Where There's a Will

by Amy K Rognlie

  “He…he was crossing the highway.” Harry stopped, his throat working. “It was an accident. He was hit by a car. They figure he was killed instantly.”

  “Oh, Harry. I’m so sorry.” Aunt Dot’s eyes glistened.

  He shook his head. “The worst part is that it happened weeks ago.”

  “Why didn’t anyone contact your family until now?” I wrinkled my forehead.

  Todd folded his arms over his chest. “Sometimes it’s difficult to find the family. The police do what they can, but they don’t have the man-hours for someone to spend a lot of time researching.”

  Harry nodded. “That’s what they said. They’ve been running stories in their local newspaper, trying to find his family. But since none of us live in Kansas….”

  “So…now you know where Jim’s been, do you think he was purposely hiding from his family? Or…?”

  Harry pressed his lips together and shook his head. “I don’t know what to think, Callie. The person I spoke with indicated that Jim was homeless and was well known to the folks at their local rescue mission.”

  “Which would suggest he’d been homeless for quite a while.” Todd rested his hand on my knee. “I’ve seen it so many times.”

  “But why wouldn’t he call someone in his family? He must have known that y’all love him and would have helped him.” Aunt Dot powered her chair toward the kitchen. “I’m going to put the kettle on.”

  “Did he have any history of mental disability, Harry?” Todd asked. “So many of the homeless have mental health issues.”

  “Not that I’m aware of. But who knows what he’s lived through these last twenty years? Such a sad way to die. Homeless and alone.” Harry steepled his fingers under his chin. “I don’t know what to make of it. I think I’m in shock after finally hearing something after all of these years.”

  The tea kettle whistled, and I headed to pour the water for my aunt. “What about the postcard? It was postmarked from Kansas, remember?”

  Harry stared at me from across the room. “I forgot about it until now. Do you think Jim could have written it? Maybe that was the only address he could remember so he sent it there?”

  “Go get it, sweetheart.” Aunt Dot wheeled back over to him as I placed their tea on the small end table between them.

  Harry returned a minute later. “I can’t find it.” He swiped a trembling hand over his eyes. “I know it was in my desk drawer because I looked at it again recently.”

  “Oh, dear.” Aunt Dot took his hand and held it between both of hers. “It can’t have disappeared. Maybe you forgot to put it back in the desk drawer?”

  I glanced at Todd. Was he thinking the same thing I was? He shook his head slightly, and I took his cue. Harry didn’t need any more to worry about this morning. “Good thing I took pictures of the postcard before I gave it to you,” I said cheerfully. “Here, I’ll pull them up.” I handed my phone to him.

  He peered at the screen. “Where’s that magnifying glass, Calendula? Take a look at that postmark again for me, will you? I could make out the town name, but the date is kind of smeared.”

  I enlarged the photo and studied it. “It looks like December 30 of this past year. You don’t know Jim’s writing, I take it?”

  Harry ignored my question. “December 30. That’s the very day of Jim’s accident. The day he died.”

  We all looked at each other.

  “Wow. So…if he wrote it, he mailed it the same day as he died.” I shivered.

  Todd leaned over my shoulder and read out loud, exactly as Mona had a few weeks earlier: “‘Marianne, I want you to know that I found… uh…’” He squinted at it. “I think it says, ‘I found peace’. And there’s this cross drawn in the corner with what looks like “3:16”. Do you think that means—”

  Harry gasped. “Y’all aren’t going to believe it. December 30 was two years to the day that our family started praying in earnest that God would not only save him and Marianne but bring them home to us.” He passed a shaking hand over his eyes. “Whew. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Jesus.”

  “Another one waiting for you in heaven, sweetheart,” Aunt Dot whispered.

  My throat tightened. God had answered Harry’s prayers…not in the way Harry expected, but in His own way and His own time.

  Right on time.

  Two years to the day.

  I blew out my breath. “I believe ‘The Legend of the Long Prayer’ has been solved.”

