Previously Loved Treasures

by Bette Lee Crosby

  If I do have to leave, Clarence will go with me. That’s the good thing about having a dog. No matter where you go or how worthless you are to other people, the dog still loves you.

  Sad. I never realized that before.

  The Search

  At the breakfast table Max announced he was going to Jack Muller’s office to check on the existence of a will. He’d planned to go alone, but Doctor Payne suggested he go along. “As a witness,” he said.

  “Some witness,” Harriet grumbled. “You’re on his side. He’d lie and you’d swear to it.”

  “There is no lying about the existence of a will,” Wilbur said. “It’s a legal document that either exists or doesn’t.”

  “Yeah, well, what if he goes there, snags the will, then says there ain’t none?”

  Laricka nodded. “Harriet has a point.”

  After fifteen minutes of discussion, it was decided that Laricka, who claimed to be reasonably neutral, would tag along as an unbiased observer. The three of them left the house at five minutes before nine.

  At four minutes before nine Wilbur, Harriet, Louie, and Caroline began searching the house for the will. “A copy has got to be here somewhere,” Wilbur said. Throughout the night he had racked his brain and run through the letters of the alphabet a dozen or more times trying to recall the name of the lawyer Ida mentioned, but nothing came. The name had disappeared from memory, so it was imperative they find the will.

  “Caroline, you and Harriet go through Ida’s room,” Wilbur said. As much as he wanted to be there and touch the remainders of a woman he’d loved, he felt it unseemly to go through things of such an intimate nature. Louie took the kitchen, and Wilbur searched the rest of the house.

  In the kitchen Louie flipped through the pages of every cookbook, searched the vegetable bins, and rummaged through the freezer. He checked beneath the trays of silverware, removed the dishes from the closet, then replaced them. When he came to the drawer containing a stack of dishtowels and potholders, he lifted the stack from the drawer and checked beneath them. Nothing. He lifted the corner of a few towels, peeked beneath them, then set the stack back into place.

  ~ ~ ~

  When Max and his entourage reached the office of Jack Muller, a receptionist informed them that he was in district court and wasn’t expected back until late afternoon.

  Visibly agitated by such news Max asked, “What time?”

  She shrugged. “Could be three, could be four, could be later.”

  Max suggested they sit and wait, but Laricka and Doctor Payne responded with a resounding “no.”

  “I’ve got better things to do,” Payne said.

  “And my grandsons are coming to visit,” Laricka added.

  Max then suggested they take the thirty-seven-mile drive to the courthouse and was again voted down.

  “We’ll come back tomorrow,” Payne said, and although Max objected to the wait he was left with no alternative.

  By the time Max returned home, Wilbur and the others had finished searching the house but found nothing.

  ~ ~ ~

  Lunch was a somber affair with most everyone thinking on what they might have missed. Most everyone, but not Caroline. Her thoughts were focused on the work at hand. For lunch she’d made a tuna salad but neglected to drain the oil from the can, then mixed in way too much mayonnaise and chopped the onions into a size more suitable for apple chunks. Again a basket of Wonder Bread was placed on the table.

  “Not bad,” Louie said and scooped a large pile onto his plate.

  The others picked at the edges of the bowl and then settled for bits of bread and butter. Max used the disastrous salad to repeat the fact that Caroline was poorly qualified to be manager of the house.

  “What we need is a professional cook,” he said. “Someone who knows how to prepare meals properly.”

  Once Max said that, the other residents began loading scoops of the salad onto their plates.

  “Actually it looks pretty tasty,” Laricka lied.

  Before everyone left the table, the bowl was empty.

  ~ ~ ~

  That afternoon Wilbur collected the rent checks; all except Max’s. When he’d broached the subject, Max snarled, “Pay rent for living in a house that I own? No way!”

  “You don’t actually own the house,” Wilbur replied. He was going to mention that the likelihood of Max ever owning it was non-existent, but given the ugliness in Max’s attitude Wilbur said only there were expenses to be paid and everyone had to help.

