by Raven Snow
“Consider it payment for spying for you.” It didn’t sound like Flint was going to be talked down from this. “I’m in town for a week without much to do aside from your dirty work.”
“Fine.” Rowen relented. “He’s not going to be happy about it, though.”
Chapter Seven
As it turned out, Rowen was the one who was unhappy that Flint was around for Eric’s testing.
“Ace of spades,” said Eric, sitting with their lab, Chester, on the ottoman across from Rowen.
Rowen frowned down at the card facing her. “Close,” she said. “Do you want to try one more time?” She looked back to Eric just in time to catch his eyes flicking upward. “Oh, you better not be- Flint!” Rowen turned and glared.
Behind the sofa, Flint quickly shoved his hands behind his back. He’d been caught, though. He didn’t actually try to deny anything. Instead, he frowned at Eric. “Seriously, man? Ace of spades?”
Eric shrugged. “It looked like a spade.”
“This?” Flint made a rather obvious heart with the thumb and pointer finger of both hands. “This looks like a spade?”
Again, Eric shrugged. “Maybe an upside-down spade.”
“I don’t care what it looks like,” Rowen snapped, still glaring at Flint. “Why don’t you just go home? You’re not helping.”
“Why don’t you give up?” Flint countered. “He’s got about as much innate magical ability as Chester over there.”
Chester perked up at having his name called. Eric scratched the old dog between his ears. “He has a point, Babe. If I was anything like either of your families, I think I would have noticed it by now.”
Rowen was afraid he was right. She didn’t want to say as much. She had a theory she was trying to work with. “What if it’s just because you don’t believe in yourself. Flint and I both grew up in magical households. We were taught what we could do from an early age. You didn’t have that kind of upbringing. Maybe the only thing that’s holding you back is your own doubt.”
“And what if it is?” Eric asked, still looking a touch bored with the proceedings. “I’ve been just fine without magic until now. I’ve got you and your family for all my magical needs. What do I need abilities for?”
Rowen stared. “That’s just…” She floundered for something to say in response. “That’s just… That’s silly. Why wouldn’t someone want magical powers?”
“I know I find mine invaluable.” Flint actually sided with Rowen this time around. “They’re especially handy when it comes to my work as a lawyer.”
Rowen had a feeling he was referring to something that was, if not illegal, highly immoral. “You won’t really realize how useful they are until you have them.” She readied the cards again. “Come on, let’s keep trying. Flint, you go sit on that side of the room. I don’t trust you standing behind me anymore.”
Eric gave a groan. “Can we break for lunch yet? I’ve just about had my fill of guessing cards and reading minds and contacting spirits.”
Rowen glanced at the clock. It was three in the afternoon, well past lunch. “All right,” she relented. “Let’s go have a quick lunch. But after that, more cards!”
***
In the kitchen, there were still leftovers from the Stonewalls. Rowen’s aunts had insisted she take some home. She was thankful for that now. She hadn’t felt much like cooking or going out to pick up something to eat these last couple of days. The food they had given them was a heck of a lot better than takeout. She heated up some chicken and mashed potatoes for everyone.
Flint made himself at home, pouring a glass of lemonade from the pitcher in the fridge. “How did the reading of the Will go?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Rowen admitted. “I didn’t go. I don’t know what I got, if anything. I don’t really care. I trust my family to give me whatever they feel should be mine.” Rowen took the mashed potatoes from the microwave and brought those to the table along with the chicken. Eric followed along with three plates.
“That’s a good attitude to have, I guess.” Flint got out a couple more glasses.
That piqued Rowen’s curiosity. She went to fill her glass with a soft drink, but her eyes remained on Flint, curious. “Why? Were you at the reading?”
“Me?” Flint repeated, like the idea was ridiculous. “Of course not. I had no reason to be there.” He pointedly ignored the warning look Eric was giving him. No doubt Eric sensed that Flint was toying with Rowen. She sensed it too. He could be a real pain like that.
“But you heard something I didn’t.” Rowen took her glass back to the table. She sat down.
“Maybe.” Flint joined her. “I mean, I am the only lawyer in the family. They thought it would be a good idea if I was there.”
