I knew Jesus wouldn’t do what I felt like doing, which was grabbing the clippers in Tom’s hand and whacking off his shirttail. So, summoning more sweetness than a triple-fudge brownie, I managed to smile and say, “Would you mind keeping an eye on the place for me till I get back? I’d really appreciate it.” Since he was going to snoop anyway, he may as well do it officially. Or maybe, to be contrary, he wouldn’t snoop.
To my surprise Tom straightened his heavy shoulders as if I’d assigned him the job of guarding the treasury.
“I’m busy,” he said gruffly. “I have a new . . . lady friend. But I’ll keep an eye out.”
I didn’t know what surprised me more. His unexpectedly cooperative attitude or the news about a “lady friend.” Tom’s wife had died several years ago, and I’d never known him to have any kind of social life. Had meeting this woman softened his grumpy outlook on life?
I wanted to know more. What kind of woman would be interested in Tom Bolton? Where had he met her? How serious was this? But, remembering my annoyance with his nosiness about my life, I held myself to thanking him.
“If I had your cell phone number, I could call if I notice anything you should know about.”
This change in Tom made me uncomfortable, as if the world had taken a sudden tilt. Continents and glaciers were shifting. I gave him a business card with the cell number.
“You oughta do something about all those digger squirrels ripping up your yard,” he growled after me as I headed back to my sidewalk. “First thing you know, they’ll be moving in over here. You’ll be liable if they do.”
Tom also liked to sue, as a couple of other neighbors had found out.
So Tom, new lady friend or no, was still Tom. I felt safer. I gave him a friendly wave. “Have a nice day.”
In the house, I checked my answering machine. I returned calls, turned down limo appointments for this week but scheduled a couple for later. I called Sarah in Florida, reached her between college classes, and we caught up with what was going on in our lives. Granddaughter Rachel had a new boyfriend.
“And he has a motorcycle,” Sarah wailed. I smiled. Things had come full circle.
I used my old Toyota to run to the post office and check my mailbox, then wrote checks to pay bills. I dropped the place cards from the wedding off at the sheriff’s office for Detective Molino. They were looking well fingered by now. I was glad he wasn’t there to ask what had taken me so long or what I’d been doing with them. I didn’t leave any helpful list of suspects.
I called Fitz, and we met at the Sweet Breeze bakery, where my friend Joella used to work, for lunch. I filled him in on the night’s events. The Miss Nora was leaving on a three-day run that afternoon. He said he’d go over and mow my lawn before they left.
I was back at the house by 1:25. The crime-scene tape was gone and the tent had been removed, only an area of trampled grass showing where it had been. The sculpture still stood, but its sharp edges had softened and blurred, and now it was more ice blob than bridal sculpture. There seemed a certain symbolism in that.
Pam was sitting at Michelle’s desk going through the wedding file when I went inside the house. She motioned me into the office. The leopard was gone from the wall.
“I kept feeling as if he was sneaking up on me,” she said by way of explanation. “I put him in an upstairs storage room.”
“Good. Maybe he’ll scare off the mice. Did you get to talk to the lawyer?”
“Oh yes. I got right in.”
Which suggested the trust fund was big enough to make the law firm jump to attention, because my infrequent dealings with lawyers were usually on a-week-from-next-Tuesday basis.
“They’ve started the ball rolling to get the trust fund transferred to my control. Though I think it makes them nervous. Like they’re afraid I’m going to spend it all on Soulja Boy and Yung Joc CDs.”
“Maybe you should retain them in an, oh, advisory capacity in handling the money.”
She surprised me by nodding agreement. “It’s a lot of money.”
I was curious how much, of course, but the fact that she didn’t volunteer the information suggested that she was weaning herself from her brief dependence on me. Good. “What about this house?”
“Michelle’s obligation was to provide a home for me until I turned twenty-three, graduated from college, or got married, and then it would be hers. None of those conditions were fulfilled, so the lawyers think it should be mine. Although there could be complications if her heirs want to contest that.”
“Maybe you’re her heir.”
