A Christmas Peril

by J. A. Hennrikus

“Clive, I’m going to run Sully home. Please tell Mrs. Bridges and Terry that I’m on my cell if they need me.”

  “I’ll see both of you tomorrow at the reading.”

  Gus grabbed me by the elbow and steered me toward the front door as Clive walked into the library.

  “Peter’s will?” I whispered. “Why would I go to a reading of Peter’s will?”

  “Because apparently, you’re named as one of the beneficiaries.”

  We were back in the car, passing the front gate before I got the words out. I’ll admit, it takes a lot for me to find myself at a loss of words, but news that I was in Peter Whitehall’s will did it. I’d barely known the man. Even when our families were on speaking terms, he was never around. “Maybe I’m mentioned because he left something to my mother and since I’m her heir … ”

  “That’s not it. The will is fairly recent, from what I understand. It names you specifically. Not your mother or your father, you. Freddy Sands gave Clive a list of beneficiaries, and Clive’s trying to round them up for tomorrow’s reading at his office.”

  “Did Clive tell you anything else?”

  “He said he hadn’t even known there was a new will. He thought the most recent one was from three years ago, when Terry took over as CEO of the company.”

  “Didn’t you tell me there was a rumor that Eric was cut out of the will?”

  “Rumor.”

  “Do you remember where you heard it from?”

  “Terry.”

  Now that was interesting.

  • Twelve •

  I woke much earlier than I needed to in order to get ready for Gus to pick me up at eight o’clock. Like, two hours early. I started to fuss over what to wear, but not for the same reasons as on the morning of the funeral. This time it was vanity, pure and simple. Gus was picking me up, and I wanted to look nice. There, I admitted it. It was out in the open. I might have a crush on my ex-husband. Talk about nuts. For the first time in I don’t know how long, I cared about how I looked. Really cared, not just “I don’t want to scare anyone so my clothes better match” or “I should probably wear a suit since I’m going to ask them for $50,000,” but “I think this shirt makes my eyes look blue” and “I think this jacket covers my butt enough to hide the damage a pint of ice cream a day for three years has done.” I wasn’t quite giddy, but the butterflies were back.

  They needed to be squashed. Fast and hard. Gus wasn’t going to be in my life for long. Maybe I could make some amends, and we could end up as friends. But nothing more. I wasn’t up to it, and he had Kate. Nevertheless, I chose the shirt that brought out the blue in my eyes.

  All of this planning took about fifteen minutes, so I decided to burn off my excess energy. I considered a run, which for me meant a slow jog, but decided on a bike ride when I saw the glorious sunrise beginning to peak. Running required me to concentrate too hard on breathing—and on not keeling over—to enjoy the sites, but I could enjoy a bike ride. I decided to do a five-mile loop by the beach. It was uphill the first half of the ride, but I needed to warm up, and what better way than to fight screaming quads?

  I’d reached the top of the hill when I thought I heard someone calling my name. I slowed down and looked at the beach. In the haze of the sunrise burning through the morning fog, I saw Stewart Tracy sitting on a piling. Next to him was the bent frame of our loaner bike.

  “What the hell happened? Are you okay?”

  “Thank God you came by, Sully. I was contemplating which house to wake up.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “Scrapes, that’s all. I was coming around the corner and something darted out … probably a coyote.”

  “Probably a dog.”

  “Whose story is this?” he asked. “Anyway, I veered to avoid the werewolf, hit a patch of sand, and wiped out. I’m fine—a couple of scrapes, but most of me is covered. The bike, however, is toast.”

  “Can you walk? We could get my car.”

  “I can walk. How far is your house?”

  “A half mile or so.”

  “Really. I was trying to remember, but it seemed much farther that time we went back after the cocktail party. Remember that time?”

  I did remember, and blushed. Damn him. I slapped him on the arm and bent over to pull his bike up. On the way to my house I caught him up about Peter Whitehall’s death. He’d heard stories, of course, but had been so busy in the past day and a half that he hadn’t had a chance to put all the pieces together.

