Deadly Gamble

by Linda Lael Miller

  I didn’t answer. After twenty-three years, I didn’t know where to start.

  It wasn’t that there was too much to say. It was that there wasn’t too much.

  Tentatively, my mother’s big brother and only living sibling touched the back of my hand. “It’s okay,” he said, and his voice was so gentle that tears smarted, like acid, behind my eyeballs. “I used to carry you on my shoulders. Help you find Easter eggs. Do you remember?”

  I shook my head. Nebulous memories were teasing the far borders of my mind, but I couldn’t seem to corner any of them long enough to take hold.

  “We looked everywhere for you.” He spoke quietly, but a muscle bunched in his jaw as he took a sip of his coffee. “My God, it was bad enough, what happened to Evie and Ron, but when you went missing on top of it—”

  Evie and Ron Mayhugh. My parents. My work-frazzled, distracted, waitress mother. My moody, chronically unemployed father. For a moment, I could see them clearly in my mind’s eye. It was an image I’d longed for, wracked my brains for, during many a sleepless night, and now, suddenly, there it was, a vivid little tableau branded on the inside of my forehead.

  “How did you find Lillian?” I asked. The air seemed to pulse around both of us, as though charged, and there was a slow, dull thudding in my ears.

  For a nanosecond, Clive looked confused. Of course, I thought. He’d known Lillian as Doris Blanchard. He made the leap quickly, though, and something eased in his face.

  “By accident,” Clive Larimer answered. “Just a fluke, really.” He gave a sigh of benevolent resignation, and his eyes were warm and kind as he looked at me, studying my features, maybe searching for a resemblance to his murdered sister. “It’s ironic, really. The day you disappeared, the police put out an all-points bulletin. After a few weeks, the FBI got involved. The case was featured on 60 Minutes. Beyond an occasional sighting, nothing. And then a friend of mine happens to recognize Doris—Lillian—while visiting her sister at the nursing home. I walk in, thinking I’m crazy to still be hoping after all these years that I’ll find out anything, and there you are.”

  “How did you know who I was?”

  He smiled. “You look like your mother,” he said.

  Well, that answered one question. I found it curiously comforting, even though I had no aspirations to be anything like the woman I barely remembered.

  “What happened, Mary Jo?” he asked, after a long pause.

  Mary Jo. It was odd, hearing the name. Familiar as it was, like the words of a ditty learned in childhood, it made me feel like an impostor, or maybe an eavesdropper. Anybody but Mary Jo.

  “What happened?” I echoed. Was he asking about the murder or the years afterward, when Lillian and I and, later, Greer, lived like the proverbial gypsies?

  “You were there, and then you were gone.”

  I wondered how much to tell him. On the one hand, he was my uncle. He might have given me away at my wedding to Nick, ill-advised as it was to marry the jerk, if Lillian hadn’t snatched me. I might have had a father figure in my life. On the other hand, Lillian must not have trusted him, back in the day, or she wouldn’t have grabbed me up and hit the road. And she’d seemed startled, even scared, when he appeared in the doorway of her room at Sunset Villa.

  I shrugged, picked up my coffee, set it down again, un-tasted. Some of it sloshed over the rim of the cup and burned my fingers. I almost welcomed the pain, because it jarred me out of the muddle of surprise that had fogged my thinking and limited my vocabulary from the moment the thought formed in my mind: This is my uncle.

  “It wasn’t a bad life,” I said. “Lillian took good care of me. We…traveled a lot, but I thought it was fun.” Except, of course, for the times when I’d just settled into a new school, made some friends, gotten myself another library card and then had to go on the run again, usually in the middle of the night.

  “Catch me up,” Clive urged, after another extended silence. “What do you do for a living? Are you married? Do you have kids?”

  I bit my lower lip. Clive Larimer was a state senator, with a socially connected wife named Barbara and four big-toothed, impossibly blond, Harvard-educated children. I’d Googled him whenever I got into one of my Norman Rockwellian moods and turned nostalgic. I figured when I answered his questions, he’d think the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, that I was as shiftless as my dad and as codependent as my mom, and I wished I could whip out pictures of two-point-two munchkins, a dog and a successful husband, and refer circumspectly to my part-time job as a rocket scientist.

