by Barbara Ross
She nodded. “Yes. But the attorney said it was only that, a wish, unenforceable if Mr. Frick chose to ignore it. Besides, I left. He didn’t throw me out. I couldn’t have spent the rest of my life with that odious man.”
“Which is what makes you suspect numero uno,” Peg pointed out. “Well, this, that, and the other thing.”
Peg stood up and went to the refrigerator. She pulled out a bowl with plastic wrap over its top. “I’m stress eating for two,” she said as she removed the plastic. “Ida here is stress non-eating.” She inclined her head toward her wiry sister.
She put the bowl, full of something thick and white, on the table along with an open bag of corn chips. Sitting down again, she scooped a chip into the dip and popped it into her mouth. “My famous clam dip,” she said when she finished chewing. “Have some.”
The Vienna finger I’d had with Vera French wasn’t cutting it. I followed Peg’s lead. The dip was wonderful, somehow both creamy and chewy, and bursting with the flavor of the sea. I was so hungry, I could have eaten the whole bowl. As Peg had predicted, Ida didn’t touch a single chip. I needed to get the conversation back on track. I helped myself to one more delicious dip and soldiered on.
“Did Lou’s lawyer tell you about the other provisions of the will? Or perhaps you already knew them because you and Lou were so close.”
“I didn’t know about the will. Lou was outgoing but you shouldn’t confuse that with being open. There were parts of our lives where Lou kept her secrets, and I kept mine. She told me I’d be taken care of and I believed her.”
“Bah!” The word burst from Peg’s pursed lips. “One hundred thousand, for thirty years of service. If she paid you better and you’d had an IRA, you would have been better off than that. As it is, you don’t even have enough money to re-house yourself.”
“She didn’t think I’d have to re-house myself, did she?” Ida still defended her late employer. “She thought I’d be living at Herrickson House. With the money Lou left and my social security, I can rent a place in the off season,” Ida swallowed, “and maybe stay here in the summer?”
“Bah,” Peg repeated. “You know you’re always welcome here. But you shouldn’t have to depend on family.”
“Who knows how long I’ll live?” Ida responded. “Maybe I should blow it all in one crazy year.”
Peg shook her head. “Don’t even joke.”
“Did you know Bart Frick?” I asked. “Was he a frequent visitor at Herrickson House when Lou was alive?”
“I never laid eyes on him until he showed up on your boat,” Ida answered. “Right after that, he moved into the mansion. It was all downhill from there. I met his grandparents, back when I worked for the Herricksons the first time. She was Frank Herrickson’s sister.” Ida closed her eyes. “I’m trying to remember if I ever met his parents. I don’t think so.”
“So why did Lou leave the property to someone she’d never met?”
Ida sighed. “She was following Frank’s wishes. Frank left everything to her when he died, but his will said that if she predeceased him, everything was to go to this grandnephew, Bartholomew Frick.”
“Lou was so attached to Busman’s Harbor. I thought perhaps she’d leave the land to the town,” I said.
“The Herricksons were quite definite that a Herrickson should always be at Herrickson Point,” Ida replied, emphasizing the Herrickson each time she spoke it. “Old Mrs. Herrickson, Frank’s mother, was a dragon on that point. As she was a dragon in so many other ways.”
“She was a tartar, that one,” Peggy confirmed. “The stories Ida used to bring to Sunday supper, back in the day.”
Ida smiled a thin smile.
“And then there’s Lou’s daughter.” I brought the conversation back to the will. “Why would she cut out her own flesh and blood?”
Ida shifted in her seat. “I don’t know. I told you, Lou and I kept our secrets.” She stopped, looking up at me. I didn’t say a word, hoping she would go on. She did. “It had something to do with Frank. The daughter, who was an adult at the time, objected to their marriage. Lou married him anyway and never forgave her.”
Across the table, Peg said. “Imagine. Turning your back on your own child. No matter what her age.”
“That seems like a draconian response to a common objection to a second marriage,” I said.