  “So Peter Whitehall left you something?”

  “I guess so. We’ll see in about, oh, three hours or so.”

  By now we were back at the house, and I stowed both bikes in the carport. I noticed a slight limp when Stewart climbed the stairs, but he shook off my concern.

  “Ice, Advil, and coffee are all I need. I’ll be fine.”

  My forays into physical fitness left me with a wide variety of ice packs to choose from, but when I offered to make the coffee, Stewart quickly declined. He knew about my lack of skills. “Please, I’ll make the coffee. You go up and get ready. How did you say you were getting to Boston?”

  “Gus had to get his car from the dealership, so he said he’d pick me up.”

  “Gus being the ex? Interesting. Seems a little out of the way, don’t you think?”

  “Shut up.” I was blushing again. “I’m going to take a shower. Why don’t you use my car today? Or my bike, whichever you prefer.”

  “Let me have a cup of coffee first, then I’ll see how I feel. Unless you want me gone before Gus gets here?” I didn’t answer him.

  My shower was brief, but getting dressed took longer than normal. I put on three, count ’em three, colors of eyeshadow and changed my earrings twice before I heard the doorbell ring. Dammit, he was early. I moved as quickly as I could and walked out into the kitchen as Gus was hanging up his coat.

  “We met,” Stewart said. He went back to the table and settled into his chair, putting his feet up on another and resettling the ice packs on his knees. “Gus, do you want a cup of coffee? I just made it.”

  “Or should we hit the road?” I asked. My handbag was by the front door. If he wanted to leave, I could go.

  “A cup of coffee would be great.” Gus smiled and lifted a bag. “I brought some scones, hoping you’d have coffee made. You do still like scones, don’t you?”

  “I love scones. I have some clotted cream.”

  “Great. Stewart, will you join us?” Gus asked.

  “No thanks. I’ve got to hit the road before I completely seize up. Sully, the car seems like the best bet. Are you sure that’s okay?”

  “Of course. Are you going to be all right?”

  “The show will go on, have no fear. Good to meet you, Gus. Hopefully we’ll see you again soon. I’d love to grab a beer sometime.” I shot Stewart a look, which he ignored. He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and limped to the back door. I wasn’t sure if his pain was real or an act until he turned and gave me a pitiful wave followed by a huge wink. He was going to be fine.

  I found the clotted cream in the refrigerator and put it, mugs, plates, and knives on a tray and brought them upstairs to the table, Gus following behind. The café table I used for meals was clear enough to set the tray. Gus waited while I started to gather the papers from the dining room table cum desk. I kept the piles as they were, and moved them to the coffee table one by one. Gus smiled while he watched.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It will take another sec.”

  “That’s okay. I remember the filing system. I didn’t realize theater created so much paper.”

  “The theater does create a ton of paper, but most of this is stuff for Eric.”

  “Really?”

  “Why do you sound so surprised? You asked me to look into it … ”

  “Whoa, let’s not fight. I didn’t mean an
ything. It’s only been a couple of days.”

  I took a deep breath. “Sorry. You’re right. It is a lot of paper. But I’ve been following tangents. You know how I get.” We both let that hang. He knew how I was a lifetime ago, but not now. Nor did I know him.

  “What sort of tangents?” he asked.

  “Larry Colfer was one. So I had to look into it, for my own sake. When I realized that Terry was at the same school as Larry Colfer I looked into it a little while longer, to see if there was anything else.”

  “And was there?”

  “Not that I could find.”

  “Me either. What’s this pile?” Gus pointed to one of the smaller stacks. I glanced at it for show, but I didn’t need to. I knew what it was.

  “That’s the security camera pile. I looked into a few systems. I thought I’d ask Frank some more questions.”

  “Research for research? But didn’t Terry say the new cameras weren’t operating?”

