by Sara Rosett
Aunt Christine was in her boot-cut jeans and a sweatshirt with the slogan “I dig treasure hunting” embroidered on it. “I just started,” she said. She’d pulled out a cabinet drawer to hold open the refrigerator door. Brown grocery bags sat on the countertop. In the living room, she’d opened the curtains, but left the lamps off and, with the deep overhanging eaves of the bungalow, the room was mostly in shadow.
“Okay, what would you like me to do?” I asked.
“Why don’t you take the food out and I’ll bag it. There’s a garbage bag over there for anything that’s spoiled.”
I handed her a stick of butter and a jar of peach jam. “So you looked around when you first got here?”
“Oh my, yes. I still can’t believe what happened to you last week,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m so sorry that happened. You’re probably still shaken up, aren’t you? You didn’t have to come today, you know.”
“I’m all right, but I wouldn’t want to be here alone.” I sniffed a half gallon of milk and reared back. “This has gone bad.” Christine took it from me and emptied it into the sink. “You’re certainly braver than I would be. I wouldn’t have come in alone. How did you get in here?” I asked as I dug in my pocket and pulled out the key she’d given me last week so I could pick up the envelopes.
“I used the one that’s hidden outside. Dad always kept a key on the front porch in one of the porch pillars.” She took the key from me and put it on the counter beside her purse. “There’s a crevice around one of those rocks and a key fits right in and you’d never notice it unless you knew where it was. I walked through the whole house as soon as I arrived. The window is boarded up again and everything else was locked up tight. Bud had one of his crews come over and . . . clean.”
“Oh, he did, did he?” I asked, and couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my tone.
“Yes, he’s got connections all over town—painters, framers, electricians, plumbers. After all his years in real estate, if it’s got anything to do with home repair or remodeling—Bud’s the man to talk to.”
I opened the vegetable tray and pulled out a plastic bag of what had once been lettuce, but now resembled sludge. I tossed it in the garbage bag. “I see. Has he got connections in the sheriff’s department, too?”
“You mean, Joel Rickets? He’s known Joel for years. They drink coffee together most every morning down at Krispy Kreme.”
“That explains it,” I said as I handed her some shiny Gala apples.
“Explains what?”
“Why Rickets closed the case so quickly on Stan Anderson’s death.”
As Aunt Christine placed the apples in one of the bags, she tilted her head. “But what else could he investigate? The man was a stranger, an opportunist, who was stealing from us during a traumatic time. I don’t feel sorry for him at all.” Aunt Christine tucked a loaf of bread onto the top layer of one of the brown grocery bags. “It looks like he had a pattern of this type of behavior.”
“Breaking and entering?”
“No, Joel said something about embezzlement. Charges were filed, but the case was dropped before it went to court . . . or something like that. But still, embezzlement is stealing, just a different way of going about it.”
“But you haven’t discovered that anything’s missing here, right?” I asked.
“No. Joel came and got me and I looked through the whole house. Nothing’s gone—except that Depression glass that Felicity took, but we’ll sort that out as a family, so there’s no need to tell him about it. That man probably hadn’t gotten to the actual taking part. He was casing the place.”
“Did Grandpa Franklin have anything small that was valuable? Anything that could fit in his pockets?
“No . . . nothing like that. He gave us girls all of Mother’s jewelry when she died. The only other valuables were the TV, stereo, and computer. They were too old to interest a thief. “
“Well, he must have been after something small because he didn’t have a car. How did he get here? This isn’t exactly in town.”
“He probably had an accomplice. Someone dropped him off and was going to pick him up, but when he returned and saw all the activity, he hightailed it out of here.” Aunt Christine pointed a carton of eggs at me to emphasize her point.
I said, “Well, a possible accomplice is worth investigating, don’t you think?”
Aunt Christine shrugged. “Needle in a haystack, probably.”
I stifled a sigh, realizing that the odds of changing her mind could probably be measured in fractions—fractions with very large denominators. Could I be completely off base? Was Stan Anderson just a clumsy opportunist?