“It was Lou’s fifth, actually,” Ida corrected. “For the record. But it lasted almost thirty years and would have lasted longer if Frank hadn’t died.”
“Did either of the Herricksons ever mention the name Elizabeth Anderson?” I asked.
Ida frowned, thinking hard. “No, never that I can recall.”
“An Elizabeth Anderson never came to the house?”
“That I’m sure of. Never. At least never while I was present.”
I stood to go. “Thanks, Ida. This has been very helpful. Good luck with the police. If you think you should have an attorney present, my friend Cuthie Cuthbert is excellent.”
“I’ve been telling her to get an attorney,” Peg said.
“Pshaw. I’ll be fine.”
“Nice to meet you, Peg,” I said. “Thanks so much for the iced tea and the delicious dip.”
Ida walked me to the door. “I don’t see how that could have been helpful.”
“It was,” I assured her.
* * *
Gus’s was closed, all the lights off, and the hushed, dark interior of the restaurant made me feel dreary on a dreary day. Chris wasn’t home. There were no messages on my phone. Upstairs in the apartment there was nothing on the old, white refrigerator where we left notes for one another. I imagined he was on the Dark Lady, alone with his thoughts, as I was alone with mine.
I sent him the simple text, HOME and stared at my phone’s screen, hoping for a response. Crickets.
I fixed myself some peanut butter crackers. The cupboard was bare. In the summer, we ate no meals at home. I knew Gus wouldn’t mind if I helped myself to a hotdog or a hamburger from his walk-in. He’d encouraged me to do that many times, but, hungry as I was, it seemed like more trouble than it was worth.
To distract myself from things I couldn’t change, I searched for Elizabeth Anderson. Flynn had said he’d searched the web, but I was more confident in my skills than I was in his. During my years away from Busman’s Harbor when I’d worked in venture capital in Manhattan, I’d researched the companies my firm had invested in, their management and angel investors. There was a saying in my office that if Julia couldn’t find it, it wasn’t on the web.
Lou’s will had said Elizabeth Anderson was Frank Herrickson’s goddaughter. That probably meant that at least one of her parents had been a friend of his, probably the dad. Town friend? Prep school friend? College friend? Frank had been older than Lou. A child born to a school friend of his might well be in her eighties or even nineties. Would Lou have left Herrickson House and everything in it to someone of that advanced age, even as a contingency? I didn’t think so. Lou was a practical person.
I didn’t know much about Frank. He’d died when I was a girl. I’d always pictured him living out his long bachelor years at Herrickson House waiting for Lou to come along so he could fall in love with her. But during that time, he’d been a lawyer in Portland, Ida had said the first time we’d talked.
I started off with a garden-variety search for background. Ah ha! Francis Herrickson had specialized in real estate law. Citations to his cases, which had been digitized, showed he’d handled boundary disputes, title problems, competing claims of ownership that had gone to litigation. It was ironic given an injunction had just been filed in such a case regarding his own land.
His firm’s name had been Herrickson and Carroll, and I spent a fruitless half an hour trying to see if his partner Carroll, who I assumed was deceased, had any children. Who more obvious to name as the godfather to your child than your law partner? Carroll had died in 1954, and his obituary mentioned no wife or children. Evidently, during the years of th
eir partnership, both men had been confirmed bachelors. I pictured them like Scrooge and Marley in their counting house.
That left me at a dead end. I got up and paced around. Ida Fischer had said she’d never heard of Elizabeth Anderson. She’d known Frank even before Lou did. Of course there would be a big gap in her knowledge while she’d been in prison. Maybe even longer, since she’d left old Mrs. Herrickson’s employ and Busman’s Harbor when she got married.
The gloomy day had gotten gloomier. I put on the light next to the couch and sat down again. I needed another approach. I tried searching for the name “Francis Herrickson,” combined with “baptism,” “christening,” “godfather” and “godchild” and got nowhere.
I was ready to give up, but then I thought, if Lou wanted to leave virtually her entire estate to someone, it had to be someone important to Frank. There would be some memento of the relationship certainly. I closed my eyes and thought about my tour of Herrickson House. Had there been a photo of Frank with a child or holding a baby?