  “But I got the impression from Frank that they were, at least partially. Anyway, finding out about his camera system tells us a little about Peter, don’t you think?”

  Gus reached for the clotted cream and slathered more on his scone. “How do you mean?”

  “Well, it seems to me that there are a few different types of technology geeks. Some who upgrade because they can afford it and only want the best. Some who upgrade because they feel that they should, though they never completely get the hang of it. And the third type, the type I think Peter was, who upgrade when it’s necessary because they want to be able to do something they haven’t been able to before. Peter added cameras to the inside of the house. Why? What made him think that he needed more security inside? Was it security or spying? Did he do it because he suspected something? Or because he could?”

  I took a sip of coffee and looked out the window at the sea. For a moment I lost myself in the view, which was, after all, why I’d bought the carriage house in the first place. My view. This morning, the clear blue winter sky was peeking above the marsh, where the early morning dew was creating a haze as it dried out. Tomorrow it would look completely different. That was what I loved.

  I looked down at my scone and realized it was a little skimpy on the clotted cream. I reached across the table and caught Gus staring.

  “Where were you just then?” he asked softly.

  I felt the color rise to my cheeks. “Nowhere. Daydreaming.”

  “I didn’t think you were the daydreaming type.”

  “This view makes it easy.”

  “It is a beautiful view,” Gus said, looking at me. He held my gaze a little longer and then looked down at his phone. “Sadly, I think we should leave it for now and get to the reading. What do you think?”

  I thought I wanted to stay put for a while longer, but Gus was right. I needed to go and see what Peter Whitehall had left me in his will.

  • Thirteen •

  We drove Gus’s car to Clive Willis’s office in Boston. Gus had a nice car—sporty but solid, green exterior, tan leather interior. Bells and whistles on the dashboard that I couldn’t even begin to fathom. I was warm, really warm, immediately. Odds were good the seats were heated. Heated seats were a fantasy of mine, as yet unrealized.

  “Nice car, Gus,” I said.

  “Thanks. I think it’s a mid-life thing … an indulgence.” Gus sounded like he felt he needed to justify the opulence of his vehicle to me. Maybe my tone had been a little sarcastic. I decided to try again.

  “No, really, it’s very nice. I love the leather seats.” I patted the seat beside me and then looked out the window. Back to work. “So, I know he’s a business associate of Peter’s, but who is Clive Willis exactly?”

  “Basically, he’s a banker.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He started off as a banker. Then Peter’s business started to expand, and Clive hitched his wagon to Peter. He started extending credit to some of Peter’s clients. Branched out to venture capitalism in the ’90s.”

  “Isn’t that pretty risky? How did he do during the bust?”

  “Clive is savvy, and he saw over the horizon in time. He also leaned on Peter a lot for advice. Fiscally, he’s pretty conservative. The dot com bust impacted him a little, but he regrouped. Made it through the last recession just fine.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “And Clive was there the night Peter died, right? How do you think he stacks up in the suspect department? Were he and Peter on good terms?”

  “They were on very good terms. Peter trusted Clive implicitly. More than anyone else. Probably because Clive didn’t quake in Peter’s presence. He treated him with respect but told him what he thought, not what he thought Peter wanted to hear.”

  “Unlike Terry.”

  “Or Emma, or me, I guess. Peter was a great arguer. If you told him something he didn’t want to hear, he’d argue. He’d argue so hard it would wear you down. The next time you spoke, he’d usually concede your point of view if, upon reflection, he thought it made sense. But he’d never tell you that you were right or that he was wrong. He’d only mention, in passing, that he’d changed his mind.”

  “That would drive me nuts.”

  “It did. I was learning how to deal with it, call him out. Clive was a great example. The few times I saw them together were the times when Peter seemed most at ease. He considered Clive an equal. I’d hoped to reach the same place with Peter at some point.”

