The Bake-Off (3 page)

But camaraderie went only so far. While Linnie had been pathetically grateful for any scrap of social acceptance ten years ago, her tolerance for Kyle and his perpetual adolescence had worn thin now that they shared living space. She had applied for the promotion to the Kitty Korner specifically so that she could earn higher tips and afford her own apartment.

Kyle resumed his explanation of the trashed apartment. “So, yeah, a bunch of the guys came over for our Video Game Olympics—it's awesome; the winner gets to wear a yellow jersey like Lance Armstrong—and you earn points by getting the highest scores in the games, but you also get bonus points for drinking.”

Linnie handed him a coaster as she sat down on a clean patch of sofa. “I assume ‘the guys' will all be chipping in to purchase a new coffee table.”

He glanced at the fractured wood as if noticing it for the first time. “Oh. I guess so. Anyway, we decided that since the winner got a yellow jersey, the loser should have to wear a pink one. But I don't have any pink shirts, so Matt said we should check your room.”

Linnie lunged off the couch and bolted for her bedroom.

“What did you do?”
She froze in her doorway, stricken by the sight of the contents of her closet strewn across the floor.

Next to her, Kyle forced a chuckle. “Turns out you don't have a pink shirt, either. I told Derek to clean up in here before he went home, but I guess he didn't have time to finish.”

Linnie knelt down, gathered up an armful of sweatshirts, and was mentally composing the overture to her symphony of vitriol when she noticed the books stacked on her nightstand: a biography of Carl Sagan,
The Joy of Cooking
, and a dog-eared paperback edition of
The Iliad
.

Her breath caught. “Who touched my books?”

Kyle scratched the stubble on his chin. “What books?”

“
The Joy of Cooking
.” She pointed. “It was on the bottom of that pile, and now it's in the middle.”

He shrugged. “The guys must've knocked it over, but, like I said, we tried to clean up a little bit. Why are you all emotional? It's not like you ever cook.”

The backs of her arms went hot and prickly. “Point A: I'm not emotional. Point B: It's not about the cookbook; it's about what's
inside
the cookbook.”

She grabbed the book and flipped through the first few pages to show him how she'd hollowed out the appetizer and main-course chapters with a razor blade to create a hiding place for the only material object that had any real value to her.

Kyle's eyes widened when he spied the rectangular blue velvet box nestled in a berth of black-and-white text. “That's so James Bond. What's in there?”

Linnie skimmed the pads of her fingers across the cool, smooth page and the warm, soft velvet. This cookbook had been a bit of wishful thinking on her grandmother's part. On the morning Linnie started college, Grammy Syl had presented her with two beautifully wrapped packages, along with a note:
Congratulations to my brilliant granddaughter. I hope this gift will provide a connection to your past as you embark on your bright future. P.S. Don't forget to eat. I recommend starting with the hard-boiled eggs and working your way up to the main courses.

The first gift had been this cookbook.

The second was an antique brooch crafted over a century ago by a master silversmith who'd designed jewelry for Russian royalty.

She pried out the jewelry box and opened the lid, instructing, “You may look, but you may not touch.”

But the box was empty.

For a moment, her mind went completely blank.

“Linnie?” Kyle's voice sounded tinny and distant. “Hey, are you okay?”

Her panic returned in full force, along with a sickening sense of vertigo. The room seemed to sway around her, and she braced one hand against the wall for support as she gazed down at the slotted blue velvet padding.

“Maybe it fell out onto the floor,” Kyle was saying. “It's probably hiding under a shirt somewhere.”

Linnie forced herself to wait until she regained her balance before responding. “My grandmother's brooch is not
hiding
. One of your Neanderthal friends lost it while you were pawing through my personal effects in a blatant violation of my trust.”

He edged toward the doorway. “Listen, seriously, I know you're upset, but your voice is all growly and your face isn't moving, and you're kind of scaring me.”

