Lisa Scottoline - Devil's corner

"We use only Splenda now. It's a sugar substitute." "Splenda. It sounds so cheery." "Make fun, but I lost five pounds the first two weeks." Vicki blinked. "I wasn't making fun, Dad. That's great, that you lost five pounds." "No, it isn't. The book says you should lose seven. I listened to it in the car, on CD. Your mother lost seven."

"Five isn't much less than seven. It's only two." Math genius .

"Fewer."

"Huh?"

"You said less. You meant fewer."

"Oh. Sorry." English genius, too . "In any event, two fewer pounds doesn't matter."

"It does to me."

"Oh." Vicki sighed inwardly. It was almost impossible to agree with her father, even when you were faking it. He was a man who never took yes for an answer. She suddenly regretted coming home. She should have gone to Olive Garden.

"Sugar is poison," her father added. He unfolded his napkin and set it on his lap, then rested his arms on the side of the table. The strains of The Marriage of Figaro lilted from a CD player in the kitchen, followed by her mother, humming along. Her father tapped his index finger in time, though he would never sing, as much as he loved opera. He seemed preoccupied, and Vicki knew he had to be thinking about Morty and Jackson's murders.

"Dad, about last night-"

"Let's wait until your mother comes in. I know she wants to hear, too."

"Okay."

"This way you won't have to repeat it."

"Or repeat it all over again." Vicki smiled at her own joke, because somebody had to. Her father was listening to the opera wafting from the kitchen, tapping his finger. She changed subjects. "Dad, guess where I was tonight?"

"Where?"

"Washington Street."

"Washington Street?" Her father's eyes flew open. "In Devil's Corner?"

"Yes, I even saw your old house."

"Really." His eyebrows lifted higher, just as her mother returned with an empty plate, which she set in front of Vicki and filled quickly with one of her own lamb chops and two broccoli spears. Between them, it wasn't enough food for a corgi, and Vicki felt a wave of guilt.

"Mom, that's all right. I'm not that hungry."

"I won't hear of it. I had a huge lunch." Her mother smiled and went around the table to her seat. The barber of Seville was bragging in the background. The dog returned to gnawing on Vicki's shoe.

"I was saying that I was on Washington Street today, Mom. I saw Dad's old house."

"Really?" Her mother tossed her shiny helmet of dark hair. "How did it look?"

"How do you think it looked?" her father interjected. "We can't all be from Hilltown." Hilltown was her mother's old neighborhood, which was nicer, some ten blocks east of her father's. Her mother let it pass, but Vicki was puzzled by his grumpy reaction.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"Of course not, Victoria." Her mother's green eyes lit up. "You know your father doesn't like to be reminded of his humble beginnings."

"It's not that, Lily," her father said, turning to her mother. Vicki couldn't see his face from that angle, but she knew what it would look like. "It's a horrible neighborhood now. A ruin."

You don't know the half of it.

"Washington Street, my block, it's a slum now." Her father sipped water from a glass frosty with ice.

"Did you know the alley behind it, Cater Street?"

"Of course. How do you know Cater?"

"I get around," Vicki said, to make him smile, which it didn't. "I was driving through Van Buren and Lincoln Street."

"All the best places. Hope you kept the windows rolled up." Her father stabbed a spear of broccoli, and her mother avoided anyone's eye.

"Dad, was there a vacant lot on Cater when you were growing up?"

"I don't remember."

"Do you have any old pictures of Washington Street or the house? Maybe in Grandma's stuff?" Vicki's grandmother had died ten years ago, and her grandfather well before that. As soon as her father had had the means, he had them both moved into a gated retirement community in Chester County.

"No. I don't even know where your grandmother's things are."

"In the attic?"

"No. I didn't save those things, did I, Lily?"

"You saved nothing," her mother answered.

"Too bad." Vicki thought a minute. "You went to Willow-brook High School, right?"

Her father set down his fork. "Why the questions?"

"I was just asking."

"Victoria, it wasn't high school like you went to high school.

Like Episcopal or another private school with nice green fields. Lacrosse, Parents' Day. It wasn't pleasant. We were poor. You can't imagine how poor."

As poor as the people who live there now?

"My father worked day and night, three jobs, to make ends meet. I don't think I ever saw him sit down in a chair, not once."

"You've been crabby all day, Victor," her mother said softly.

"No, I haven't."

"You have, too." Her mother faced Vicki. "We lost a house client this morning. Remember Carlon Industries, the dry cleaners?"

"Sure. Jerry Solomon, right?" Vicki's parents did so much business entertaining that she had grown up around their clients and their wives, like Olive Garden families had uncles and aunts. Michael, Sam, and Carol clustered around the Allegrettis' dinner table. They counted as family, evidently until they fired you.

"Yes. Yes. Good for you."

"It wasn't Jerry, it was the son," her father said, but her mother waved him off.

"Please, it was Jerry. He's hiding behind his own son, the coward." Her mother turned to Vicki. "Anyway, Jerry had eleven locations. As you know, we've done all his closings for years, and he let us go today. It was a blow for us."

"We'll do fine without him," her father said, gruff. "The son was a slow pay anyway. Receivables of six months' standing. It's enough, already." He turned to Vicki, miffed but trying to hold it in. "That's not what I want to talk about, anyway. Your mother and I want to know what happened last night. If I've been crabby today, that's why."

"That's not completely why, Victor," her mother corrected, but her father ignored her.

"We pieced together what we could from the newspapers.

Why don't you fill us in? Our only child is on the news, involved with violence, a multiple homicide, a shooting, and we hear nothing but a phone message."

"I told you we should have stayed up for the news," her mother interjected. "Were you on the eleven o'clock news?"

"I was. A case agent I've been working with was killed last night." Vicki gulped chilled water, hoping it would get past the sudden lump in her throat. The barber was singing happily in the kitchen, an ironic soundtrack to Morty's shooting, flashing through her head. "His name was Bob Morton."

"I saw it in the newspaper account, and online. I thought I knew that name."

"We won that case together, Edwards? Morty was his name."

"Yes, I remember now. He was killed, and a pregnant woman, a black, was shot in a house." Her father's dark eyes grew hard as onyx. "It said you were inside the house at the time of the shooting. Were you?"

"No, I wasn't inside when it happened." Vicki reflected that maybe she hadn't learned to lie in law school. Maybe she had learned it at this color-coordinated table. "I was outside at the time and I'm fine."

"The newspaper said you were inside." Her mother set down her fork, waiting.

"The newspaper got it wrong. They want to sell papers."

"But you were there at the house last night, weren't you?"

"It's part of the job." Vicki checked her temper, and her father tugged the napkin from his lap and set it down on the table. She knew he wouldn't be eating another bite tonight. He could lose those extra two pounds in no time. The corgi, on the other hand, was making a meal of her shoe.

"You're in the wrong job, Victoria." Her father shook his head. "Two people killed. If this experience doesn't change your thinking, I can't imagine what will."