  “I work at home,” I said instead. “Medical billing and coding. Doctors like to outsource that stuff these days.” Feeling stupid, I blushed, but then plunged on. Telling the truth is good for you, Tucker had taunted me, not so long ago, during one of our screaming fights. You ought to give it a try sometime. “No kids. I was married for a couple of years, then divorced.”

  The truth, I told Tucker silently, is overrated.

  My uncle’s face reflected a calm, intense interest as he listened.

  I left out the part about seeing Nick’s ghost, of course, and I didn’t get around to mentioning that I lived in a rented apartment over a biker bar in Cave Creek, either. I’d save that for when I really wanted to make a major impression. Show him my stack of dog-eared, highlighted Damn Fool’s Guides, too, and tell him how I’d educated myself on every subject from psychic pet communication to private investigation. Who needed Harvard?

  “So that’s about it,” I said, letting the words dwindle to a sigh.

  Uncle Clive settled back in his chair, tented his fingers together over his chest. “You must have a few questions yourself,” he remarked.

  Hell, yes, I had questions.

  The first one, which I didn’t voice, was: What ever happened to that no-good, scum-sucking, parent-murdering brother of mine? Correction, Geoff was a half brother—but the whole topic congealed in my throat, like some gelatinous mass, and the words my brain framed were slithering along, flattened against the side walls, trying to squeeze past it.

  I’d run a hundred Googles on Geoff if I’d run one, after finding his last name in the newspaper archives. I didn’t remember it, for reasons already stated, and Lillian had always clammed up whenever I raised the subject. Geoff Waters, born to my mother by her first husband, had gone to a juvenile detention facility in California after confessing to shooting Dad in the back of the head and Mom through the throat. At twenty-one, he’d been released and his record expunged. It galled me a little—and scared me a lot—to know that he was out there somewhere, lily-white as far as the law was concerned. Going on just as if nothing had happened.

  “Geoff,” I finally managed. “Where do you suppose he is now?”

  I hadn’t realized Clive was tense until he visibly relaxed. “Who knows?” he replied, followed by an unspoken, Who cares?

  “He killed my cat,” I said. The words just came out, without my consciously forming them.

  What cat?

  Clive leaned forward slightly in his metal chair. His bushy brows lowered a little, and his eyes narrowed.

  I blushed again, rubbed my right temple with my fingertips. “I don’t know why I said that,” I admitted, flustered. “I don’t remember owning a cat.”

  My uncle bent a little further at the waist and laid a hand on my shoulder. “This is too much, too fast,” he said. “I’m sorry for springing myself on you out of the blue, Mary Jo. It’s just that I’ve wondered for so long, what was happening to you—if you were all right. When I saw you, I…”

  I wasn’t used to that kind of concern, and I’ve got to admit, it felt damn good. After I married Nick, Lillian and I weren’t exactly estranged, but we weren’t as close, either. She flat-out didn’t like him, and she didn’t mince words about it. Around the same time, Ham, Lillian’s husband and Jolie’s father, had been diagnosed with liver cancer, with all the attendant sorrows for all of them. And Greer had been too involved in stealing her rich doctor hus
band away from his former wife to care much what was going on in my life, so I’d coped as best I could.

  I swiped away a tear with the back of one hand.

  Clive took out his wallet, produced a card, and laid it beside my coffee cup. It was official, with raised print and the Arizona State Seal in the upper right-hand corner. “When you’re ready, Mary Jo,” he said, “give us a call.” He pushed back his chair, soundlessly this time, and stood. Collected his jacket from the armrest of the seat next to his. Waited.

  I finally realized I was supposed to reciprocate with my own information. I took the pen he offered and wrote my cell number on one of the napkins that came with the coffee. I guess I should have added the address in Cave Creek, but I was afraid he’d MapQuest it when he got the chance, and find out I lived over Bad-Ass Bert’s. Maybe before the next mini family reunion, I could swing a decent place.