“This can certainly go in the trash,” I said as I handed her a Styrofoam take-out box. She opened it and shook her head. “I should have known he wouldn’t eat it all.” She put it in the trash and said, “Barbeque brisket. I picked it up from Sonny’s and dropped it by here on my way to dinner last Monday night.”
I pulled out the last thing in the fridge, a tub of yogurt that had been shoved to the back, and turned to see Aunt Christine was staring off into space with a distressed look on her face. I checked the date on the yogurt and tossed it in the trash without opening it. “Did you go out with Roy that night?” I asked, realizing that I didn’t know what Aunt Christine had been doing the night before Grandpa Franklin died. If she’d been with Roy, her comments about hurting Grandpa Franklin might not be so odd after all. Had Grandpa Franklin felt excluded from the new relationship in Aunt Christine’s life? As far as I knew, Aunt Christine’s love life had been pretty tame. Had she ever had a serious boyfriend before?
She looked back at me and blinked. She looked like she’d forgotten I was in the same room with her. “Roy? Oh, no. Not that night. He was working the late shift. I had dinner with my teacher friends at Benito’s. Even though I’m retired, we still get together every few months and go out to eat. Darcy was showing off her new baby—the sweetest baby girl. Here, let me show you.” She grabbed her purse and pulled out a phone. “Roy talked me into this newfangled phone,” she said, holding it out at arm’s length and tilting her head back as she tentatively tapped the touch screen. “He showed me how to take pictures, so I gave it a whirl that night—oh, here they are.”
She handed the phone to me. There was a picture of five women ranging in age from early twenties to probably sixties. They were gathered around a table with a red-and-white-checked tablecloth. Drinks and loaves of bread covered the table. One young woman with dark circles under her eyes and a large smile on her face was hemmed in by a stroller and a huge diaper bag. She was holding a tiny pink bundle. I touched the screen and moved to the next picture, a close-up of a yawning baby. The last picture was of Aunt Christine holding the baby. “So cute,” I said, and felt that twist of bittersweet nostalgia. My kids were long past being infants. “Babies are always so precious, aren’t they?” I said as I handed the phone back.
“They are when they’re sleeping,” Aunt Christine said. “Darcy said she hasn’t slept more than two hours in a row since she came home from the hospital. She spent the whole dinner trying to wake up little Elise, but couldn’t. She didn’t go to the movie after, either. Said Elise would start crying and she’d miss the end.” She slipped the phone back into her purse. “All right, back to work.” She shook open another brown paper bag.
We finished the refrigerator and moved to the freezer, which didn’t take long. Aunt Christine wiped down the shelves while I carried the grocery bags to her car. When I returned to the kitchen, she was doubled over, wiping the bottom shelves of the refrigerator.
“Here, let me do that,” I said.
“Thank you. My knees are not what they used to be—all those years of sinking down to get on the same level with the kids have caught up with me. I can’t forget to water the plants—the ivy by the front door looks sickly.”
“You go ahead and do that. I’ll finish in here,” I said. I wiped everything down, wondering how grimy the shelves
were in my refrigerator. They could certainly use a good cleaning. I stood, tossed the paper towel in the trash, and unhooked the refrigerator door from the cabinet drawer that Aunt Christine had pulled out to hold it open. As the door swung shut, I glanced in the narrow drawer. It held accumulated odds and ends, all neatly arranged in a plastic tray. There was an address book, pens and pencils, a few rubber bands, and a take-out menu for a barbeque restaurant. It was the stack of business cards that caught my attention. I picked up the top card for a better look. I read the name aloud, “Anderson Stanley.”
“What did you say, dear?” Aunt Christine replaced a watering can under the sink and turned toward me.
“Who’s Anderson Stanley?”
“I don’t know.” She saw the drawer and said, “If you found it in there, then it was probably someone who came to work on the house. Dad kept all their business cards in there. I know the tree trimmer’s number is in there and that nice man we got to paint the eaves last summer—his card is there, too.”
The flimsy paper of the card was plain white. There was one phone number with an unfamiliar area code in the bottom right-hand corner. A single word was centered under the name, producer. “It says he was a producer.”
