She’d come about her brother, her twin brother, Sebastian.
“Mom, she was an LPN, a practical nurse, but she was always taking these night school classes to improve herself. She was taking a Shakespeare class when she got pregnant with us, so she named us like that, after Shakespeare. Of course, no one in our school knew about Shakespeare, or they would have made fun of us for being stuck-up, but even so I got called ‘violin,’ or even ‘violence,’ all the time.”
She edged farther onto the bench. “Mom always wanted us to go to college, and I started at DePaul, but Sebastian, he made good grades and he got himself a scholarship to IIT to study engineering.”
“What kind? Electrical?” I wondered if that was where Uncle Jerry picked up his wiring skills.
“Electrical? Why would you think that? He’s in construction engineering, but he hasn’t been able to find a full-time job. He does contract work with Brentback.”
Brentback was one of those contractors whose name always pops up on the siding around the city’s big construction sites. “Sounds as though your brother has his foot in a good door,” I said.
“Yes, I suppose. But he’s disappeared, that’s the problem, and Uncle Jerry, I’m sure he knows, knew, what happened, but he won’t say. Wouldn’t say.”
I sucked in a breath. “How long has Sebastian been gone?”
“Almost a week now.”
“And why did Uncle Jerry know about it?”
“When Sebastian was in school, we didn’t have any money.” Viola spoke to the floor in a whisper. “He worked in the bursar’s office and—and he borrowed money from the accounts to pay his bills.”
“Was he expelled?” I asked when she came to a complete halt.
“They found out right away. I guess Sebastian didn’t really know what he was doing, so he didn’t know how to cover his trail.”
“Embezzling is hard to conceal,” I agreed, “especially for a beginner.”
“It wasn’t embezzling,” she said reproachfully. “It was borrowing. He was going to pay them back, only they found out about it too soon.”
“How was he going to pay them back?” I tried to keep the impatience out of my voice. “By borrowing from someone else?”
“No, he thought—he knew someone who’d made a huge amount of money playing online poker and Sebastian got him to show him the system he used. Only he lost, it was like thirty thousand dollars in twenty minutes. I was watching, it was terrifying—he kept thinking he’d start winning. He only stopped because I turned off his computer. We didn’t know what to do, so I went to Uncle Jerry.”
“Jerry had money?”
“He said he could get the money but we’d have to pay him back and of course we agreed, but we didn’t know—it was so expensive! The interest, we could barely keep up, even with us both working. I can’t really date anyone, seriously, I mean—if some guy gets interested in me I break it off so I won’t have to explain about the money. I can’t even take a real vacation: all our money goes to Uncle Jerry!”
I wondered if she had any idea how good a motive for murder she was giving herself, but I didn’t suggest it. “How long has this been going on?”
“Seven years now. It’s like—the thirty thousand Sebastian lost, plus the twelve thousand he borrowed from the school accounts, we’ve paid that much three times already but we still keep owing Uncle Jerry.”
So Jerry had juice connections. “Your brother got to graduate from IIT?”
“Yes, thank goodness, at least the school let him pay back what he borrowed. He was on probation for his last two years, but they didn’t put anything bad on his transcript. Only that’s how the money to Uncle Jerry got so huge, because we could only make small payments when Sebastian was still in school and Uncle Jerry said the interest was like really expensive because none of us could get credit from a regular bank. I started working full-time as soon as I saw how much it was. I take classes at night, like my mom, but I’ve never been able to finish my degree. As soon as Sebastian gets full-time work, I’ll quit my job and go back to school, but construction these days, it’s hard.”
“You’re a good sister,” I said.
She flushed. “We’re all each other has.”
“You couldn’t persuade your uncle to let you off the hook? If you’ve already paid him, what? A hundred and twenty grand? That should have been enough.”
“That’s what Sebastian and I kept telling him. That’s what we were arguing about in church the day you saw me there. Sebastian—he’s afraid they’re going to let him go at the place he’s working and we can’t keep those payments up. You saw how Uncle Jerry acted. But then a few days later he said he could make it all go away if Sebastian would do him a favor.”