“I’m okay.”
Neither of them spoke for another moment. Molly stared at the pale yellow wallpaper, dried her eyes and blew her nose again. Outside in Dora’s garden, a bird was singing. Through the open window the fresh pine scent of Vermont wafted into the room.
“How’s your sister holding up?” asked David.
“I don’t know,” answered Molly. “She knows what happened to Jimmy, but I’m not sure she understands what his death means for us. I’m always afraid that she’ll have another one of her attacks. She had one when we first got here.”
“Yeah. You mentioned she had fits. What set her off this time, do you think?”
“Maybe it was seeing Dora so upset,” said Molly. “I don’t know.”
“Now, who’s Dora again?”
“She married Atherton Gale, our great-grandfather, after our great-grandmother died. Dora’s very old. Ninety-three. She was devastated to learn who we were. Everybody else was just angry.”
Talking too fast again, Molly described the people who had also come to the door that first day. Russell Bowslater, Dora’s child from her first marriage. Dr. George Gale, her adopted son. Mrs. McCormick, the nurse-companion. Henry Troutwig, Dora’s attorney.
There was silence again on the other end of the phone. Molly listened for David’s breathing but couldn’t hear anything except a car alarm going off in the distance. Or was it an ambulance? A fire truck? The police? Whatever it was, it sounded like New York.
“This Gale Trust must somehow be involved in what’s been going on,” said David finally in a thoughtful voice. “Will any of the people you just mentioned get anything when Dora dies?”
“No, and you’re going around in the same circles that the sheriff and I are going around in,” Molly said wearily. “Nell and I are the only beneficiaries of the trust now that all the other naturalborn descendants of Atherton Gale are dead. And if we weren’t around it would all go to charity.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” said Molly. “The sheriff told me.”
“Have you seen the trust document yourself?”
“No, but—”
“Then you’re assuming that this sheriff knew what he was talking about,” said David, “Perhaps that’s not such a good idea. He’s not a lawyer. He may not have understood what he was reading. Or maybe whoever told him about the terms of Atherton Gale’s will left something out.”
“I suppose.”
“Look,” said David. “I’m going to give my father a call. Maybe he remembers something about all of this. Is there a number where I can reach you?”
Molly read him the number off the dial of the telephone in her room. She didn’t want to give him the main number for Gale Castle, then have to explain to everyone who David was. She wasn’t sure herself.
“Please call me back right away,” she said. “I can’t stay at this phone very long.”
“Okay,” said David. “Oh, by the way. Did I mention that you sound very pretty today?”
“No, I don’t,” said Molly.
“Yes, you do,” he answered. Then he said good-bye and hung up.
Molly lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. For all she knew David’s father had some sinister involvement in all this. Perhaps David was involved as well—it was impossible to know whom she could trust anymore. But if David were involved, what was kind of world was it? What was the point of anything? Why even bother to go on living? Did she really sound pretty? Or had he just said that to be nice?
The door of the room opened with a squeak. Molly jumped up in alarm, then fell back as she recognized Nell’s familiar silhouette.
“Hi,” Molly said. “I’m just lying down for a moment. I wasn’t feeling well.”
Nell came over and sat down next to Molly on the bed. Then she put her cool hand on Molly’s forehead. Nell shook her head to indicate there was no fever, but her eyes were full of concern.
“No,” said Molly. “I don’t think I’m sick. It’s just beginning to get to me, you know?”
Nell nodded.
“Nellie,” said Molly, looking in her sister’s deep green eyes. “When you went out to get me the watch for my birthday, why were you gone so long?”
Nell shrugged. She mimed holding a car wheel. She brought the flat of her hand to her brow, like she was searching for something.
“You had to look around to find a store with the right watch?”
Nell nodded.
“Of course you had to look around,” said Molly, relieved. “We’re in the middle of nowhere up here.”
Nell grinned and motioned bringing a fork to her mouth.
“And naturally you got something to eat. I should have known.”
Nell seemed calmer than she had been in a long time, almost serene. It was ironic: Now that the person who had been the biggest threat to them, Jimmy Gale, was dead, it was Molly who was falling to pieces.
Nell grabbed Molly’s hand and gave it a tug.
“No,” said Molly. “I think I need to be still for a bit. Maybe take a nap. I’ll be fine. Will you cover for me downstairs? I don’t want Dora to worry.”
Nell nodded and rose. At the door she stopped and glanced back at her sister.
“I’m okay,” said Molly. “You go. I’ll be back down in a little while.”
Nell left, shutting the door behind her. Molly closed her eyes and waited for the phone to ring, relieved that Nell had an explanation of why it had taken her so long to buy the watch last week. How could the sheriff possibly think that Nell might have had anything to do with Jimmy’s death? It was absurd. Molly knew her sister. Nell was the gentlest soul on earth. She wouldn’t hurt a bluebottle fly.
The phone was silent. Molly’s thoughts turned again to David Azaria. She didn’t know him at all, not really. Why then had it been so reassuring just to hear his voice? And why was he so interested in her? What had been David’s father’s relationship to Atherton Gale? How did any of it tie in to Evangeline O’Hara Cole?
