by A.W. Hartoin
Chapter One
Mrs. Lane Sanders was the kind of woman who usually didn’t approve of me. Her grey hair flowed back from her widow’s peak in thick waves and landed on her white silk blouse that was buttoned as high as possible and, just to make sure, sealed with a heavy amber brooch that weighed a pound at least. No one was getting those buttons undone, by god.
I sat in the walnut-paneled waiting room opposite Mrs. Sanders, very aware that it was her domain, not mine. The room matched her perfectly, cold and dignified. I’d never been accused of being either. She sat behind her oversized desk with arms crossed and refused to say where her boss was. That was nearly the last straw. I’d had enough of lawyers and their critical secretaries. Two days left before vacation and Arlene Cobb, a lawyer my father referred to as the Duchess of Dirt, hadn’t even bothered to show up to pelt me with obnoxious questions about my godmothers’ sanity in the civil case against them. I had better things to do than be deposed, buy flowered sundresses that I’d never wear again and wax things that really ought not be waxed. In the last month, I’d found myself involved in four high-profile cases, where the lawyers were happy to bill as many hours as humanly possible, wasting my time in cold offices, repeating cold facts. I think they were trying to freeze some sort of confession out of me. Fat chance. All four of the offices were so similar I often forgot which one I was in and which high-priced shark sat across the table. This wasn’t going to be one of those days.
I would’ve walked out and, in retrospect, I should’ve, but Myrtle and Millicent needed me. Their nephew, Brooks, was trying to get control of their money and their lives. He was using my family to do it. So I sat as far away as possible from Mrs. Sanders, which put me directly across from the stenographer, a spindly redhead that was probably forty but looked twenty. He definitely did approve of me and not in a good way. It was all my fault for letting my mother pick out my outfit. She insisted and I’d learned the hard way that it was easier to comply than fight, so I was wearing a wrap dress that was supposed to make me look like I meant business, yet be stylish. It did neither job well. Mom’s theory that the hideous print of black and yellow daisies would be distract from my chest might’ve worked if the top would’ve stopped gapping open and the skirt didn’t part to expose my thighs.
Jay the stenographer loved that dress, couldn’t take his eyes off it. More to the point, he couldn’t stop trying to look up my skirt. So I got to sit there holding my dress together, while listening to my lawyer, Big Steve Warnock, yelling in the hall behind me. Big Steve’s voice had been known to go through three feet of concrete and we got to hear every curse word he uttered and there were a lot of them. I say we but Lane and Jay didn’t seem to be paying attention. Lane’s expression had gone to glaring and Jay had slid down in his seat in an effort to get a better view up my skirt. Why is it when someone’s trying to look up your skirt, you get an irresistible urge to cross and recross your legs?Maybe it’s just me, but I had to recross my legs. It had to be done. Jay licked his lips and I put my right leg over my left and felt a little pop in the twenty-dollar pantyhose I’d bought for their supposed durability because Mom said I had to wear pantyhose to depositions. I leaned forward and a spidery run raced down my thigh to my knee.
Freaking great.
“I can help you take those off,” said Jay, licking his lips.
Just then Big Steve stalked in, still on his cell. “Get her here now!” He tossed me the phone and popped Jay in the head with the back of his hairy hand. “Shut up, fool, or I’ll fire you so hard you’ll have to sell your equipment for scrap.”
Jay blushed as red as his hair. “I’m sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”
“Damn straight it won’t.” Big Steve sat next to me and I scooted over to make room, even though he was in another chair. He was that kind of guy, the kind that took up a lot of space in every room, whether a closet or an auditorium. You just couldn’t stop looking at him, even when he was quiet, which was rare.
“We’ll give Arlene another fifteen seconds and then we’re out of here.”
“Thank goodness,” I said.
Big Steve looked at his watch. “Ten seconds.”
I smiled. Jay the stenographer looked terrified, a normal reaction to Big Steve. Lane sighed and got on the phone.
“Five seconds. Grab your purse, Mercy.”
“Got it.”
A young man with a receding hairline and watery blue eyes ran through the door, clutching six inches worth of paperwork and a battered laptop. “I’m here. I’m here.”
Big Steve pushed past him. “We’re out and you’re not Arlene. Don’t think I don’t know the difference, although that is a tie a fifty-year-old woman would wear.”
“Please don’t leave. Mrs. Cobb will kill me if I don’t get this deposition done.”
“Where is she? And don’t tell me she got caught up in court. She has nothing on any docket today.”
“Um…” said the young man and I began to feel sorry for him.
“Um is not an answer.” Big Steve gently pushed me out the door.
