Too Far Under

by Lynn Osterkamp

  Whoa, this was getting down and dirty. Part of me wanted to get out of there, but the other part felt rooted to the spot. Suddenly my phone rang. I stuck it in my pocket and dashed down the hall away from the fighting family, hoping the ringing hadn’t drawn their attention to me. There was no way I wanted to have to explain why I was standing there eavesdropping on their argument. I didn’t look back to see whether they had noticed me, just headed for the front door and ran out through the rain to my car.

  Chapter 35

  The call was Lacey again but I didn’t pick up soon enough to get it. When I called her back, she sounded ticked off. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning,” she complained. “Where are you?”

  “I was at your grandfather’s funeral, so I had my phone turned off. Shane said you and Angelica got stuck in the mountains and couldn’t make it. What happened?”

  “We had the worst luck,” she wailed. “October in the mountains. I should have checked the forecast, but I had so much on my mind, I forgot. I can’t believe we missed Grandad’s funeral.” Lacey was crying and I heard Angelica in the background trying to soothe her.

  “Lacey, I’m sure you did your best to get here. Your grandfather would understand. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  “We started back from Aspen late yesterday afternoon, but we ran into a monster snowstorm. The driving was getting pretty hairy, so I decided to stop at a motel in Dillon. I figured we’d get up early and easily make it to the funeral, but when we got up we heard that a truck had jackknifed on the highway and the road was closed.”

  “Have they gotten the road open yet?”

  “Yes, they opened it about half an hour ago, but it was too late to make the funeral by then. We’re on our way down now and we should be in Boulder in about an hour. We have to talk to you as soon as we get there. It’s really urgent. Can we come right to your office?”

  “For sure I’d rather talk to you in person, instead of talking on the phone while you’re driving down a snowy mountain highway,” I said, “but you know I can’t have Angelica in my office.”

  “It’s sunny up here this morning and the snow is mostly melted now. Also, Angelica is holding the phone for me, so no worries about the driving.” She had started speaking calmly but her voice began to rise as she went on. “But we have to meet with you. We need help and you’re the only one who will understand. This is beyond urgent! No one will ever know Angelica has been at your office.”

  “Can you tell me what’s so urgent?”

  “You’re not going to believe this, but Glenna called me early Saturday morning to tell me she had Mom’s new will. She said I shouldn’t say anything to anyone else except Angelica, and I needed to come get it right away. I told her I’d rather tell Dad and let him get it from her, but she started yelling at me that if I told Dad or Shane, she’d destroy the will and deny ever finding it. She sounded so out of control, I didn’t want to argue with her,” Lacey groaned, sounding a bit out of control herself. She took a deep breath and continued, “Whatever might happen, I couldn’t risk losing a new will that contains Mom’s last wishes about her estate. So we picked it up on our way to Aspen, and Angelica read it out loud to me on our way up. Mom made some big changes and we’re not sure what to do about it. That’s what’s so urgent.”

  After what I’d just heard in the angry exchange among Glenna, Derrick and Shane, I wondered whether Glenna was manipulating everyone in the Townes family for her own purposes. On the other hand it was hard to see what Glenna would have to gain from Mirabel’s will, whether it was the original version or a new revised one. “Why didn’t she want you to tell your father or Shane?” I asked. “And now that you have it and she can’t destroy it, what’s to stop you from giving the new will to your father or taking it to a lawyer? I think you should let them decide what should be done. I don’t know anything about wills.”

  “We’re not ready to do that yet,” Lacey said, her voice rising again to almost a shriek. “Angelica and I can’t agree on what to do with this will.” She gave an exasperated sigh. “I’ll let her tell you. I think she can explain her point of view better than I can.”

  Angelica came on the phone, speaking patiently in the deliberate manner of someone who has been repeatedly misunderstood. “Cleo, it’s Angelica. Let me explain. The energy surrounding this will is muddy and its provisions are not harmonious. The universe has arranged for Lacey and me to have Mom’s new will when other people don’t know about it. I have a strong feeling that this will doesn’t represent Mom’s true intentions. Lacey thinks we have to take the will to a lawyer, but my intuition tells me that bringing out this will may cause great harm.”