“Producer?” She frowned, then her face cleared. “Oh, Dad told me about him. He came by, let’s see, it must have been about two weeks ago. He was making a documentary about the disappearance of small southern towns and wanted to interview Dad.”
“Did Grandpa Franklin do the interview?”
“No, he didn’t want that kind of attention.”
“That doesn’t sound like Grandpa Franklin. Didn’t he always have a story about everything?”
“Yes,” Aunt Christine said slowly. “There was something he didn’t like about the fellow. I don’t know what it was, specifically, but I could tell Dad wasn’t too taken with him.” She picked up the garbage bag. “We should have just enough time to drop the food at my house before we go to Gus’s office.”
“Don’t you recognize the name?”
“No . . . sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.”
“It sounds familiar because that’s the name of the man who died here—only reversed. Anderson Stanley. Stan Anderson.”
She took the card from me, angling it at arm’s length as she studied it. “That’s got to be the strangest coincidence I’ve ever heard of.”
Chapter Thirteen
“A coincidence? Do you really think that?” I kept my voice low as I spoke into my phone. I was following a sturdy middle-aged woman who was escorting Aunt Christine and me along a hallway to the conference room at the attorney’s office. I’d taken the business card with me. After we’d put the food away at Aunt Christine’s, I’d left another message for Detective Kalra while Aunt Christine changed out of her sweatshirt into a red corduroy shirt and black blazer.
I hadn’t expected to hear back from Detective Kalra and had taken my phone out to put it on vibrate when her call came in. “No,” she said. “I think the chances of two men with the names Stanley and Anderson, in any order, being connected to your grandfather are slim to none. Add the fact that ‘Anderson Stanley’ visited your grandfather shortly before his death and then a few days later ‘Stan Anderson’ dies in a botched robbery attempt at the same house . . . well, that situation is either fate or foul play, but I have to check everything out. Your aunt didn’t see this ‘Stan Anderson’ at the visitation, or at Mr. Avery’s house? She doesn’t know what he looked like?”
“No, I described him and she said she didn’t remember seeing anyone like that at the visitation.”
“And you’re sure no one else saw ‘Anderson Stanley’ visit Mr. Avery?” Detective Kalra asked.
“I don’t know. Aunt Christine said that Grandpa Franklin told her about the man, but she wasn’t there. He told her about it afterward.” Static crackled on the line. “Oh, before I lose you—Aunt Christine says on Monday night she was at dinner with friends at a restaurant named Benito’s and that Roy was working the night shift at the pharmacy.”
“I’ll check on it . . . back in town . . . sheriff’s office . . .” The line went completely quiet and I switched the phone to vibrate, figuring it would be awhile before I’d hear from her again.
The woman stopped at a doorway. “Gus’ll be along in a moment. There’s bottled water, coffee, and tea on the credenza. Help yourself.” Uncle Bud, Aunt Nanette, Uncle Kenny, and Aunt Gwen were already seated at an oval table.
The lawyers’ offices were in a two-story brick building that had once been a home and had been converted to offices. The walls were painted a subtle yellow. Cream trim surrounded the windows with their wavy aged glass and framed a view of three massive oak trees. A painting of a man in his fifties with a Roman nose and gray at the temples of his dark hair hung at one end of the room. Aunt Christine and I slid into the padded swivel chairs at the table as Felicity burst through the door.
“Hello, everyone!” she sang out, and dropped into the chair beside me. She plopped a Dooney & Bourke purse onto the conference table with a small crash, then her keys clattered down beside it. She shrugged out of her leather jacket. “Where is everybody? Where’s Gus? Isn’t it time to get started? Dan’s parking the car. He’ll be here in a minute.”
Aunt Nanette’s glare was so focused on Felicity that I inched slightly away from her. “This may be a day that you’ve been looking forward to, but I’ll remind you that this is not a happy event. It is a solemn occasion, the last time we will hear my father’s wishes. Comport yourself accordingly or I’ll see that you’re removed.”
Felicity tossed her head. “No one can make me leave. I have a right to be here. I’m family. And at least I visited him,” she said as her accusing gaze slid from Aunt Nanette to Uncle Bud, then over to Uncle Kenny and Aunt Gwen, before finally resting on me. “I wasn’t too busy to take some time to brighten his day.”