  “You liked Peter, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know if ‘like’ is the word,” Gus said. “I began to appreciate him. And I looked forward to our meetings. You know I was Bryan’s son-in-law for five years.” He glanced over at me and smiled. “So I don’t know if I could ever like him, but I did respect him. Sorry, I know you had issues.”

  “My father had issues … ” I let the silence hang for a second. Gus didn’t rush in to fill the gap. We were getting into rough waters. Discussions of my father’s issues, or pigheadedness, would no doubt remind us both that I’d inherited the trait. Back in the day, if I thought something was white, no one and nothing could convince me otherwise. There was little to no gray in my life when Gus and I were married. I wanted to tell him that there were more hues now, but I couldn’t find the words. Luckily, we were almost there, and we had more pressing issues to discuss.

  “How did Clive know about the will?”

  “The executorship was changed. He’d been named executor of the old will, but Freddy Sands called him and told him about some of the changes in the new will.”

  “Clive wasn’t the executor any longer?”

  “Not exclusively. A coexecutor had been named.”

  “Will there be a problem?”

  “I guess it depends on what’s in it, but Clive said it’s pretty foolproof.”

  Once in the city, we parked the car in a garage in the financial district and walked to Clive’s office. The garage was going to cost an arm and a leg, but street parking in Boston, particularly in that area, was a fool’s folly. I admit I’d have cruised around for a while, but Gus didn’t give it a second thought. Clive’s office was in one of the swankiest buildings in Boston. The financial district, which straddles Chinatown, Faneuil Hall, and Downtown Crossing, looks closer to the textbook definition of a major American city, complete with skyscrapers, than the rest of Boston does. With the exception of the Hancock and Prudential towers, most of the city’s buildings are well under five stories high. The financial district, which packs a number of tall buildings into a small space, makes it feel more like New York.

  While on the force, I’d had occasion to come to this part of town, but I hadn’t been here in a while. I marveled at the new construction and mentioned it to Gus.

  “There’s also a lot of refitting of older spaces. I’m working with a few clients on some major redevel
opment—Jerome Cunningham? Have you heard of him?”

  Had I heard of him? Yes, I’d heard of him. A rich, handsome, entrepreneurial real estate developer who’d been cutting large swatches throughout the city for about ten years—his PR machine had set him up as a kind of Robin Hood. His projects always had a nonprofit edge to them. He could be altruistic, I supposed, but he was probably just smart. Building a little league field made him a community hero. Never mind that his building next door had made two hundred residents homeless.

  “I’ve heard of him, yes … ”

  “Don’t start.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

  Gus ignored me until the elevator stopped and we were on the thirty-fifth floor. A young man was waiting for us.

  “Hello, Mr. Knight, Ms. Sullivan. You’re in the conference room at the end of the hall on your right.” Gus smiled and nodded. I wondered how often he’d been there that they knew who he was. And how they knew who I was.

  “The front desk calls up when you sign in downstairs,” Gus whispered as we walked down the hall. “It took me a couple of visits to figure the system out.”

  “It throws you off balance a little, don’t you think? I mean, it seems nice, but it’s also pretty intimidating to have Super Boy meeting you armed with your name.”

  Gus laughed as he pushed open the door to the conference room and stepped back to let me enter. We were on time, a couple of minutes early even, but we were the last to arrive.

  There was a logjam at the door to the conference room. Coffee was being rolled in, and cups and saucers were being set on the table. The waiter tried to move the cart to let me pass, but I shook my head and walked the long way around, away from the crowd, in order to join it.

  “What is she doing here?” Brooke pulled on Terry’s arm and pointed toward me with a shaky hand. Everyone stopped talking, and I stopped walking. I couldn’t decide whether Brooke looked worse than she did yesterday. She certainly seemed more fragile, but her makeup and hair were perfect. And the look she was giving me was pretty clear, though I couldn’t figure out what I’d done to earn such contempt.