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looked so defeated, that must be it. And who knew the man had a killer grin? I was certain I’d never seen him smile like that. But worse, I was used to seeing him in total control, commander of the universe or something like that.
    Just how bad were the finances of the Coxwell household? How broke was broke, in my sister’s estimation? Even James seemed pretty stressed about the cash, but then, we were from different worlds, the Coxwells and the O’Reilly’s. He might be down to his last five million or so and feeling the pinch.
    And Marcia had a pretty high burn rate—coming from nothing teaches you zip about the language of money. I’d come by what fluency I had the hard way, and she’d never been to that part of town.
    I prowled around, like the proverbial feline on the hunt, unable to concentrate on any of the questions sent to dear opinionated Aunt Mary. I was trying, if you must know, to persuade myself to forget about it. My mother always said that my need to know other people’s business would get me into trouble—not so far, but there’s still time. And I had a feeling that once I started to dig into this, it would be tough to stop.
    Curiosity won.
    Wondering was getting me nowhere, and nothing done, after all. James wasn’t the only one who needed billable hours to make the math work.
    The cost-effective solution was to ferret out the truth, then get back to my diligent labor. Enquiring minds want to know and all that. Of course, it had nothing at all to do with James, or even with Marcia. I couldn’t have cared less whether I ever saw her again or not.
    I just like to know stuff . What makes people tick. What triggers them. What it takes to get something done. My sister had crossed a little threshold of no return. I wondered—quite naturally—just what it took to push her that far.
    After all, if she ever came back, I might need to give her a nudge myself.
    I got on the phone and you know how it is. You know someone who knows someone who knows someone and sooner or later, you’ve got the number of the secured line for some guy somewhere who can negotiate a black market one-time-use fee for a password to a big credit bureau.
    Is this legal? Don’t be ridiculous. But it’s there, and hurts no one other that the mega-corporation that keeps the database.
    This is incidentally the same mega-corporation which has tried to ruin my life on several occasions, through absolutely no fault of my own. It’s not as if I have a vendetta against them, but defrauding them of a hundred bucks here and now wasn’t even going to make a bleep on my moral radar screen.
    See, I made a bad marital choice, but am hardly the only one who ever did that. Why should it cost me for the rest of my blessed life? Okay, the guy was a loser—I should have insisted in the divorce papers that he have an “L” tattooed on his forehead, as a warning to all my unsuspecting single sisters—but enough is enough. The last drop of blood I had to pay to be rid of him forever was coming up due in a few weeks and I had the cash coming in, right on time.
    Amnesty from the IRS would be mine shortly. Finally. Monkey off my back and all that. It’s been my holy grail for what seems like most of my life, but has really only been about six years.
    Only. Ha.
    I tell you, I should plan a major celebration. It’s got to be worth a bottle of the good stuff to get your life back from them. It’s not as if anyone’s going to reclaim my grey hairs.
    Anyhoo, defrauding this corporate entity who blew the whistle and got this steamroller going in the first place is a zero guilt decision—in fact, it’s a matter of principle.
    I like bucking the system, after all, AND backing the underdog. Conveniently, in this case, I happened to be the underdog, so it was a double-bonus plan.
    Once I had the magic number, I knew I couldn’t wait. In for a penny, in for a pound. I snagged my leather jacket and one of those prepaid phone cards, then headed out to a