Laughing Heirs (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  “Nothing. I just never heard a woman call herself any kind of dog.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’ve made a concession in letting Deeks sit on the furniture. If he gets too controlling, I’ll have to put a stop to that, too.”

  “You’ve got a whole system for keeping your men in line.”

  “He’s a dog, Paul. It’s a system for keeping dogs in line. I learned it from my veterinarian father.”

  “Point taken.”

  “Besides, I let you sit on the furniture.”

  After supper I put on a jacket and stocking cap while Deeks danced at the door.

  “We are walking, aren’t we?” Paul asked.

  “Didn’t you say you wanted to walk?”

  “I was just making sure we weren’t going to run. Don’t you run with him sometimes?”

  “It varies. Usually I do a little of both. I walk, I jog. Sometimes I do a few sprints.”

  “How about tonight?”

  “Tonight I thought we’d just walk.”

  “Good. I’m up for walking.”

  I opened the door and Deeks took off into the night. By the time Paul and I reached the street, he was nowhere in sight.

  “I take it you don’t worry much about Richmond’s leash law,” Paul said.

  “You can walk your dog without a leash if he’s under, quote, ‘immediate voice control.’ ”

  Paul twisted to peer at the road on the other side of me. Of course, Deeks wasn’t there. “I think I’m missing something.”

  “It may be a looser sort of control than immediate,” I conceded.

  I heard a clatter of toenails on the road behind me an instant before Deeks plowed into the back of my knees, almost taking me down. He caromed off me and disappeared again into the darkness. “You can see that he checks in with me periodically. And he’s good about getting off the road when headlights are coming. That’s the main thing.”

  “What do you do about his poop?”

  I pulled a hand out of my coat pocket and showed him a plastic bag.

  “Well, okay. I’m impressed.”

  “Unfortunately, Deeks usually poops up against someone’s house, right under a window. That limits me. I can hardly go crouching in front of someone’s bedroom window even if I am picking up poop. I’d be likely to get shot.”

  “So how long have you been carrying the plastic bag?”

  “This particular one? Couple weeks.”

  “Ah ha.”

  “Ah ha?”

  “That’s the Robin Starling I know.”

  We did a two-mile loop and were almost home when Paul said, “I haven’t seen Deacon in a while. Are you sure he’s out there?”

  “Pretty sure.” I raised my voice. “Deeks! Deeks, old buddy!”

  “Old buddy?” Paul asked.

  “He seems to respond to it better than ‘Come.’ ”

  “He doesn’t seem to be responding now.”

  I stopped Paul with a hand on his arm. The night was silent but for the distant buzz of a street lamp.

  “What?” Paul whispered, but I held up a hand. You could hear it, almost a thrum in the air, a clicking of toenails, and Deeks was there, dropping into a sit with his nose almost against Paul’s knee.

  “You flinched,” I said.

  “Hard not to.”

  I took a treat out of the pocket of my coat that didn’t hold the plastic bag and gave it to Deeks, feeling his teeth and tongue on my cold fingers. “Good boy, Deeks,” I said. “Good boy.”

  He gave my hand another lick.

  “Break,” I said, and he was gone again.

  “Break?”

  “It means…” But Paul’s cell phone rang and he fished it out of his pants pocket, spilling a few coins that clinked on the street in the darkness.

  “Hello?” he said, as I bent to retrieve the coins I could see. “Yes. Sure. I’m with her now.”

  I stood and handed him the coins.

  “Mike McMillan,” Paul said. “He wants to talk to you.”

  I took the phone. “Hi, Mike.”

  “Hi, Robin. I understand you’re going to be locking horns with Rupert Propst.”

  “You know him?”

  “You know all those shark jokes they tell about lawyers?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s the one who inspired them.”

  “He’s good?”

  “No, not at all, but he is unscrupulous.”

  “You sound like you know him well.”

  “Mostly by reputation—and of course he looks like a shark.”

  “Then at least I’ll know him when I see him.”

