by Jessica Beck
“It was just this past weekend, as a matter of fact,” Momma said gravely as she kept her vision focused on the tricky winding road upward.
“What? Why didn’t you tell me you were going? Momma, I would have been happy to go with you.”
“I know that you would have,” my mother said as she reached over and patted my arm. “But to be honest with you, Jean wanted to talk to me about something that she didn’t want anyone else to overhear.”
“Not even me?” I asked, feeling a little hurt that I’d been excluded from the confidential conversation.
“Especially not you, because mostly it was directly about you. Jean had a question she wanted me to ask you after I answered a few of her queries about your past, but I never got the chance to do it while she was still alive. I thought that she was just being silly, so I delayed telling you anything about it. In hindsight, I’m not at all sure that I did the right thing.”
Her confession certainly got my attention. “What kind of questions did she ask about my past?” It was a curious thing to hear, since I’d never kept anything from my aunt intentionally.
“As a matter of fact, she wanted to know about your past investigations into murder,” Momma said.
“Why would she want to know about that? Did someone she knows get killed?” I asked.
“I suppose you could say that. Suzanne, my sister wanted your help for herself.”
“With what?” I asked, still not understanding where this conversation I was having with Momma was going.
“The truth is, she wanted you to figure out who was trying to kill her,” Momma said, “only I never gave you the chance.”
Chapter 5
“What?” I asked loudly, startling my mother so much that her tight grip on the steering wheel nearly jerked us off the road.
“Suzanne, don’t ever yell at me like that while I’m driving,” Momma chastised me as she quickly regained control.
“Come on, even you have to admit that that’s a pretty startling thing for you to say. What made her think that someone wanted her dead?”
“I asked her the same exact thing, and Jean explained to me that she had her reasons. I wasn’t so sure when she told me about them, but now there’s a possibility that I was wrong. If that turns out to be the case,” she added softly, “I’m not at all certain that I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for not coming to you.”
“Momma, you can’t beat yourself up about it. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned investigating murder over the years, it’s that you can’t hold yourself responsible for what a killer does. Now I need you to think carefully about what I’m about to ask you. What exactly did Aunt Jean tell you?” I asked.
Momma shrugged briefly, and then she started to explain, “Apparently, there have been a series of events lately that have left her unsettled. I tried telling her that her overactive imagination was just getting the better of her, but I’m afraid now that I should have taken her more seriously than I did.” Momma teared up a little as she added, “Suzanne, I know that you believe what you just said, that what happened to my sister wasn’t my fault, but I’m not at all sure I can live with that. What if I’d told you sooner? You might have been able to prevent what happened to her. Is it my fault that she’s dead?”
“Of course it’s not,” I said as I patted her arm gently, careful not to startle her again. “How could you possibly know that there may have been a rationale for the way she felt? Momma, even if you’d told me everything that she’d shared with you the moment you heard it all, I’m not at all sure what I could have done about it with so little time to investigate.” I took a deep breath, and then I let it out slowly before I spoke again. “Honestly, we’re not even sure that this wasn’t an accident. Her fall down the stairs might have been just a perfectly innocent accident.”
“Or not,” Momma answered gravely.
“Then let’s find out, shall we? Now, tell me everything that she told you.”
Momma dried her tears, and as she drove on into the mountains, she said, “Jean told me that it started innocently enough. That old car of hers lost its brakes coming down her driveway. She jammed it into reverse and steered it into a small tree, which was enough to stop her. When she called her mechanic, he told her that the brake line had loosened itself and had come off. It was unsettling, but she didn’t think it was all that malevolent.”
“Could it have just been an accident?”
“She didn’t think anything otherwise at the time,” Momma said. “Then, two days later, someone shot out one of her windows in the kitchen while she was cooking breakfast. Her neighbor likes to have target practice sometimes, so Jean stormed over there to complain, but he wasn’t home. When she called him, he was at the coast fishing.”
“That sounds bad,” I said.
“Well, unfortunately, it’s not all that uncommon around there either, whether it’s hunting season or not. Some of her neighbors live in the mountains so they can shoot off their guns whenever they feel like it, ride dirt bikes and four-wheelers, play loud music, and generally disrupt the peace and quiet.”
“Why did she live there, then?” I asked. It sounded pretty dreadful to me.
“You know as well as I do how much she loved that old house,” Momma explained. “It would take more than noisy neighbors to get her out of there.”
I thought the description was mild given the behavior, but I wasn’t about to comment on that. “What else happened to her after that?” I asked. “There must be more to it than that.”
“The third thing was the one that convinced her that someone might actually have her in their sights. She was shopping in town one evening when an old pickup truck jumped the curb and nearly crushed her. If it hadn’t been for her best friend, Sylvia, pulling her out of the way at the last second, she said that she would have been a goner.”
“Surely someone saw who was driving the truck,” I said.
“No one actually saw the driver, but several of them did see the truck. Evidently its rightful owner had left the keys in it at the grocery store a few minutes before, and someone had taken a little joy ride.”
