A Bad Day for Mercy Read Online Free PDF Page A

listlessness that was enhanced by her prescription drug habits, she had never bothered to find a job or an alternate source of income. Iola beseeched her angry son to find it in his heart to forgive his father; instead, the boy took the last of the support money and lit out for Wisconsin, where he intended to live simply but promptly got himself embroiled in a gambling habit instead. In the decade since, Chip’s ever-changing schemes to support himself alternated with desperate pleas for money, made through calls that skirted his father and went straight to his source. Chester Senior finally had what he wanted: a grandson who was pleasant to him—at least when he wanted money.
    “I do remember those piercings,” Stella said cautiously. “I believe he had more than most ladies I know.”
    Every two years Chess and Gracellen sent Stella a plane ticket to come spend Thanksgiving with them, and if Chip happened to be in one of his cash-poor episodes, he could be found at the holiday table. This last visit, his head had been practically shaved and his ears had been studded like a leather club chair; he glowered at the end of the table and said very little to anyone.
    “Yes, and then he went and got these little bitty rings through the cartilage, three on each side—oh, it was just terrible looking, Stella. But at least that’s how we know it’s his. Although it’s awful wrinkled up and stale and it has a smell on it— oh .”
    “So let me get this straight—a box with Chip’s ear in it came to the cabin? Was there a note?”
    “Well of course there was, Stellie, that’s how we know Chip’s gone and done it this time, they’re going to kill him if we don’t send them thirty thousand dollars!”
    Stella sucked in her breath in dismay. “Gambling again?”
    “Of course it’s gambling. That boy ain’t never knowed a card game or a roll a the dice he could pass up. He used to bet on what color dress his teacher was going to wear and was the mailman coming before noon and how many saltines in the package would be busted. Used to be kinda cute till we figured out it was going to be the ruin of him.”
    “Well, can’t you just call Chester and have him send the money?”
    “He don’t have it, Stella!” Gracellen was wailing again.
    “What do you mean, Chester’s loaded!” The one time the Papadakis family patriarch had deigned to come to the holiday dinner, he’d arrived in a glowering snit and looked around the table at all the fixings as though he were looking for country mice to come dancing down the table waving little bitty pitchforks. Stella was pretty sure the diamond in his pinky ring cost more than her car, and the gold weighing down his wife looked like it would topple her over at any moment.
    “Well, that was then and this is now. You may a heard the economy’s in the crapper.”
    “Yes, Gracie, news does still reach these parts now and then,” Stella said wearily. The decades her sister had spent on the West Coast had unfortunately drained any affection she had for her home state, though Stella had observed on her visits that Sacramento seemed to have its share of the same chain restaurants and ugly-ass strip malls that Kansas City did. “They bring it in on the Pony Express, so we’re a bit behind, plus since we’re still trading in shiny rocks rather than cash—”
    “Don’t make fun of me,” Gracie snuffled, then burst into full-scale sobs. “Folks aren’t buying pecans like they used to. Everybody’s all over the almonds now that the stupid California Almond Board’s going around saying they can cure cancer and make you more regular and what-all. Never mind that a almond ain’t even a proper nut, it’s a seed, but you never hear them talking about that ! It’s false advertising, is what it is!”
    “But Gracie, there’s got to be money—”
    “Oh, Stella, you wouldn’t even believe it. Our house ain’t worth what we paid for it, so there’s no way Chester Senior’s