“Is Uncle Joe around?”
Maeve didn’t turn around, answering while she continued to crack eggs. “He was. He went out for a walk.”
We sat down to join Roman and Yumi while we waited. “That sure looks good,” Ian said, his eyes locked onto the as yet uneaten sausage on Roman’s plate.
“It is good.”
“Bet you’ve had a few already.”
“Sure have.” Roman bit into a piece of buttered toast and began to chew.
Yumi leaned toward us, a naughty smile playing on her lips. “Better than last night, huh?”
I grinned back at her and gave her a sly nod. She sure wasn’t wrong.
“What are everyone’s plans for today?” I asked. “I haven’t had a real vacation in years. I don’t really know what to do with myself.”
“Out here,” Roman said, as he pierced the sausage to Ian’s unconcealed disappointment, “there’s nothing to do. Except to enjoy the great outdoors, of course. Or if you enjoy reading old books, Beryl has a library. I don’t think it’s been updated since her grandfather was a boy.”
“Reading could be a plan.”
“I love the outdoors,” Ian said. “I brought my hammock camping set with me. I’ll probably spend most of my time out there, you know. Communing with nature.”
“Isn’t it scary?” Yumi asked, her deep brown eyes wide with curious excitement.
“Not if you know what you’re doing. Of course, Tiffany’s a city girl. She wouldn’t last an hour out there.”
“I think I could manage an hour, Ian.”
“We’re going to go for a walk in a minute. Roman says he has something interesting to show me.”
Roman swallowed and nodded. “I’ll show you all later. But I don’t want to spoil the surprise for Yumi yet.”
“Thanks, love.” Yumi reached over and squeezed her boyfriend’s hand.
Roman finished his sausage, and with that, his breakfast. The couple cleared their plates away just as our own breakfast was delivered to the table.
“Later, guys.” Roman and Yumi both gave us a little wave as they left the kitchen.
We dug in, and it was good. And even Maeve’s demeanor, though still a little chilly, was noticeably warmer than the night before.
While I wouldn’t say we ate like pigs, my plate was half clear by the time Maeve had made it back across the kitchen to the stove.
We had just finished eating when Joe made his appearance. And he wasn’t alone. With him were two newcomers.
“Everyone,” he said as he entered the room. “This is my son, Marcus, and his fiancée, Jini.”
The couple looked to be about my age. Marcus had short, curly black hair, and eyes alight with the same mischievous fire that his father had. His fiancée, Jini, was sterner, with an analytical gaze that took everything in instantaneously. I felt like I was judged and, thankfully, approved in less than a second. She smiled at me, my reward for passing her look test. “Nice to meet you both. Joe’s just been telling us all about you.”
“Which wife did you have Marcus with?” Ian asked rather tactlessly.
I gave him a kick under the table. Joe didn’t seem to mind. He chuckled at Ian, but Jini gave him a sharp look. I didn’t think Ian had passed the Jini test yet.
“My third wife, Ian. Sharon was her name. She was a good woman and a better wife and mother. From South Carolina. She passed away ten years ago. Cancer.”
“Oh, that’s no good,” Ian said, shaking his head sympathetically. “Cancer.” He made a thumbs down motion. “No good at all.”
“It was a long time ago now,” Marcus said. “Though we still miss her, don’t we, Dad?”
“Always will.” He raised his head and looked up toward the ceiling. “Unlike that woman upstairs.”
Everyone laughed. But we stopped when a steely voice said, “I heard that.”
Beryl was apparently quieter in the mornings than she was in the evenings. She was still holding her cane in her hand, but we had not been warned of her looming presence by its warning cracks and smacks on the ground. Like an unfriendly ghost, she had appeared silently in the doorway.
“You’re down early,” Maeve said to her.
“I have important business today.”
“I’m glad to see you’re taking family seriously, finally,” Joe said to her. “This is my son and his fiancée.”
Beryl just shook her head. “Not them. They’re not my family. They’re yours.” She could barely look at Marcus and Jini, and seemed to be glad that they had nothing to do with her.
