Her Birthday Celebration Was My Exit novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Expense Card

I called Pop first.

He picked up on the first ring, which meant he'd been sitting by the phone.

"They gone?"

"They're sitting in a Lincoln across the street with the engine running." He sounded more annoyed than scared. "They're blocking the neighbor's spot. She's going to call the cops on them."

"Pop. Lock the door."

"The door's locked. I'm sixty-one. I lock the door for the raccoons." I heard him take a sip of something. "What do these guys want with you, Lali?"

"I don't know yet."

"Well, find out. I'm missing my program."

Then I called Remo.

It was midnight in Chicago. He answered on the second ring, wide awake.

"Look who remembered my number."

"Why are your men on my father's porch?"

"Because you're a thief, Ilaria."

I sat down on the bed in the roadhouse.

"Excuse me?"

"Thirty-eight thousand dollars." He said it slowly, so I'd feel each word. "On the jet card. In Milan. While you were sitting around waiting for the return leg. Lisi went through the statements for me. She found it. She was very upset."

"I bet she was."

"You took the card, you went shopping, and then you quit and ran to the North Pole before anyone noticed. That's how it looks."

"That's how she made it look."

"Careful."

I could hear his breathing. I could hear ice in a glass.

In his world, a person who stole from the family and ran didn't get a phone call.

They got a visit. Then they got a hole somewhere.

I had flown men to Las Vegas who came back with less luggage than they left with. I had never asked.

I opened my photos.

"Listen to me. October second. I was in the crew hotel by the airport all day with the flu. Check the hotel. Check the FBO log."

"Ilaria."

"Four charges. All at Linate, all inside the terminal." I read them off one by one. "A leather goods shop. A silk shop. A shoe boutique. A jeweler. Ten forty in the morning to one-fifteen in the afternoon."

He didn't say anything.

"Every slip is signed with a big looping L. You've seen her sign birthday cards for thirty years. You know that L."

"Lisi wouldn't."

"Lisi did."

"Her father died for my father." His voice went flat and cold. "You understand what you're saying about that family?"

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