She dismissed that with a wry, “Yeah, right. And maybe Phreddie’s in for a million bucks.” She looked around the office thoughtfully. “I don’t know that I’d bother arguing if the heirs do want the house. It doesn’t mean that much to me, and I have enough money in the trust fund.”
I found that attitude also admirably mature. Too many people never consider any amount of money “enough.”
“Did you get an electrician for the cottage?”
“They’re going to have to replace a lot of old wiring. Some wires shorted out—”
“Accidentally?”
“I guess so.” She looked up sharply. “You’re suggesting it was deliberate?”
“Don’t you wonder? Uri and Cindy move in to the house, and the first thing that happens is the office is ransacked.”
“It will take a day or two, maybe longer, to get the wiring replaced. So they’ll be staying here. You think that’s a . . . concern?”
“Lock up your guavas. Anything interesting in the wedding file?”
Pam glanced down at the open folder. “Just that I still owe a lot of money. Including for the fog machine, which seems kind of ironic, doesn’t it? Though I can be grateful Michelle didn’t go ahead with some of her ideas. She considered having doves fly out of the wedding cake.”
The possible consequence of disoriented doves zooming around the wedding cake and guests was not pretty. Perhaps Michelle had realized that too. Pam and I smiled at each other.
“Do you still think she was planning to try to kill you at the wedding?”
“It seems kind of . . . far-fetched now.” Although a certain reluctance in the admission suggested Pam wasn’t yet willing to abandon that suspicion entirely.
I noted she’d taped the hair we’d found to the piece of paper. “Planning on framing that?”
“Just leaving it displayed. Maybe it will rattle someone’s nerves.” She propped the sheet of paper against the lamp on the desk where anyone looking in from the foyer would see it.
“Someone such as Cindy of the dark and curly hair?”
“Joe’s hair is brown too. And short and curly.”
That startled me. I hadn’t even thought of Sterling’s father in connection with the found hair. But what was left of his brown hair indeed had that unexpected hint of boyish curl.
“Anything from Detective Molino yet about the autopsy?”
“Not yet. But I’ve called a funeral home, and they’ll pick up the body when it’s released. I found the name of Michelle’s law firm in her files, and I have an appointment with them tomorrow. I’ll talk with Phyllis about the funeral services. I suppose she should have some say since she is Michelle’s cousin.”
I was impressed at the way she was grabbing hold of the situation.
“So now all we have to do is open the safe,” she added.
I noted the we. “You don’t need me for that. Look at all you’re accomplishing on your own!”
“I’m all false front. Like an inflatable bra. I may deflate any moment.” She smiled. “C’mon, you’re curious, you know you are.”
“I guess I am,” I admitted. “But remember that big deal about the 1930s safe being opened on TV? Big letdown. Maybe this one will be empty too.”
Pam knelt by the desk, pulled the plastic mat aside, and pressed the corner of the concealing panel. She gave me a nervous little smile and blew on her fingertips like some safe-cra
cking expert.
“Here goes.”
She clicked the numbers without having to crane her neck to look at the underside of the drawer. Her memory was good too.
Michelle’s safe was not empty.
The first thing Pam pulled out was a white velvet jewelry box. It was empty, but that probably only meant that it had held the necklace Michelle had worn to the wedding. Then emerald earrings and ring, a joined wedding and engagement ring set, a diamond tennis bracelet, the biggest diamond-stud earrings I’d ever seen, half a dozen gold chains, numerous other earrings, and a beautiful, old-fashioned looking strand of pearls in an alabaster box.
“These were my grandmother’s!” Pam exclaimed. “I remember my mother wearing them when I was a little girl. What was Michelle doing with them? She didn’t have any right to them!”
Papers filled the bottom of the safe. Lots of papers. She passed them up to me. Deeds, birth certificates, passports, legal papers on the Change Your World Fitness Center partnership, house insurance, a lot of other legal-looking stuff, a death certificate for Pam’s father. She studied that for a long minute. Then she pulled out what I think we were both waiting for. A will.
