by Sue Henry
“And the police went through the house?”
“Yes, they found the back door unlocked and went through every room of it. That nice young man that was here before came across to talk to me—the tall one in uniform. Officer . . . ah . . .”
“Bellamy?”
“Bellamy. Yes, that’s right. He seemed to know you weren’t here. He gave me his card.”
“I saw him the night before I left,” I told her, thinking that the police were probably tired of making unsuccessful runs to burglaries at Sarah’s address. “Did they lock the back door before they left?”
She nodded assurance. “I know they did, because I loaned them my key.”
“You have a key?”
Why did that startle me? Neighbors often have each other’s keys. The woman who cares for my house in Alaska while I’m on the road has one.
“Sarah and I traded keys years ago,” Doris confided. “It makes it easier to water the plants and things like that when either one of us is gone.” She stopped and put a hand over her mouth, eyes wide as she remembered that Sarah was dead. “When one of us was out of town, I mean. Sorry.”
Who else, I wondered, had a key to the house? Alan? Westover? Why should I have assumed I had the only key?
Stretch, who had been padding around outside where I could keep an eye on him through the open coach door, scratched on the screen to be let in. I got up and opened it for him. Ignoring me, he headed straight for Doris, who gave a chirp of delight and leaned to pet him.
“Oh, what a sweetie you are.”
Accepting her accolade as nothing less than his due, he gave her wrist a lick of appreciation and encouragement.
He can be such a ningnong.
“Well,” I said, setting down my empty tea glass. “I guess I’d better take a look and see if I can tell what this person took away with him—if it was a him.”
Doris rose as I did and we went out the door, leaving Stretch inside. She hesitated. “Would you want me to come with you?”
Clearly, she had no desire to do so and was offering because she thought it was the thing to do.
“No thanks. I’ll be fine. There won’t be anyone there now.”
Relieved to be let off the hook, she went home and I went to unlock the back door with the key that I had retrieved from my bag.
Sarah’s kitchen looked the same as it had when I left for Salt Lake. The only difference I could see was that the basement door had been left open, perhaps by the police. I left the basement till last and made a tour of the first and second floors, but found nothing out of place or missing. A quick trip up the stairs to the attic had the same result.
I could feel the temperature drop as I descended into the cellar. Like many old basements, it smelled damp and dusty. A few cobwebs festooned the joists of the floor overhead and the windows that, as Doris had observed, had years of grime obscuring them. By the time I reached the cement floor at the bottom of the stairs I knew that, however dirty those windows, I had evidently been observed through them more closely than I suspected. How else could anyone but Sarah have known that the utility shelves hid her secret room?
They held no secret now, for they had been swung away from the wall and the door had been kicked in. It stood splintered and wide open.
What the thief had carried out was obvious. The box of letters and photographs was missing and only a dim square in the thin film of recent dust lingered to show it had ever occupied the shelf next to the empty one that remained, its lid askew.
I stared at the space with a sinking feeling that I had seriously let my friend down. If Sarah had treasured those letters and pictures, then I should have, too. Now I might never be able to read those letters that I had put off until later.
Who could have taken them? Jamie was the first name that came to mind. Would she have been able to kick open that solid door? It could not have been the person who left the threat on my screen door the night just past. A person can’t be in two places at once and there was too much distance between Green River and Grand Junction to reach either one from the other fast enough to kick in the door and leave the warning note.
I closed the door as best I could and swung back the shelves in front of it. But the horse, so to speak, was already gone.
I’m sorry, Sarah. But you didn’t leave me much to go on.
Back upstairs, I wandered through the living room, checking things again to be sure nothing else had been taken. In the vestibule I remembered the mail that had probably come while I was away and retrieved several items from the box under the mail slot. Walking back toward the desk, I shuffled through them—a magazine, one of those You Are Pre-qualified envelopes from some credit card company that must gobble up trees by the square mile at least once a week at the rate they harass the public by mail, and a large manila envelope the sender had wasted tape to seal, rather than moisten the flap. About to lay them all down on the desk with the mail I had retrieved before I left for Salt Lake, I flipped them over and found that the manila envelope had been sent to Sarah’s address, but the name printed on it in ink was mine!
Something from Don Westover’s office, I thought at first. Then I noticed that in the upper left corner the sender’s address was the same as the address under my name and above it were two initials: S. N.
Sarah Nunamaker—without a doubt.
If anyone should know, I should, for I had seen those initials in the same familiar handwriting—on every piece of mail that I had received from Sarah in over forty years.
At the house, Maxine . . . I wrote it all down. You can read it, she had said. And here it was—I knew—in the best hiding place she could think of—the U.S. mail.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WITHOUT BOTHERING TO FIND A LETTER OPENER IN THE desk, I ripped open the flap of the manila envelope. What I pulled out was a similar envelope, folded once to fit. It was even more carefully sealed with tape, this time all around the edges, so it was impossible to open without irrevocably tearing the brown manila paper, and was addressed to Sarah Nunamaker at her Chipeta Avenue address.
