by K. T. Tomb
Having completely forgotten about her motorcycle, Riley had the familiar swell of disappointment to realize that the motorcycle she walked past that was propped up on the side of the bar’s south wall was the one which she currently had the keys for. The bike itself wasn’t terrible, a 500cc Suzuki T500. The problem was that it wasn’t really hers; it was a replacement for the beautiful British racing green Triumph she had lost in a not quite legal street race a month previously. The Suzuki wasn’t in bad shape considering it was after all, nearly twenty years old, but it still didn’t quite suit her as well as the Triumph had. Damn that Darren Harper taking her on the last corner, forcing her into second place and missing out on a cool grand. Not having the cash to pay into the winner’s pot herself, she had to give up her pink slip.
She swung her leg over the seat of the Suzuki and fished her key from the zippered pocket in her leather jacket. O’Malley’s, Steven and her regrets were soon left behind as the Savannah air flowed through her short hair and over her skull, and even on this hopefully temporary motorbike, the joy of freedom, the speed, the easy way she darted through lunchtime traffic always managed to improve Riley’s mood to no end. She weaved her way across town, heading for home—or, more accurately, her place of work which doubled as her home these days.
She slowed the bike gently as she passed Forsyth Park, taking in the verdant green park lands, then sped on quickly, doubling the speed limit for most of the route to East 49th Street, and the welcome sight of the decaying building that housed R3 Recovery. As she pulled up outside, a familiar pickup truck arrived, honking its horn. Riley dismounted as her sister Roberta opened the door and stepped from her vehicle.
“Sis, you look like hell. Rough night?” she asked.
“You might say that, but I’d rather not talk about it, ever, if you don’t mind,” Riley said, but despite her words she no longer felt embarrassed or glum about her indiscretions of the night before. Roberta smiled at her, kindly.
“Come on Riley, I’ll get the coffee on. I just got done taking in that jumper; Terry had to bring the police van out to collect him; I had the guy handcuffed to my own ride!” Roberta laughed as she relayed the tale of Mike Lewis, embellishing her own dramatic outsmarting of the criminal only a little.
“Nice work, we need all the cash we can get, huh? Hey, can’t your cop boyfriend help out a bit?” Riley asked, accentuating the word ‘cop’ with a dash more venom than she had intended.
“I wish you wouldn’t call him that. He’s a good guy, and we’ve been together six months since yesterday, so get used to it. You’re just mad at him and the police in general, for writing you up with tickets, which I hasten to remind you wouldn’t happen if you didn’t break the speed limit every darn day.”
“Gee, thanks, Bertie,” Riley said, “tell your cop boyfriend I’ll try and keep it below a hundred or so in the future.” Roberta threw her hands up in mock horror and turned toward the wood and glass door bearing the legend R3 Recovery—R., R., & R. Vaughan, Proprietors. Through the glass, both sisters could see their third sister behind the office desk. Ricki Vaughan stared frostily through the door at them while cradling a telephone against one ear and holding two separate pieces of paper in her hands. She did not look like she had had a good morning.
Riley and Roberta entered the office, sending the bell over the door jingling.
Chapter Four
Ricki
Ricki’s morning had not been anywhere near as exciting as either of her sisters, but if she was asked her opinion on the matter, it had been far more stressful than both Roberta’s and Riley’s combined.
The air conditioner gave out within fifteen minutes of being started up at eight in the morning when she arrived, and she was now reduced to the ignominy of employing a desk fan in a vain attempt to combat the unrelenting Savannah mid-summer heat. The hot air that was pushed over her skin felt only cooled by a degree and at most two, which made the torture of catching up on the paperwork that all of the Vaughan sisters had ignored for some weeks all the more arduous.
In addition to this, Ricki had to cover her own secretarial and telephone answering services in Riley’s absence. Her youngest sister at twenty-two didn’t have Ricki’s experience in running the business, so when she wasn’t out chasing down vehicle repossessions, which was most of the time lately, Ricki pressed her into doing the menial office tasks.
How had they allowed it to get so bad? There were multiple invoices to pay, and dozens of letters to reply to, including several important looking ones bearing the seal of the local courthouse—no doubt regarding the bail bondsman license for R3 Recovery that was up for renewal. Ricki shuffled the most official looking letters to the bottom of the pile and attacked instead the letters bearing a handwritten address.
In her experience, such missives were invariably pleas for assistance when the local police refused to help. This wasn’t to dismiss the validity of some of the cases, and it was true that one of R3’s biggest cases of the last three years (the recovery of the deeds to over a dozen condominiums that had been swindled) had been as a result of one of these unsolicited begging letters, but that was a rarity. The vast majority of the letters were pointless. Find my lost cat, my husband ran off with my jewels—value: fifty dollars. Still, even answering these non-starters was better than tackling the serious letters at the bottom of the pile. She knew it was irresponsible, and she likewise knew that eventually she would have to deal with them; just not yet. It was far too hot, and her patience was far too short.