The minutes dragged on for what seemed like forever. Molly worried that David wouldn’t call back, that she would never hear from him again. Then she worried that he would call back—call back and tell her she was too short, too talkative, too much trouble.
Suddenly an old-fashioned bell jangled loudly enough to make her jump. It was the telephone. Molly grabbed it, worried that someone downstairs might have heard. Then she remembered how isolated this wing of Gale Castle was. You could probably shoot a cannon off here and no one would be the wiser.
“Sorry it took so long,” said David’s calm voice at the other end of the line. “I had to get him out of a hearing. Nobody ever does that. He wasn’t happy.”
“What did he say?” Molly asked, her palms moist, her stomach dancing with butterflies.
“Well, my father does remember your great-grandfather’s trust,” said David. “He didn’t usually get involved with personal matters—corporations are his specialty—but Dad didn’t build Azaria Klein Morthall & Nathan by turning away clients like Atherton Gale. You know, I didn’t quite understand what you were telling me before. Millionaires are a dime a dozen these days. Apparently this Atherton Gale was in a different category entirely. You and your sister are going to be very wealthy women from what my father tells me.”
“We don’t want the money,” said Molly, standing up and walking around the bedroom.
“Sure you do,” answered David with a laugh. “Everyone wants money. But let’s deal with that later, shall we? First I have some disturbing things to tell you.”
“What disturbing things?”
David’s voice suddenly became dry and professional.
“It turns out that my father set up not one, but two different trusts for Atherton Gale over a period of a few months,” he said. “The will that went into effect divides everything among all living bloodline Gales upon Dora’s death, as you said. But there was an earlier arrangement with much different terms. Before Atherton changed his mi
nd and decided to include his whole family there was going to be only one ultimate beneficiary for the trust’s principal.”
“You mean that somebody thought he was going to get everything and then Atherton pulled the rug out from under him? My God, that must be it! That’s the person with the motive! He would have been angry enough to kill all the Gales.”
“I’m afraid you’re jumping to the wrong conclusion, Molly,” said David. “The sole beneficiary of the earlier will was to have been Atherton Gale’s granddaughter.”
“Granddaughter? What granddaughter?”
“The daughter of his only natural child, Margaret.”
“But that was my mother,” said Molly, then gasped. “Are you saying that Atherton Gale was going to leave everything to my mother?”
“That’s right,” answered David. “Atherton told Dad he had never met her and didn’t want to. He said he ended up hating anybody he got to know, especially relatives. Apparently Atherton only knew about your mother because she had sent him some letters or something.”
“He never answered,” murmured Molly, sinking into one of the room’s big overstuffed chairs, her mind reeling. “Mom thought that Grandma’s family might help us, but she never heard anything back. We assumed that they just didn’t care. But why did Atherton rewrite his will in the first place?”
“The stepson and adopted son who had previously been his heirs had done something that Atherton found intolerable,” David replied. “Atherton wouldn’t tell my father what it was, just that he was furious. The new will was going to be Atherton’s punishment for them, leaving the entire Gale fortune to this young woman that nobody else even knew existed.”
“But when we first got to Gale Castle nobody had ever heard of my mother,” said Molly, trying to understand. “How can that be if Atherton had named her in his will?”
“Probably because Atherton had come to my father in secret,” David replied. “That’s one of the reasons that Dad remembers this, it was all so odd. Nobody was supposed to learn about the new will until after Atherton was dead. And since Atherton relented a little and rewrote his will again three months later to include all of his natural relatives, the terms of the earlier document never came out.”
Molly took a deep breath. At least some things were beginning to become clearer.
“So somebody must have killed Mom to prevent her from inheriting the Gale fortune,” she said. “I knew this was about money. I just knew it.”
“You would think so, yes,” said David, “but that’s the problem.”
“What problem?”
“As far as my father can recall, nobody would have been better off with your mother dead. Under the earlier will, if your mother didn’t survive the Atherton Gale Trust was to have been divided among various charities upon Dora’s death.”
“But then we’re right back where we started from,” exclaimed Molly, crumpling back into the soft chair. “If nobody profited from Mom’s death, then why did somebody kill her? And why did somebody kill Jimmy now? Nobody profits from his death, either. Except Nell and me. It’s crazy.”
“I promise we’ll get to the bottom of this, Molly,” said David gently. “There must be something about Atherton’s wills that Dad has forgotten or something so mundane that nobody’s even considering it. When I was an assistant DA our office once prosecuted a maid for murdering her elderly employer. The maid didn’t care about the woman’s million-dollar estate. She just wanted the five thousand dollars she had been promised—big money to her. It could be something just as simple in this case.”
Molly shuddered. There was something horrible about speculating why someone had killed a person you loved. If it had been about money—whatever the amount—that somehow made it worse.
“Dad’s having someone from his old firm dig out both of Atherton Gale’s wills and overnight them to me,” David went on. “If there’s anybody who could conceivably have gained something by your mother’s death—or by Jimmy’s—we’ll know soon enough.”
“In the meanwhile Nell is still the prime suspect in Jimmy’s murder,” said Molly, rising and beginning to pace back and forth again.