  That only served to make Max angrier. “Poor management! If she knew how to run a boarding house, she’d have managed without harassing me for a measly week’s rent.”

  “It’s two weeks,” Wilbur replied, but Max ignored the comment and continued on his tirade. After going back and forth for several minutes, Wilbur turned with an air of disgust and walked away.

  That afternoon he gave Caroline an envelope containing the rent checks and twenty-five dollars in cash. “The cash is Max’s rent for one week,” he explained. “He’ll catch up with the rest next week.”

  Caroline had a look of surprise. “Max paid cash?”

  Wilbur nodded, then quickly changed the subject.

  All too often he’d seen Ida sitting at the table totaling up columns of figures and trying to make ends meet. It was always a stretch. Caroline was less capable of managing than Ida; still, if she knew Wilbur had put the money in for Max, she would have refused it. Charity, she would have said, and handed the money back.

  As it was, Caroline pocketed the envelope with no further questions.

  Fifteen minutes later she loaded Clarence into the car and pulled out of the driveway.

  Standing at the window and watching, Max grumbled. “Bunch of jerks, giving a girl like that their money. That’s the last we’re gonna see of her.” Laricka, who’d been the only person within earshot, gave him an angry glare then turned and left the room.

  ~ ~ ~

  Caroline drove directly to the bank and opened a checking account in her name. She deposited all five checks plus one hundred-and-twelve dollars of the money she’d brought from Pennsylvania. She held back the twenty-five dollars in cash for necessities.

  From the bank she continued to Food Lion. Instead of picking the snacks she usually bought, she filled an entire shopping cart with items Ida was likely to select: chopped meat, pork chops, fresh ears of corn, ripe tomatoes, and a ten-pound bag of potatoes. She also added several packages of ready-to-bake biscuits. Caroline knew her grandmother would never have bought those, but until she learned to make a decent biscuit these would have to do. When she got to the checkout line there was not one bag of pretzels. No chips. No TV dinners.

  That evening when Caroline served dinner, the pork chops had places where the breading had come loose and dropped off and three pieces of corn had bits of silk still caught between the kernels, but there was a basket of biscuits on the table.

  Everyone but Max smiled. Although there was a round of compliments stating that Caroline’s cooking had dramatically improved, Max said nothing.

  ~ ~ ~

  Three days passed before Jack Muller finally made time to speak to Max, and when he did it was a five-minute meeting in the reception room of his office.

  “I haven’t heard from Ida since Big Jim’s passing,” Muller said. “I believe she’s taken her business elsewhere.”

  “Was there an earlier will, one written back a year, maybe two?” Max asked.

  Muller shook his head. “The last one I did was five or six years before Jim passed.”

  Max’s eyes brightened. “Do you have a copy of it?”

  “Just a file copy. The will was probated and settled when Jim died.”

  “By who?”

  Muller began looking at Max with a suspicious eye. “What’s going on here? And what gives you the right to be snooping in Ida’s business?”

  “I’m Jim’s brother, and I’ve got every right to look into what’s happened with my brot
her’s estate.”

  “Afraid not,” Muller said. “Jim left everything to Ida. And now that she’s gone I guess you’ll have to talk to James if you want to know what happened to the estate.”

  “He’s been gone for thirty years. Nobody knows where he is or even if he’s alive.”

  “Did he have any children?”

  Max curled his lip. “That’s the problem. This girl showed up claiming James was her daddy, but I’m thinking she’s a phony.”

  Muller had dealt with enough no-goods to sense when a person had the stink of trouble on their skin. Max Sweetwater was ripe with it.

  “That’s a pretty strong accusation. Unless you’ve got proof positive, I can’t help you.” He turned and walked away.

  That didn’t stop Max; he trailed behind Muller. “If proof is what you want, proof is what you’ll get.”

  Without bothering to answer, Jack stepped back into his office and closed the door.

  As Max stormed out the door, the receptionist said, “Have a nice day.”