  Harry’s smile broke through his tears. “Yes, ma’am. Except for one thing. What do we do with Sharlene?”

  What, indeed, to do with Sharlene? I watched her later that afternoon as she poked gladiolas into a large brass pot for an altar arrangement. She was a natural when it came to floral arranging, even if she couldn’t learn to knit to save her life.

  “Sharlene, do you know anything about that box of papers under the counter?”

  The box of papers from Sister Erma’s house that had been missing…and was now back again on the shelf under the cash register where I originally placed it.

  She turned white, her fingers frozen on the flower stems. “I took it to look through it.”

  At least she told me. “Why didn’t you ask first?”

  She shrugged. “I should have. But I didn’t think you’d mind. I mean, it was laying out in plain sight, not like it was something secret or special.”

  Argh. I hated confrontation so much, but I had to say something. “Still. It’s not polite to dig around in other people’s papers. And especially to take the box with you without asking.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I blew out my breath. “What were you looking for?”

  She yanked the bucket of pink roses out of the cooler. “I saw Miz Erma’s name on one of the papers. She told me so many cool stories about stuff that happened a long time ago.”

  My ears perked up. “Like what?”

  “Just stories about people and stuff. You know she was a teacher at the high school, so she knew like lots of the kids and their families who grew up here. I asked her if she knew my family when we lived here, but she said she didn’t recognize our last name. That seems weird, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Unless her family had a different name while they lived here. Like Janosic. Maybe Sharlene hadn’t asked the right questions.

  “She was a cool old lady. I wish she hadn’t died.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Sharlene pushed three roses down into the foam in front of the gladiolas. “She sure believed in God a lot.”

  That was an understatement. I think Sister Erma’s prayer power matched my Aunt Dot’s.

  “She told me a cool story about some guys who broke into her house one night.”

  “Really.” My pulse leapt. Could this be a piece of the puzzle?

  “Yeah. She said it was right after her husband died. Like, a really long time ago.”

  I nodded. “I never knew him.”

  “Anyway, she was sleeping one night, and she heard someone in her house. She said she snuck out of bed and grabbed one of her husband’s golf clubs.”

  I laughed. I could picture feisty little Sister Erma, all hundred pounds of her, creeping up behind the burglars wielding a golf club.

  “She said they were so surprised that they just stopped and stared at her. They had on ski masks, so she didn’t see their faces, but she told them ‘Stop in the name of Jesus!’ And they froze. She kept praying and God told her to give them something to eat.” Sharlene had a funny look on her face.

  “I can believe that, knowing Sister Erma. I bet she made them a pot of tea and pulled out her famous cocoa-butterscotch cookies.”

  “That’s exactly what she said. She made them sit down at the table and gave them cookies and tea. But… I don’t understand.” She fiddled with her necklace. “What did she mean by telling them to stop that way?”

  “What? In the name of Jesus?’

  She nodded. “I mean, I know who Jesus is. But I don’t understand w
hy she would say that to them.”

  “Jesus’ name has power, Sharlene. The Bible says that He came to destroy the works of the enemy. And when we pray in His name, we’re asking for Him to use His great power in a situation.”

  “You mean God made those men stop robbing her and listen to her?” Her eyes were wide.

  I smiled. This girl had no idea what God could do. “That’s what it sounds like to me. Was that the end of the story?”

  “Nope. She said she kept telling them that God loved them and that He would forgive them for everything they had ever done wrong if they would ask Him too. The robbers took her jewelry out of their pockets and gave it back to her. Then she prayed for them and they left and never came back.”

  “Wow. I never heard that story before.” And I’d heard a lot of Sister Erma’s stories.

  Sharlene’s eyes filled. “She said she’d never told it to anyone before, but God told her to tell me.”

  I smiled at her. “That’s so cool. No wonder you are missing her so much.”