“I suppose all of those incidents could have just been unrelated,” I said, but I was basically just trying to make my mother feel better. It sounded a little too coincidental to me, but then again, maybe I was just being paranoid. Working on so many murder cases with Grace in the past had left me watching the world with jaded vision these days.
“Nonsense,” my mother said. “I might believe two events were simply accidents, but three? No, I’m afraid that Jean might have been right. Someone was out to hurt her, and they finally succeeded.”
A thought suddenly occurred to me. “Momma, is that the real reason why you asked me to come with you? Did Aunt Jean really want me to help with her estate?”
“That part of it is true enough,” my mother said gravely. “I’m just asking you to take on the first task she wanted of you, along with my sister’s other requests. Suzanne, we need to figure out if this was an accident or outright murder. It’s the only way that I’m going to ever be able to live with myself.”
I’d noticed the word “we” the moment that she’d said it, but I wasn’t about to comment on it just yet. “One way or another, you can’t beat yourself up about it,” I said, “no matter how it turns out.” I paused, and then I asked, “How are you going to feel if we find out that really was coldblooded murder?”
“I can live with whatever we uncover,” Momma said firmly. “It’s the not knowing that’s been killing me.” She smiled gently as she added, “I know that you’re used to working with Grace, but would I do as a substitute Watson to your Sherlock?”
“Grace is more than that,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re equals in our investigations.”
“I’m not discounting her contributions, but we both know that you are the driving force behind solving the murders you’ve looked into in the past. So, what do you say? Could we do this togethe
r? Please?”
I couldn’t say no to her request even if I’d wanted to. There was no way that I was going to disappoint such a direct and heartfelt plea from my mother. “I’d be honored to have you working with me. There’s just one thing that we need to get straight first, though. Momma, I know that you’re much wiser and more experienced than I am in more ways than I can count, but I’m the one with a history of solving murder. You’re going to have to follow my lead, and not challenge me at every turn. Can you honestly do that?”
She nodded solemnly. “I can, and I will. I need this, Suzanne.”
“I do, too,” I said with fresh resolve. “If someone did kill Aunt Jean, I’m going to find them, and make sure that they are punished for what they did.”
“We’re going to find them,” Momma gently corrected me.
“We,” I agreed.
We were almost in Maple Hollow, and Momma surprised me by heading toward town instead of Aunt Jean’s place on the outskirts of it. “Where are we going?”
“We have to get the keys and the paperwork from her attorney before we go to the house,” Momma said. “He’s the one who called me to tell me what happened, and he gave me instructions on what we have to do first.”
“Do you think that we can we trust him?” I asked her as she pulled into a parking space in front of a small law office across from the courthouse.
“Suzanne, I’m not sure that it would be wise to trust anyone but each other while we’re here,” Momma said.
“You’re right, of course,” I replied. “Okay, let’s go see where things stand.”
“Mr. Jefferson? You were expecting us, am I correct?” Momma asked as we walked into the lawyer’s outer office and found a slim and handsome man about my age wearing jeans and a faded old sweatshirt with the name DUKE emblazoned across the front of it.
“I am. You must be Mrs. Hart,” he said as he extended a hand to my mother. “As I told you on the phone, I’m sorry for your loss. I can’t believe that she’s really gone. We spoke just this morning around seven, and three hours later, her housekeeper found her at the bottom of the stairs. You both have my deepest and most sincere sympathies,” he added as he nodded in my direction, though we hadn’t been introduced, he must have assumed that I was Jean’s niece.
“Thank you,” she said as she took in his apparel once more. “If this is a bad time for you, my daughter and I could come back later.”
He seemed to realize the inappropriateness of his attire for the first time. “Are you talking about my clothes? Sorry, but I own a few rental properties on the side, and I had to stop a leaking pipe this morning, at least that’s what Colleen Edwards told me when she called me so frantically an hour ago. I went home, changed, and then made my way to her apartment. The ‘leak’ was a worn-out washer in the sink faucet that took me all of two minutes to replace.”
“So, you’re a lawyer and a handyman,” I said.
He offered me a high-wattage smile as he extended his hand. “Guilty as charged. You must be Suzanne. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” The attorney hesitated, and then he said, “Please, I hope you’ll both call me Adam.”
“Did you really go to Duke?” I asked him.
He glanced down at his sweatshirt, and then he smiled. “I did, but I think I learned more being a super for the college apartments I managed than I did in law school.”
“I very much doubt that,” Momma said. “You were third in your undergraduate class, and second in law school.”
One eyebrow shot quickly up before he answered. “Somebody’s been spending time on Google.”
“What can I say? I like to know who I’m dealing with,” Momma said.
“As do I,” he answered with a smile. “You make for a fascinating study yourself. You’ve hidden your tracks rather well, but I found several interesting businesses you own portions of, and your land holdings are rather extensive as well.”
I expected Momma to blow up, but instead, she just smiled. “It appears that I’m not the only one who knows how to manipulate a search engine online.”
