“And what difference does it make?” Betty added. “Be friends if you want to be friends! As you said, both men are dead, rest their souls.”
“It makes a world of difference,” Maggie insisted, impatience crawling over her. “If it was something awful, then Jo and I shouldn’t be friends.”
“We have no idea,” Betty said.
Frank just looked down at his coffee and uneaten cookie, quiet enough that Maggie thought hedidhave an idea, but didn’t want to say. Something he was hiding from his wife?
Well, too bad. The truth, whatever it was, had to come out.
“We’ve recently learned that Roger’s case wasn’t just a police matter,” Maggie said. “The FBI was involved, making it a federal investigation. All the files—every last one—went missing from his attorney’s office.”
Frank still didn’t look up.
“Do you have any idea why, Frank?” Maggie asked.
“Course not,” he said quickly. “But I don’t know why you can’t let the past be past. Who gives a hoot what happened thirty years ago?”
“We do,” Maggie and Jo replied in perfect unison.
“Well, we just don’t know,” Betty said, trying again to push her chair out. “But we have three grandchildren who?—”
“Look, Frank.” Maggie narrowed her eyes at him. “We know you used to run numbers at the deli. And we’re not here to judge, but was Roger ever involved in that? Was Artie?”
“Artie?” Frank snorted so hard, he coughed. “Mr. Goody Two-Shoes?”
Jo Ellen smiled. “He was ethical, but we have to know everything.”
Another long silence pressed on the room until Frank sighed then looked at his wife with a question in his eyes.
“Go ahead,” she said softly. “They want answers…”
Finally, Maggie thought with a huff of breath.
He closed his eyes, looking trapped. “Yes, I was a bookie,” he said. “I ran a side hustle at the deli. Took bets on horses, football, you name it. I’m not proud of it, really.”
“Well, I was proud of the fur coat it got me,” Betty said sheepishly.
“I’m sure you got so much use out of that in Florida,” Maggie cracked. “Please, go on, Frank.”
“I never got caught,” Frank said. “I skirted the law and I swear to God this hadnothingto do with either of your husbands. Well, Roger…”
Oh, heavens. “Roger what?” Maggie demanded when he didn’t finish.
Frank shifted in his chair. “It doesn’t matter, Mag?—”
“It matters!” she exclaimed, the sound of her voice reverberating through the kitchen. “We want to know.”
He groaned, leaned back, and scratched his chin. “It really doesn’t matter, ’cause Cotton Ramsey is deader than a doornail now and his whole operation has been gone for years.”
“Cotton…who?”
“And I honestly don’t know what happened between them, but?—”
“Make some sense, honey,” Betty said, putting a hand on her husband’s arm. “These ladies don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He nodded and took a sip of coffee, looking like he’d kill for it to be something stronger.
“The gambling operation was run—and owned—by a group out of Biloxi.”