  “I’ll be interested to hear your take on him.”

  We had been walking as I talked and by the time I hung up were on the street directly in front of my house. Deeks was with us, now walking sedately at heel, his eyes on me as if he were the best trained dog in the world. Immediate voice control, I thought with satisfaction.

  Chapter 5

  The number listed for Rupert Propst looked like a cell number. I called it right at eight the next morning. It rang so long I kept expecting it to go to voice mail, but a man answered.

  “Rupert Propst,” he said, aspirating his consonants in an oddly breathy voice.

  “Hi, Mr. Propst. My name is Robin Starling. I’m an attorney representing Whitney Foster.”

  “Yes?” He hissed the “s,” and I began to get the mental image of a twisted, shadowed Mr. Hyde.

  “I understand you’re probating her Uncle Robert’s will for her and her two cousins,” I said.

  There was a slight pause. “Jared Walsh is the executor.”

  “Understood. He’s the executor, and he, his brother Nathan, and his cousin Whitney are the beneficiaries of the estate. Are you representing the estate, or Jared personally?”

  “The estate, of course.”

  “There’s a safe in the testator’s house you haven’t been able to open.”

  “Ms. Foster has the combination? I knew she must.”

  “She doesn’t have the combination. I understand you’re going to be drilling the safe open, though, and we’d like to be there when you do it.”

  He was silent.

  “Sometime today, isn’t it?” I said.

  More silence. This time I waited him out.

  “Two o’clock,” he said.

  “Great. If we’re all there when the safe opens, I think we can avoid a lot of accusations being hurled back and forth—and lawsuits, and complaints being filed with the state bar. All for the best, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

  “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Starling. Think of the black-speckled bird.”

  “And your first name is Robin?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid that would be the red-breasted bird.” I hung up, reflecting not for the first time on my twice-avian name.

  I took Broad Street Road into the office the next morning so I could drop in on Rodney Burns, who ran a detective agency located on the backside of a strip shopping mall. Actually, it would be more accurate to say he was a private detective and leave out the part about the agency, because the agency was just him. He did have room for help, though, an outer office with a computer desk from Costco and a secretarial chair that, as far as I knew, had always sat empty.

  A bell chimed as I went through the door, and Rodney glanced at me through one of the plate glass windows in the wall that separated his back office from the front. He gave me a nod, which was a pretty subdued greeting coming from him.

  I approached the inner doorway slowly, wondering if he had a client or was on the phone. “You alone?” I asked as I looked in, though I could see that he was. I stepped over a box of office supplies to stand by the client chair, which was piled with files. “Why so glum? You out of coffee?” I peered into his mug, half-full.

  “No, I’ve got coffee. The building’s been sold.”

  “The shopping center?”

  “Such as it is. The new owner’s going t
o tear it down and put something else here. He’s not going to renew my lease.”

  “How long have you got?” Callously, I was wondering if a new restaurant might come in to replace the laundromat, the tanning salon, and the former karate studio that were on the front side of the building.

  “End of the month. The sale must have been in the works awhile. Old owner kept dragging his feet about giving me a new lease. I’ve been month-to-month for almost a year now.”

  His head was down, giving me a good look at the comb-overs plastered against the dome of his head. I moved the files from the client chair and sat down. “At least business is good,” I said, indicating the pile I’d just put on the floor. “I guess this is all stuff you’re working on?”

  He shrugged. “Some of it. My business has been kind of month-to-month, too.” He sounded more lugubrious than I had ever heard him.

  “Anything else going on? Ex-wife giving you hell?”

  He turned his basset-hound eyes on me reproachfully. “I’ve never been married. You know that.”

  Actually, I did. “So. That’s one positive, isn’t it? No ex-wife to torment you.”

  He shrugged.

  “I’ve got something you might look into, if you have time.”

  His eyebrows went up, and his mouth pursed beneath the short mustache that was just beginning to gray.

