Deadly Gamble

by Linda Lael Miller

  “It wasn’t the eating part I was worried about,” I told her. “It was the gnawing.”

  She smiled.

  “It would be great to have you living in Phoenix,” I said. “I miss you, big-time.”

  “If you miss me so much,” Jolie reasoned, “why did you boogie like that the other night? Why didn’t you stay and talk it through?”

  “I don’t know.” It seemed I’d been saying that a lot lately.

  “I’m on your side, Moje. You were rattled because some of your memories were coming back, and you panicked. I could have listened, maybe helped you sort things out, if you’d given me a chance.”

  “A part of me doesn’t want to remember,” I confessed.

  “Ya think?” Jolie chimed. She sounded smart-ass, but I saw the concern in her eyes.

  “Maybe it’s better not to start digging things up,” I mused. “After all, it’s been twenty-three years. It’s old news.”

  Jolie put down her fork, pushed her plate to one side for the waitress to remove. “Lillian must have thought you were in danger, to kidnap you like that,” she said. “She’d have gone to prison, maybe for life, if they’d caught her. She blew off her whole life—her home, her friends, everything, to get you out of Dodge. Has she ever told you why?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve asked, but she always said it was better to leave the past alone. She was a great mom. She was also a master at stonewalling. The more questions I put to her, the less she was willing to say.”

  “I’ve often wondered how much she told my dad,” Jolie reflected.

  “Me, too.”

  Jolie signaled for the check.

  I’d left my ATM card at home, and I didn’t have any cash. I hadn’t deposited Greer’s check, either, since I’d been a little busy. I snatched the bill, just the same, since Jolie had paid the time before, at the Italian place in Tucson, and handed the waitress my credit card. I offered a silent prayer and hoped for the best.

  The waitress returned, and the apologetic look on her face was a clear indication that my prayer was stuck in some heavenly cyber-queue.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but the credit card company declined payment.”

  Jolie was ready with a twenty-dollar bill.

  The waitress took it and hurried away gratefully.

  “It bites, being poor,” I said, my face hot with embarrassment.

  “You really got burned in that divorce,” Jolie said. “I thought you’d paid all that stuff off.”

  “That’s the last one,” I said. “I cut up the other cards a long time ago.” I thought of Nick, and his mother, and seethed. I’d rarely used plastic, but Nick had flashed them everywhere he went. Most likely, I’d taken the fall for a lot of hotel rooms, romantic dinners and sexy lingerie. Nick DeLuca was going to be a while getting out of the train station up yonder if he needed my forgiveness to buy a ticket.

  “Better take the whackers to that one, too,” Jolie suggested.

  “You can bet on it,” I said.

  On the way back to my place, Jolie pulled into a supermarket parking lot and loaded up on groceries. Maybe she’d looked in my fridge between going to the bathroom and catching me at smoothing the bed. Maybe—and this was worse—she just felt sorry for me because I was a schmuck with a piecework job and bad credit.

  We carried the bags up to my apartment, and Jolie went off to take a shower and put on her pajamas while I put the stuff away.

  Nick popped in just as I was turning away from the refrigerator.

  “Creep,” I said, in a whisper, because I didn’t want Jolie to hear and demand an explanation. It was enough that I’d had to tell Tucker I saw ghosts, and if it hadn’t been for the Jessica story, I would have been up against it in the credibility department.

  Nick looked offended. He was holding Chester, or I’d have smacked him with something.

  I grabbed my purse, dug out the credit card, and shoved it in his face. “This bounced tonight, thanks to you and Mommy Dearest, and I was humiliated. Again.”

  Nick frowned, put the cat down on the floor. “There was life insurance,” he said. “A lot of it.”

  “Fat lot of good it did me,” I said. I yanked open the junk drawer, got out the scissors and snipped the card into pieces. Okay, I should have checked the available credit before I tried to use the thing, but I’d been making minimum payments for about a hundred years, and I figured there was room for two pancake specials at IHOP.