She continued to glare at him, and he stammered, “If you kill me, you won't have anyone to help you look.” He paused. “What am I looking for, anyway?”

“A one-of-a-kind platinum brooch studded with rare cognac diamonds.”

He blinked a few times.

“Silver metal and brown stones.” She pointed imperiously at the carpet. “Stop standing around and start searching. Move!”

But a careful excavation of the debris on the bedroom floor yielded nothing. Linnie scoured every centimeter of every article of clothing that had been displaced; Kyle lifted the bed frame and the bureau so she could check beneath them, but all to no avail.

Grammy Syl's brooch had vanished.

“You are going to call every person who was in this apartment last night, we are going to corral them in this room, and I am going to grill them until I get my brooch back.”

“Okay, okay. I'll start with Derek. Maybe he put it somewhere for safekeeping when he was cleaning up. Maybe he—” Kyle's expression flickered. “Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She took a single step toward him. “Out with it. Now.”

Kyle fidgeted with the belt loops on his baggy cargo shorts. “It's just . . . you know how every family has a screwup?”

Linnie flinched, painfully aware that she herself filled that role in the Bialek clan. “Go on.”

“Well, Derek doesn't have the best track record, and he's been having some pretty heavy problems lately with his house and his wife.”

“And?” she prompted.

“I'm sure it's just lost. I'm sure it's around here somewhere.”

She took off her shoe and imagined wedging it down his throat. “Find a phone and start dialing.”

Kyle retreated to the living room while Linnie started yet another inch-by-inch search of the floor and the closet. When he returned, his sheepish smile had been replaced with a dazed expression of dawning horror.

“Derek knows where your brooch is.”

Linnie nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“It's in a pawnshop.” Kyle stared at his bare feet. “Someplace out by the Strip called Longbourne Jewelry and Loan.”

She nodded again. “So he stole it.”

When Kyle started to plead with her, she got a glimpse of the winsome little boy who had sold millions of bags of potato chips with his earnest charm. “He knows he shouldn't have done it, okay? He knows that. And as pissed as you are right now, I'm just as mad. But you have to believe me when I tell you that the guy has, like, an avalanche of financial problems. He lost his job; he's losing his house; his wife just found out she's pregnant.”

Linnie pressed her fingers against her temples and inhaled deeply through her nose. “We are going to the pawnshop right now, and we are going to get the brooch back. Where's the claim ticket?”

“Derek's going to send it to me.”

“Incorrect. He's going to give it to me when he meets me at the pawnshop.”

“He's already on the road to California.”

“Tell him to turn around and get back here with his ill-gotten money.”

“Well, here's the thing. He went to the bank as soon as it opened. Tomorrow is the first of the month, Linnie. He's out of time. He's been putting off foreclosure for months already.”

The pounding of her pulse began to amplify in her ears. “Exactly how much money did he get for the brooch?”

“Thirty-five grand.”

She clamped her lips together and bit down so hard she tasted blood. If a pawnshop had paid thirty-five thousand, the actual value of the piece had to be at least twice that amount. Grammy Syl could never find out about this. Linnie had disappointed too many people already.

“Derek says we have thirty days to pay it back, plus a bunch of interest and fees,” Kyle was saying. “Grand total should be around forty or forty-five thousand.”

“Who is this ‘we' you keep referencing?”

“Us—Derek and me.” Kyle hunched over, his hands in his pockets. “Try to calm down and get a little perspective. He's got a family to support.”

“That doesn't justify stealing. Kyle, what do you suggest I do here? I don't have forty-five thousand dollars. I don't have anywhere near that, and neither do you.”

“We'll pay you back, I promise.” Kyle lifted his hand in a throwback to the Boy Scout oath. “It might take us ten years, but we'll pay you back.”

She shook her head. “Ten years is unacceptable. I have thirty days before the pawnshop can resell it, with interest and penalties accruing by the minute.”