  What the heck did that mean? I felt like I was in over my head again, drowning in complications with two messed-up kids. My immediate response would be to take the new will to a lawyer. But Vernon was a lawyer, so he certainly knew what he should have done. He had done great work for my grandparents and he had been eulogized as a man of high ethical standards. Why would he keep the will a secret? Why had he continued to insist that there was no new will? And if he wasn’t going to report the new will, why did he keep it? Did he somehow feel that keeping the will secret was acceptable but that because it was a legal document destroying it would be going too far? Given that he made the choices that he did, was Angelica right that the new will was harmful?

  My curiosity and my desire to help were strong. I did want to meet with them, but I was very worried about violating Derrick and Judith’s strict instructions not to see Angelica again—especially at my office. I made what seemed at the time like a smart compromise, but was actually a rash decision. I said I would meet them at my house.

  They showed up at 1:30, both looking worried and tired. I welcomed them into my kitchen, where I had laid out some muffins and fruit that I had picked up on my way home. Once Lacey and I were settled with coffee and Angelica with some lemonade, I asked Lacey to tell me as much as she could remember of what Glenna had said about the new will.

  She closed her eyes briefly in thought, then began. “Apparently Grandad left his house and all its contents to Glenna. When she was cleaning out his office on Friday, she found several boxes stuffed with legal papers. For some reason, she decided to look through them before she took them to the lawyer handling Grandad’s estate. And she found Mom’s new will in one of the boxes.”

  “Amazing! Did she say whether she already knew your Mom had made a new will or whether finding it was a big shock?”

  Lacey grimaced. “She said she didn’t know anything about it. But I have no idea whether or not that’s true. She can be cagey.”

  “Did she have any idea why your grandfather had kept the new will secret and told everyone your mom didn’t make a new will?”

  “She said she didn’t know. But she said Grandad was much more forgetful than any of us knew—had big problems finding things around the house, forgot people’s names and how he knew them, and sometimes got lost driving right here in Boulder. He was good at covering up so other people didn’t notice. She said she urged him to get an evaluation of his memory, but he refused. She also said she tried to get him to cut down on his drinking because he was much more forgetful when he was drinking. But he said drinking as much as he wanted was one of the pleasures he’d earned after working hard all his life.”

  “So Glenna thinks Vernon forgot your mom made a new will?”

  “Right. The new will is dated in June of this year—only a couple of months before Mom died. So you’d think he would have remembered. But Glenna said his forgetfulness had been getting much worse this spring and summer, and he forgot recent things more than longer-ago ones.”

  I could actually believe that Vernon Evers could have forgotten having drawn up his own daughter’s new will. Having lived with Gramma’s Alzheimer’s for years, I knew quite a bit about short-term memory loss and how people who have it can be much worse than they seem. And when they start to notice their forgetfulness, they lea
rn ways to cover up. It sounded very believable to me that a powerful man like Vernon Evers wouldn’t want anyone to know how forgetful he was. Glenna knew what he was like day-to-day a lot better than we did. If she thought he’d forgotten making Mirabel’s new will, it was likely she was right.

  “We’ll probably never know why he didn’t bring out the new will,” I said. “But whatever his reason was, Glenna doesn’t seem to have any reason to lie about it. What I don’t understand is why after she found the will she decided to give it to you instead of your Dad and told you not to say anything about it to anyone except Angelica.”

  “She said Dad and Shane had been accusing Grandad of not remembering and he was furious about that. Grandad was mad at Dad anyway for moving Judith into our house, and he was disgusted with Shane’s lifestyle—thought he was a slacker. They knew Grandad was angry with them and they weren’t getting along with him. Glenna figured that if she told them about the will, they’d be saying they were right all along about his memory. She accepts they’ll have to know about the will soon, but she said they’ve never liked her and they treat her like a whore. She detests them both and she didn’t want to deal with them or have to discuss Grandad’s memory problems at his funeral. So she gave it to me and asked me not to tell anyone until after the funeral.”