  Nick backpedaled. Maybe because I still had the scissors in my hand. I couldn’t kill him, but ectoplasmic puncture could conceivably be a problem. In that moment, I really wanted to test the theory.

  “Where’s the dog?” he asked.

  I choked on a sob I hadn’t known was coming. “Russell was almost murdered,” I answered, still keeping my voice down. I could hear Jolie rattling around in the other end of the apartment, though, so I figured I was safe. “I had to leave him with the vet.”

  “Murdered?” Nick repeated.

  “Yeah,” I snapped. “Murdered.” I took a deep breath, but it didn’t help. So much for The Damn Fool’s Guide to Self-Control. I’d have demanded my $14.95 back if I hadn’t highlighted so many pages. “I don’t think this forgiveness thing is going to fly,” I added. “You may need to take another approach to boarding your train.”

  “There isn’t another approach,” Nick said quietly.

  “Maybe your mother could work something out for you. Stick it to whoever’s in charge up there, the way she stuck it to me.”

  Nick closed his eyes. Opened them again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You know,” I whispered back, “you look like you mean that. You even sound like you mean it. But since you probably never told me the truth in your selfish life, I’m having a hard time believing you.”

  “Mojo—”

  Jolie stepped into the doorway, wearing cotton pajamas that made her look about eleven years old. Her gaze glided right past Nick without catching. “I thought you were on the phone,” she said.

  I smiled. “I was,” I told her. “It was just a telemarketer.”

  “Liar,” Nick said, close to my ear.

  My smile turned to a grimace.

  “They’re hiring people in India and places like that,” Jolie said. “To make sales calls, I mean. That’s how they get past the no-call list.” She grinned. “Next time, just tell them you’d love to buy everything they’re selling, but a waitress at IHOP chopped up your last credit card.”

  “Ouch,” Nick said.

  My face was beginning to hurt. I wanted to tell him to shut up, and a few other choice things, too, but I didn’t dare.

  I’d forgotten how perceptive my sister could be.

  “Is that ghost here?” she asked. “Is that why you look as if rigor mortis set in while you were watching Comedy Central?”

  “Yes!” I said, relieved, gesturing toward Nick. “He’s right here.”

  “She can’t see me, Mojo,” Nick said.

  “Where?” Jolie asked, squinting.

  I sighed. “Never mind.” Turned to Nick. “Get out,” I said. “Go rattle chains at the foot of your mother’s bed or something.”

  Jolie was wide-eyed. After all, from her viewpoint, I was talking to an empty kitchen.

  Nick blinked out. Chester, however, remained, curling around my ankles and purring.

  “No wonder you didn’t want me to bring Sweetie,” Jolie said.

  I was stumped.

  She looked down. “The cat?”

  I gasped. “You can see him?”

  “Of course I can see him. He’s right there, circling your shoes.”

  I scooped Chester up and sank into a chair at the table.

  “What’s wrong?” Jolie demanded.

  “He’s dead,” I said.

  “Who’s dead?” My sister took a seat of her own.

  “This cat.”

  “Nonsense,” Jolie said. She put out a hand to pet him, and before she
could make contact, he disappeared.

  My arms ached, suddenly empty. I felt the echo of an old loss in my heart.

  Jolie’s eyes were enormous. “What just happened here?”

  “Do you believe me now?”

  “No,” Jolie said. “I still think you’re full of shit. How did you do that?” She turned in her chair, scanning the kitchen. “With a projector, right? Some kind of hologram?”

  “Sure,” I said. “My credit card was denied at IHOP, but I can afford all kinds of sophisticated video equipment. Disneyworld has nothing on me.”

  Jolie’s rich mahogany complexion paled. I’m not sure how that was possible, but I saw it with my own eyes. “I am losing it,” she said, with a gulp, and I instantly felt sorry for her.

  Nobody knew better than I did what a jolt it was to see a ghost.

  “You’re perfectly sane, Jolie.”

  “That was the cat—”

  “The one Geoff killed, when I was four,” I said.