“I'll straighten everything out—I promise.” Kyle sounded like he was trying to convince himself. “I'm going to land a big role any day now; I can feel it. A TV role, maybe a movie.”

Linnie started toward the kitchen. “I'm calling the police.”

He raced ahead of her, snatching up the cordless phone by the entryway. “Don't do that. Please.
Please
. There has to be another way to work this out.”

“How? The pawnshop's not going to return that piece to me without a police report.”

Kyle finally realized she was implacable. His whole body slumped and he dropped the receiver onto the counter with a clatter. “I guess you have to do what you have to do. But tell them I did it, okay?”

Linnie froze, her fingers poised over the phone's keypad. “What?”

“Tell them I was the one who took the jewelry without your permission and pawned it. They can arrest me instead of Derek.”

“Absolutely not. Your brother needs to take responsibility for his actions. Why would you—”

“He's got a family and a life and everything, and I don't.” Kyle swallowed audibly. “He wouldn't have done this unless he was really at the end of his rope.”

Linnie put down the phone, torn between blinding rage and helpless despair. “And you're willing to take the blame for something you didn't even do?”

Kyle scuffed the carpet with his toe. “Yeah.”

“You can't do that. I won't let you.”

“What do you care? You'll still get your jewelry back.”

“But letting him take advantage of you like this isn't doing him any favors in the long run. Trust me. It's . . .” Linnie looked away and dug her fingernails into her palms. “It's
wrong
. Not to mention extremely dysfunctional.”

“It's not dysfunctional.” Kyle stuck out his chin, suddenly defiant. “It's love. It's family.”

“You're putting me in an impossible situation here.”

“Well, I don't see any other way to get your thing back.” Kyle's eyes lit up. “Unless . . .”

Linnie folded her arms. “Unless what?”

“Unless you go gambling.”

“No.”

“Yes! You could hit the high rollers' table tonight and win fifty grand, easy. I know you could.”

She almost laughed at the absurdity of this suggestion. “No, no, a thousand times no. I don't gamble.”

“Why not? Just 'cause you're a casino dealer doesn't mean you can't play.”

“Being a dealer isn't the issue.”

“Then what is the issue?”

She inhaled as deeply as her tightly laced corset would allow. “I just don't. Let's leave it at that.”

“Dude, what is the point of having an IQ of a hundred and seventy if you're too wussy to use it when you really need it?”

“It's one eighty,” she corrected him.

“You can win. I know you can.” He turned on those puppy dog eyes again. “Have a little faith. Give my brother a break. And hey, think about your karma. What goes around comes around, right?”

Linnie's stomach clenched.
That's what I'm afraid of.

 

“
T
exas Hold 'Em, two-hundred-dollar minimum, no limit,” the dealer announced when Linnie approached the gaming table. “You want in?”

Linnie hesitated only a fraction of a second before nodding and depositing a stack of black chips on the green felt surface in front of her. She'd just written a check to the casino cashier, and this dismayingly short pile of chips represented the entirety of her savings account, along with a significant cash advance from her credit card.

She'd worn a baggy jacket to cover her body and a baseball cap to obscure her face, but she couldn't hide the fact that her entire body was trembling. High-stakes, cutthroat competitions like this used to send her spirit soaring and her adrenaline surging, but that was before she knew how it felt to fail.

Pure icy panic seeped through her as she sank into her seat. Failure was not an option tonight. She would win, again and again and again.

While she waited for her first batch of cards, she sized up the other players at the table. These six guys looked like expenseaccount rookies, out for a little male bonding and bragging rights. She surmised from their crisp tailored shirts and European watches that they could afford to lose at two-hundred-dollar-a-hand poker.

She ignored their speculative smiles and devoted her full attention to her cards. Throughout the first few hands, she played very cautiously, hedging her bets and observing her tablemates' styles and skill levels. As her stacks of chips grew taller, she got bolder with her bets and cagier at calling bluffs. Her body stopped shaking and her death grip on her cards relaxed.