“Arlene has a new boyfriend!” yelled out the young man behind us.
“Leonard,” said Lane, “are you out of your mind?
We turned slowly. Big Steve looked like it was his birthday. “How old is this one?”
Leonard clapped his free hand over his mouth.
“Too late for that, boy. The new cat is out of the bag. I’m truly going to enjoy my next committee meeting with Arlene.”
“Please don’t tell her I told you,” begged Leonard.
“Alright. I’ll give you a break.”
“Will you please come in the conference room? She’ll fire me if I don’t get this deposition done.”
I crossed my arms. “I thought she was going to kill you.”
Leonard barely glanced at me. “Same thing. Please. I’m begging you.”
“She’s quite the dragon, isn’t she?” said Big Steve.
A bead of sweat rolled down Leonard’s cheek. Poor guy didn’t know Big Steve made dragons look like house cats. He worked sixteen-hour days because he thought the law was good fun and didn’t understand that other people needed to do things like, you know, eat and sleep.
“I’ll give you fifteen minutes.”
Damn. So close.
Leonard led us into the conference room and I sat in a chair designed to be so comfortable that you’d relax and be off your guard. Fat chance. Big Steve touched my hand. “We’re in and out. Remember what I told you.”
I nodded. How could I forget? He’d told me a dozen times to answer questions briefly and to offer up absolutely nothing. As if I would. I’d been around. This was my tenth deposition in a month, including the murder cases. If this kept up, I’d have to buy stock in pantyhose or paint my legs.
Leonard settled in across from us and spread out his papers like a fan. Jay set up at the end of the room and tried not to look at me. Nice.
“State your name for the record,” said Leonard.
Sigh.
“Carolina Watts.” I was named after my mother, but my dad had nicknamed me Mercy. I preferred Mercy to Carolina. I was already too much like Mom for comfort.
“Is that the name you’re commonly known by?” asked Leonard.
“No.”
Leonard looked up and waited. I could see a flicker of a smile on the edge of Big Steve’s lips. He loved it when I did as I was told. My parents loved it, too. I didn’t get the appeal.
“Let’s move it along,” said Big Steve.
“Yes, of course. State the name you’re commonly called,” said Leonard.
“Mercy Watts.” I almost said Marilyn, since I was a dead ringer for the late bombshell, Marilyn Monroe, and got called Marilyn as much as I did Mercy.
“Describe your relationship with Myrtle and Millicent Bled.”
“I’m their goddaughter.”
Defining my relationship to The Girls went on for anothe
r five minutes. I don’t know what he was looking for and I wasn’t sure he did either. Every deposition was the same. Who are you? What’s your relationship? Who’s decision was it that you attend Whitmore Academy? Who paid for it? Blah. Blah. Blah. But then it got interesting.
“What did your parents pay for the house on Hawthorne Avenue?” asked Leonard without looking up.
“It was a gift,” I said.
“A gift from Myrtle and Millicent Bled to your parents whom they barely knew.”
“Yes.”
“Are you aware of the worth of the Hawthorne house at the time it was signed over?”
“No.”
“Would it surprise you if I said that house was worth over seven hundred thousand dollars the year you were born?”
“No.”
“You’re not surprised that the Bled sisters gave away a seven-hundred-thousand-dollar house to strangers?”
“No.”
“I’d be surprised.”
“Is that a question?” I asked.
Big Steve’s lips twitched. “She’s not surprised. Next question.”
“Are you aware that the Hawthorne house was signed over to your mother alone? That your father, Tommy Watts, is not in fact on the deed?”
“No.”
“You thought it was signed over to both your parents?”
“I’ve never seen the deed and I never thought about it,” I said, stifling a yawn.
“Do you know when exactly your parents met the Bled sisters?”
“No.” What in the world was he getting at?
“Would it surprise you that at the time the deed for the Hawthorne house was signed over to your mother, Myrtle and Millicent Bled had never actually met your mother?”
That stopped me cold and I felt Big Steve stiffen beside me.
“Miss Watts, please answer the question,” said Leonard with a smile. The goofy lost lawyer act was gone.
“I don’t know that’s true,” I said.
“Did your mother tell you she had met the Bled sisters at the time the deed was signed over?”
“No.”
“Why do you think that the Bled sisters gave such an expensive property to a woman they’d never met?”
“I don’t know that’s true,” I said.
“Do you concede that the house was signed over to your mother?”
“No.”
“Do you know what cases your father was working on at the time of this supposed gift?”
Supposed?
“No.”
“Your father had just become a homicide detective on the St. Louis police force at the time of the signing of the deed. Correct?”