  Jolie wrapped her arms around her middle and rocked a couple of times. I got up and got her a bottle of water, from the dwindling store in the fridge, and handed it over—after checking to make sure the seal hadn’t been broken.

  The encounter would have been hard on anybody, but Jolie was a scientist. She’d be a long time getting the situation straight in her head, especially since her brain was heavily weighted to the left side.

  “What—what does it mean?” she asked.

  “I don’t have the slightest idea,” I answered.

  Jolie tested my forehead for fever, then her own.

  The phone rang, and I was so concerned about Jolie that I didn’t check caller ID. If I had, I wouldn’t have taken the call.

  CHAPTER

  12

  “T his is Margery DeLuca,” said Nick’s mother. She sounded uncertain, as though she were as surprised to find herself calling me as I was to hear from her. “Maybe you remember me?”

  I also remembered Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and Jack the Ripper. “How could I forget?” I countered sweetly.

  “I was just awakened, from a sound sleep, by the strangest dream—”

  Jolie peered at me curiously.

  I put the phone on speaker.

  “O-kayyy,” I said, drawing the word out.

  “I would have sworn Nick came to me.” Saying this, Attila DeLuca sounded so small and so sad that I almost felt sorry for her. And I stress almost.

  I didn’t speak. I’d rehearsed what I would say to the monster-in-law a million times, if I ever got the chance. Now, here it was, and not a damn thing came to mind.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I called you, dear.”

  Dear.

  Jolie grimaced.

  “I guess I am,” I said.

  “I feel an urgent need to meet with you in person,” Margery said.

  Jolie shook her head wildly from side to side, made a throat-slashing motion with one hand.

  Like I needed clarification.

  “I don’t see the point,” I said. God, I was proud of my self-restraint. Plus, the way my life had been going lately, I could find myself in some train depot at any moment. I didn’t want any guff at the ticket booth.

  “I was in such a state after Nick’s death,” Margery went on. “I might have overlooked some things.”

  Yes, I thought. My jugular. My vital organs. And maybe there was a dime somewhere, in the bottom of an old purse in the back of my closet, that should have been hers.

  “It’s okay, Mrs. DeLuca,” I heard myself say. “Nick was your only son, and it was terrible, the way he died. But it’s all in the past, and I really can’t imagine what we have to say to each other now.”

  “Please—just let me buy you lunch. Tomorrow, perhaps?”

  “All booked up,” I said, looking to Jolie as exhibit A. Of course, Margery couldn’t see her, but it gave me the illusion that I was telling the truth.

  Attila started to cry. I was not prepared for that.

  “We must talk,” she said.

  “Mrs. DeLuca, I’m very busy.”

  For the first time since our conversation began, she showed some steel. “Too busy,” she replied, “to discuss my son’s life insurance policy? It seems you were the beneficiary.”

  Nick loomed behind Jolie, and he looked smug as hell.

  Jolie followed my gaze and whirled.

  “She still can’t see me,” Nick said.

  “Nick and I were divorced two years before he died,” I reminded Margery calmly. As if she didn’t remember dancing naked around a bonfire the day the decree came through. “If I was still listed as the beneficiary, I’m sure it was an oversight.”

  Nick shook his head.

  Jolie looked behind her again.

  “It is a sizable amount of money,” Margery said.

  I swallowed. Jolie made a bring-it-on motion with both hands.

  “I’m really not—”

  Nick morphed over to the trash bin, fished out several pieces of the cut-up credit card, and held them under my nose.

  Jolie fainted.

  “I have to go,” I told Margery, and thumbed the button.

  Nick stepped out of my way, and Jolie was already coming around by the time I got to her.

  “Are you okay?”

  “No,” Jolie said. “I’m seeing things.”

  I helped her to her feet, settled her in a chair, and handed her the water bottle I’d gotten out earlier.

  “Vanishing cats,” Jolie murmured. “Garbage, floating in midair.”

  I gave Nick a look.

  He shrugged and spread his hands.

  “You need a good night’s sleep,” I told Jolie.