Ricki discarded her neckerchief at ten in the morning, and at eleven kicked off her shoes. Her stockings went at midday, fifteen minutes before Roberta and Riley had arrived. Despite growing up in Savannah, none of the three Vaughan sisters were particularly good at coping with the heat, almost in defiance of their mother who had blamed her daughter’s sun-shyness on their daddy’s white man’s blood. Their father had always agreed happily with his wife, but he was as comfortable in the blazing Savannah sun as she was. Ricki had no particular theory on the reason why, she just knew that she hated being stuck inside, with no air conditioning, while Roberta was off being an all-action hero and Riley; well, where the hell was Riley? She had been due to be in to help with this horrendous mess of paperwork at nine. Ricki was cursing her under her breath for what felt like the fortieth time that hour when she heard the thrumming engine of Riley’s bike, pulling up outside. The cavalry had arrived, at last.
The bell over the door rang as Roberta led Riley into the office. Neither of the girls took advantage of the cracked leather sofa in what served as a waiting area for the few visitors that R3 received in person. Ricki grunted a greeting but felt her face break into the first smile of the day when Roberta dropped the receipt from the police department relating to the re-capture of Mike Lewis.
“Well done sis! That’s the first good news I’ve seen all day,” she said.
“It’s not much, Ricki. Guess it’ll pay for some new paperclips or something. Don’t we have anything a bit juicier I can sink my teeth into? I’m bored as hell.” Roberta twirled her finger through her hair.
Ricki’s smile dropped instantly.
“Bored!” she spat. “Bored, are you? You could come and help me sort through all this trash and see if we can’t scrape a few more contracts out of them.” She leaned in her chair to eyeball Riley, who was, at a shade over five feet tall, comfortably hidden by Roberta’s frame. “And you, miss-can’t-get-out-of-bed-too-drunk, you should have been here hours ago. Why am I picking up after your screw-ups, again?”
Riley gave her sister a sheepish grin.
“C’mon, Ricki I-” she began, but Ricki silenced her with a raised finger, now in full flow.
“C’mon Ricki, nothing. We’re on our own here, ladies. We need to actually work as a team. At least Roberta gets the odd bounty, and I’ve pulled in three investigations across the county, this month alone. Riley, what exactly have you done for us lately? It’s two thousand and fourteen, and you
’re acting like you’re waiting for Rock Hudson to walk off the set and carry you off into the sunset. A woman has to make her own way these days, get it?” Ricki’s jaw was set, eyes feeling on fire. It felt good to have an enemy to fight, someone to blame, even though it wasn’t all Riley’s fault and she knew she’d feel bad about it later.
“Oh, screw you!” Riley’s yell of pent-up anger made Roberta physically jump backward, standing on Riley’s toe, who was evidently so angry at their elder sister that she barely noticed, or didn’t give any outward appearance of feeling pain.
“I’ve had a really, really crappy morning, I stink, and I could do without the third degree from you, alright? Gosh, when did you turn into such a bitch? You’re not Mom. And you never will be.”
Riley folded her arms in defiance. Ricki stood up out of her chair, finger jabbing and ready to unleash full-scale Vaughan family warfare, when her eyes widened at the shape of the man at the door, coming in. Great. A visit from Dumont was all she needed right now. The portly white man—fifty-something and looking a good ten years older, thanks to the combination of what Roberta had always said was a drinking problem of herculean proportions and the wizening effects of the Savannah climate—waddled into the office. Ricki stood motionless, finger in the air. Riley and Roberta turned on the spot and muttered their greetings to the man whose visits invariably accompanied a lecture.
“Good morning, Mr. Dumont,” Ricki echoed her sisters. “How are you feeling today?”
Dumont had, for as long as Ricki could remember, been on the verge of dying from any number of imagined maladies, and Dumont had been a friend of the Vaughan family since before any of the girls had been born.
“Good morning ladies. I do hope I didn’t interrupt any, uh, family business?” Dumont ignored Ricki’s question, and Riley shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot, as she had always done since a child when caught fighting with either Roberta, or Ricki, or both.
“Nothing we can’t sort out, Mr. Dumont,” Roberta said in a falsely cheery voice.
“Yes, we’re just discussing paperwork,” said Ricki.
“Ah, excellent,” said Dumont.
He rummaged for a moment in the inside pocket of his light summer blazer which was like his pants and shirt an off-white shade that made him appear as if he would be more at home selling high cholesterol pineapple chunks than his usual business of being a venture capitalist and a giant pain in the ass for the Vaughan sisters. He withdrew a sheaf of letters, and passed them to Riley, who passed them to Roberta, even though Ricki was standing closer to her. Roberta handed over the letters, and Ricki rifled them quickly, and she was sure that she was unable to keep the horror from her eyes as she fought to restrain her mouth.
“What are they, Ricki?” Riley said, standing on tiptoes to try and see over the edge of the letters. Ricki instinctively raised the papers to hide them from her view. Riley scowled.
“What they are, my dear, are bills for the running costs of your business,” said Dumont. “As you can see, the bill runs to some thousands of dollars, which you ladies clearly don’t think is too much of a problem because you have always had me to bail you out.”
The Vaughan sisters made exclamations of denial but Dumont silenced all protests with a chop of one pudgy hand. His face became dark and glowering and when he spoke his voice was no longer his soft southern drawl but was thunderous with anger and frustration.
