The McHenry Inheritance (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 1)

by Michael Wallace

  “I want to be very clear on this point, Mr. Marchand. Would it be fair to say that Frank McHenry felt strongly enough about leaving the ranch to his son to insist upon it, even after you had pointed out the potential difficulties with that disposition of the estate?”

  “At that time, yes.”

  Bosso paused for effect, wrinkling his brow as though carefully thinking through his next set of questions. “All right,” he continued, “Let’s move ahead to the second will. When was that drawn up and signed?”

  “In the summer of 1988.”

  “And was there any particular reason for doing it then?”

  “There was. Mr. McHenry’s wife, Elizabeth, had died in 1984, and I had been gently urging him since that time to revise his will.”

  “Why did it take him four years to do it?”

  “I’m sure you’re aware, counselor, that a great many people postpone doing their wills. He just kept putting it off, and then one day he was ready to do it.”

  “Again, in general terms, how did this second will dispose of the bulk of the estate?”

  “With his wife deceased, Mr. McHenry disposed of the ranch and its assets among the two children as he had in the previous will.”

  “So he once again left the ranch, the cattle and the lease holds to the son with provisions for income to the daughter?”

  “That is correct.”

  “And did you, on this occasion, again advise him of potential difficulties with this arrangement?”

  “I did. If anything, I made the point more strenuously than before.”

  “And how did Mr. McHenry respond?”

  “Much the same way. I think he really hoped his son would take over the ranch, and he insisted on disposing of the estate on the presumption that such a thing would happen.”

  “To be absolutely clear about this point, then, on two separate occasions, Frank McHenry, overriding your concerns, commissioned and signed a will that, in the end, called for his son, Daniel, to inherit the ranch and its assets. Is that a fair and accurate statement?”

  “I would say so, yes.”

  “Now can we move forward to the morning of March 29th of this year. Do you remember that day?”

  “Quite vividly.”

  “Please describe the events of that morning as they related to the McHenry family.”

  “Well, shortly after nine o’clock that morning I received a phone call asking me to come to Summit County Hospital because Mr. McHenry wanted to have a new will drawn up.”

  “Was it Mr. McHenry who called?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then who placed the call to you?”

  “His daughter, Ellen McHenry.”

  “Didn’t you think that was unusual?”

  “No.”

  Bosso raised his eyebrows dramatically and his voice imperceptibly for maximum effect.

  “You didn’t? Mr. Marchand, how many times in your legal career has someone other than the testator initiated the redrawing of a will?”

  “I can’t recall any other occasion.”

  “So you are telling the court that although something occurred which had never happened to you in a professional career spanning more than three decades, you did not consider that to be unusual?”

  “I guess not at the time.”

  “Why not, Mr. Marchand?”

  “You had to consider the circumstances,” he said with a touch of asperity. “I knew that Frank McHenry had fallen from a horse three days earlier, broken a number of bones, and had lain in the snow for almost four hours before being discovered. Possessing that knowledge, it did not seem unusual to me that he might choose to conserve his energy by having someone else make a phone call on his behalf.”

  “Even though that someone else stood to benefit from the change in the will?”

  “I had no way of knowing that at the time.”

  “But you did know that Miss McHenry was a beneficiary of all earlier wills?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You suppose so? Very well then, Mr. Marchand. And I suppose that if your clients are satisfied with that sort of sketchy knowledge of their business, it’s no concern of mine. Let us proceed. After receiving the phone call from Miss McHenry, what did you do?”

  “Since the matter appeared to be urgent, I canceled my morning appointments and drove straight to the hospital.”

  “And will you please describe what you saw when you reached Mr. McHenry’s hospital room.”

  “Mr. McHenry was lying in his bed, on his back. His daughter was sitting in a chair to his right from my point of view and holding his left hand in hers. One of the nurses was putting away a washcloth and bowl and left within a minute of my entrance.”

  “Did Mr. McHenry look like his usual self?”

  “No one would after what he’d been through. Physically he looked haggard and aged considerably since I had last seen him two weeks earlier. His mental faculties, however, were most acute and he was quite lucid as he spoke, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

  “Did either of the McHenrys say anything to you when you came in?”

  “I believe Miss McHenry thanked me for coming.”

  “Is that all?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Didn’t Miss McHenry say something along the order of ‘Thank you for getting here so fast, Howard. We — and I emphasize the word even though I am certain she did not — We need to get this taken care of quickly?’”

  “She might have. I don’t recall.”

  “So you can’t rule out the possibility?”

  “Not completely. I wasn’t paying much attention to her greeting because I was concerned with the business at hand.”

  “Very well. When you got to the business at hand, did you ask Miss McHenry to leave the room?”

  “No, sir, I did not.”

  “You didn’t?” Bosso moved up to the witness stand and leaned over. In a soft, insinuating voice, he said, “Tell me, Mr. Marchand, is it customary in these parts for the primary beneficiary of a will to be present while the testator is giving instructions to his attorney?”