“This is not the place for disparaging comments, Felicity. I will not have it,” Aunt Nanette declared.
Felicity opened her mouth to respond, but at that moment Dan loped into the room, followed by Mitch, Bill, and Caroline. Felicity muttered a word under her breath and I glanced at her sharply, but no one else seemed to have heard it in the commotion as the last arrivals, Julia and Wes, Mitch’s sister and brother-in-law, came in and took the seats at the other end of the table. Dan pulled out a chair beside Felicity. Mitch walked around and sat down opposite me. Caroline, in a casually dressy taupe sweater and black skirt, sidestepped into a chair, causing her long gold-chain necklace to shift back and forth as she smiled across the table to me. I knew she’d gone to the real estate office this morning, but Bill’s stubbly beard, rumpled knit polo shirt, and worn jeans attested to the fact that he’d taken the day off from Smarr Electric Company where he worked in management.
A woman in a sea-foam green suit that matched her eyes walked to the head of the table. I could see the family resemblance, especially in her nose and the shape of her eyes, between her and the man in the portrait behind her. “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Gus Wallis,” she said, arranging folders on the table.
I looked at Aunt Christine, questioningly. She leaned toward me and said, “Short for Augusta. That’s her dad in the picture, Augustus.”
“Looks like everyone is here,” she said as she glanced around the room. “Let’s get started.” She took a seat and pulled out a set of papers. “Mr. Avery was very specific. He wanted this will read with all of you present.” She cleared her throat and read, “I, Franklin Scott Avery of Culverton County, Alabama, being of sound mind, do make and publish this, my last will and testament. I hereby revoke all previous wills and codicils of every nature and kind. I nominate, constitute, and appoint my son Ernest Adrian Avery to be the sole Executor and Trustee of this my will and to serve without bond.”
I glanced around the table, puzzled. Ernest? Who was Ernest? Mitch caught my glance and tilted his head in the direction of Uncle Bud. I raised my eyebr
ows and discreetly mouthed the word, “Ernest?” No wonder he went by “Bud.”
Mitch shifted in his chair and propped his arm up on the table so that he could rest his chin in his hand, hiding his grin before anyone else noticed. I felt a bit of the tension between us slacken.
I returned my attention to the reading. Gus’s voice, a mellow alto, was strong and carried clearly across the quiet room. She read that William Marcus Avery, Mitch’s dad, was to be the sole executor of the will if Uncle Bud wasn’t able to fulfill that position. As she read the instructions for dealing with funeral costs, taxes, and other financial matters, I glanced around the table. Everyone was focused on Gus. Uncle Bud looked stoic, his jaw set. Aunt Christine blinked rapidly and touched a tissue to the corner of her eye. Aunt Nanette looked sad and fierce at the same time. She kept shooting pointed glances at Felicity, as if her look alone could keep Felicity in line.
Gus read, “I hereby bequeath the landscape print in the hallway and all the contents of the guest bedroom to my daughter Christine Maria Avery along with a sum of seventy-five thousand dollars to be paid from my estate after all taxes, funeral costs, and other bills are settled. I give this amount to Christine because she deserves it.”
Beside me, Felicity tensed and leaned forward slightly. Gus continued, naming who would receive which individual items from his possessions. Grandpa Franklin’s antique pocket watch and roll-top desk went to Uncle Bud. Mitch’s dad received the tools in the garage. The quilts stored in the trunk in the living room were to be divided among the women of the family. Aunt Nanette received all the photo albums and the china set. Uncle Kenny received Grandpa Franklin’s guns. Julia and Wes received a box of family portraits and family charts because of Julia’s interest in tracing the Avery family history. Summer received a painting and Aunt Jenny inherited a set of figurines. Felicity gripped the arms of her chair when Gus read, “To my grandson Daniel Benjamin Avery, I bequeath my computer and all the Depression glass, because Felicity has a fondness for it. To my grandson Mitchell Steven Avery, I bequeath my military memorabilia, including the Civil War sword that is stored in the attic, and the dirt bike in the garage.”