  “Of course, payment is uncertain at this point,” I said. “It’d be something you might work on in your odd moments, if you have any. You wouldn’t want to set aside any paying jobs for it.”

  His eyebrows went back down.

  “You’ve never seen my new digs, have you? I don’t think you’ve been to see me since I hung out my shingle.”

  “You’ve always come here.”

  “Why don’t you stop by? I’m in the Executive Suites on the second floor of the Ironfronts: 1011 West Main.”

  “Okay.”

  “Today, maybe,” I said. “Or tomorrow. Brooke Marshall has the office next to mine, and there’s a third office in the same grouping. It’d probably cost less than you’re paying here, even if you have to pay extra to store all your files and, ah, stuff.” I made a broad, sweeping gesture to include the stacks of files, journals, books, boxes, and whatnot.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been on my own a long time.”

  “You’d still be on your own, but you’d have a secretary out front, and you’d be a dozen feet from the door of your favorite client. There’s even some sort of marketing consultant down the hall who’s having marital problems.”

  “Why is it a plus that he’s having marital problems?”

  “She. When she finds out you’re a detective, maybe she’ll hire you to spy on her husband.”

  It earned me a weak smile, but really, the effort to cheer up Rodney was wearing me out. I gave him the names of Robert Walsh and his three beneficiaries, then added Macy Buck, Robert’s therapist, as an afterthought. “Anything you can find out about them,” I said. “I’m looking for background.”

  Robert Walsh had lived in a brick ranch house partially obscured by a huge magnolia. That afternoon I parked on the curb in front of it behind a Mercedes convertible and a late-model Nissan. Directly across the street from the sidewalk was someone’s back yard—Jared’s, if I’d understood what Macy had said at the funeral. The back yard was surrounded by a privacy fence, and the house itself faced a cul-de-sac that opened off Robert’s street. Jared’s house, if that’s whose it was, was built in a more contemporary style than most of the houses in the neighborhood, with sloping roofs that didn’t attach to each other.

  The black Corvette that Brian drove stopped behind me, and I got out of my car and walked back.

  “You ready?”

  Brian nodded. Whitney shook her head, her eyes hidden by her sunglasses.

  “Oh, come on. We’ve discussed this,” he said to her. “We have to be there when they open the safe.”

  “It’s going to be so unpleasant.”

  “You’re going to have to put up with it, Mouse. It’s the only way to be sure of getting a share of whatever’s in there.”

  She sighed, looking out the window toward the house. Mouse? I thought.

  “Whitney?” he said.

  “I know. I’m ready.” She popped open the door and got out, tucking her purse under the seat, but keeping a glasses case clutched in one hand. An image of a white, old-fashioned pair of glasses was printed on one side of the case.

  I walked with Brian and Whitney up the sidewalk to Robert’s house. Behind the storm door the front door was standing open, so I pulled open the storm door. “Hello?”

  “In here.”

  I held the door for Whitney and Brian. She went first, changing out her sunglasses for a pair of glasses with clear lenses. I followed her and Brian into the foyer. Beyond it, the living room had a sofa, love seat, and coffee table all piled with clutter—books, magazines, catalogs, DVDs, and mail. An archway led to the kitchen, where the table and the sill of the window at one end of it were covered with scattered mail, some of it opened and some not, yellow pads covered with scribbled notes, and rows of bottles—some prescription drugs, but mostly nutritional supplements, from the looks of them. Jared Walsh was there, wearing a mock turtleneck and a houndstooth sports jacket. The other man was wearing a gray suit and a striped tie, and his scalp gleamed through the thin, dark hair plastered to his skull.

  “You’re Robin Starling,” the man wheezed. “Rupert Propst.” He extended a hand, grimacing at me with widely spaced teeth that struck me as, dare I say it, sharklike.

  Jared kept his own hands in his pockets. “You didn’t need to come.”

  Whitney shrugged, averting her gaze.

  “Curiosity,” I said. “Rumors of disappearing financial assets, a big safe no one can get into. Inquiring minds want to know.”

