The Tessa Randolph Collection, Books 1-3 by Paula Lester (good short books .TXT) 📕

money from folks and not paying it back. Leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths. We’re all just trying to get by, you know?”

Both she and Gloria nodded in agreement.

“None of us can afford to bleed out money, especially to support somebody else’s habit.”

“Did Sanborn owe you money?”

“You gotta double down on those.” Ricardo disregarded Tessa in favor of Gloria’s instruction.

The dealer added a three to her eight. Gloria hit again to make twenty.

Slowly, she turned toward him, expression serene. Her tone was cool but held a note of irritation. “My grandfather taught me to play blackjack when I couldn’t even see over this table. And I can tell you this—you could be doing a lot better than you are.”

The dealer made seventeen and shoved a stack of chips beside Gloria’s. She pushed away from the table and stood.

“Too bad for you, I have to go to work and don’t have time to teach you any of Granddad’s tips.” She winked and pushed her winnings toward Tessa. “You can have this.”

Gloria started to leave and then stopped, glancing over her shoulder. “By the way. If I were you, I’d give up that horrible smoking habit. Your heart is getting tired of it.”

Tessa wanted to ask Ricardo more about his relationship with Sanborn—maybe try to weasel out some information about how much money Chet had owed the other gambler. Ricardo seemed to have an attitude about Sanborn. Maybe even a motive.

But her phone buzzed, and she took it out of her purse to read the text. It was from her mother: Come over for dinner. This roast is too big for just me.

Tessa sighed. She wasn’t about to turn down free food. But an evening with her mother wasn’t the highest thing on her to-do list. Especially since she hadn’t caught Sanborn’s soul yet. She was pretty sure dinner would consist mainly of getting an earful from Cheryl.

As if she hadn’t been good enough at parental lecturing, now she was also Tessa’s boss. Who knew if their relationship could survive the double dose of authoritarianism.

She put away the phone and turned back toward Ricardo, but his attention was completely on the cards in his hand. The moment was gone.

Tessa left the room, scrounging up the chips that Gloria had gifted her. Maybe she could buy some cat food. She made her way toward the dining room to find Gloria. She didn’t feel like walking back to town and decided she’d rather wait for the other reaper to finish up with her choker.

As she skirted around slot machines, Tessa thought about what Ricardo had said. It jived with what Officer Stewart had let slip—that Chet Sanborn had a lot of enemies who may have wanted him dead. So far, Tessa knew Melinda Chino was one of them. And Ricardo himself seemed to have motive too. Maybe Mark Sanborn could even make the cut.

How was she ever going to narrow down the list enough to figure out who the real culprit was? Because, even though Gloria had said things weren’t quite as dire as Cheryl made them out to be, Tessa knew she only had so much time before a horrible tear ruptured in the veil between worlds. Or, at the very least, before she lost her job.

Chapter 10

EVEN THOUGH TESSA’S mother wasn’t exactly the cookie baking, emotionally nurturing type, going to her childhood home for one of her favorite meals was comforting. Tessa parked Linda on the curb in front of the white colonial with black shutters and gazed at it for a moment.

As always, memories and feelings came at her too fast to process. Happiness, warmth, safety, and anger rushed at her like an oncoming train. Mixed in there, overlying all of it for the past half a decade, was the pang of sadness that her father wouldn’t be opening the door as she walked up the steps to the porch. He always timed it like that.

Tessa sighed and rang the doorbell, catching her breath when the front door opened. But, of course, it wasn’t Michael Randolph standing there, backlit by light from the living room, smiling and then running a hand through thick, dark hair. It was Cheryl. She leaned on the door frame and waited, moving aside to let her daughter enter.

“I thought you had a key.”

“Hello to you too, Mom.” Tessa dropped her purse on the bench in the foyer and breathed deeply. “Dinner smells great.”

“It’s ready,” Cheryl said. “I just need to carry the platter to the dining room.”

Tessa followed through the formal foyer with its brass-framed artwork and mirrors into the big modern kitchen that glittered with stainless steel and polished black and white tile. A platter of roast and vegetables sat on the black granite countertop, and Cheryl grabbed it before heading through another doorway into the formal dining room.

“You changed the locks,” Tessa said in answer to her mother’s earlier question.

“That was years ago.”

Tessa knew it was years ago. But she didn’t visit often enough to warrant a key. Not since her dad passed.

Even though she knew what the answer would be, Tessa asked, “Can’t we just eat at the kitchen table?”

She cast a wistful glance at the wood table tucked into a kitchen alcove next to a huge bay window that looked out onto the front yard’s lovely landscaping. It was a homey, comforting spot that Cheryl never used for family meals.

Sure enough, Tessa’s mother shook her head. “The dining room’s the proper place for dinner.”

She headed into the room in question, which had always made Tessa feel uncomfortable because of its formality. It reminded her of times long past. Nights when she had a boy over and her father grilled him about sports and hobbies—about school if the boy showed any hint of not being good enough for daddy’s little girl.

They never were good enough.

The room was large, with oak wood floors and cream-colored walls. Paintings of food hung at intervals, and a long mahogany table, scrubbed with