“Why?” asked Eric, beating Rowen to the question. He sat down across from Flint and reached for the chicken. “Why would your family get anything in the Will?”
Flint shrugged. “I can’t speak for the deceased.” His tone had become a bit more serious. “But she did leave my parents a tidy sum of money.”
That was news to Rowen. Suddenly, she had lost her appetite. “What?” she demanded, sitting up straight in her chair. “Why? How much?”
“Like I said, I can’t speak for the deceased… Well, unless they contact me, but your grandmother certainly hasn’t. All I can say is that she felt she owed them something.” The humor had entirely left Flint’s tone. That was a good call on his part. No one else at the table was amused.
Rowen stood. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” she demanded.
“I was debating over it until just now.” Flint scooped some mashed potatoes onto his plate, not deterred by the subject at hand. “It didn’t really feel like my place to tell you, but I know how you wanted me to report these sorts of things back to you. I was kind of hoping that your aunts had told you and you’d decided on your own that the Stonewalls didn’t have anything to do with what happened to your grandmother.”
Eric frowned at his wife. “You have Flint spying for you? You said you would give it a couple of days before you-”
“Not now.” Rowen stood. Pulling out her cell phone, she left the room. Aunt Nadine was the first person she called. Nadine was an honest woman. It just wasn’t in her nature to lie. If she wanted answers, Nadine was her best bet.
“Rowen,” Nadine answered, sounding happy to get a call from her niece. She wouldn’t be that happy for long.
There was no use in beating around the bush. “Aunt Nadine, did Grammy leave the Stonewalls money in her Will?”
Aunt Nadine didn’t say anything at first. It was as if she had been totally blindsided by the question. “I don’t-” she began. “She left them some, yes.”
“How much?”
“A… ah.” Nadine sounded uncomfortable saying the exact number. “A fair amount.”
That was saying a lot. “Were the Stonewalls there to collect it? Did they know they stood to inherit that much?”
“Jeana and Tobias were there, yes. That son of theirs, Flint, he was there too. He’s a lawyer, you know.”
“I know.” Rowen wasn’t sure how to feel about this news. On the one hand, it was a new clue to go on. On the other hand, she hated the idea of the Stonewalls getting even a piece of Greensmith property. “Is Aunt Lydia doing anything about this?”
“Well, she’s angry,” said Nadine, as if that should be obvious. “But what can she do? This is something you just have to let go. It was Grammy’s wishes. She didn’t write why, and it’s not really our place to question.”
“It’s totally our place to question.”
“Rowen.” Nadine’s voice had grown uncharacteristically stern. “This is a hard time for everyone. Please don’t make things more difficult.”
Rowen winced, feeling the reprimand deep down in her chest. “Yes, ma’am.” She tried to put her suspicions from her mind for a moment. “Is everyone all right?”
“As much as they can be,” Aunt Nadine said with a sigh.
“We’ll all get through this. That much I can tell you for sure. Hang in there, Sweetheart.”
“I will.” Rowen exchanged a few more words with her aunt before hanging up and going back to the dining room.
Flint hadn’t waited around for her. He was already eating. Eric had food on his plate but his eyes on the door. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Flint was right.” Rowen went to the table and sat back down at the head of it. She stared Flint down until he stopped eating and put his fork aside. “Can you tell me with a straight face that you really don’t think your parents had anything to do with this?”
“Rowen…” Eric began. He clearly didn’t want her to pick a fight. He already thought she was reaching.
“I think you’re unfair to my family,” Flint said immediately. “I don’t think they’re the villains you’re always making them out to be.”
“But what does your gut tell you?” Rowen urged. “What are your instincts in this? Because I know you feel things like I feel things. I know you have some kind of opinion on all of this that’s completely divorced of emotion.”
Flint frowned at Rowen for what felt like a very long time. His fork was halfway to his mouth. His eyes were narrowed. Finally, he just put the fork down all together and leaned back in his chair. “Fine,” he said with a sigh. “Fine, I admit it. I sort of suspect them.”
