Fatal Deduction (6 page)

I knew the picture she meant. He was a rookie, just out of the police academy, and Nan was all of twenty. They had married a month later, Dad already on the way.

There was a very similar picture of Mom and Dad at about the same age, Dad a big bull of a man in his uniform, Mom impossibly slim in her jeans and shirt. Tori and I had shown up a mere five months later.

What had happened to all that fine promise?

“Nan and Pop are still a pretty good-looking pair.” Tori spread marmalade on a muffin, but she only managed one bite before pushing her plate away. “I hope I look that good when I’m their age.”

“I bet you’ll be even prettier,” Chloe said. I noticed wryly that she didn’t include me in that comment.

Tori shot me a mocking look. “And I didn’t know you kept family pictures, Libby. I thought you’d washed your hands of us sinful Keatings.”

I shrugged uncomfortably. I loved my family, I truly did, but for me they were as toxic as arsenic. It wasn’t because of Dad and Pop being in jail, though that was obviously no picnic. It was the family mind-set, all negativity and criticism, bitterness and resentment. Life had not turned out the way everyone had expected, and they blamed the universe. Certainly it wasn’t their fault.

From the day I became a Christian at seventeen, I was often the target of everyone’s verbal battery. Not that I had escaped before, but
it was as if I had betrayed them when I trusted my life to Christ. The nicer I tried to be, the more critical they became, even Tori. Especially Tori.

“You’re too sensitive,” she told me once when she’d made me cry. It was like she had a momentary pang of conscience. “You just need to tell us all off. Stand up to us for a change. Sass us for all you’re worth.”

There were two problems with that advice. One, I had never sassed anyone in my life. I was a peacemaker, not a troublemaker. And two, as a new Christian still feeling my way in matters of faith and practice, I didn’t think I was supposed to give as good as I got. There was all that turn-the-other-cheek stuff.

So I kept pictures because pictures were safe. They never mocked you or made fun of your faith or heaped bitter invective on you. They smiled at you and let you make believe your family loved and appreciated you.

Chloe carried her dirty dishes to the sink without being told. I held my breath as she bumped her plate on the edge of the sink, but nothing seemed to chip or break. She smiled at Tori. “I think you sinful Keatings are cool.”

“That we are, kiddo. That we are,” Tori said with a smirk at me.

Oh, God!
I prayed as that all-too-familiar fear washed over me.
Please let Chloe see through them. Please don’t let her go down the same path they’ve followed. Please let her follow Christ! Please!

“I’m going to take a shower, Aunt Tori.” Chloe walked out of the room, all unaware of my alarm at her comment. She paused at the base of the stairs. “Then I’ll go get Jenna. We’ll be ready whenever you want us.”

“Ten,” Tori said, amazingly perky after her night out.

I shifted slightly as Chloe raced up the stairs, and the paper in my pocket crackled. I glanced at Tori’s
Times
puzzle booklet, now sitting on the counter. Everyone who knew Tori for any length of time knew she was crazy about crosswords. She carried puzzles with her the way ardent readers carried paperbacks.

“Did you know that man on the steps?” I watched Tori closely. She was one of the best liars I’d ever met. “Because he somehow knew you.”

Her eyes went wide with innocence, a sure sign she was about to lie.

T
ORI SHOOK HER HEAD
, her eyes earnest. “I didn’t know him.”

“You turned awfully pale when you saw him.”

“I’ll bet you did too,” she shot back. “And cops make me turn pale too.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the paper. I unfolded the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet until only one fold remained. I held it out for her to see.

T
ORI
, handwritten in block letters.

A flash of something like fear appeared before she could stop it. Even if the paper hadn’t been on a dead man, that quick inability to school her features would have told me it was somehow significant, because Tori was a master at controlling herself, her technique perfected when Dad and Pop got into so much trouble.

I opened the paper and laid it on the table. A free-form crossword puzzle with circles around certain spaces stared up at us.

Tori glanced at her
Times
booklet, open on its spiral binding to the current project.

“No comparison, is there?” She sneered at the paper on the table.

I read clue one. “Competent.” I checked the puzzle. Four letters across. “Able.” I wrote it in. “One-down: from the heart.” I frowned. There was a reason I did Sudoku instead of crosswords.

Tori reached for the puzzle. “Don’t bother, Lib. I’ll do it later.”

I firmed my hold on the paper. “We’ll do it now, Tori. Before Chloe comes down and learns something uncool about her favorite aunt.”

