Fatal Deduction (9 page)

But mostly she loved me, showed me a healthy family, and modeled Jesus before me.

I sat in Aunt Stella’s living room and wished I was in Madge’s shop or workroom or even at the eBay store, mailing one of our online sales to somewhere on the other side of the country or world. It was not an exaggeration to say that I—and Chloe—owed my life to her.

“I didn’t get to the Hutchinson estate sale today,” I told Madge when she picked up her phone. “I found a dead body instead.”

“What?”

I could just picture her, eyes wide with disbelief and curiosity as she danced around the room. Madge was a fidgeter of immense proportion. Bill seemed to find her constant movement amusing, and her boys, ages nineteen, seventeen, and fifteen, took it for granted. Since Bill always looked rested, I took it to mean that she somehow stayed still when she slept.

“I found a dead body,” I repeated and gave her a rundown of the morning. I pulled myself out of the recliner as we talked and wandered into the kitchen for a glass of sweet tea.

“That note with Tori’s name on it is troubling.”

“Tell me about it.” As I passed Tori’s
Times
puzzle book resting haphazardly on the counter, my elbow caught it, and it tumbled to the floor. A piece of folded paper that I had earlier thought was a torn page fluttered out.

“You’ve got to give that puzzle to the police, Lib. Tori’s got to talk to them.”

I sighed. “I know.” I bent to pick up the booklet and the piece of paper. As I stood, the paper fell open and a puzzle appeared, circles around specific letters but none of the answers filled in. My breath caught. I flipped the paper and there was Tori’s name in all caps, just like the note on the dead man.

A chill raised bumps on my arms. “I just found another one, Madge.”

“Uh-oh. Is it filled in?”

“No. I’ve got to go.”

I heard her yell, “Call me!” as I hit Off. I grabbed my purse and scrabbled around until I found a pencil, then collapsed at the table, the puzzle spread before me. Clue one-across was
now
. Five letters. I wrote
today
. Two-down was
one who gets even
. I didn’t think the answer was
mean person
. I went to six-across, which cut through two-down.
One who owes
. Six letters. I wrote
debtor
.

My hand stilled. Was Tori a debtor, or was it just a word that supplied an
o
to the embedded message? If she was a debtor, whom did she owe? Certainly not a bank like me with my mortgage-banks didn’t send threatening puzzles or dead bodies.

Gambling debts? She worked in the gambling industry, but surely she was too smart to play. She knew the house always won. In fact, I didn’t think the SeaSide let its employees gamble there. And she saw what happened to the disordered gamblers, the people who got caught in the addiction. She saw the ruined lives and broken homes of those for whom the bet was all.

Still, even knowing the pitfalls well, I feared she had tumbled down the abyss of empty promises and vain speculations. The question was: how deep was the water in her pit? The threats buried in the puzzles, to say nothing of the dead man on the front steps, seemed to indicate she was in well over her head. How long could she successfully tread water?

If she owed money, who did she owe it to? Casinos didn’t send threatening puzzles any more than banks. What kind of a lender would be ruthless enough to send a dead man as a message?

Oh, Lord, did You bring me here to save Tori?

I just wondered if I could bear the emotional cost.

W
HEN I FINISHED
solving the puzzle, I stared in distress at the message. Y
OU
A
RE
O
VERDUE
.

Library books could be overdue.

So could taxes and your time of the month.

Reports at work could be overdue, and trains and planes.

I doubted any of these things were Tori’s problem.

Loans could also be overdue.

My stomach cramped. Had Tori borrowed unwisely? It certainly made sense.
I want it. I need it. I’m buying it
. That was Tori, no matter how expensive the item and how empty her bank account.

If she borrowed unwisely, it also meant she’d run her legitimate credit avenues to the max. It had to.

And no one left dead bodies lying around unless big money was involved. The sweet tea sloshed uncomfortably in my teeming stomach.

Had Tori really been foolish enough to go to a loan shark?

Even thinking of her with such a connection seemed absurd. I would have thought that she’d have learned from the example of Dad and Pop that wrong choices eventually caught up with you. However, knowing Tori, she no doubt thought she could charm her way out of her payments if she couldn’t make them or if she wanted to use her salary in some other manner, like betting more or buying my daughter a laptop. Since life generally went as Tori scripted, Dad and Pop excepted, she assumed she could write this scenario too. If half of what I saw on TV was accurate, she was being unbelievably naive. Loan sharks weren’t used to taking “no” or “wait” for an answer. They expected what was due them when it was due them, exorbitant interest rate and all.