TO BE OPENED ONLY IN THE PRESENCE OF MAXIE MCNABB AND DONALD WESTOVER had been written in block letters across the face of the envelope. Under that: MAXINE: READ THIS BEFORE OPENING had been underlined with an arrow that pointed to a sheet of paper folded in quarters and paper-clipped to the envelope. I pulled it from under the clip and opened it to find a half page written in Sarah’s familiar hand:Dear Maxine,
I may be able to do this myself, but just in case I can’t: Please DO NOT OPEN THE ENVELOPE TO WHICH THIS IS ATTACHED.
It is very important that you take it directly and as soon as possible to Don Westover.
I have mailed this first to myself, then, in the envelope you have already opened, to you. Without opening it, you must take it straight to Don so he will be able to prove from the way it is sealed and the date on the postmark that it was mailed and, therefore written, after the copy of my will that he helped amend several days ago and assumes is final. The changes in this will postdate and invalidate parts of that document.
Inside with these changes is a letter to you explaining why this course of action is necessary so far as I know and understand it.
If this is necessary, I’m sorry to land you in the middle of this without prior knowledge, but you and Don Westover are the only people I can trust and all this is crucially important to me and will be to others.
Thank you, my dear friend.
All my love,
Sarah
I stood staring at what I held in my hands for a long minute, then read it again as I reached for the phone and called Don Westover’s office.
June answered.
He was in court, she told me, but would be back by lunchtime.
I told her if he came in before I arrived that it was critical to keep him there, which she promised to do and didn’t ask why.
Taking both envelopes and the note back to the Winnebago with me, I grabbed up the kit and clean clothe
s I had expected to use in Green River and headed to Sarah’s upstairs bathroom for a quick shower. I locked the door and put the envelope on the toilet seat, where I could keep an eye on it, determined that this time nothing that had been trusted to my keeping and was so important was going to disappear.
Leaving Stretch behind, I took the rental car I had left parked while I was in Salt Lake and headed into downtown Grand Junction, where I took care to park in the shade of a tree on Main Street, though I had to hike a block and a half to Westover’s office as a result.
Don Westover was in the outer office by June’s desk when I walked in, examining some papers he evidently had brought back from his trip to court. She looked up and smiled as he left what he was doing and came to meet me anxiously, gesturing that we should go into his office.
“Are you all right?”
I assured him I was.
Once again sitting in a chair in front of his desk, I took the manila envelope and accompanying note from my bag and handed them over without a word.
He raised a questioning eyebrow.
“It came in the mail,” I told him. “Maybe yesterday, or the day before. I found it less than an hour ago, when I got back from Salt Lake.”
He read both the note and what was written across the envelope, then went back and read them again.
“Smart woman, Sarah,” he commented. “Mailing this to herself will legally establish the date from the postmark. As she says, it is perfect proof that any changes in this sealed envelope were written after and will invalidate the last one I drew up for her. It’ll hold up in any court of law.”
Laying the envelope on the desk in front of him, he frowned and pursed his lips for a moment of thought before speaking.
“Well,” he said finally. “We’ll open this and find out what Sarah has to say. But I think it would be wise, under the circumstances, to have witnesses. If this is a final change to Sarah’s will, as she indicates, there is a lot at stake that could be contested—by Alan, for one. And I think we could count on that, if it doesn’t go his way.”
I agreed—thinking also of Jamie and how the will Westover and I had reviewed when I was last in his office had seemed designed to include her.
“There was another break-in at Sarah’s house last night,” I told him, “and a theft this time. There are also some things I found out in Salt Lake that you should know. There may be another child besides Jamie Stover.”
“Who?”
“I’m not sure yet, but . . .” I started, but he interrupted.
“One thing at a time. Let’s open this envelope and find out what’s in it first,” he said, laying a hand on the envelope in question as he got up from his chair. “Then you can tell me the rest. Stay here while I scare up a couple of witnesses and we’ll open it.”
In five minutes he was back with June and a woman attorney in tow. He introduced his colleague, Karen Keller, and we all sat. He handed the envelope across to Karen Keller and June, who looked it over thoroughly, then signed their names with the date on a lower corner, attesting that it had been sealed when they examined it. We all watched, as Westover took a pair of scissors from his desk drawer and carefully slit the envelope and tape at the top, preserving evidence of the way it had been sealed. Just as carefully, he removed a few pages that were paper clipped together and a sealed white business-sized envelope with my name across the front that was exactly like the three I had found for Alan, Ed, and Jamie.
“Better sign this, too,” he said, handing the white envelope to the two witnesses, who complied and handed it on to me.
“Read the will first,” I suggested, laying Sarah’s letter in my lap, not sure if I was ready to read and make public what she had written to me just yet. “It’s the most important thing, after all.”
Before reading it, Don had his witnesses sign and date each page that had been in the envelope and asked June to make copies, so we could all see what he was about to read. In a quick first glance I could see that it was composed in Sarah’s unmistakable penmanship, though her writing looked a little shaky here and there.