I’d been on such sensory overload when I was there. There had been generations of photos on every side table, and lining some of the bookshelves, but I didn’t remember any photos of children, none at all. Which was odd, because in my experience people took more photos of children than they did of adults. My brother-in-law Sonny had a saying, “In this family, if you want your picture taken, stand next to a kid.” And it was doubly odd because Lou had a kid. She’d cut her daughter out of her life, but not to retain any reminders of her childhood?
I fell asleep like that. In the corner of the couch, my computer on my lap. At some point, I woke up long enough to turn it off and put it on the coffee table.
Chris never came home.
CHAPTER 19
I woke up to the gyrations of my cell phone on the coffee table. I uncurled myself from my fetal position on the couch and answered without looking at the display. I assumed it was Chris.
“Hi!” I did my best to sound chipper.
“Julia? You’re up.”
“Quentin? What time is it?”
“Almost eight. I’m glad I got a hold of you. I heard the gate across the beach road at Herrickson Point is open. Wyatt’s dying to see Herrickson House.”
My brain, just coming alive, was slow to compute. “You won’t be able to get into the house. It’s a crime scene.”
“We can at least walk around and look in the windows. Meet us there in half an hour.”
Half an hour? “I’m not even dressed.” I was dressed, but in yesterday’s clothes.
“Well, get dressed. See you there.”
I double-timed my way through my morning routine. The sun shone through the studio windows. A nice day meant going back to work. While I’d enjoyed having the day off as much as the next person, the bills would pile up quickly if we weren’t open for business. And our employees relied on tips. No work, no tips.
When I was dressed, I went downstairs, slipped out the back door of Gus’s and ran to my mother’s garage. I pulled the Caprice out and headed to Herrickson Point.
That Chris hadn’t come home worried and upset me. Not so much the not sleeping at the apartment part. He stayed on the Dark Lady from time to time when chores kept him there late in the evening, or when he’d been tied up at his job at Crowley’s and then driving his cab. But he’d always texted me to let me know where he was.
It was the way we’d parted that was the problem. He didn’t want to talk about his family or the disease they carried. It had taken everything he had in him to tell me what he did. I could see it, and felt awful for him. To a point. Because, fundamentally, he wasn’t being fair to me. He hadn’t told me about his mother. He hadn’t told me he might get sick, too. No matter what happened between us from here on out, we loved each other now. He should have told me sooner.
Chief Beaupre had been true to his word. The gate to the beach parking lot stood open. Half a dozen clammers worked down by the waterline. I recognized Will by his stance and physique, but didn’t call to him. He wouldn’t have heard me over the surf. Quentin’s antique wood-sided estate wagon was already in the parking lot. He and Wyatt leaned against it, waiting for me.
After I parked, we walked up the driveway to Herrickson House. When we reached it, Wyatt bounded up the front steps, walked along the deep porch and tried the front door. It was locked, as I was sure it would be.
“I’m going to try the other doors.” Wyatt went back down the steps and started around the side of the house.
“You can’t go in!” I called after her. “Chief Beaupre specifically said no one in the house.”
Wyatt didn’t answer. Quentin hesitated for a moment and then followed. I was left alone on the big front porch.
There were more than a dozen other doors to examine—the French doors to the dining room, kitchen door, back hall door, sun porch door, and on the ground floors, doors fixed in the thick stonewalls to the old laundry, coal room, cold food storage pantry, and workshops. They’d be gone for a while.
I decided to use the time to look through the windows for a photo of Frank Herrickson with a baby. All the public rooms at the front of the mansion could be inspected from the front porch. I started at the living room. As I remembered, there were photos on every available surface. Long lives, well lived, or at least that’s what I’d assumed when I’d first seen them. Some of the photos were on side tables and faced away from me. Others were perched on bookcases all the way across the room, too small for me to see. I cupped my hand over my eyes and pressed my face to the glass to get a better look.
