She looked like she'd been possessed by Sherlock Holmes himself, eyes bulging, finger trembling as she pointed at me.
"I figured it out! No WONDER they couldn't find anything!"
She lunged forward and seized my arm, terrified I'd bolt:
"At lunch! You INSISTED on ordering that soup dumpling!"
"I thought it was strange. You never eat pork, but today you were scarfing it down like your life depended on it!"
She whipped around to face the guards, her voice piercing:
"She must have hidden the gold inside the dumpling and swallowed it!"
"The gold from the jewelry store is in her stomach right now. I'm sure of it!"
I froze where I stood.
Twenty minutes earlier, my mother had insisted on dragging me to the food court, claiming she was too hungry to walk another step.
I couldn't win the argument, so I bought two baskets of soup dumplings. She ate one. I ate three.
The whole time we were eating, she kept stealing guilty glances at me.
Only at the very end did she wipe her eyes and speak up. "Your Uncle Dwight Mercer owes money again. Dora, please, help him out. Just this once..."
I'd already bailed my uncle out of his gambling debts three times. Seventy-five thousand dollars, all of it thrown down a hole.