Pam backed out of the knee hole still holding the stapled sheaf of crinkly legal papers in a blue cover. “Do I have any right to read it?” she asked as if her conscience had suddenly jolted her.
I peered at the last page. “This isn’t the original. It’s a copy, with the signature just typed in. Her lawyer probably has the original. I think anyone can read it when it’s probated.”
Or, I wondered guiltily, was I using that to justify reading it now because I was so curious?
“It’s dated, let’s see, about a month after Dad died. So I guess it’s okay.”
Not that date had anything to do with it, but her rationalization sounded okay to me.
We stood over the desk together as we read. It started with the usual formalities about paying bills and taking care of final expenses. It named a lawyer in the legal firm as executor.
“Oh, good,” Pam said. “I’ll just give him everything. I don’t even need to read any more.”
But I’d spotted a name farther down on the page, a name that seemed totally out of place in Michelle’s will.
“I think you’d better read it,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
There, buried in the legalese about the giving, bequeathing, and devising of all her worldly assets, was the name of Michelle’s lone heir.
With the even bigger shocker of the two words before his name. My son.
Everything Michelle Gibson possessed in this world went to her son.
Sterling Forsythe.
“Sterling is Michelle’s son?” Pam gasped. “How can that be?”
“He was adopted, obviously. You didn’t know that?”
“He never mentioned it.”
“Would he have told you if he knew?”
“I don’t know. Not necessarily. We didn’t talk a lot about personal stuff.”
“Could he have known about this?” I tapped the crinkly paper that gave Sterling all Michelle’s worldly possessions. Would that include Pam’s grandmother’s pearls? And how about Michelle’s partnership in the health club? What would Uri and Cindy think of this development?
“I have no idea. I’m just . . . flabbergasted. Michelle wanted me to marry her son.”
“She must have had a very high opinion of you, then. She surely wanted a good wife for him.”
Pam contemplated that for a moment, and then she slammed the will against the desk as if she wanted to smash it. “She didn’t care anything about me as a person. She didn’t want Sterling to marry me because I’d be a good wife. She wanted him to marry me for my trust fund!”
“Oh, Pam, that isn’t necessarily so.” But I probably didn’t sound convincing, because what she said struck me as all too possible.
“Oh, yes, it’s so! That’s all Michelle cared about. Money! Sterling has all that prestige running the lab when he’s so young, but the money—” She turned her thumb downward and made a scornful pffft sound. “It didn’t matter to me, but I’m sure it did to Michelle.”
Suddenly Michelle’s bribing Mike’s sister to sabotage Pam and Mike’s relationship made sense. She had to get the guy Pam loved out of the way, so she could slip her son into his place. For the trust fund money.
“Money was everything to Michelle. She married my dad for it. She killed him for it!” The blaze of passion abruptly fizzled, and Pam slumped against the desk. “Compared to murder, what’s the minor matter of arranging a marriage?” she asked in a voice as whispery as Phyllis’s.
“But surely she wanted her son to be happy,” I protested. “She wouldn’t want him to marry you unless she thought it would make him happy.”
“To Michelle, money and happiness were one and the same, inseparable. I could be a two-headed, cult-worshipping, shrieking maniac, and she wouldn’t care. Just so long as I had the trust fund to bring to the marriage.”
“But this proves one thing, doesn’t it? Michelle wasn’t planning to kill you to get the trust fund for herself. Why would she? She could get the benefits of the trust fund for her son through the marriage.”
“Then she could kill me after her son got hold of the trust fund, and they’d all live happily ever after!”
That was pretty far out, but it was wildly possible, I had to admit. But it was also ferocious speculation, and I certainly didn’t intend to encourage that thinking. “Pam, here you are ranting and raving—”
“I’m not ‘ranting and raving’!” Then she looked down at her hands, and we both saw they were shaking. She managed a hint of sheepish smile. “Maybe a little rant.”
“Aren’t you even wondering how he’s Michelle’s son? Did she choose Joe and Phyllis to adopt him because she couldn’t raise him herself? Or did they adopt him, not knowing he was Michelle’s, and then she managed to find out who had him?”