A man’s torso loomed in front of me. “Aiiyyeee!”
“Julia! Julia!” The torso disappeared and seconds later Quentin opened the front door and stepped onto the porch. “It’s me. Wyatt found a door in the cellar that had been propped open with a rock. Come inside.”
“You nearly gave me a heart attack! You realize the last time I was in this house there was probably a murderer hiding somewhere.”
That wiped the smile off his face. We stood in the oval front hall. “Where’s Wyatt?” I demanded.
“Somewhere deep in the house rapturously taking photos of woodwork, or door knobs, or something,” he answered.
“We can’t be in here. Wyatt!” I shouted. “Wyatt!” My voice echoed through the cavernous rooms.
“We have to find her,” I said to Quentin. I was annoyed with both of them. The house was a crime scene for heaven’s sake. And if the cops discovered we’d been in there, they might block beach access again, which would anger the entire town. “You go upstairs. I’ll look down here. And for goodness sake, don’t touch anything and tell Wyatt not to touch anything.”
When Quentin left me, I went through the archway into the dining room. “Wyatt?” She wouldn’t have gone into the breakfast room, would she? The murder room. I shuddered, hugging myself as I stepped forward to peer through the doorway, just in case.
I stared into the sun-filled room. It was a wreck, as Flynn had described. Broken shards of china and glass sat on the hutch and sideboard and the floor around them. Art hung crazily askew on the walls. The Oriental carpet was gone, probably taken by the crime scene techs, but the shadow of a pool of blood remained on the hardwood floor. Someone had wiped it up, but the rest of the cleanup remained for the new owner. If she was ever found.
The rest of the house looked like nothing had happened. The murderer’s rage had been confined to that single space.
I returned to the oval-shaped front hall. I could hear footsteps above and the faint sound of Quentin’s voice calling Wyatt. I went through the archway and crossed the living room, pausing on my way to look carefully at the photos as I went. My impression from my previous visit that there were no photos of children was confirmed.
In Lou’s study, I went to her desk. Its roll top was closed. I put my hand on the top, which jiggled beneath it. It wasn’t locked. Taking a deep breath, I rolled the top back.
The letters were gone!
&
nbsp; I was disappointed, but also relieved. Binder and Flynn must have thought my clue was important and picked the letters up after all.
As long as I was there, I poked around a bit in the desk. It was a beautiful oak with all sorts of nooks for correspondence, pens, cards, and other doodads. There wasn’t much to see. A skeleton key in one cubby that probably fit the lock for the desktop, some return address labels in a fancy font. Evidently, for all her collecting, Lou hadn’t been much for keeping desk sorts of things. Except, of course, for those letters.
Then my eye caught a corner of grey metal sticking out on the writing surface of the desk, like something was pushed beneath the lowest row of cubbies. I put a cautious finger on it and fished it out. It was an old silver frame, very tarnished, with a rough, moss green velvet backing. My heart beat faster. I turned it over.
It was a photo of Frank Harrington with a little girl. I recognized him because of all the photos all around the place. The child in his arms was perhaps two years old, blonde and plump cheeked, smiling at the camera. Frank smiled too, beamed actually, as he lifted her on his shoulder. She wore a fancy dress with smocking across the chest. It seemed to me even in the black and white photo that the dress must be white. Behind her were bushes and a gate, and little parts of people caught by the camera, an elbow, a fancy hat. They were at a party of some sort.
Could it be a christening? The child seemed a little old, but everything else was right—a daytime celebration, a white dress, Frank holding the child for a photo.
I sank into the leather-padded desk chair. Perhaps there was something on the back of the photo. A name, a date, a clue as to some other aspect of the mysterious Elizabeth Anderson’s identity. I had to tug hard to slide the moss green back off the silver frame, which had become misshapen over time. It took three tries, but at last the thing came free. I slid the photo out.
There was nothing on the back. Absolutely nothing.
I sighed, disappointed, and began reassembling the photo and frame, reversing the previous process. I’d been so sure I was onto something.