  “I need a shrink,” Jolie argued.

  “If you do, so do I,” I said, trying to console her.

  “Is that supposed to be reassuring?” Jolie countered.

  “I can’t believe you’re sisters,” Nick said. “You bicker a lot, and there’s no family resemblance to speak of.” I guess he thought he was being droll. “Maybe a little around the eyes.”

  “I’ve had about enough of you for one night,” I told him.

  Jolie looked hurt.

  I laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’m not talking to you,” I said.

  When I was sure she wouldn’t faint again, I went into the living room, folded down the couch and made a bed for her.

  She crashed without so much as a whimper of protest.

  I was a lot longer getting to sleep, and when I woke the next morning, it was to the buzz of my doorbell.

  I kept the chain on and peered around the edge of the door to see a uniformed messenger on the landing, holding an oversized envelope.

  “Ms. Sheepshanks?”

  “Yes,” I said suspiciously. I had reason to mistrust unexpected deliveries.

  What was in the envelope? Anthrax spores?

  “I’m not expecting anything,” I told the messenger.

  “Sign here,” he said, and shoved a clipboard through the crack in the door.

  Oh, what the hell?

  I signed, took the envelope, and shut the door hard.

  No return address.

  I like to live dangerously. I pulled the little tab and peered inside.

  No spores, unless they were invisible.

  Just a piece of paper.

  I fished it out, read it, and yelled.

  “What’s that?” Jolie asked, jolted from sleep. Seconds later, she stood blinking at the end of the short hallway.

  “It’s a check,” I answered, waving it. Doing a little dance. “Jolie, it’s a check! Get your clothes on. We’re going out for breakfast, and I’m paying!”

  THE YOUTHFUL TELLER at my bank deposited Greer’s check without a quiver, but when he saw the numbers on the second one, signed by Margery DeLuca, he gulped, examined me speculatively and summoned a manager.

  The pair of them disappeared into a back room, and Jolie and I waited, she tapping her foot nervously, me smiling from ear
to ear. My former mother-in-law was every kind of awful—at least in context with me—but she wasn’t likely to pass bad checks. She had a position to maintain.

  “Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Jolie kept whispering, under her breath, like a mantra. “What will you do with that kind of money, Mojo?”

  “Breathe,” I said. Of course, I wanted to set a chunk aside for security. I’d pay off that last credit card balance, too. And then I would set myself up in business as a P.I.

  I already had one case, didn’t I? Okay, so the client was my sister, and it was a low-danger job. But Greer had been right when she said I’d make a good detective.

  The manager returned, smiling ingratiatingly, the DeLuca check in hand. “We’d like to talk to you about some of our more elite investment programs,” he said.

  “I’m sure you would,” I replied. I sounded really businesslike. Seemed like a good idea to start practicing that. “For now, just put the money in my regular checking account, please.”

  “Certainly,” the manager said. I could tell he’d been building up a spiel about bank stock and certificates of deposit, and he looked disappointed at having to swallow a speech he’d spent a whole five minutes composing in his head.

  “It’s time to get serious,” I told Jolie, as we walked out of the bank. My branch was in a supermarket, alongside a Starbucks, and I’d sprung for double-mocha supreme frappacinos on the way out.

  It was also time to pick up Russell—Bethany had left a message on my cell phone that he was good to go—and I was glad Jolie was with me, because despite my sudden riches, I wasn’t real thrilled about facing Allison Darroch again.

  We did the drive-through thing for breakfast, since we were in a hurry, and juggled our sausage biscuits and designer coffees as we drove out of town. I followed the same route Tucker had taken the day before; another reason to believe I could make the detective thing work.

  I’m good with directions. That would come in handy on stake-outs and in high-speed chases.

  “So you take Russell to the vet, and the doc turns out to be Tucker’s wife,” Jolie recapped what I’d told her earlier, while we were both peering into the mirror over my bathroom sink, doing a sort of Siamese-twin makeup thing.

  “Not his wife,” I stressed, sucking up some frappacino. “His ex-wife.”