  “I liked to pretend that she was my grandma. I never had a grandma.” She pushed up the sleeves of her baggy hoodie. “But Callie, how did she know that God was talking to her? I mean, did He, like, say words to her out loud?”

  “Probably not. But when we accept Christ as our Savior, the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us. God sent the Holy Spirit to be our teacher and help us understand God better. The more we get to know God, the better we can hear His voice speaking to us in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”

  She considered that. “Do you hear God?”

  I nodded. “Yes. Often. Sometimes I understand what He is saying to me when I read the Bible. Sometimes He gives me dreams. But sometimes, I hear Him way down in my heart.” I laid my hand over my heart. “The Bible calls it ‘a still, small voice’.”

  She cocked her head. “That’s so cool. So, if I listened, I could hear Him.”

  “Yep.”

  “So cool.” She grabbed me into a hug before I could brace myself. “Thank you again for giving me a chance.”

  I let myself embrace her back briefly. God was working. Jim, Harry, Sharlene… “Did you find anything interesting in the box?”

  “No. I don’t even know what I thought I’d find. I loved Miz Erma so much, and I guess I thought it would be okay to look in the box. I’m so sorry. It was a bunch of old bills and stuff like that. I went through piles of that kind of junk when my mom left. My younger brother Ben has been out of our lives for like, forever, so I had to do it all myself.”

  When her mom left? Red flags started waving wildly. Was all of her interest in God meant to throw me off from asking her any more questions? “I thought you said your mom had passed away.”

  “She did.”

  “But you just said—”

  “She disappeared one day, and no one knew where she went. Just left work and never came back home. I reported her missing. They found her car a few days later with a suicide note in it.”

  I swallowed hard. How much did one person have to endure? “I’m so sorry.”

  She shrugged. “She wasn’t a very nice person. Somebody saw her standing on the nearby bridge that night. The police figure she jumped off it, but the river was up from all the rain and they said her body probably washed out to the ocean. Never found it.”

  Personally, I thought that sounded like a fishy story, but what reason would Sharlene have to lie to me about it? I’d ask Todd what he thought. “And where did this take place?”

  “Oh, this is when we lived in Massachusetts. Like a year and a half ago.”

  “Hmm. Well, you’ve certainly been through a lot.”

  “That’s why I wanted a new start, and when I found out I might have lived here when I was a kid, I thought I’d come here.”

  I wanted to ask her more about her birth dad, but maybe I’d better see what Harry found out in Kansas first.

  It wasn’t until she walked out the door a couple of hours later that I noticed her backpack. Pink, studded with rhinestones.

  Oh, no. I so wanted Sharlene to be innocent. But why would she have been in the hall outside of Kenny’s room the night of Harry’s party? The same night Kenny was rushed to the emergency room?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Karen flew into the store as I was getting ready to leave. “Good timing,” I said, laying my purse down on the counter. “I was just walking out the door.”

  She waved an envelope at me. “I finally found Grandma’s will!”

  Praise God! Finally, progress. So that’s what she had planned to tell me at Aunt Dot’s party. I sank down on my stool. “Where was it?”

  “Stuck between all of her Bible commentaries. Of course. Because everyone stuffs their will between books where it won’t be found.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t understand why she wouldn’t have put it into a safety deposit box or at least somewhere logical.”

  “Have you read it?”

  “Nope. I was so excited when I realized what it was, that I ran over here before I even opened it.” She broke the seal and pulled out the papers. “Oh, my goodness.”

  “What?”

  “This is dated a very long time ago. Like twenty years ago.”

  “And?”

  “I thought she had made it more recently than that.” She shrugged, thumbing through the pages. “Why do they have to make these things so complex?”

  “Yeah, people used to be able to handwrite a will, then get it witnessed and—”

  “Callie.” She looked up at me, her eyes wide. “Look at this. I never knew anything about this.”

  I skimmed the document she handed me. My pulse jumped. “Your grandma had a business deal with Kenny Carner? Looks like he sold her some acreage.”