  “Thanks,” my uncle said. He took the napkin, folded it carefully and tucked it into the pocket of his coat, now draped over one arm. “It’s so good to know you’re all right, Mary Jo,” he added gruffly. “I used to worry that Geoff might have found you…”

  I swallowed, felt the soft fur of a cat brush against the underside of my chin. A cat I didn’t remember owning.

  Chester, whispered one of innumerable wraiths haunting the depths of my subconscious mind.

  Clive, who had been about to turn and walk away, paused and frowned. “Are you all right, Mary Jo?”

  “Mojo,” I corrected. “Nobody calls me Mary Jo.”

  He registered this information with a half nod, his eyes still narrowed with concern. “Just then, you looked—”

  “I’m fine,” I insisted. Like I’d wanted to tell Tucker, the truth is not what it’s cracked up to be.

  Still, he hesitated. “You’ve had quite a shock. Maybe I should walk you at least as far as your car.”

  I shook my head. “I need a few moments to work through all this,” I said.

  Score one for the truth.

  “The memories must be tough to deal with,” Clive ventured.

  I favored him with a thin, wobbly smile. “That’s the problem. There aren’t any memories.”

  Uncle Clive looked taken aback, and sympathetic. “No memories?”

  “Zip,” I said.

  He surprised me then. He leaned down and kissed the top of my head, just lightly, the way I’d kissed Lillian at Sunset Villa. Something in my heart locked onto the feeling, like a heat-seeking missile, and launched itself into unknown territory.

  WHEN I GOT HOME an hour later, still shaken, but with a copy of The Damn Fool’s Guide to Tarot under my arm and a spanking-new deck in my purse, the parking lot was full of Harleys and pickup trucks, and Bad-Ass Bert’s was jumping, even though it was still early afternoon. I probably should have rescued Russell from the steady flow of pepperoni and hot dog scraps, but I was already upstairs before I really focused on the idea.

  I would take a shower, I decided, fall into bed—Nick or no Nick—and sleep until I could face the world again. After that, a couple of hours at the computer, coding and billing, and I could meet my quota, hold on to my various jobs and reasonably expect to pay next month’s rent when the first rolled around.

  I fumbled for my keys, dropped one of the Tarot cards Lillian had pressed on me in the process, and watched as it slipped between the boards of the landing and fluttered to the ground beneath.

  With a groan, I unlocked the door, tossed my purse and the book inside, and went back down the steps to retrieve the card.

  The skeleton on horseback stared up at me.

  Death. Of course it would be that card.

  I picked it up, hiked back up the stairs and got a fresh shock.

  No, Nick hadn’t come back.

  But the cat had. He was fat and white and fluffy, with china-blue eyes, and he sat on the cheap rug just inside the door, switching his lush tail back and forth.

  “Chester?”

  “Meow,” he replied.

  I dropped to my knees, reached for him, drew back my hand. If it went through him, I was going to lose it. I couldn’t deal with another ghost.

  “Chester?” Okay, so I was repeating myself. I’d automatically called him by name, so I must have recognized him.

  Another meow, this one a little less patient than the last.

  Tentatively, I touched his head. Warm. Solid. Soft.

  I saw a flash of crimson in my mind. The cat—this cat, lying on his side, dead, shot through with an arrow. I swallowed a rush of bile and sat back on my haunches, still on the landing, still clutching the Death card in my left hand. I had to take four or five deep breaths before I could be sure I wouldn’t either faint or vomit.

  “How did you get in here?” I asked.

  Like he was going to answer.

  The way things had been going, he might have. I had definitely tumbled down the rabbit hole at some point. Let’s just say, if I saw a bottle marked Drink Me, I wasn’t planning to take a swig.

  Chester gave his bushy tail another twitch, turned and strolled regally back into the apartment.

  I heard the side door open downstairs and, afraid somebody would see me kneeling on the landing and ask a lot of questions I didn’t want to answer, I scrabbled inside, with considerably less grace than the cat had exhibited, and hoisted myself to my feet.

  My mind was racing.

  I remembered what Bert had said earlier, about how his aunt Nellie had seen her dog, gone to Bingo and died.