  Gordon winced at the sledgehammer blow. Ellen turned to whisper something to her attorney, and Gordon caught just a glimpse of her profile before she turned her eyes upon the witness again.

  The witness recovered quickly. “I have been in numerous conferences where husbands and wives made out wills in each other’s favor and both parties were present at the same time,” he said.

  “That was a clever answer, Mr. Marchand, but let me rephrase the question. On how many other occasions have you redrawn a will to change the primary beneficiary and have the new primary beneficiary be present?”

  “I don’t believe I ever have.”

  “And as an experienced estate attorney, did it not occur to you that the physical presence of the primary beneficiary as the testator was giving instructions for the new will might suggest the exertion of undue influence by that party?”

  “Objection, your honor.” The soft tenor voice of the defense counselor interrupted the examination as he stood. He was tall, slender, pale, and fortyish with thinning brownish-gray hair and large round eyeglasses. Looking from the defense attorney to Bosso, Gordon was glad, for Ellen’s sake, that the case was being heard by a judge rather than a jury.

  “The question is extremely leading,” he said.

  “Your honor,” said Bosso, “undue influence is the basis for our challenge to this will. If we can’t raise the issue during examination, how can we possibly prove the facts of the case.”

  For the first time since Gordon had entered the courtroom, Judge Herbert Hawkins moved. From a reclining position in his chair, he leaned forward. He looked like central casting’s idea of a judge: middle-aged, gray haired, bespectacled and otherwise featureless. His voice, when he spoke, had a rasping, slightly whiny quality.

  “I’ll allow some latitude, counselor,” the judge said. “The question of undue influence can
no more be separated from this witness than wetness can be separated from water. The objection is overruled, but keep your follow-up questions to the point.”

  “To begin with,” said Marchand, “I don’t know that I would describe myself as an experienced estate attorney. I practice all kinds of law, and in a typical year I probably do as many drunk driving defenses as wills. Because of that, I perhaps was not as aware as I should have been about the appearance of impropriety. All I saw was a devoted daughter comforting her seriously injured — and, as it turned out, dying — father.”

  “And you never once thought that this devotion might have something to do with the terms of the new will?”

  “Objection!” The defense attorney’s voice took on a passion and urgency it lacked the last time around. “Your honor, that’s an unfounded insinuation with no basis in the evidence introduced thus far.”

  “Mr. Watkins has a point, Mr. Bosso,” the judge said, gesturing with his head toward the defense attorney. “You are not playing to a jury, so I’ll sustain the objection and disregard the question.”

  “My apologies, your honor. Let’s move on to the substance of the new will. Mr. Marchand, how did Mr. McHenry breach the subject, or did Miss McHenry do it for him?”

  “He did it himself,” said the witness testily. “Right after the nurse left, he said something to the effect of ‘Howard, I’ve got to change the will. I don’t think Dan will ever come back to the ranch, and I’m afraid of what he might do if he did. Ellen knows how to run it and I want to leave it to her.’”

  “Did he say, specifically, what he was afraid of?”

  “No, he didn’t. I interpreted it as a statement of general concern.”

  “I don’t think the court is interested in your interpretations, Mr. Marchand. Now when Mr. McHenry said he wanted to leave the ranch and its assets to his daughter instead of his son, were you surprised?”

  “I was, a bit.”

  “Why was that?”

  “I did think he might redress the previous inequality by dividing the property equally among the two children, but I hadn’t expected him to go so far as to leave virtually everything to Miss McHenry.”

  “Did you say anything to him about that?”

  “Yes. I essentially repeated the point I had raised with the two prior wills, pointing out the bad feelings such a division would cause and emphasizing even more strongly than before the possibility of this new document being challenged.”

  “How did he respond?”

  “He asked me if I had any doubts about the soundness of his mind. When I replied that I hadn’t, he said ‘Then he hasn’t got a case if he sues, so let him try. He has his own life now, and we’re not a part of it any more.’”

  “I will ask you again, Mr. Marchand, did you not then, considering the severity of the change in the will, entertain the possibility that Mr. McHenry might have been unduly influenced in this matter by his daughter?”

  “No, I didn’t. Frank McHenry was not a man who could be pushed around by anybody.”

  “That may have been true when he was in vigorous health, but you yourself testified that he seemed to have aged visibly in just a few days after the accident. Did it never occur to you that lying there, probably knowing he was dying, his emotional state might be as fragile as his physical condition?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Your lack of cynicism is a refreshing antidote to the world we live in, Mr. Marchand. How large an estate are we talking about, precisely?”

  “It was substantial.”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “As I said previously, the bulk of the estate consisted of land and cattle. Twin Creek Ranch itself consists of nearly 5,000 acres, along with a primary dwelling house, several additional dwellings for employees and guests, and numerous outbuildings. Additionally, Twin Creek Cattle Company maintained lease holds on some 9,000 acres of federal land in several locations in this county.”

  “How long were the leases?”