“Nell will be fine, you’ll see,” said David. “You need evidence to prove a case in court. Witnesses. From what you’ve told me, all your sheriff has against Nell is conjecture.”
“But who knows what pressures he’s under to do something?” said Molly angrily, all her frustrations boiling up to the surface. “Just because you were a lawyer doesn’t mean that you can convince me that police never arrest innocent people. If Nell is the only suspect, they’ll lock her up sooner or later. Or they’ll turn her over to some shrink who doesn’t know anything except how to fill people full of drugs. It would destroy her.”
“Okay, okay,” said David. “Calm down.”
“Don’t tell me what to do! I hate it when people tell me what to do.”
“And I like a girl with a temper. It’s nice that we’re getting to know each other like this, don’t you think?”
“No!”
“Look, I’m just trying to help,” said David. “I think I could do that better if you were here.”
“Where? New York?”
“That’s right. It’s going to be a lot harder for some back country sheriff to arrest your sister if she’s in New York. If you leave now, you and Nell can probably be here in time for the show tonight.”
“You’re crazy,” said Molly, sitting on the bed. “We can’t leave.”
“Sure you can. And you should. There’s still a killer running around up there, remember?”
“It’s nice of you to be concerned,” said Molly, “but nobody has any reason to harm us.”
“Molly, let me point something out to you,” said David Azaria, his voice measured and concerned. “Your mother was the sole beneficiary of the Gale Trust and somebody killed her. Then everybody thought your cousin Jimmy was the only one left to inherit and somebody killed him, too. We may not yet understand what’s going on, but you and Nell are now the sole beneficiaries of the Gale Trust. I’d really feel better if you were out of there.”
“But we don’t have the trust. We won’t have anything as long as Dora is still alive.” Molly stopped and put a hand up to her mouth. “My God, you don’t think she’s in any danger, do you?”
“Nobody’s knocked her off so far, have they?” said David with what was obviously meant to be a reassuring laugh. Molly wasn’t reassured.
“Look,” he went on, “if you’re really worried, you can bring her along, too. I like old ladies, and I’ve got one of those big old Westside apartments. Dora can have the extra bedroom. Nell can sleep on the couch in the living room. You can sleep in my room. I’ll curl up on the floor at your feet and guard you from all evil. Nobody will know where you are.”
“Nobody but you.”
“Still don’t trust me?”
Molly didn’t answer. David let out a sigh.
“You’re probably right,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know that I could trust myself. I’m pretty goofy about you, you know.”
“Why? I wish you would tell me why.”
“It’s mostly physical at this stage, I think. But I’m optimistic that we’ll find other things in common besides Atherton Gale to sustain us over the years. For starters, look how easy it is for us to talk to each other.”
“I can talk to anybody on the face of the earth,” muttered Molly. “Perfect strangers. Garbage men. Brick walls.”
“You think about New York. I’ll call you tomorrow. What’s a good time?”
“It’s not that I don’t like you, too, David. I … I just can’t leave Dora alone right now.”
“How about three o’clock?” he replied. “That will give me enough time to get the wills and look them over.”
“All right. I’ll be at the phone at three. Thanks, David.”
“See? Aren’t you glad you came to me for help?”
“I didn’t come to you for help.”
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“I like you, too,” answered David. “Good-bye, Molly. Be careful.”
“I will.”
Molly hung up the phone, lay back on the bed and stared at the now-familiar ceiling.
She wanted more than anything just to leave everything behind and go to David, but that was impossible. Nell was the prime suspect in Jimmy Gale’s murder. If they left now it would look like they were just running away. Besides, after the way Dora had welcomed them into the family, they couldn’t just up and desert her.
It was all Atherton Gale’s fault, Molly fumed. Him and his filthy money. Molly didn’t want any part of it. The Gale fortune was like some kind of poison. Everyone who had stood to benefit from it was dead. Everyone, that is, except her and Nell.
Molly closed her eyes and watched stars wander across the inside of her eyelids. Unsettling questions resumed their chase across her mind. Were she and Nell in danger now that they would inherit the Gale Trust? Who stood to gain if they, too, were suddenly out of the way? Was she just making excuses about why she couldn’t go to New York? Was she more afraid of David and what going to him meant than of whoever it was that had killed Jimmy?
After several more minutes of tying her brain into knots, Molly breathed a deep sigh and forced herself to open her eyes and sit up. Only one thing was clear: Nothing was going to be resolved today. Today was a day for burying the dead.
The birds had stopped singing in the garden. A sharp breeze coming through the window made the lacy curtain dance. Molly rose to her feet and went over to breathe in the summer before going back down to the strange gathering downstairs, the remembrance of a man whom no one wanted to remember.
Dora’s garden was still and perfect, alive with tiny explosions of color that were roses. The two figures sitting on the garden swing looked almost like dolls that had been placed there for effect by a gigantic child. They were even holding hands and shyly looking off in different directions like young lovers sometimes do. It was a charming picture, yet there seemed to be something wrong with it. It took Molly a moment to figure out what it was. When she did she almost fell over backward.
The two figures were Mrs. McCormick and Henry Troutwig.
The Girl at the End of the Line Page 22
