Bones of a Feather - Carolyn Haines [92]
She flushed. “I deserve that.”
It’s hard to kick someone when she’s down, so I stopped. Monica and Eleanor were crooks, but they loved each other, and I had gone a far stretch to save Dahlia House from being repossessed by the bank. I’d betrayed a friend. I wasn’t in any position to cast stones.
“What should we do now?” Eleanor picked up the bottle of bourbon and topped off her drink.
“Wait.” There was nothing else to do. “Maybe when Tinkie gets back she’ll have new information.” Speaking of my partner, I was getting a little worried. She should have been back at Briarcliff by now. Almost as if I’d conjured her, the Caddy sped down the drive. Tinkie had news. I hoped it would be the good kind.
She came in the front door, Chablis jumping at her side like a whirlwind. “You will never guess what I found out!” she exclaimed. It took her a moment to register the tension between Eleanor and me. “What’s wrong?”
I explained about the necklace. Tinkie’s expression went from confusion to volcano-hot fury in under ten seconds. “We’ve been beating ourselves silly to help you and the whole necklace theft is a rip-off? My husband offered to front you the money!” She looked at me. “Thank god for you and your common sense, Sarah Booth.” She bent down and picked up Chablis. “I’m leaving. I’ve had enough of these … lowlife, conniving people.”
I caught her by the hem of her blouse. “Wait a minute, Tink. Monica is still missing.”
“And that’s my problem how?” She was madder than I’d ever seen her. No one liked being played for a gullible fool, but Tinkie had almost put her husband in a very bad place because she’d wanted to help the sisters. Help them perpetrate a fraud! That was unforgivable in her book, and I didn’t blame her.
I held on to her shirt. “Let’s finish this. Eleanor has agreed to return the insurance money—if it’s recovered. If she loses the ransom to the kidnappers, she’ll confess to fraud and suffer the consequences.”
Eleanor white-knuckled her drink. “Please don’t abandon Monica. I’m so sorry, Tinkie. I can’t change what we did. I can only beg your forgiveness. We’re bankrupt. Monica and I will lose everything. That’s why we did it. Not to be greedy, but to save Briarcliff. It’s the last property we have left, our heritage. Everything else, the European holdings, the boat, all has quietly been sold off.”
“You were millionaires. What happened?” Tinkie’s anger gave way to curiosity.
Eleanor’s half-smile was rueful. “We were scammed by an investment advisor. We managed to keep it hushed up. He’s awaiting trial now, but punishing him won’t help us recover what we lost. Nor does it excuse what we did with the necklace, but we thought we didn’t have a choice. We just lost our way.…” She let the sentence fade.
So it was a case of “Do unto others as they’d done to you.” Not exactly the application of the golden rule I’d been taught. In my world, people got jobs to save what they loved. The Leverts, though, suffered from entitlement syndrome. Crime was the option that sprang into their heads instead of finding work.
“Nice way to pay it forward,” Tinkie said bitterly. “I don’t want anything to do with people like you Leverts. Sarah Booth, are you coming?” She started upstairs to collect her things.
“Wait a minute, Tinkie.” I had to stop her. “It’s wrong, but what’s done is done. Monica is our focus now. Once she’s safe, we’ll let the law handle the insurance mess.”
Eleanor checked her watch. “It’s three o’clock. Please, just a few more hours. Sarah Booth has agreed to give me advice on making the drop. I need to be prepared and ready to get my sister back. Please, help me through this.”
Tinkie groaned and blew out a breath. “I shouldn’t. We shouldn’t.”
Eleanor slid to her knees. “For my sister’s life, I’ll beg.”
“Get up,” Tinkie motioned impatiently. “Just get up.”
Eleanor resettled into her chair. The whole episode made me queasy. Desperation is ugly to watch. Eleanor on her knees brought back all of the dark emotions I’d felt while trying to save Dahlia House. I sympathized with