  We stared at each other. What could this mean?

  Could Kenny have been involved in Erma’s death? Over a piece of land?

  I hated to think it, but he sure seemed to have something on his conscience. I couldn’t imagine him murdering his old schoolmate, but still…

  I reread the first paragraph. “Wait a minute.” I read it a third time to be certain I understood it. “He didn’t sell it to her. She paid it off for him.” I furrowed my brow. “Why would she do that?”

  “I wasn’t aware that they knew each other that well.” Karen frowned. “He must have been a pretty good friend for her to do that for him.”

  “Or pretty desperate.” I read the rest of the document, slowly this time, pausing at the last few lines. “Wow. She laid out pretty specific details. Listen to this: ‘Kenneth Carner shall pay Erma Newman the agreed-upon amount by exactly twenty years to date of this will. If debt is not repaid by exactly twenty years to the date of this will, the property will be donated to a charity of Erma Newman’s choice.’”

  “Leave it to Grandma to come up with something so complicated.” Karen massaged her temples. “So that means…what? Whose land is it now?”

  I stared at the date on the will, then at my calendar on the wall above the flower coolers. “She died two weeks before the twenty years was up. Wow. I wonder if he paid her back.”

  Karen shook her head. “If not, she must have been getting ready to donate the land.”

  “Maybe that’s why my name was on those papers you found a couple of weeks ago. Maybe Erma was planning to give the land to Hope House.”

  We stared at each other again.

  Karen flipped her hair back over her shoulder. “But someone killed her before the land could be given away? Like, on purpose? So that the land wouldn’t be given to y’all?”

  My thoughts exactly. I read through the legal description of the land. “Wait a minute. It looks like this land is out on the highway, near the acreage we’ve already put a bid on.”

  “Kenny lived out there, you know. Maybe he was still allowed to live on the land, even though Grandma ‘owned’ it?”

  I pursed my lips. “Maybe. But he recently moved to Willowbough.”

  So…could this have
anything to do with June trying to block our plans for Hope House? But how would June have known the terms of the will, if Karen had only found the document today? Had Kenny told her?

  Karen peered over my shoulder at the paper. “Does it say what should happen if she passed away before the twenty years were up?”

  “I don’t know. I got stuck on the part about her dying two weeks before the time ran out.” Time ran out.

  Isn’t that what Kenny had said to me last time I talked to him? Before they rushed him to the hospital? I knew I was running out of time, but I didn’t think they’d get her.

  I sucked in my breath. “I think—.” I snapped my mouth shut. I needed to talk to Todd before I jumped to any conclusions. I found my place in the document and finished reading it out loud, my mind whirling with the possibilities. “In the event that I, Erma Newman, die before the aforementioned twenty years and the debt has not been paid in full, I bequeath the property to the person or direct descendent of the person who can produce the token of promise within three weeks of my death, to be verified in person by my lawyer.”

  Oh, boy. My brain was buzzing. Who stood to gain from killing Erma two weeks before the land was donated? Obviously, the person who held the ‘token of promise.’ Right. And now we only had one week left to find said person.

  Karen sighed loudly. “What in the world is a ‘token of promise’? I can’t believe Grandma made this so complicated on purpose.”

  “She must have had a reason.” But what kind of reason? Was she trying to protect someone? Or trying to make sure the land ended up in the hands of the ‘right’ person? “I think you need to show it to a lawyer. Maybe we’re misunderstanding it.”

  I hoped we were, anyway.

  I woke the next morning with a sense of urgency. I needed to go see Kenny in the hospital. Somehow, he was tied to all of this and I needed to know how. I pulled on my clothes and threw my hair up in a bun. Annie, who had spent the night with me, wanted to come.

  “You have to stay here, girl. I need to get this mystery solved once and for all. And I don't think they let dogs into the hospital.” I bent to hug her, and she gave me a quick kiss on my nose. “Yes, even nice ones like you.”