“Enough! I’ve known all of y’all since you could fit in my hand, and I knew your folks way before that. I’ve been like a grandpappy to you since your parents have been gone, but you have to stop taking me for a ride! I agreed to back R3 Recovery, and y’all know I’m happy to, but you have to break even! Thousands of dollars in unpaid bills and a receipt for a new motorcycle!”
“It’s not exactly new,” said Riley, in a small voice. Dumont glowered, and she was silent.
“Oh, I might have guessed you’d lose your last one. What did you do, wreck it? Never mind, I don’t care,” Dumont spat, voice still at full volume. Ricki had never seen him quite so apoplectic. “You three characters have exactly one month before the electricity company pulls the plug. I guess Riley would be instructed to repossess her own damn bike and I would think Roberta’s truck too, not to mention all the furnishings in here, and you’ll be working at Walgreens. I’ve backed you for five years, and you have never let it get this bad, but promise to your daddy or no, that’s it. Sort your own mess out. Let me know when you have the cash, or when you’re ready to hand over the keys for R3.” Dumont straightened his shirt which had nearly taken leave of his back during his explosion. “Have a nice day, ladies,” he said, and with that marched out of the offices of R3 Recovery.
The sisters looked at each other, agape. The room was silent for several long moments, and Ricki felt that she had tinnitus such was the volume of Hubert Dumont in full flow. She had never seen him quite like that before, not even when she had Roberta had broken the windscreen of his Cadillac throwing stones as children. Ricki, Riley and Roberta shared wide eyed looks. Ricki let the unpaid bills drop onto her desk and slumped back into her chair, head in her hands.
“Ricki, what are we going to do?” Riley said. Ricki raised her face to her little sister, memory of the conflict of only a few minutes previously buried, for now.
“I don’t know. We need,” she examined the bills, “about eight grand. Eight thousand! I don’t think we can do it.” She felt downcast. R3 Recovery had been her life for five years, and sure it wasn’t all that profitable, but the Vaughan sisters had made it by themselves. It was theirs, and now it could all end.
“We’ll find a way, somehow!” said Roberta, forcing a smile. “We’re the Vaughan sisters, right? We can do anything if we put our minds to it. Now, we just need to get a few jobs in, a few real big hitters, and we’re back in the game, right?”
“Yeah!” joined Riley. “We can do it! A few Ferrari repos, some caught fraudsters, they’re always well paid!”
Their optimism was almost enough to break through Ricki’s pragmatism, but the weight of responsibility hung on her heart heavier than her sisters’. It always had done, as the eldest. Then, out of nowhere, there was an unfamiliar, metallic buzzing noise. Ricki couldn’t place it for a moment, and then it ended as Riley picked up the receiver of the telephone on Ricki’s desk.
“R3 Recovery? Yes!” She said, and motioned for a pencil. Ricki handed one over. “Mmmhmm… ya huh… Okay! Great! We’re on our way!” Riley hung the phone back up and grinned.
Ricki raised an eyebrow. “So… are we saved?” she said.
Riley’s smile faltered a little.
“Well, no, but it’s a repo! I got a repo; it’ll get us, like, two hundred! That’s a start, right?” Roberta and Ricki shared a slightly crestfallen moment. Nothing was going to be quite that easy, it appeared.
“Okay, it’s a start. We have to start somewhere. Get on it, ladies. Roberta, you’re free at the moment. Go with Riley. I’ll get in touch with the courthouse and see if they have any jumpers for you.” Riley mock saluted, and positively skipped out the door. Roberta merely shrugged and followed her, hips swinging as Ricki picked up the phone.
Maybe, just maybe, there would be a light at the end of all this. Losing R3 Recovery could not happen. Must not happen. She had to find a way of keeping the Vaughan family together.
Chapter Five
Roberta
Despite the oppressive heat and the evident inability of any partner in R3 Recovery to maintain a working air conditioning unit, neither vehicular nor in a building, Riley was irrepressible.
As children, Roberta had found her bursts of excitement annoying to the extent that on more than one occasion she had press-ganged Ricki into assisting in flushing Riley’s head in the toilet. As they grew up she had recognized that the youngest sister veered wildly from the depths of self-destruction and depression to periods of near mania, and Roberta and Ricki grew kinder with the understanding of that.
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nbsp; As the two sisters traveled across Savannah, Roberta barely paid attention to the roads. She had driven these streets for ten years, ridden bikes around them for ten more than that. For all its flaws with the racial divisions and the economic disparity, she did love the city. On one corner, she had shared her first kiss with Terence Alderman, by a stand of trees she had been caught by Ricki trying marijuana and threatened with summary jail; by the courthouse steps she herself had done the same to Riley. The Vaughan sisters were as much a part of Savannah as it was a part of them.
“Hey, Roberta,” Riley said, after driving some distance in silence. “You mad at me too?” Riley looked up with worried eyes at her elder sibling. Had she been worrying about that the whole time? Roberta checked her watch. Twenty minutes, she had been lost in her own past and neglected to pay attention to the moment she was in, which was really the only moment that ever really mattered. At this moment, her little sister was worried.