  Laricka and Doctor Payne, who’d both witnessed to the conversation, agreed that Max had not proven there was no will any more than Wilbur had proven there was.

  So things remained at a stalemate. And Max did not hand over a rent check even when the others did.

  ~ ~ ~

  In the days that followed, Caroline was up early and had breakfast on the table by nine o’clock. Although the residents had become accustomed to eating at seven, no one complained. By week’s end Caroline had mastered scrambled eggs, little sausage links, and biscuits. When Doctor Payne suggested melon with cottage cheese might be a pleasant change, four pairs of eyes glared at him angrily and Max gave a self-satisfied nod.

  Just learning as she was, it took Caroline twice as long to cook and three times as long to clean up the kitchen. Struggling to get the platters ready to serve, she ignored the thrown-about dishtowels and splatters of grease that dotted the stove. A week after she’d begun making breakfast, Caroline left the sausage simmering on the front burner of the stove and went to the pantry in search of salt. In less than a minute, the grease caught fire and spread across the spills and splatters. Seconds later it caught hold of the potholders she’d left lying there. Caroline was moving a large bag of flour aside when she heard Laricka scream, “Fire! Fire!”

  Caroline rushed back, grabbed the pitcher of orange juice ready to go on the table, and poured it over the flames. By then Wilbur and Louie had arrived in the kitchen.

  The fire sputtered, spit, and finally fizzled out, becoming a greasy, sticky goo that dripped down the front of the stove and onto the floor. Bits and pieces of the tattered potholders melted and were now cemented to the stove.

  Caroline gave a mournful sigh. “I’m never going to get this right.”

  Seeing the girl hunched with the weight of responsibility as she was prompted Wilbur to once again lie. “This is nothing. Why, one time your grandma set fire to a pan of bacon twice this size!”

  “Grandma did?”

  “Sure she did. It’s a thing that can happen to anybody.” Wilbur turned to Louie and Laricka. “Right?”

  They both gave blank-faced nods, even though neither of them remembered Ida ever doing such a thing.

  “The important thing is just to get this cleaned up,” Wilbur said. He pulled open the drawer of dishtowels and handed three to Laricka. “Wet these and let’s get started.”

  Without being assigned tasks, Louie and Laricka began wiping and cleaning. Wilbur carried the skillet now full of orange juice to the sink.

  It took almost twenty minutes to clean the kitchen, and in the process of doing so they dirtied seven kitchen towels. After she’d rinsed the towels and carried them to the laundry room, Caroline tossed the charred remains of the potholders in the garbage can.

  By then it was nine-thirty and breakfast was still uncooked. Getting ready to start over, she reached into the drawer and pulled out four fresh towels and two new potholders. That’s when the envelope Ida had so carefully hidden fell to the floor.

  “What’s this?” Laricka asked and handed Caroline the envelope.

  It was a thick white envelope that had been mailed to Ida, but it now had Caroline’s name scrawled across the front in a handwriting they had all come to know. In the upper left hand corner was the return address for Susan D. Schleicher, Attorney.

  Finders Keepers

  Once the will was found, Max turned uglier than imaginable. He insisted the will was a forgery, and if perchance the signature was authentic Ida had apparently been coerced into giving a total stranger the house his brother built. He copied down the name and address of Susan D. Schleicher and warned he would take a trip to South Rockdale and check out this supposed lawyer.

  By time the excitement died down it was nearly ten-thirty, and no one had eaten breakfast. Wilbur, feeing victorious and vindicated, offered to take everyone to the diner, his treat. Everyone nodded yes, except Max. He skulked off, saying he’d get to the bottom of this.

  Louie laughed. “You’re at the bottom of it.”

  Max didn’t bother to respond. The thought of losing something that rightfully belonged to him crawled under his skin and caused an itch that was impossible to scratch.

  ~ ~ ~

  Two days later Max announced that he had an appointment with Susan Schleicher and planned to uncover the truth about the will. This time Laricka refused to tag along as a witness, saying it was a waste of time and her grandsons were coming to visit.

