The Riesling Retribution by Ellen Crosby Page A

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 hitthat’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 withmoney 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