  Angelica had been quietly eating a pear and a raspberry muffin while Lacey was talking. I wanted to get her into the conversation, so I asked, “Angelica, what do you think is harmful in the new will?”

  “One thing is that in this will, Dad gets most of the money. He talked her into that. I know because I heard their arguments. Mom told him she had written him out of her will except for what she had to give him under Colorado law And she told him she was thinking of getting a divorce. Dad kept begging her to reconsider, told her he had given up Judith. After a while she believed him and told him she would stay with him and that she had made a new will. But he was lying. He never gave up Judith and he never planned to.”

  “I guess that’s what your grandfather thought, too,” I said. “But this will is a legal document. Even if your mother made a mistake, we can’t keep it a secret now that we have it.”

  “That’s what I think, too,” Lacey said. “Plus in the new will Mom disinherited the Scientologists. If we don’t turn it in, they’ll get money Mom didn’t want them to have.”

  Angelica put her hand on Lacey’s arm and spoke slowly and clearly. “But if we do turn it in, Judith will get money Mom didn’t want her to have. We may not like the Scientologists, but they did help Mom when she needed help, which is more than Dad did. And all Judith ever did was hurt her.” Angelica paused, staring into space. Then she said, “There’s also Faye Whitton to think about.”

  “What about Faye?” I asked

  “She said some very bad things in the will about Faye and the way she manages the West End Gallery. Mom said Faye had been warned but she hadn’t changed so Mom was no longer leaving her the gallery. I think they weren’t getting along lately, but I don’t think Faye deserved that.

  I turned to Lacey. “What’s that about?”

  “Mom said in the will that …”

  “All of you sit right where you are and put that will at the end of the table,” a loud male voice demanded. Brian stood in the kitchen doorway pointing a gun at us.

  Chapter 36

  I jumped up and confronted him, trying to sound confident, despite my pounding heart. “Brian, what are you doing? How did you get in?”

  “You left the front door open,” he sneered, “so I just walked in. Get back in your chair, Cleo. I’m here for the will.” Keeping the gun carefully trained on us with his right hand, he walked up to the table, used his left hand to push me down into my chair and then to grab the will.

  Lacey had begun to cry, but Angelica sat stoically, observing him. Sweat trickled down my chest. What had I done? Not only had I allowed Angelica to come to my house against Derrick and Judith’s orders, I had gotten her into a life-threatening situation. I had to take charge.

  “How did you know about the will?” I demanded.

  “Don’t be naïve, Cleo. Do you think we leave this sort of thing to chance? I’ve had your cell phone tapped for weeks.”

  Huh? “How did you get hold of my cell phone?”

  “I didn’t have to do anything to your cell phone. I have software installed on my phone that lets me see who you call and who calls you. I can listen in to all your conversations. Most of them are pretty boring, but I hit the jackpot today.”

  Brian never took his eyes off us as he put the will in his pocket, reached down into a bag he had dropped on the floor next to his feet, and pulled out several long pieces of rope and tossed them on the table. “Stand up, Cleo,” he barked. I stood. He motioned at Lacey and said, “Put your arms together and hold them out in front of you.” She complied. “Okay, Cleo, take one of those pieces of rope and wrap them tightly around her arms several times and then tie it so she can’t get loose.”

  My gut was churning and I felt dizzy with fear, but I stayed put. Did not pick up the rope. He couldn’t be serious about shooting us. If I refused to cooperate, maybe he’d take the will and leave. “Brian, you don’t have to do this. You have the will. Isn’t that enough?”

  He took a half step in my direction. “Shut up, Cleo and do what I say or I’ll shoot you in the foot.” He pointed his gun at my right foot. Looks like his new level of spiritual awareness doesn’t stop him from inflicting pain and suffering.

  “Okay, you don’t have to get violent. I’ll do what you say.” I reached for a piece of rope, walked over to Lacey’s chair and bound her arms together. She sobbed and twitched, but didn’t say anything. Brian watched closely to make sure I was tying her arms tight.

