Cockeyed by Richard Stevenson Read Free Book Online Page A

weekend, and there are bound to be drunks. Plus people coming down the Northway from the races at Saratoga.”
    Hunny and Art exchanged glances, and then suddenly Hunny began to tremble. I feared he was having a seizure, but he seemed to know exactly what to do, which was to have another sizeable snort of whatever was in his glass. Then he shuddered once and seemed to exorcise something. After which he began to snuffle quietly as Art pulled Hunny against his shoulder and gently smoothed his little frizz of scraggly hair.
    Hunny said tearfully, “Poor Mom, poor Mom.”
    After a moment, Art said to Lawn and me, “After Hunny’s father died at the age of sixty-four of testicular cancer, Mother Van Horn had a rough time of it.”
    Hunny nodded and shook his head and cried some more.
    “Rita had always enjoyed a drink before and after dinner,” Art went on. “And to ease her sorrows she — well, let’s be frank —
    Rita started drinking to excess. She had gone to work at Clyde and Arletta Briening’s crafts shop as their bookkeeper, and while her imbibing did not immediately affect her work there, it did affect her judgment after hours.”
    Hunny lowered his head now, and it seemed way too close to the two smoldering cigarettes in his ashtray. Not unaware of the danger, he picked up one of the burning Marlboros and took a drag on it.
    Art said, “Mother Rita had always had a nice time playing the ponies at Saratoga, and unfortunately after Carl died she apparently got it in her head that she could help make ends meet with her winnings at the track. One season she had actually come out ahead, and this must have clouded her judgment. But, well, you know how it goes with gambling. Lawn, I suppose you understand, since you are in a similar line of work.”
    “That’s preposterous.”
    “Anyway, one thing led to another, and apparently pretty soon Mother Rita had begun covering her losses at the track with CoCkeyed 39
    money she — I’m sorry, Hunny, but I have to say the word —
    embezzled at Crafts-a-Palooza.”
    Hunny flinched.
    “By the time Arletta and Clyde realized what was going on two years later, Rita had taken sixty-one thousand and some odd dollars from the business. When they confronted her, Rita begged them not to go to the police because it would be so embarrassing for Miriam and Lewis. Hunny, too, but especially Miriam and Lewis, who are active in the Epworth League and other Methodist organizations. Hunny, of course, has a forgiving nature, and also he has always had a soft spot for the criminal element.”
    “I’m afraid that’s true,” Hunny said.
    “The horrible Brienings unfortunately saw this as an opportunity, and they took it. They knew that Mother Rita would begin collecting over thirteen thousand dollars a year in Social Security in just a couple of months, and they made her sign a letter confessing to stealing their money and agreeing to pay them a thousand dollars a month until the sixty-one thousand had been restored — plus interest. Except, when you figured out the interest, it came to more than two hundred thousand dollars total. So every month Mother Rita’s Social Security has been going into her account from the government and then straight out and into Crafts-a-Palooza’s account. This has been going on for thirteen years.”
    Lawn stood looking grim. “I have never heard of any of this.
    I’m stunned. And I’m sure Nelson couldn’t have known either.
    He would never have put up with extortion. He would have gone to the police, or he would simply have held his nose and paid these people off.”
    “It’s true,” Hunny said, “that Miriam and Lewis decided not to tell Nelson. He had always thought so highly of Grandma Rita, and they were afraid it would break his heart. And also it might not be appreciated by Nelson’s investment clients that there was a crook in the family. It could have been bad for business.”

    40 Richard Stevenson
    “A crook in the family that