“Her only aunt.” Tori tried for the paper again.

“Careful.” My voice was hard. “You’ll tear it.”

Tori narrowed her eyes. “I believe this was addressed to me. It’s my private concern.”

I shook my head. “Not when I find both it and the dead body it’s resting on. We’re doing it together and now.”

“When did you become so stubborn?”

Obviously stubbornness was not a good character trait, at least in me. “About five o’clock this morning.” I held tight to the paper. “It’s amazing what tripping over a dead man does to you.”

“I’m not doing it.” Tori flicked a finger over the puzzle.

“Yes, you are. I kept this puzzle from the police, which is probably very illegal and could get me in a lot of trouble. But you’re my sister and deserve a chance to explain all this to me.”

“There’s nothing to explain.”

“And even if there was, you wouldn’t tell me, right?”

She just looked at me. I clearly did not have a corner on the stubbornness market.

I leaned forward, invading her space. “If you don’t cooperate
here, I will call Detective Holloran.” I kept my voice even, but I hoped she heard the iron intent behind it.

Tori leaned back, and her face would have been funny under other circumstances, her mouth and eyes wide in disbelief. “Are you threatening me?”

I thought for about a second. “Yes, I believe I am.”

She glared at me.

“I’m also trying to protect you, so let’s get to work here.”

It took Tori less than five minutes to do the puzzle, with me looking on. I never eased my grip on the paper the whole time she worked.

I stared at the circled letters when she was finished. “‘Areyounext.’ Are you next?” I blinked. “That sounds like a threat.”

“Don’t be foolish.” Tori tried to appear unruffled as she lounged back in her chair.

“Tori, this puzzle with your name on it was found on a dead man. Is someone out to kill you too? Is that what this message means?”

I’d spent a good part of my growing-up years waiting for Dad or Pop to get bumped off by some druggie in a raid or at a simple car stop, and my adult years waiting for some inmate to take their resentment of law enforcement out on either or both of them in prison. I’d never thought I would fear the same thing for my sister.

“Get a grip, Libby.” She stood.

I grabbed her hand. “Talk to me, Tori.”

She pulled her hand free. “My life is none of your business.”

“Yes, it is. If your poor choices endanger my daughter or me in any way, it’s my business big-time.”

The front doorbell rang, and Tori knew reprieve when she heard it. She all but ran to answer it, beating the barking Princess by a hair.
With a sigh I collected our empty plates and cups and took them to the sink where I hand-washed them. No way would I put the Wedgwood in the dishwasher. I went back to the table and studied the puzzle. I could hear Tori’s animated voice from the living room over Princess’s happy yips.

“Chloe’s upstairs, Jenna. Why don’t you go get her and tell her whenever she’s ready, we’ll leave.”

I heard the clump of feet rushing toward the third floor accompanied by the
click, click
of little poodle claws. And I heard a deep voice.

“I just wanted to stop and ask how you and your sister are doing.”

“We’re fine.” Tori’s voice was bright and cheerful. You’d never know she’d just gotten a death threat or watched the police lug away a dead man.

“I know that body this morning must have given you a jolt.”

“It certainly did.” Now she was properly solemn. “Thank you for being concerned.”

I heard a small laugh from Drew. “Jenna’s mad because she slept through all the excitement.”

“Have no fear. Chloe will fill her in. I’m surprised the kid’s scream when she opened the door didn’t waken Jenna and all the rest of Philadelphia.”

There was a clatter of feet as Chloe and Jenna rushed downstairs. How they made so much noise in flip-flops was an interesting question, though not one I cared to ponder.

“Look, Dad,” Jenna said. “This is Princess. Isn’t she cute? Don’t you want one?” I imagined her cuddling the dog.

Drew gave a noncommittal laugh and sidestepped the question.
“Well, you girls have a good time shopping. And, Jenna”—his voice took on that reasonable parental tone kids so hate—“you do whatever Chloe’s aunt asks.”

“Dad,” came her embarrassed cry.

And I knew he knew Tori wasn’t me.

Interesting, since everyone else tended to confuse us.

D
REW GRINNED BROADLY
as he walked back to his home away from home. Jenna was so easy. And he was undoubtedly a terrible dad to enjoy teasing her like he did, but it was such fun to get a rise out of her.

He hoped she had a good time with Chloe and Tori. He knew spending his sabbatical here was hard on her. She was away from her friends and would miss the first part of the coming school year, an eternity in the shifting cliques and clashes of eighth grade.