  “They were 50-year leases executed at various times from 1969 to 1981, so the end dates vary accordingly.”

  “So they all had at least a quarter of a century remaining before they expired?

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And how many head of cattle did the ranch possess at the time of Mr. McHenry’s death.”

  “You obviously are not familiar with the cattle business, Mr. Bosso.”

  “I freely concede as much.”

  “Asking a cattleman how many head of cattle he owns is tantamount to asking how much money he has in his bank account. It just isn’t done, and the estate asked the court to seal that information.”

  “Which it did. Very well, Mr. Marchand, there nevertheless was an appraisal conducted on the estate. Could you please tell us at what figure it was valued.”

  “The appraiser had some difficulty coming up with exact figures, owing to the nature of the estate. Five thousand acres of land, much of which is high-quality cattle pasture, is clearly valuable, but there are few recent transactions to base a comparison upon. The same is true for the leaseholds, and of course the value of the cattle themselves changes almost daily.”

  “Nevertheless, the appraiser did hazard a ballpark figure?”

  “She did.”

  “And what did that come to?”

  “The best estimate of assets for the estate was between eleven and fourteen million dollars, based on current knowledge of those assets.”

  “What do you mean, based on current knowledge?”

  “Based on what we know of the estate. For instance, there might be mineral reserves beneath the property that would greatly add to its value. That would be unlikely, but after all gold and silver have been found in this county in the past. In fact, there is an abandoned mine on the ranch.”

  “And what were the liabilities of the estate?”

  “Those were easier to calculate precisely. They came to four million, one hundred eight thousand dollars, which consisted mostly of bank debt, along with a few outstanding expenses.”

  “So Mr. Marchand, we are talking about a net inheritance of seven to ten million dollars. In your experience of the world, sir, have you ever known people to lie, cheat, or cut corners when that much was at stake?”

  “Objection!” Watkins was on his feet. “That’s another speculative and insinuating question, your honor. Counsel has introduced no evidence as yet to indicate that any of those things have occurred here.”

  “I’ll withdraw the question and take another approach,” Bosso said. “Given the substantial size of the estate, which you surely must have guessed at, did it not occur to you that Mr. McHenry was being unusually impulsive in changing his will as dramatically as he did.”

  There was a long pause before Marchand answered. “Impulsive, perhaps, but I wouldn’t say unusually impulsive. Mr. McHenry was a man who was what he seemed to be and whose feelings were close to the skin. When he made a decision, that was that, and I accepted it as being his intention.”

  “Did not the dramatic reversal of fortunes in the new will, combined with Miss McHenry’s clinging presence in her father’s hospital room, cause you to wonder in any way what had been behind that decision?”

  The pause this time was shorter, but still perceptible. “No, sir. It did not.”

  Bosso fixed his witness with a steely glare for a full five seconds, then let the next words out on the exhale, almost under his breath.

  “The faithful family retainer.” He turned from Marchand and walked back across the courtroom to his table. “No further questions.”

  Watkins rose to cross-examine. For ten long seconds, he looked at a sheaf of yellow legal papers spread out on the table, which he tapped nervously with a pen. Gordon couldn’t help noticing the difference between his edgy, tentative behavior and Bosso’s superbly controlled and theatrical performance.

  “Mr. Marchand, the will that is being challenged in this court was dated March 30th, which would be a day a
fter the conversation you just described and four days before Mr. McHenry’s death. Did Mr. McHenry express any hesitation before signing the document?”

  “No, sir, he did not.”

  “Did he read it over carefully before signing.”

  “Yes, he did. In fact, he questioned me on several different specific points in the document.”

  “Was his daughter present during the signing of the document, or during your discussions prior to that on this day?”

  “No. She excused herself when I arrived and was waiting in the lobby of the hospital when I left.”

  “Going back to the will that was drawn in 1988, what was the status of the McHenry family at that time?”

  “Frank McHenry and his daughter were both living at the ranch. She had been back from college for a couple of years and was learning the business affairs of the property. Daniel McHenry had been living and working in San Francisco ever since his graduation from college.”

  “And at the time of Mr. McHenry’s death?”

  “It was the same. Ellen was still on the ranch, and her brother was in San Francisco.”

  “Mr. Marchand, how long have you been doing legal work for the McHenry family?”

  “More than a quarter of a century.”

  “And during that time, have you become fairly well-acquainted with the personalities of the family members and with the nature of their relations to each other?”

  “I don’t snoop into my clients’ lives, if that’s what you mean, but, yes, you do pick up on things.”

  “Mr. Bosso has made a great deal in his examination about the changes in the will and the presence of Miss McHenry at the hospital, neither of which you said unduly alarmed you. Would it be fair to state that you were probably filtering those events through your understanding of the family, and that this is why you saw nothing sinister where Mr. Bosso would have the court believe there was?”

  “At some level that was probably true.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Marchand. I have no more questions.”

  Judge Hawkins leaned forward in his chair. “Mr. Bosso, it is now 3:45. How long will it take to examine your next witness?”