Fatal Deduction (14 page)

This was the second time Drew had come to my rescue. A dead man and a dead romance. I didn’t even want to think about how he must see me, a weak woman without the internal fortitude to speak the truth to her daughter. Or a keeper of secrets, causing her own predicament.

It was past time that I acknowledged that when a secret is known to others, especially untrustworthy others, it’s not a secret. It’s information, and it was a certainty that this knowledge would be passed on whether I wanted it to be or not. It was up to me to see that the information was shared properly and soon.

My stomach cramped at the very idea.

“By the way, your sister dropped this.” Drew held out a piece of paper.

I saw the T
ORI
and my breath hitched. I took the sheet and opened it. A puzzle stared up at me.

Betrayed as I felt over her bringing Eddie here, I was still scared for her. She might not be nice or kind much of the time, and I might not always like her, but she was my twin, and I always loved her.

“Where did she get this?” I spoke more to myself than Drew, but he answered.

“Eddie gave it to her.”

Eddie. How was he involved in all this? Did he have anything to do with the dead guy on our step? Eddie might not be my favorite person, but his being involved in a murder strained my imagination. Still, he had brought this puzzle. Had he brought the others?

I nodded my thanks to Drew and folded the puzzle, slipping it in my slacks pocket. Déjà vu. “I have to find Tori.”

My face must have shown my distress because Drew studied me much too closely.

“She acted like the paper was something dirty she’d stepped in. You’re distressed about it too.” He frowned and waited, not quite asking what was going on but clearly wanting to know.

I shook my head. I wasn’t about to tell him that my sister was in hock for some unknown amount of money and had someone making threats on her life. It was bad enough he knew about Eddie. I
gave him the best smile I could manage, which I imagine was pretty sick. Then I set out to find my sister.

I didn’t find her. She’d disappeared for the night, whether with Eddie or someone else, I didn’t know. Instead I sat by myself at the little kitchen table and sweated over the puzzle, finally solving it. The embedded message read, “payuporelse.” P
AY UP OR ELSE
.

Or else what? She was next? That threat still made no sense. Dead clients do not repay you.

Words embedded in the puzzle leaped off the page at me.
Rage, demand, loans, contract. Trey, odds
, and
slot were
gambling words. Of course pretty words like
gold and pearls
were in the puzzle too. But
wreaths
could refer to funeral wreaths as well as Christmas ones, and black
crepes
were what you draped funeral things with.
Kneecaps
jumped out, and my hand automatically went to my patella, whole and bullet-free.

I shuddered in the comfortable air conditioning of Aunt Stella’s lovely house. Chloe and I were knee deep in Tori’s mess!

Chloe flopped back on her bed in her daffodil room. “Is this not the coolest place in the world?”

Jenna sat in the yellow squishy chair under the window and surveyed the room. “I know. My room’s all shades of pink. It’s sort of like living in the Barbie aisle at Toys “R” Us, but it’s still really pretty. I’ve got this hot purple room at home. Dad says it gives him a headache just looking at it, and I say the better to keep him out.” She grinned.

Hot purple? Chloe thought daffodil was better. More bedroom-y, as in letting you sleep. When she got home, she was going to repaint
her room just like this one. “Did you ever live where they had a party like this and the whole street came and everyone went up on the roof for fireworks?”

“We live in a pretty small town. A college town in the middle of nowhere. We definitely don’t have fireworks like the ones tonight, but we have college things and town things. Today there was a parade and all.”

“Haydn has a parade too. It’s pretty hokey,” Chloe said.

“So’s ours. The high school band marches, at least the kids not on vacation, and the mayor and the Little League teams and the girls’ soccer teams and stuff.”

“We’ve got all these little kids riding decorated bikes, running into each other. And there are a bunch of these Shriner guys who drive around in little cars and stuff, and one of the Philadelphia string bands, but they don’t look anywhere as neat as they do in their costumes on New Year’s Day.”

“Did you ever go to a Mummers Parade?”

Chloe shook her head. “Maybe we can stay until January first and go this year.”

“January first. Next year.” Jenna laughed. “Do you march in Haydn’s parade?”

“I used to when I played soccer.”

“Me too. I’ve marched for as long as I can remember. I still do because I still play. Dad marches too because he’s our coach. When you pass someone you know, they all clap and cheer for you and you wave. It’s fun. One time my mom’s parents came, and they whistled and cheered. It was so embarrassing and so fun.”

“I wonder where we’ll live when we grow up,” Chloe said. “A big city or a small town?”

