Ellen Crosby - The Riesling Retribution

I put my hands on my hips. “What’s going on?”

He wadded up the tissue. “I learned a little something today. Apparently you found an old grave on our land after the tornado came through. Not in this cemetery.”

“Well, yes—”

He folded his arms. “Thelma attached herself to me like she was superglued on when I stopped by the General Store just now. If Homeland Security ever hired that woman she’d be their top interrogator. She could wear anybody down in nothing flat.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“What do you think I told her? Nada. For the simple reason that I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about,” he said. “You should have seen the look on her face when she figured that out.” He did an uncanny imitation of Thelma’s high-pitched voice. “Well, now Elliot, do tell. How odd your sister didn’t tell you about that dead body. A person has to wonder if there’s something conspirational going on, don’t you think?’”

“Conspirational, huh? You sound just like Thelma.”

An accomplished mangler of the English language, in addition to being a world-class gossip.

He tapped his fingers on his arms and glared at me. “I’m so flattered. How come you didn’t call?”

“I’m sorry, Eli. Between the tornado damage and finding that grave, things were insane around here. Bobby came over this morning with a search warrant. They’re out there right now excavating the remains.”

“Jesus.” He stopped tapping. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know. The medical examiner said he reckoned the body had been there thirty or forty years. A Caucasian male.” I righted a flag in front of a marker of another ancestor who had fought in the Civil War. “Can you help me fix a couple of these?”

Eli raised an eyebrow and indicated Leland’s grave. “Wonder if Leland knew him?”

“Just because someone’s buried on our land doesn’t mean anyone in the family knew anything about it. We both know Leland didn’t have the best judgment when it came to business deals, but he would never kill another person and you know it.” I stood up and faced my brother.

He threw up his hands like he was putting on brakes. “I just asked if he could have known him and you bite my head off. How can you be so sure he didn’t do it?”

“Because of Mom. She would have known and she couldn’t have lived with it, that’s how.”

“Leland kept secrets.” He walked over to our parents’ graves and fixed Leland’s flag.

I joined him. “Not that secret. Not murder. Whose side are you on, anyway?”

“Yours,” he said. “Ours.”

“I hope so.”

He cleared his throat. “Hey, Luce?”

“What?”

“Got a little favor to ask you.”

I knew it. “What favor?”

I also knew the favor. Money.

“I’m a little tight this month and I was wondering if you could—”

I cut him off. “I can loan you three hundred, maybe four, but I want to know when you’re going to pay me back.”

“Three or four hundred?” He looked startled. “You can’t do more than that?”

“I can’t really do three or four hundred since I just took a hit that’s going to set us back well over a hundred thousand dollars. How deep in debt are you, Eli?”

He ran his thumb along the edge of our mother’s marker. “It’s not too good. I’m on the verge of bankruptcy.”

He spoke lightly, but I saw his throat constrict. It was probably worse than “on the verge,” but he wasn’t saying. I knew him too well. Still, he’d caught me off guard.

“Bankruptcy? How could you let it get this far?” I stared at him. “You’ll lose everything.”

He cleared his throat again. “Right now I just need enough to cover my August mortgage payment since today’s the first and it’s due soon. That’s all. I don’t want to lose my home, Luce. Brandi loves that house.”

Of course she did. He’d designed it for her, giving her everything she wanted. Now they lived in a nouveau riche palazzo that combined the most garish extravagances of Versailles with the Disney Castle, including a multitiered fountain in the front yard that looked like he’d borrowed it from Trafalgar Square in London.

“How much is your mortgage?”

“We refinanced a few times to consolidate our debt.” He paused and said, without looking at me, “It’s just under eight thousand.”

“Eight thousand?”

He needed that just for his mortgage? What about everything else? Groceries, car loan—all of it? Could he cover those expenses, or were they down to eating the labels off cans?

“Why don’t you sell something?” I said. “That antique Sarouk carpet you just bought for the great room. The gold faucets in the master bath. Anything.”

He looked pained. “I haven’t got that kind of time. It’s not the first payment I’ve missed, so they’re already knocking on the door.” He laughed, but it was the self-mocking laugh of someone pushed to the edge. “We’re barely answering the phone because most of the calls are collection agencies. Besides, Brandi would just die if I started dismantling her dream house. You know I can’t do that to her.”

“Brandi needs to go to credit card rehab, and I’m not joking. Cut up her cards, take away the checkbook, and give her a cookie jar with money in it. Tell her that’s it. You can’t go on like this. She’s as bad as Leland was, blowing money on junk she doesn’t even care about the next day,” I said. “That’s why you’re in so much debt.”

“You are being unfair.”

“I am being honest.”

“Aw, jeez. Give me a break. I come to you for help and what do I get? A lecture.” He started pacing in front of our parents’ graves. “You’re the one talking about family and being on the same side. You could help me out if you wanted to. I’m not asking for a handout. I’ll pay you back once I get on my feet. I just need some time.”

Sure. Like he’d paid his other creditors back. “You can’t repay me and you know it.”

He stopped pacing and looked at me with an odd glint in his eyes. “How can you turn your back on me when you’ve got a five-figure sum in the vineyard checking account right now?”

“How do you know that?” The hair prickled on the back of my neck.

“Aha! Knew I was right. You do, don’t you?”

I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book. “It’s not my personal piggy bank, Eli. It’s a business account and that money is there to pay bills.”

He spread his hands apart, palms up. “I’m tapped out, babe. Are you going to help me or are you going to throw your brother to the wolves?”

It was a low blow, and he knew it. I wasn’t responsible for his problems. He was.

“Giving you more money without doing something about the way Brandi spends it isn’t going to help anyone. You can’t pay me back the eight grand any more than you can pay your creditors back. Take the four hundred as a gift, okay? You don’t need to repay that.”

He looked like I’d slapped him. “I don’t need your charity. Forget it. I’ll go elsewhere.”

“Eli, wait!”

But he was already moving toward the gate, raising his hand in a backward salute, dismissing me.

“I gotta go. I’m late for something.”

He slammed the gate, as I expected he would. I sank down by my mother’s gravestone.

“Now what?” I asked her. “How did he do that? Why am I the one feeling bad?”

Giving my brother money would be like giving alcohol to a drunk. He didn’t have his spending under control—and his wife was dragging him down to the depths I remembered from when Leland was alive. When we lurched from feast to famine, either flush with cash or nearly flat broke. Eli’s story was just a downward spiral.