Westover cleared his throat and began.
“In sound mind, I, Sarah Anne Nunamaker, affirm that these are the final changes and additions to my last will and testament, written in my own hand and witnessed by Doris Chapman, my longtime friend and next-door neighbor, and by Tomas Navarro, my trusted gardener, whose signatures appear with the date on each page and formally on the last.”
I flipped through the three pages of the document and found that she had been cautious enough to make sure each of them was witnessed, as she said.
Well done, Sarah. But you never did do things by halves.
That established, I listened and followed along with the other two as Don Westover read the rest aloud. It was completely lucid and to the point.
She mentioned that before Westover had gone to her house to amend her will, the one she had on file had left everything to Alan, and that the amendments Westover had made at her request had changed it to include any child of hers, natural or adopted.
“That re-establishes a reliable chain of events within the document,” Westover stopped to comment.
He turned back to Sarah’s instructions.
Though this new document delineated items that should remain the same as the amended version—the life insurance and investments that listed Alan as beneficiary. Two changes were startling.
The first concerned the family businesses—namely the orchards and the vineyard and winery. Sarah indicated that their worth and future profit or loss, or their worth should they be sold, should be “divided equally between any and all my children, natural, adopted by me, or adopted by others, and who are not convicted of a felony by any court of law.”
Upon reading that line, Don Westover paused again to comment.
“Interesting instruction, considering the question of how Sarah died. She didn’t say who have been convicted. She carefully said who are not convicted. There’s a very significant difference between the two. She must have known she was in danger.”
I was thinking the same thing. Though she hadn’t said so specifically, it seemed to indicate that she had been aware and afraid of the possibility of an unnatural death. Or was it someone else’s death she had feared?
The second change addressed the disposition of the property and house on Chipeta Avenue. She had unconditionally left them to “Jamie S. Stover of Salt Lake City, Utah, to occupy or dispose of as she wishes.”
Evidently Sarah had been convinced beyond doubt that Jamie was her real daughter. She had also left Jamie her jewelry. I thought of the box I had found in the upstairs closet and remembered the pin I had slipped into the pocket of my sweatpants. I told myself I must remember to take it out and put it away, but I did not regret taking it.
One other bequest was new—as if she were adding something she had forgotten in the past. She left a thousand dollars “with thanks to my faithful gardener, Tomas Navarro.” I had to smile at the rightness of it.
By the time he finished reading, Don Westover was shaking his head in perplexity, but he waited until June and Karen Keller left his office before he turned to me with his questions.
“You went to Salt Lake?” he asked.
“I did—and found out some interesting things.”
“What did you mean that there might be another child?”
He picked up a pencil to take notes and waited.
“It’s a long and complex story,” I told him, hesitating. “First, about the break-in at her house last night. Doris Chapman called the police, but whoever she saw was already gone. I was about to call them again this morning on another issue, but I found the envelope in the mail and came here instead. If I’m going to tell everything I know about this situation, I can’t see any reason to tell it twice. Could we get Officer Bellamy or Detective Soames to come here?”
We could, and did. Bellamy showed up almost at once—Soames, twenty minutes later. Bellamy and Westover c
hatted about another case while we waited and I took the opportunity to open the letter Sarah had enclosed for me.
There were several pages in the white business-sized envelope, more than there had been in the document Westover had just read. I unfolded them to find to my dismay that the top two were threats similar to the one I had found in the screen door of my Winnebago that morning. The first had the same circle face with turned down mouth and Xs for eyes. The warning beneath it read, “DO WHAT IS RIGHT AND FAIR OR YOU WILL REGRET IT.” The second had two smaller faces, side by side, and read, “SHE IS A FRAUD. BELIEVE HER AND SHE DIES WITH YOU.”
“Dear Maxine,” Sarah’s letter to me began on the third page.
Along with several phone calls from someone whose voice I do not recognize, I have received these threats in the mail, both within the last week, and since my daughter Jamie came here from Salt Lake to stay with me I will not run away. I am almost as stubborn as you are, you know?
I did know and had to smile.
So, if you are reading this I probably am dead, as both threats imply I could be.
Oh, Sarah.
If that is true, Jamie will have seen you, told you who she is and all about searching and finding me after so many years. I have kept track of her since she was born through a woman in Salt Lake who was my nurse at the hospital and who has regularly sent me letters and photographs of my girl and her poor little boy. In a secret hiding place in the back of a drawer of my desk you will find a key that unlocks a room hidden behind a set of shelves in the basement. There you will find those letters and pictures of Jamie’s life.
Ahead of you, Sarah, but where are they now?
Give them to her, please, and tell her again how happy it has made me to have her with me at last. I would like her to know that I always knew who and how she was and loved her.
She went on to tell me what I already knew; that she had, as Mildred Scott’s husband, David, had confirmed, given twins up for adoption during the fall of her junior year of college—a girl and a boy. She apologized for not telling me at the time and for keeping such a secret through the years.