“Well, one thing. We never had a body show up on our doorstep back home. Bad guys live more in the cities, I think.”

Chloe thought of her grandfather and great-grandfather. “I think there are some in small towns too. Maybe there are more in cities because there are just more people in cities. Population concentration.”

They fell silent as they contemplated this for several seconds. Then Chloe grabbed Princess and rolled over, pinning the dog beneath her, though she was careful to keep all weight off the little animal. Princess went satisfyingly nuts, barking like an off-key soprano stuck on one note. Chloe rolled onto her back and opened her arms. Instead of fleeing, Princess stood on her chest and washed her face thoroughly. After she dried her face on the bedspread, Chloe looked at Jenna.

“Did you see that guy my Aunt Tori brought?”

“Ugh.” Jenna made a face. “That Eddie guy.”

“Icky Eddie. I think Aunt Tori and my mom knew him back in high school.”

“All kinds of people go to high school.”

Chloe thought about some of the weird guys she knew. How much weirder would they be by high school? Now there was a scary thought.

“I like your mom.”

Chloe looked at Jenna in surprise. “Thanks. I like your dad.”

“Wouldn’t it be neat—”

“Do you think they—”

And the girls laughed. Like that would ever happen.

I
WAS BLEARY-EYED
S
UNDAY MORNING
, having spent a restless night tossing in my surprisingly comfortable iron bed, getting up to stare down at the quiet of the garden, even going down there to sit for a half hour, alone, scared, and weepy.

Half the time I was worried about Tori and totally without any kind of idea on how to help her, assuming she’d take my help if offered. The rest of the time, I thought about the mess I’d made of my own life. I had no room to be too upset with Tori.

I was such a fraud. People thought I was this great Christian, standing for Jesus in the face of my family’s opposition and mockery. They thought I had turned my life around and pulled it from the toilet where I had lived pre-Christ.

Ha!

Five minutes with Eddie and all my deceit and weaknesses became much too apparent, at least to me. At the core, I was still me. What a fake!

“You’ve got to tell her, Lib,” Madge had been saying for years. “She needs to hear it from you before someone else tells her. And mark my words, someone will.”

She was right; I knew it. Secrets known by others were not secrets. But how did you tell your lovely and beloved daughter that her father was a stinking rat who deserted our sinking ship?

When I mentioned that to Madge, she’d hooted derisively. “You think she didn’t figure out Eddie’s nature when she was about five? Get real, Lib.”

But it was so embarrassing to acknowledge what a fool I’d been. I’d been so needy that I’d believed Eddie’s assertions of love and fallen into his arms. Jumped into his arms. But it wasn’t only my shame that kept me silent. In all honesty I could also say I wanted to protect Chloe from her father and his ability to be purposefully cruel.

One day, when I was about five months pregnant, I had been standing by my school locker, blocked from view by its open door, when Eddie and two of his cronies came down the hall. I heard his voice and wished I could crawl into the locker so I didn’t have to see him or he me. I’d never sparkled like Tori, and now in the overly big clothes I was wearing to minimize my pregnancy and hopefully get through the school year without the school authorities finding out, I was an even greater embarrassment to myself than usual.

“I’m short of cash for the weekend,” he said. “I sure miss Chief Keating at times like this.”

“Did he ever know about the drugs?” That was not-so-bright-but-oh-so-loyal Rick Woods.

Drugs? Eddie was doing illegal drugs? My hand went to my stomach. What effect would that have on the baby?

“Where do you think I got ’em?” Eddie asked. “You think I’d risk my neck gettin’ involved with the hopheads out there?”

“The chief supplied you?”

“Him and the lieutenant, but only to sell. The deal was that if they ever found out I was keeping any product for myself, I was toast.”

Relief made me lightheaded. My baby didn’t have a druggie for a father. I grabbed the edge of the locker for balance, resting my forehead against the cool metal door.

“Toast? As in dead?” Rick sounded incredulous.

“Who knows? I never pushed it. It was a sweet deal, easy money while it lasted.”

Their voices were so close I knew they were almost on me.

“Aren’t you afraid one of ’em’ll rat you out for a lighter sentence?”

“They know I know too much.”

“What do you know?” Rick asked eagerly.

“I know they were selling to the drug ring in the Camden projects. Those are nasty people, let me tell you, and they’ve got lots of contacts inside the Jersey prison system. It’ll be hard enough for the Keatings to stay alive in prison, them being cops and all, but if they name names, they won’t have a chance, especially the chief, the old man. And then there’s the fact that I could tell the world that I had both twins. Trust me, they don’t want the world to know that sordid little fact.”