  “They’re here all the time,” Max said. “Can’t you skip a day?”

  “Not with my precious grandsons!” Laricka replied. She reminded everyone within earshot how children were only young once and you had to take advantage of every moment you could spend with them. “Just look at what happened to poor Ida,” she said and shook her head sadly.

  Only Doctor Payne was willing to accompany Max on the trip, and even he was skeptical as to whether such a venture was worthwhile. “What is there to prove?” he asked, but Max’s answer had been just a sly nod of his head.

  On the drive to South Rockdale there was very little conversation. Max drove and Doctor Payne leafed through the pages of the Today’s Dentist magazine he’d brought along.

  After Max had suffered in silence for nearly two-thirds of the trip, he said, “How long’s it gonna take you to read that thing?”

  “I don’t know,” Payne replied. “Is there some kind of hurry?”

  “Not so much a hurry,” Max said, “but I was figuring on you giving me some kind of encouragement. Bolstering my spirits a bit.”

  “Encouragement?” Payne repeated. “For what? Going on a wild goose chase and making everybody’s life miserable?”

  “What wild goose chase? I’m just trying to set things straight.”

  “Stop kidding yourself.” Payne looked up from his magazine. “That will’s legitimate, and you know it. You’re just too much of a pompous ass to admit it.”

  “Me?” Max’s eyes grew big and round, and his nose began twitching side to side. “You’re the one! Everybody says you’re pompous. Not just me, everybody!” Max angrily floored the accelerator, and they arrived in South Rockdale forty-five minutes before their appointment with Susan Schleicher.

  Up until now Payne had considered Max a principled man who could at times be difficult. But that last comment was something he couldn’t brush aside. “I’ll meet you back here in forty-five minutes,” he said and walked off. A second later he turned the corner and disappeared.

  “Well, if that don’t beat all,” Max grumbled. “I figure him for a friend, and he gives me this kind of crap.” The anger inside his head swelled and pushed against his brain. It was difficult enough to think through the questions he had to ask, and Payne was making it harder. “I should never have brought him,” Max said with a groan as he paced back and forth across the lobby of the building. He thought and rethought what he should say to Susan Schleicher, but in between every thought was the echo of P
ayne’s words.

  With not a minute to spare, Payne returned carrying two new magazines. “Let’s get this over with,” he said. Without another word passing between them, they entered the elevator.

  When they walked into Susan’s office, all of the well-planned arguments Max had practiced disappeared. A red-hot ball of anger aimed at Caroline Sweetwater had replaced them. She was to blame for everything. She was the reason he’d have to pay rent to live in a house that was rightfully his. He pulled a copy of the will from his pocket and waved it in the air.

  “Did you do this?” he shouted accusingly.

  “Sit down,” Susan commanded. “And do not use that tone of voice with me, or I’ll have you thrown out of my office.”

  Max took a seat and mumbled, “Sorry. I’m just a bit overwrought about this will.” He passed the copy to Susan.

  She leafed through the pages then looked back at Max. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Wrong? Everything’s wrong. I doubt this is even a legitimate will!”

  Susan’s voice grew quite a bit testier. “On what basis?”

  “This girl is not Ida’s granddaughter!”

  Susan chuckled and leaned back in her chair. Since Max had introduced himself only as Mister Sweetwater, she’d assumed he was the son. “Ida suspected this would happen,” she said. “That’s why she left you the thirty silver dollars.”

  With his face growing redder by the minute, Max shouted, “I’m not Ida’s son! I’m Big Jim’s brother!”

  “I don’t care if you’re Santa Claus,” Susan said. “One more outburst, and you’re out of here.”

  Max, unaccustomed to being bossed about by a woman, came right back at her. “You can’t talk to me this way! I have rights!”

  He probably would have said something more, but by then Susan had already called for security. Within the minute an armed guard appeared and took Max by the elbow.