“Charming.” Jini didn’t even attempt to hide her sarcasm.
Uh-oh. It was a bit early for fights, wasn’t it?
Beryl narrowed her gaze at Jini. “You’ve got some pep.”
Was that approval I heard in her voice? Was the way to Beryl’s heart to insult her? Whatever. I didn’t think I wanted to find my way to Beryl’s heart.
“Today I have important business with my friend, and personal lawyer, Mr. Norman Langan.”
“Your lawyer is coming here?” Joe asked.
“He is.”
“May I ask why?”
“Surely you just did. He’s coming because I decided that, at my age, it may be prudent to think about drawing up a will.”
“Now? Now that you’re a hundred?”
“Ninety, Joe. Get it right.”
“Sorry, I find it hard to remember just how much older than me you are.”
“You’re definitely not going to be in it.”
“And you’re not in mine either,” Joe said to her brightly. “Not that you have any chance of outliving me.”
“I really don’t care. Even if you were a millionaire, once it was divided up between all your offspring we’d get about a nickel each.”
“Maybe. But it sure would be a shiny one.”
“Who are you going to leave everything to then?” Ian asked. He was always tactless, but it was sometimes useful. I was kind of curious.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m going to leave it to him.”
“Me?” Ian asked.
“Not you, you dolt. Norman.”
Joe’s combative tone disappeared. “Your lawyer has persuaded you to leave everything to him?” he asked, “Surely, surely, you’re not going to.”
“He’s a dear friend.”
“Beryl, when people reach your age, vultures start trying to take advantage. I’m not saying you’re losing it, but if your own lawyer—”
“Stop.” Beryl’s response dripped pure vitriol. Crack. She rapped her cane against the table leg. “I’m not losing it. I have made my decision. My friend is worth a thousand family members. And that’s final.”
Joe took a step back from her. The look on his face wasn’t worry or shock, but more like contempt. “You do what you think’s best,” Joe said, “but I’d strongly advise you get another lawyer to look over this will when you’re done. I’ll say no more.”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort.”
There was a loud knock at the front door.
“That’ll be him. Maeve?”
She was already wiping her hand on a dishcloth. She tossed it back onto the counter and went to the hallway to open the door.
Beryl glanced at Ian and me witheringly. “Come on, up.” Is she talking to us? “He’s a lawyer, he’s my friend, and he deserves to be treated with respect. Greet him with me.”
Out of curiosity rather than any duty to his elevated station as a lawyer—ha!—I followed Beryl back out of the kitchen into the large hall.
“Let’s see this con man for ourselves,” Marcus said quietly. Joe clapped him on the shoulder.
Maeve opened the door to reveal an older, sharp-dressed gentleman. He had slicked-back silver hair and tortoiseshell horn-rimmed glasses low on his nose. He pushed them up. “Well, hello! A welcoming committee. I can’t say I was expecting that.”
“We’re not so much a welcoming committee, as an inquisition,” Joe sai
d, the smile on his mouth contrasting with his words. “We want to see just who Beryl plans to leave her entire estate to.”
Norman’s brow furrowed. “I’m here to help Beryl compose her will, not write myself into it.”
“Ignore them. They’re jealous that none of them have a law degree.”
“Actually,” Jini said, “I have two.”
Beryl sniffed. “Paper means nothing. You don’t have half a century of experience like Norman.” Jini summarily dealt with, Beryl smiled ingratiatingly to the lawyer. “Come, Norman. We’ll retire to the library. Away from nosy ears.”
“Can ears be nosy?” Ian looked like he was actually seriously considering the question. Everyone ignored him. “Shouldn’t they be eary?”
“Nice to meet you,” Joe called after Norman as he and Beryl headed down the hallway to the library door. It sounded like he was using a different meaning to the word nice than was normal.
Norman paused, turned, smiled. “Nice to meet you all.”
When they were gone, the five of us were left standing in the hall.