“I guess.”
“You don’t know?” asked Leonard with such smugness, I wanted to kick him in the shin, but Jay was taking it all down and looking pretty interested, too.
“I don’t know the exact dates, since it was before I was born.”
“You don’t know the events surrounding the giving of this extraordinary house?”
“No.”
“What did your parents tell you?”
“Nothing.”
“Tommy Watts, a man known for his attention to detail, told you nothing about how your family got entrance into the exclusive world of Hawthorne Avenue?”
“No.”
“I find that extraordinary.”
Big Steve stood up and his chair flew backwards and hit the wall. “Your fifteen minutes is up.” He took my arm and lifted me out of my seat.
“I’m not done,” said Leonard.
“Then you should’ve been on time.” Big Steve opened the conference room door and steered me through.
“She’ll have to answer these questions.”
“She has answered them. My patience is at an end.”
We walked through the waiting room and were met by Lane, who handed me two large safety pins.
“For until you get home.”
“Thanks,” I said, my head still reeling from Leonard’s insinuations.
“Did you pick out this dress?” asked Lane.
“My mother did.”
“Burn it. It says everything you don’t want to say.”
“I will. Don’t worry. Thank you.”
Leonard came charging out of the conference room. “One more question, Miss Watts. How well did your father know Josiah Bled?”
I started to answer that I didn’t know, but Lane stepped in front of Leonard. “You’re late for court. The Rina case. The clerk has been calling.”
Big Steve pushed me through the office door into the warm hall and began yelling into his phone as we walked to the elevator. “Freya, get Bub over to the office now and I want a list of every damn person in the squad when Watts made homicide.” He took a breath. “Every person. Right down to the cleaning staff.”
I pressed the elevator button and watched Big Steve order poor Freya to pull up his employee list for the same time period. My mom was his legal secretary for years and she would’ve been in his office when she got the house. He must’ve thought that someone in their circle had blabbed, but what could they possibly know? Dad always said the house was a thank-you. I gathered there was some kind of favor involved, but I always thought the truth was more special than that. Myrtle and Millicent fell in love with my parents. They adored them and my parents adored them right back. If Leonard thought the house was payment for some kind of illegal act on Dad’s part, he was wrong. I’m not saying Dad wasn’t above bending the rules or even breaking them. I’d seen him do it and it was always the right thing. My godmothers didn’t pay Dad off. There was no way. If they had, it would’ve been a dirty back-alley deal. They’d never want to see him again. That didn’t remotely happen. I was born in the Bled Mansion. The Girls babysat me, while Mom worked. They taught me to garden and bake, against my will but still. Mom was the one they called when they were sick or wanted to shop for ridiculous hats. Dad took care of their security system and fixed faucets for them. Whatever Leonard thought just simply couldn’t have happened.
The elevator opened and Big Steve put his phone in his pocket. “I don’t want you to worry about this.”
“What exactly is this thing I’m not supposed to worry about?” I asked.
“The lawsuit.”
“I’m not worried about the lawsuit. Myrtle and Millicent aren’t incompetent. What’s all this about the house?”
“Nothing to worry about.”
Whenever someone says that, I know there’s definitely something to worry about.
“Was that dillweed right? Is the house in Mom’s name?”
Big Steve looked at the floor numbers slowly counting down.
“You know I can check. It’s public record.”
“She’s on the deed.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Had she met The Girls at the time the house was signed over?”
The elevator hit the first floor and the doors started to open. I hit the stop button and an alarm clanged, echoing off the wood paneling.
“Did Mom meet them or not?”
“Mercy, that was twenty-six years ago.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
“Mercy.”
“They’re my parents, like it or not. I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“It’s better if you don’t know anything. I won’t have you lying under oath.”
“So that’s a no.” I let go of the button, the alarm stopped, and the doors jerked open. A crowd stood there, looking as confused as I felt.
“Everything’s fine,” said Big Steve as he pushed through the crowd.
Yeah, right. I don’t think so.
He walked me to my truck and opened the door for me. “Don’t worry. Tommy will dig up something on Brooks and the lawsuit will be a thing of the past.”
That was supposed to make me feel better? It didn’t. He might as well have said there was somet
hing to find out about our house.
I must’ve looked worried, because he put a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Your parents are good people. The best. Leonard has nothing.”
“Come on. Leonard isn’t fishing without bait,” I said.
“He doesn’t even have a hook. Trust me.” He moved to close my door, but I blocked it.
“Did Dad know Josiah Bled personally?”
Big Steve grinned. “I have every confidence that you’ll be able to figure that out.”
