Fatal Deduction (30 page)

“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.

At first the only noise was the refrigerator opening and things being put on the counter. Tori peeked back into the room.

“You doing okay, Chloe?” Jenna watched Chloe pile tuna onto slices of whole wheat bread.

Chloe shrugged. “It still hurts, and I wish she had told me so I could have been prepared. But I know she was trying to protect me. It was the surprise of the whole thing that got to me.”

Tori frowned. The kid sounded like her mother, all understanding and bouncing back with a smile, a second-generation goody two-shoes. How sad was that?

Jenna opened cupboards until she found the cookies. She pulled out a bag of Double Stuf Oreos. “You’ve got to remember to keep your mom as she is today separate from the girl who was sixteen. They’re like two different people.”

Tori blinked. When had kids gotten so smart? Where was the me-first, I’m-worth-it mentality? If her Chloe Quest were to succeed, she would have to work a lot harder than she’d thought.

Jenna put several Oreos on a paper plate, closed the bag, and shoved it back into the cupboard. “I have to remember that my mom was a pretty girl who loved Jesus when Dad met her and married her. The bad part of her bipolar disorder didn’t kick in until later. I have to tell myself that all the time, or I’d think Dad was nuts for marrying her. Then that makes my thinking about him get all screwed up.”

Chloe grabbed a sharp knife and cut the sandwiches in half. “Mom’s told me lots of times not to follow her example. But you know something? I want to be like her when I grow up. I really do. She’s pretty and nice and works hard. She even bought us a house all by herself. And her faith is deep and true.” Chloe handed Jenna a sandwich. She made a face. “But still, Icky Eddie!”

The girls looked at each other and chorused, “Eeyew!” They went out onto the patio to sit with their parents.

Tori walked slowly up to her room. She knew she was selfish and demanding and what some might consider shallow. She knew she was beautiful and had deserved being prom queen and Most Popular. She knew she liked things her way and didn’t adapt easily when she was thwarted. She knew she was good at using and manipulating people, at least everyone but Luke, and she was proud of it. She was worth every single one of the accolades and perks that came her way.

She knew she had always been the dominant twin, even if she was the younger.

But while she was busy being vivacious and charming, leaving a trail of broken hearts and accumulating a closet of to-die-for clothes, Libby had been busy too. She’d grown a backbone and inner fortitude. She’d raised a daughter who loved and respected her, which was more than Tori could say for how she felt toward their mother, and
she was forced to wonder, if only for a moment, how much Lib’s faith had helped her become this impressive woman.

And what in the world did she do with this new woman? It didn’t take many smarts to understand that she could try and bribe Chloe from now till doomsday, and she might not succeed in luring her away from all that circumspect living. If finding out about Eddie didn’t do it, would anything?

Life had certainly become disorienting.

Libby wasn’t malleable Libby.

Eddie wasn’t biddable Eddie.

Mick was dead and Ruthie was Drew’s ex.

Drew seemed enamored with quiet, mousy Libby. No. Maybe quiet, at least in comparison to her own outgoing nature, but not mousy.

And Luke had called twice in two days.

She shook herself. Too much analyzing was bad for the complexion. She pushed Luke’s number in speed dial and listened to the phone ring. She closed the bedroom door behind her as Luke barked, “Tori, where are you? Why aren’t you here?”

“I’m at my Aunt Stella’s. You know the every-third-night deal. ”

“Well, I don’t like it.” He sounded miffed, and Tori was delighted. He missed her.

“Are you coming up to the apartment tonight?” she asked.

“Probably not. Why don’t you just forget that house and come back here where you belong?”

“You of all people should know that I need Aunt Stella’s money.”

“Yeah, well, we can work something out there.”

“Like forgiving my debt?”

He snorted. “Right.”

Tori glanced at the old furniture surrounding her. Old stuff didn’t appeal to her, but she knew that some people paid big money for things she wouldn’t give house room. Look at what Libby did for a living. She’d actually made enough to buy a house in Haydn, though why she’d want to live so near the parents was another thing Tori couldn’t understand.

“Luke, I think this house is loaded with antiques worth a lot of money. If I leave, I lose all that lovely green stuff that would come from their sale.”

Luke was silent for a minute. If there was one thing he appreciated, it was that lovely green stuff.

“I’ll be with you most nights. Two out of three.”