  “Now the kid,” he said pointing at Angelica. I picked up another piece of rope and turned to Angelica. I touched her shoulder softly to reassure her before I tied her arms. She sat quietly gazing intently at Brian the whole time.

  Brian matched her stare. “What are you looking at?” he demanded.

  “Your aura,” she said. “It’s a muddy forest green. That’s a sign of jealousy, resentment, insecurity, low self-esteem, and feeling like you’re a victim.”

  This guy is pointing a gun at us and she’s making derogatory comments about his aura? “Angelica, I don’t think he really wants to hear this right now,” I said, hoping she’d take the suggestion and let it go.

  Brian clenched his jaw, but didn’t answer her or respond in any way. Instead he turned to me. “Back to your chair, Cleo,” he said, pointing to where I had been sitting across the table. I walked over there and sat. Brian put his gun in his pocket, picked up a piece of rope and headed toward me. I knew the drill and could see no point in resisting. I held out my arms. I did try to leave a gap between my arms, but he wrapped the rope so tightly that it not only pulled them together, it burned my skin. I didn’t flinch. No way was I going to give him the satisfaction.

  He checked and tightened the rope on both Lacey’s and Angelica’s arms. Then he returned to the head of the table, took the will and the gun out of his pocket, put it on the table in front of him, and sat down. “I’m going to read this will,” he said. “You can all watch my aura or whatever. Just sit quietly and don’t bother me.”

  As he read his face flushed, his nostrils flared, and his arms and shoulders tensed. As I watched his anger build, I desperately tried to figure out how we could possibly escape. Maybe if we all tipped over our chairs at once, he’d be so distracted one of us could kick him while one of us scooted her chair to where a knife would be within reach. But that would take planning and coordinating our actions, which there was no way to do. And realistically our arms were tied too tightly to grab a knife and use it. Maybe if we all screamed at once, someone would hear us, but my house is thick stone and not really close to any other houses, so that wasn’t likely to work. Plus, he’d probably shoot us if we screamed.

  He looked up at me as if he could
hear my thoughts. “You can stop worrying,” he said. “I’m not planning to shoot you. My interest is in preserving the Church of Scientology’s inheritance by destroying this will.” He snatched up the will and ripped it in half. Then he stomped over to my gas stove, lit a burner and touched the will to the flame. With a flourish, he tossed the burning document into the sink and smirked as it turned to ashes.

  “No! Stop! You can’t do that!” Lacey screamed. “That’s a legal document. Destroying it is a crime.”

  What was she thinking screaming at him like that? Just because he said he wasn’t going to shoot us didn’t mean he wouldn’t. And he clearly wasn’t concerned about committing a crime.

  But now that he had destroyed the will, his anger had turned to gloating. “How are you going to prove I destroyed anything—or even that there was a new will?” he sneered. “No one has seen it but you three—a strange kid and a couple of women who talk to spirits—and Glenna Corn, a seductress who preys on old men. I doubt any of you would convince the police. Even Cleo’s annoying boyfriend thinks you three are deluded.”

  I hated to admit it, but he might be right. It would be hard to prove what he had done. Brian always was an accomplished liar who knew how to cover his tracks.

  Angelica glowered at him. “You are caught in a tide of evil,” she said. “You act in darkness, which prevents your spiritual growth. Evil opposes the life force, kills human life or the human spirit. I believe you killed my mother so the Scientologists could get her money.”

  Brain gave her a surprised look. Then he launched into a lecture. “You know nothing about human life or the human spirit or spiritual growth,” he said, patronizingly. “Humans are immortal spiritual entities who have fallen into a degraded state as a result of past-life experiences. Through Scientology we become free of our past-life traumas and recover past-life memory, leading to a higher state of spiritual awareness. Your mother understood that. But then she filled her body with toxic substances, left Scientology, and went back on her promises to us. She had to be stopped. As far as the church goes, I could have killed your mother with no spiritual consequences. A Scientologist can ethically trick, lie to, or destroy a critic or former member who is considered a suppressive person.”