  I peered at the Death card again, then made my way into the living room. Chester was perched on the back of the couch, delicately washing his right forepaw with a pink tongue.

  “Nick?” I demanded. “Is this your idea of a joke?”

  No answer, of course.

  Chester paused in his ablutions and regarded me with pity.

  “This is not funny,” I told him.

  “Meow,” he agreed.

  I looked around the apartment. No one had a key except Bert; I’d had the locks changed after Tucker and I called it quits—not because I was afraid of him, but as a statement, as much to myself as to him—and besides, he’d never have pulled a mean trick like this. Even if he’d been so inclined, he couldn’t have known about Chester.

  “Get a hold of yourself, Sheepshanks,” I said aloud. “This can’t be the same cat.”

  “Meow,” said Chester, sounding almost indignant.

  I saw the blood again. The arrow sticking out of the animal’s side.

  I ran into the bathroom and dry heaved until my empty stomach finally shriveled up into a tight little ball and stopped convulsing.

  “I thought you’d like him,” a familiar voice said mildly, from the doorway.

  I whirled from the sink, my face still dripping water from the frantic splashing, and there was Nick, in his funeral suit, leaning casually against the doorjamb.

  “Y-you—”

  Nick’s mouth quirked at one corner, and he nodded his head. “It’s me, all right.” He wasn’t glowing, I noticed fitfully. Must be a nighttime phenom.

  “This cat—where—?”

  “I found him wandering in the train station,” Nick said.

  I stared at him, goggle-eyed. My stomach threatened more mayhem.

  “What train station? What the hell are you talking about?”

  Chester arrived on the scene, wound himself, purring, around Nick’s ankles.

  “It’s a kind of cosmic clearinghouse,” Nick explained. “On the other side.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “You just head for Platform 9 and 3/4 and catch the Hogwarts Express.”

  Nick looked blank. He’d never been much of a reader.

  “Forget it,” I said. I pushed past Nick, noting that he was neither cold nor nebulous. Maybe the bone-freeze was a night thing, too.

  Maybe I was out of my freaking mind.

  “He was your cat when you were a little girl,” Nick wheedled, following me. “I thought—”

  I made it to th
e kitchen, wrenched open a cupboard door and ferreted around until I found a can of tuna with a fairly recent expiration date. “Do dead cats eat?” I asked, furious with confusion.

  “I don’t know,” Nick said uncertainly. I jumped when I realized he was standing directly behind me, peering over my shoulder into the cupboard. “Are those Oreos?”

  I grabbed the package of cookies off the shelf and thrust them at him. “Yes. They’re old, but what the hell. It’s not like you could be poisoned.”

  “You could be a little kinder,” Nick pointed out, affronted. But he took the cookies.

  “Excuse me,” I snapped.

  He stuck his nose into the Oreos, sniffed with decadent appreciation. His eyes rolled closed in ecstasy, the way they used to do when we had serious sex.

  “Delicious,” he said.

  The can opener whirred jarringly as I opened the tuna. I dumped the contents onto a saucer, crumbled them with a fork and set the whole shooting match down on the floor.

  Chester nosed the food with interest, but didn’t eat.

  I looked up at Nick.

  He was holding a cookie in one hand and staring at it as though it had just tried to bite him.

  “Damn,” he muttered.

  I glanced at the cat again, partly to make sure he was still there and partly to see if he would eat.

  “Problem?” I asked, shifting my attention back to Nick.

  “I bit into the thing, and nothing happened.”

  “I’d like to see that,” I said. “Do it again, while I’m watching.”

  Nick did his ironic look. “This is not a performance designed for your amusement,” he told me.

  “Duh,” I shot back. “I am definitely not amused.”

  Just then, a familiar knock sounded at the outside door.

  Nick arched an eyebrow. “Company?”

  “Disappear or something,” I whispered. “It’s Tucker!”

  Nick folded his arms. “Oh, well, if it’s Tucker—”

  “I mean it, Nick. Go back to the train station or whatever it is.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Boogie!” I ordered, and made for the hallway.