I looked around Aunt Stella’s living room, all rose and beige with a gorgeous crimson, beige, and black patterned rug. Her formal dining area was more Hepplewhite, the shield-back chairs mahogany with needlepoint seats. We were living in a museum filled with priceless antiques.

No wonder Tori was willing to stay here with me for six months. She needed the money from Aunt Stella’s estate more than I did,
much
more than I did. All she had to do was hold the shark off for six months and everything would be fine, assuming no one got tired of waiting and made her the next body on the front stoop.

I got up, restless from all these black thoughts. I wandered to the living room corner cupboard with its scrolled pediment and studied the books resting inside on little stands. I blinked, then blinked again, goose bumps popping up on my arms as I realized what I was looking at. I opened the door and carefully lifted out the nearest, a cloth copy of
Lady Windermere’s Fan
by Oscar Wilde. I carefully
opened the cover and confirmed that it was a first edition, 1893. A slip of paper lying inside the cover read, “One of only five hundred copies, sale value—$2,800.00.”

The next book was
The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I opened it carefully and read on the paper lying inside: “First edition, first printing, original dark green cloth, $1,500.00.” There was also a volume of William Wordsworth’s poems, a first edition with its note reading, “Contains the extra stanza in ‘Ode to Duty’ omitted after this printing. 500 printed. $6,000.00.”

I thought of the collectibles and the occasional good antiques Madge and I moved. They were nothing compared to these rare books. I held a treasure in my hand, and I reverently put Wordsworth back in the cabinet.

The next book was a Thomas Wolfe,
Look Homeward, Angel
, whose slip read, “in a first state book jacket, first edition, first printing, and signed by the author. $16,500.00.”

My heart gave a queer jump. These four books represented more than $26,000.

Then I picked up the next to the last book and almost hyperventilated.
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley, printed in 1833 in two volumes. The second volume sat quietly on its stand in the cupboard. The combined value of the two was $36,000.

I lay volume one back in place and gently closed the glass door. $62,800. I looked again at the furniture, the costly objets d’art sitting casually on the end tables and coffee table, the original art on the walls. Where had the money for all these things come from? And if Aunt Stella had all this money and hadn’t kicked in to help with Dad’s and Pop’s massive legal fees, no wonder Mom and Nan resented her so much.

I thought about the little notes in each book. Someone had had the volumes appraised since Aunt Stella’s death. No doubt everything else had been valued and recorded too. For the first time I wondered who the executor of the estate was. Someone besides or in coordination with her lawyer? A bank, maybe? Some close friend I had never met?

I hadn’t wanted to live here before I knew that this place was a veritable museum, my room being the exception. Now I was terrified. The responsibility was too much, especially with a thirteen-year-old used to a home that was definitely lived in. Suddenly I was glad for my bedroom with its iron hospital bed, where I didn’t have to worry about damaging anything. I could put my feet up, stuff my clothes in the unimpressive bureau, and knock the books on the floor, and it didn’t matter. I couldn’t hurt a thing. Reader’s Digest Condensed Books never died. They didn’t even fade away.

And once again I wondered where all the money came from for all the wonderful things. Granted, Aunt Stella had a good job and a nice income, but this house represented an extraordinary income.

“James will know. James knows everything.”

I was going to have to talk with James.

But my twin was my problem du jour, and I needed to concentrate on how to extricate her from the pit into which she’d fallen, assuming she’d let me help. Life had taught me that she didn’t value my suggestions very highly, and more so—less so?—since I’d become a Christian. It was like when I said, “I believe, Jesus,” she said, “Stay away, dummy.”

What would happen when Tori realized the wealth sitting right here in the living room? Not that she could legally touch anything before the end of December. But if she was threatened enough,
scared enough, would she take things anyway? She could rationalize that they would soon be hers. She was just taking possession a bit early.

Y
OU
A
RE
O
VERDUE
would be a powerful incentive to me to take advantage of every means available to find money. And if the note wasn’t enough, there was the body.

And that was another thing. What did the body have to do with the loan shark? Had he been another client? But a loan shark would never kill someone who owed him money. Hurt maybe, but not kill. It was the one action guaranteed to prevent collecting.

Was that why Tori wasn’t more afraid? She knew he wouldn’t kill her? I went to the kitchen and looked at the puzzle still lying on the table. Words started pulsing like red flares:
debtor—
Tori?
avenger—
the shark?
scam—
what Tori was trying? What about
burglar
and
steal
? Did they refer to Tori somehow, or were they just words?

I looked at the A
RE
Y
OU
N
EXT
puzzle.

Threat. Guns. Rob. Slit. As
in throat? I glanced back at the clues. That was what twelve-across indicated. Then there were nice words like
gem
and
ruby
and
treats
. And strange ones like
eerie
and
incite
.