“I don’t trust him,” Maeve said.
“If you don’t, then we sure don’t either” Joe confirmed.
Ian said, “I’m going to get my stuff ready before we head out into the wilds.”
“You mean our walk with Yumi and Roman?”
Ian nodded. “I think at least one of us should be properly prepared and equipped, don’t you?”
“Sure. I think I’ll go into my room and read for a little while.”
“Read?” Ian said in some disbelief. “Don’t you mean binge watch TV?”
“No, Ian, I don’t. I’m going to read. I have several books with me.” I didn’t feel any need to add that there wasn’t any wi-fi in the house, and the phone signal was so weak it would take me longer than my entire planned stay to download a single television show.
Not that I had tried the night before.
Nope.
Definitely not.
Books it was, and books it was going to be.
It would do me good.
Chapter Four
Ian looked the part. He was wearing some lightweight cargo pants with dozens of pockets, had a compass hanging around his neck, and a windproof jacket on top of whatever he was wearing underneath. On his back was a small backpack, and he was testing out his new hiking boots by stomping up and down the hallway.
“This is just a test run, you see, Tiff.”
“Yeah?”
Ian stomped in the hall a few more times. I wasn’t sure if this time he was testing the sturdiness of the floorboards or of his new footwear.
“Yeah, just to see how it goes. I’ll go out on a proper expedition tomorrow. Really show this mountain what’s what.”
“I’m sure it’s quaking in its bedrock.”
Yumi and Roman reappeared in the hallway.
“Wow,” Yumi said with a smile. She touched Ian’s waterproof jacket, fingering the material. “You sure came prepared.”
“Always do.”
“We’re not going far this time,” Roman said to him. “But you can never be too careful, right?”
Quick as a flash, Ian’s hand whipped up, holding his can of bear mace that he had just extracted from one of his many cargo pockets.
Roman backed away from him warily.
“See?” Ian said. “Always prepared. If you’d been a bear, you’d be blind right now.”
“Those bears better watch out then.” Roman walked over to the front door and opened it. A light breeze with a slight nip to it began to blow inside.
“It’s getting colder,” Yumi said.
Ian shook his head. “Nope. We’re coming up to midday. It’s actually going to continue getting warmer until the mid-afternoon.”
Yumi poked her head out the door. When she turned back to face us, she looked skeptical. She didn’t verbally disagree with Ian though.
In a flurry of feet, Marcus and Jini trotted down the wide central staircase.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. We decided to unpack first.”
“No problemo,” Ian told them. “I just finished getting ready myself.” He patted his jacket. “Had to get kitted up. You know, just in case.”
“Just in case, huh? In case of what?”
Ian looked up at the ceiling, slowly shaking his head as if recalling past mountain disasters and tragedies. Perhaps even a war. “Anything, man. Anything can happen out there.”
Uncle Joe stuck his head in the front door. “Are we all ready?”
We were. Uncle Joe had been waiting outside with Amber and Angel.
Once we were outside the house, Roman took the lead. Having spent weeks staying with Beryl working on her memoirs, he was the local expert among our small crowd. He walked past where I’d parked my car, to the edge of the gravel parking area. Leading away from it was the barest trace of a trail. It took a keen eye to notice the gaps between the sparse bushes that made up the local scenery.
“We follow this path for about twenty minutes, and then there’s a little trail that’ll take us up to Pickaxe Peak. That’s where we’re headed. We’ll take it slow.”
“Not on my account, I hope,” Joe said.
“No, of course not. But Yumi and I have already been up once today. We’re a little beat, aren’t we, love?”
Yumi nodded while interlocking her arm with his.
“And we do have a little one with us, don’t we, Angel?”
Amber and Angel had been waiting outside with Uncle Joe. Waiting may not have been the best term—from the shrieks we could hear from inside, it sounded like Angel had been attempting to run her own marathon up and down the driveway as a warmup.
“Not little.” Angel stared up at Roman. “You’re all big.”
“I guess we are.”