  Jared’s mouth twisted.

  “The locksmith should be here shortly,” Rupert said.

  I nodded, my gaze roaming over the bottles on the kitchen table. “What’s Broccoli-Max?” I asked.

  “What?” Jared’s scowl deepened, but I picked one of the bottles off the kitchen table and held it up. “Broccoli-Max,” I said.

  Jared rolled his eyes. “God knows. Uncle Robert had an obsession with alternative medicine, and that therapist of his kept recommending supplements to add to whatever he was already taking. Made his obsession worse.”

  I put the bottle down, picked up another one labeled ORAC-Plus. The subtitle was Oxygen Radical Absorption Capacity, below it a bunch of numbers. I put it down.

  “He bragged about being a health nut,” said a new voice from the living room. Nathan, too, was there for the big opening. “Though we usually just called him a nut for short.”

  “We did not. He’s only joking,” Whitney murmured, looking a little pink.

  “Oh, never to his face,” Nathan said agreeably, his hands in the pocket of a gray overcoat he wore over jeans and a pocket T-shirt. “A rich man who can occasionally be talked into turning loose of a little money is entitled to respect, hey, Jared?”

  Jared’s mouth tightened, but before he could respond, Rupert said, “Why don’t we go have a look at the safe? It’s right back here through the bedroom. We might as well have a look at it, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, by all means,” Nathan said. “Let’s all have a look at the safe. That’s sure to be productive.”

  Rupert was through the doorway, looking back over his shoulder and waving his arm in a come-along gesture. As interested in watching his efforts to maintain peace between the two brothers as I was in examining the recalcitrant safe, I followed Rupert through the door into a room that was dominated by a king-sized four-poster bed. The box spring and mattresses came up nearly to my waist, and, as I may have mentioned, I’m a tall girl.

  “Right through here.” Rupert reached through a doorway to flip a light switch and disappeared through it.

  The next room was a small bathroom with two sinks on opposite w
alls, the counters covered with bottles of over-the-counter medicines and (mostly) supplements. The faucets and the sinks themselves were covered with a thick film of grime. Beyond making the bed, it seemed that not a lot of housekeeping got done in Robert’s house. Of course, if I’d just had both knees replaced, I might be letting a few things go myself.

  “What good is this going to do?” Jared asked, coming hard on my heels as if not wanting to allow a couple of lawyers to be alone with his uncle’s safe.

  Rupert already had the light on in the walk-in closet beyond the bathroom. Against the back wall was a chair, where, perhaps, Robert sat to pull on his socks and tie his shoes. Against a side wall, under a row of hanging slacks, was the safe, a massive cube about three feet on a side, a round disk with a number pad in the middle of the door.

  “It’s a five-digit combination,” Rupert said, turning with a hand on the safe like a man about to demonstrate a new washing machine. “I called the manufacturer. Robert would have set it.”

  “Is there a default combination?” I asked. “Maybe he never got around to setting it.”

  Rupert was nodding. “There is. One-two-three-four-five, but that didn’t work. Evidently, Robert chose his own.”

  Whitney was crowded in the doorway with Jared, beyond them a bit of Nathan’s arm and a shadow that must have belonged to Brian.

  “I guess you’ve tried everyone’s birthday?” I asked. “Yours, Robert’s siblings’, his parents’?”

  “Of course,” Jared said.

  Of course. “Anniversaries, any other number sequences that might have been significant to Robert?” No one said anything. “Does he have a desk? I assume somebody’s been through it looking for a five digit number scribbled on an index card or a sticky note.”

  “Oh, I’m sure Jared’s been through the desk,” Nathan said.

  “He used the front bedroom on the other side of the house as his office,” Rupert said. “Of course we’ve been through it.”

  “What’s the zip code here?” I asked him. “Have you tried that?”

  “Oh, for pete’s sake,” Jared said.

  I decided not to suggest the first five digits of Robert’s social security number.