Pam blinked, as if in her fury about the money and trust fund, all this had bypassed her. But finally she said, “It seems more likely they knew, doesn’t it? Considering that Phyllis is Michelle’s cousin.”
“But what were the circumstances of his birth? Who’s his father?”
The timing would have been right for Phyllis to appear in the door and dramatically proclaim the facts of Sterling’s birth. But what happened was that Phreddie wandered in and coughed up a hair ball.
“I guess I’ll just have to ask them,” she said.
I saw undercurrents here, ominous possibilities. Motives. Maybe even dangers. I didn’t like to mention them, yet where murder was concerned I didn’t think we could shove anything under the table.
“If Sterling knew who he was, and also knew about this—” I tapped the crinkly page again and spelled it out even further, since Pam was looking at me so blankly. “And was ruthless enough to go after the inheritance . . .”
Pam paled as my ominous implication got through to her. “He could have murdered her for the inheritance.” Almost as an afterthought, she added, “And then he wouldn’t have to marry me.”
Actually, that was exactly how the situation stood, I realized. Michelle was dead, Sterling inherited everything, and the wedding was off. Sterling’s plan? Or someone else’s? Or a coincidental side effect of some other unrelated plan?
“Do you think he could do that . . . murder?”
Sterling had struck me as self-centered and inconsiderate, totally focused on himself and his work, definitely not prime husband material. But murder? So much hinged on what Sterling knew. He’d certainly removed himself from the murder scene and rushed back to California with all possible speed. Although he might have done that even if the wedding had proceeded normally.
“I’m not sure what anyone is capable of,” Pam said, sounding both bewildered and somber.
This, I realized, put a harsher spin on Sterling’s mother’s actions toward the deputies after the wedding. Was she so protective of her so
n because she thought . . . or knew . . . he’d killed Michelle?
“Or there’s another unpleasant possibility,” I added reluctantly.
Pam nodded. “Joe and Phyllis. They had a motive to murder Michelle too. Get her out of the way, and their son collects a big inheritance. Providing for him what they couldn’t provide themselves.”
“If they knew about the will.”
Pam nodded.
“Except that simply marrying you gave him access to the assets of a hefty trust fund. They didn’t have to kill Michelle to set their son up financially. Michelle had already done that by arranging the marriage to you.”
“But maybe they had another reason for murdering her.” Pam had jumped ahead of me here.
“Other than money? What other reason?”
“Maybe Sterling doesn’t know Michelle is his mother. Maybe Joe and Phyllis were determined he not know. And maybe Michelle was planning to tell him.” Pam’s mouth twisted in a wry curve. “A special little wedding gift from Mommy.”
“Surely something like that isn’t important enough for murder. I mean, lots of adoptions are open. Birth mother and adopted parents know all about each other. They keep in touch. Adoption isn’t the big secrecy thing it once was. Neither is being unmarried and pregnant.”
“The operative words being the way it once was. Twenty-nine years ago things were different, weren't they?"
Yes. Twenty-nine years ago the movie magazines weren’t full of articles and pictures about pregnant fiancées and star couples happily celebrating parenthood without being married. And adoption was seen by some people as a sign of failure, infertility a weakness, and everything was hush-hush. Phyllis and Joe, not sophisticated or worldly people, might be exactly the kind of people who’d keep adoption a secret. Even from the adoptee.
Pam suddenly bent her head and put her palms to her temples. She squeezed as if she wished she could squeeze all this out of her head. She stayed that way for several long minutes.
I didn’t interrupt. I was busy fitting all that had happened into this startling new scenario.
Phyllis, determined that Michelle not have a chance to usurp her role as mother, willing to kill to keep that from happening? Joe, willing to do whatever it took to protect Phyllis? Or maybe it really was money, the two of them wanting Michelle’s inheritance for their son, figuring an inheritance was something that couldn’t get away from him, unlike a wife’s trust fund that she might pick up and walk off with someday.
Here Comes the Ride Page 19