“Big and old!”
Yumi, Roman, and Angel all laughed together.
“Angel!”
“She’s right,” Roman said to Amber. “Compared to her, we are all old.”
“Especially me,” Joe said. “Don’t go too fast for me, will you, Angel?”
She stared up at her great-granduncle as if considering her answer carefully. “Okay,” she said finally, bestowing her kindness upon him.
Roman and Yumi led from the front while the rest of us followed behind. Marcus and Jini fell in beside me, while Ian stayed up front with Yumi and Marcus to show just how much of an outdoorsman he was.
“Do you see much of your dad?” I asked Marcus.
“We do, actually. More than most of his kids. It helps that we live in Las Vegas. We usually hit a buffet together once every couple of weeks.”
“Yeah?”
Jini nodded. “I’m a fiend for them. Why have one food when you can have eighty-four different ones, that’s what I say.”
“And dad’s the same,” Marcus said with a laugh. “He makes up these new dishes using whatever’s out there. He doesn’t recognize them as pre-prepared dishes, but as ingredients for creating his own. Baked beans on a shrimp salad? Bacon and blue cheese on top of a plate of schnitzel? Miso soup with some chopped up frankfurters stirred in?”
Yumi spun around. “What?”
Uncle Joe had heard too. He laughed at her reaction. “Fusion food, my dear. I should have been a chef.”
Yumi’s mouth hung open as she shook her head. She whispered something to Roman, and they both laughed at their private joke.
“I hope you’re not criticizing my creations.”
“No, no,” Yumi said over her shoulder. “I was just telling Roman that I never stop being amazed by what Americans can do with food.”
“In a good way?” I asked.
“Umm,” she hesitated, “if you like?”
Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
“Uncle Joe,” I asked. “So if you weren’t a chef, what did you do?”
He slowed his pace to walk beside me, while Marcus and Jini dropped back.
“A bit of everything. After scho
ol, I did four years in the army. Don’t ask. But I learned a bit about vehicles. Used that knowledge to become a mechanic for a few years. Even had my own shop. I was out Iowa way at the time. But I lost it in a tornado.”
“A tornado?”
“Yep. Tore the place to shreds. Took my tools and everything. Scattered them amongst the field. Some poor farmer’s probably still wondering why he’s harvesting wrenches and oil cans. I figured it was a sign to move on. That’s when I moved down Florida way. Got work on a fishing boat.”
“How’d you like that?”
He shrugged. “It was a change. After my first hurricane, I decided it wasn’t for me. So I got my pilot’s license and took people sightseeing for a bit in a little old Cessna. After I crashed that, I—”
“After you what?”
Joe waved a hand dismissively. “Wasn’t my fault. The darn tree wasn’t there when I took off. Someone put it in while I was flying.”
That made me laugh, and I gave him a playful hit on the arm.
“What? I’m not kidding. It was a forty-foot palm. Part of a landscaping thing they were doing. The contractors were fast, but they put it in the wrong spot while I was up there.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the sky.
“Wait, you’re serious about the tree not being there when you took off?”
“I’m always serious.”
I knew for a fact he wasn’t always serious. I guessed I wouldn’t know if this was a tall tale or a true one anytime soon.
“Then I did a few other things. Bus driver. Taxi driver. Karaoke bar. Groundskeeper. You know how it goes.”
I didn’t, but I nodded like I did.
“When I hit fifty, I decided it was time to get me a real job. So I learned carpentry. Knew a bit already of course, but I really hunkered down. Twenty years I’ve been making tables now.”
“Wow. Just tables?”
“Chairs too, sometimes. Don’t like ‘em so much. Tables are more my thing.”
“Why’s that?”
“They’re easier, and people will pay more for ‘em.”
“Makes sense.”
“Phew.” Joe wiped the back of his hand over his brow as we came to a stop. “Talkin’ and walkin’ is a bit much for this old timer.”
Reunions and Revelations in Las Vegas: A Humorous Tiffany Black Mystery Page 3