He slammed my door and got into his big gold Lexus and squealed the tires on the way out of the parking lot probably yelling into his phone the whole time. Big Steve was right about most things and he was right about me. I’d figure it out eventually, but wouldn’t it be nice if my parents would just tell me and save some time. I googled Josiah Bled on my phone and found his Wikipedia page. I’d seen it before, but it still seemed weird that The Girls’ uncle had one. Josiah Bled was famous in his own way. First for being a Bled. The Bled Brewery was known all over the world and so was the fabulously rich family. Second for being a WWI flying ace and third being a spy in WWII. He was known to a lesser extent for building our house and The Girls’ house. Pictures of both featured prominently on the page below his picture taken in France next to his bi-plane in 1917. He couldn’t have been more dashing with his leather flying helmet and white silk scarf. Myrtle and Millicent said their uncle was bad in the best way possible and he looked it as he smiled a rakish smile at the camera, his eyes crinkled like a great joke had just been told.
I scrolled down to his dates. Josiah Aloysius Bled, born July 4, 1900, died unknown. What the heck? How could they not know? He was definitely dead. He’d be over a hundred and ten, if he wasn’t. Come to think of it, I’d never seen his grave in the family plot. I wasn’t looking for it, but The Girls took me to the family estate Prie-Dieu for picnics and they liked to visit the family. I didn’t remember ever visiting Josiah Bled’s grave. Maybe he was in Arlington cemetery or some place like that, but everyone else was in the family plot, no matter where they died or how. Why would the much loved Josiah be any different?
I called Prie-Dieu to ask and got the answering machine. Since their accounts were frozen, The Girls were staying at the old estate to save money. They spent most of their time tending the grounds and giving tours since the mansion was in trust to the Missouri Historical Society. They’d never been so busy.
Then I tried Dad’s cell and Mom’s. I got voicemail on both. The home office was a lock. Claire, my old high school rival, had taken over after I did a favor for her in exchange for her transcription skills. She practically lived in Dad’s office. He was now a private detective and he’d never been so organized. My parents loved Claire. She was the daughter they never had. Obedient, respectful, and quiet. She did absolutely everything they said right down to her dating life. Dad checked out all potential suitors, so Claire hadn’t had a date in six months, which was a good thing. If there was a loser con artist in the vicinity, Claire would find him.
“Hey, Claire,” I said. “I’m trying to get ahold of my parents, but they’re not answering.”
“Hi, Mercy. Let me see. That’s right. Your dad’s chasing a child molester in Jeff City and your mom’s testifying in front of the grand jury in Cleveland. Do you want to leave a message in case they get in touch?”
“Will Dad be back tonight?”
“I doubt it. If he gets the guy, he’ll follow the arrest through.”
“What about Mom? We’re supposed to leave in two days.”
“She’s flying back tomorrow, assuming the indictment goes through. Why? Is something wrong?”
Is something wrong? Not exactly.
“No. Everything’s fine. But you’ve been going through Dad’s files reorganizing, right?” I asked.
“Yes. They were a mess.”
“Did you perhaps find anything about our house? Maybe some notes?”
Claire got cagey. “What are you looking for?”
“Nothing in particular, just what was going on around the time The Girls gave it to us.”
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
Groan.
“What was Dad working on back then?” I asked.
“He was a police detective.”
“I know. He kept every single notebook he used during his career. I just want to know what he was working on.”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” said Claire.
“Why the heck not?”
“I signed a confidentiality agreement.”
“I’m his kid. I think you can tell me what cases he was working on before I was born.”
“I can’t. The agreement was very specific. You’re mentioned by name.”
“Dad had you sign an agreement not to tell me stuff? Seriously?”
“I can’t tell anyone else either, if that makes you feel better,” said Claire.
“It doesn’t.”
“Before you go, I have a message from your mom.”
Groan.
“You have to go shopping for appropriate cruise wear today. She’s tired of your procrastination. Sheila at Forever Summer is expecting you.”
“What in the world is appropriate cruise wear?”
“I have a list for you.”
Great. More dresses that fall apart.
“Never mind. I’ll figure it out.” I hung up and started up my ancient truck. The engine roared in a most satisfying way and the familiar vibrations rumbled through my generous rump, but I didn’t know exactly where to go from there. My parents were hiding something and Claire knew what it was. That just sucked.
Read the rest in Diver Down (Book Two)
A.W. Hartoin is the author of the Mercy Watts mystery series and the Away From Whipplethorn fantasy series. She lives in Colorado with her husband, two children, and six bad chickens.
