered briefly why she needed to best Libby. All her life she’d felt she had to one-up her twin. It was like a compulsion, her form of OCD.
Was it because Libby was four minutes older? Because she seemed so smart? Because she was like one of those Weebles, the old toy people, the ones that had round bottoms? You could knock them over a thousand times, but they never stayed down. They popped back up, as caring and loving as ever. Well, the Weebles weren’t caring and loving after a good punch, but Lib was. It was so frustrating!
And not worth thinking about right now. Tori pushed it from her mind. There was enough real stuff to be upset about.
Chloe stepped out with a phone in her hand. “You got a call, Aunt Tori. It came in just as we finished a game.” She held out the phone. “I thought it might be important.”
Tori took the cell, held it to the light streaming from the kitchen, and checked the number of the last call. Luke! For the second time in two days!
“I’ve got to take this.” She rose and hurried toward the house.
Behind her Chloe asked, “Are there sandwiches for Jenna and me?”
Tori paused and glanced over her shoulder. After all the tears and angst of earlier, all Chloe was talking about was food? How disappointing! Where was the snippiness, the disrespect, the “I hate you, Mom!”? Well, maybe expecting the kid to blurt that out was a bit much, but the attitude should be there. It’d certainly be there if her mother ever kept a secret like that from her.
Libby smiled at Chloe. “I made extra tuna salad. It’s in the fridge. Help yourselves.”
Chloe nodded and spun to come back into the kitchen, and Tori was forced to move too. She stepped into the dining room, where she lingered a couple of minutes to hear what the girls said to each other, a truer picture of Chloe’s feelings than anything else.