“Why do I feel so unprepared for this meeting?” I asked them both. “I didn’t bother checking anyone out. Silly me.”
“I didn’t need to search your name to know about you, Suzanne,” Adam said. “I learned everything I needed to know from your aunt. She was a big fan of yours, you know.”
It warmed my heart knowing that Aunt Jean had talked about me. “I can assure you that the feeling was mutual, but I’m not sure you should believe everything she told you about me.”
“Trust me, everything she said was stellar. You didn’t happen to bring any donuts with you, did you? Ever since Jean described them to me, I’ve been aching for a taste myself.”
“I have some in the car that were freshly made this morning, if you’d like them,” I said. Momma had protested when I’d suggested that we bring them, but now I was glad that I’d insisted.
“That would be great,” he said. I started to fetch them when he added, “Maybe I can get them after our meeting.”
“That’s fine by me,” I said.
“I understand you have Jean’s keys,” Momma said, shifting gears back to the business at hand. “If you’ll get them for us, we’ll both get be on our way and let you go home and change.”
“I’m afraid that it’s not going to be as simple as that,” Adam said as his smile slowly hid behind a cloud beginning to cover his face.
“What do you mean? Are my daughter and I not my sister’s executors?” Momma asked pointedly.
“As I told you earlier, you are, but she left me very specific instructions I was to follow in case of her demise, and I mean to follow them to the letter.”
“Because it’s your job?” I asked him.
He frowned as he shook his head. “Because I gave your aunt my word, and I never break it once it’s given. To me, a promise is the most sacred contract there is in the world.”
“Then you’ve chosen a most interesting profession for yourself,” Momma observed.
“Unfortunately, not everyone in the world feels the way I do, but there are consequences when someone breaks their word to me.”
“I must say, I think you and I are going to get along just fine,” Momma said as a slow grin started to appear.
“Perhaps you should reserve your judgment until you hear your sister’s conditions,” Adam said. He might have been dressed as a handyman, but there was an air of professionalism to his words that belied his outer appearance.
Momma sighed. “I’m not about to be caught off-guard by them. Don’t forget, I knew Jean much longer than you did. What did my dear sister demand?”
He nodded as he got down to business. “Before either one of you do anything else, I have letters for each of you to read,” Adam explained. “They are both in my safe at the moment, so let me go get them. I’ll be right back.”
After the attorney disappeared into what had to have been his inner sanctum, I looked at Momma and raised my eyebrows. She shook her head in reply, so I decided to bide my time. It was clear that she wasn’t ready to discuss anything about the latest twist with me, and that was something that I could respect. I was dying of curiosity about what might be in those letters, but I knew that I’d find out soon enough.
Adam returned a moment later with two envelopes, both clearly written on Aunt Jean’s stationery. I had several letters at home written on the same paper in a drawer in my bedroom back in April Springs. My aunt’s missives were not to be read and then discarded, but to be treasured for their wit, humor, and willingness to offend just about anybody in her sights. She’d missed her calling; the woman should have written comedy professionally, in my opinion.
As Momma put a hand out for her letter, Adam looked embarrassed as he explained, “I’m sorry, but I’ve been instructed to read these aloud, with just the two of you present. Since this is my secretary’s day off, that won’t be too difficult. Shall we go into my office?”
“Lead the
way,” Momma said.
She and I followed, and it was clear that Adam was doing all right for himself by the furnishings we found inside. Every last bit of the furniture in there was made from quarter-sawn oak, an expensive office full of items that had been masterfully built and finished.
“What a beautiful desk,” I said as I stroked the top of the slick and polished surface.
“Thanks. Everything in here was part of a graduation present from my folks.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t mind you starting your practice in such a small town,” I said.
“Suzanne, that’s hardly an appropriate thing to say to someone that you just met,” Momma said.
“I don’t mind responding,” Adam said with a rather disconcerting smile. He turned to me and explained, “This town is where my grandfather practiced law when he first started out, and I promised him I’d spend my first few years here in private practice as well before I made my way out into the world.”
“That was an honorable thing for you to do,” Momma said as she checked her watch. “Now, if you don’t mind, we’d like to get started. My daughter and I have a great many things we need to accomplish in a very limited amount of time.”
“No nonsense, exactly what I expected from you,” he said with the hint of a smile.
“Just how close were you to my sister?” Momma asked. Now who was being more curious than she should have been?
“I’m not afraid to say that she was one of my best friends in Maple Hollow,” Adam said proudly. “I was a big fan of the woman, and she seemed to enjoy my company as well.”
Seeing that Momma was satisfied with his response, Adam opened the first envelope and removed its letter. Before beginning to read it, though, the attorney looked at both of us and said, “Before I begin, you should both know that I protested what is about to transpire, to no avail. Jean had made up her mind, and she wasn’t about to let anyone change it. Is that understood?”
“So, you’re privy to the information written in there?” Momma asked as she pointed to the letter in his hand.