It was like the vice around Rowen’s heart had released all at once. She could suddenly breathe a lot easier. For his part, Eric just looked confused. His head turned from Flint to Rowen then back again, like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of any of this. “Thank you,” said Rowen. She’d been starting to feel like she was going insane.
“I can’t say they did anything for sure. They probably didn’t,” Flint added quickly. “And I don’t think they outright murdered her.”
“What do you mean?” asked Rowen.
“Maybe it was almost her time anyway,” Flint suggested. “Maybe they just sped things along.”
“All murder is just speeding things along.”
“You know what I mean!” Flint was suddenly on the defensive. He wasn’t so eager to joke around when it was his own family’s reputation on the line. “Maybe she would have been dead within weeks anyway.”
“Why would they need the money?” asked Rowen. “What difference would a couple of weeks make? Your family seems to be ridiculously well off. They have way more than the Greensmiths anyway.”
Flint opened his mouth as if to say something. Finally, he just shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I did ask my parents why they thought they stood to inherit anything. They just told me it was private family business I didn’t need specifics on.”
“Has your family been losing money on anything?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I’ll need to talk to the guy who drew up the Will,” Rowen decided aloud.
Flint winced. “You might run into some trouble on that front. “The guy who read the Will was a younger guy. I’m thinking the person who drew it up did so a long time ago.”
“Unless the money left in the Will was a recent addition to it.” Rowen wasn’t backing down here. She was on to something. She had to be.
“Are you sure we can’t just go back to testing me for magical abilities?” asked Eric.
“That’ll have to wait,” Rowen told her husband. “This is more important.”
Flint winced. “For the record, I agree with Eric. I’d rather do just about anything other than prove someone in my family is a murderer.”
Chapter Eight
Rowen got a meeting with the attorney who had drawn up Grammy’s Will easily enough. His office was in an old strip mall downtown. Rowen had driven them there with Eric in the passenger seat. Flint sat in the back, looking for all the world like he very much did not want to be there. He was slouched back, arms folded over his chest, an almost petulant expression on his face as he glared out the window. This wasn’t where he wanted to be. He didn’t want to prove that he came from a family of murderers. He wanted to go home and either do some research of his own or warn them that Rowen was suspicious. Rowen wasn’t sure which. She supposed she couldn’t really avoid the latter in the long run, but she at least wanted him along for this. He was a lawyer, after all. He was better equipped to talk to this guy than she or Eric was.
Rowen walked in and was immediately directed to sit in the waiting room by a drowsy-looking receptionist. “What are you even hoping to learn from this?” Flint asked.
“I’m not sure,” Rowen admitted. “I just feel like this is where I need to be if I want to find out the truth. Don’t you?”
Flint opened his mouth to say something but closed it almost immediately. As she had expected, he felt it too. He had to. This was where they were going to find their next clue. Whatever it was she needed to find out, she was on the right track.
After a good twenty minutes, the phone on the receptionist’s desk rang. She gave a start, answered it, then looked over to the only three people in her waiting room. “You can go back now.”
Rowen led the way into the lawyer’s office. He stood from behind his desk as they entered. He didn’t look like much. He was on the younger side. His suit was a bit too large for him and there was what appeared to be a coffee stain on his lapel. “Sorry, I was on a phone conference.” He motioned for them to take a seat in front of his desk. “Mrs. Greensmith and Mr. Greensmith, right?” His gaze moved to Flint. “And I remember you from the Will reading.”
Flint smiled a dazzling smile in the lawyer’s direction. “Yep. That’s me.”
“Well, I’m Larry Houston. You can call me Larry.” The lawyer sat as soon as they had. “To what do I owe the pleasure? Did you have questions about the Will?”
Rowen sensed that he was nervous he had done something wrong. She didn’t catch any bad or sketchy vibes off of the guy. It just felt like he was relatively new at his job. “I do actually.” She watched as Larry went a little stiff. “I was wondering about the money that was set aside for the Stonewalls. I was wondering if my Grammy ever discussed that with you. Did she give a reason as to why that money went to them?”
Larry’s eyes widened. He looked at the three people in front of him like he was waiting for them to rephrase that question. “I don’t really ask why my clients put anything in their Will. That would be unprofessional of me.”
“But they tell you anyway sometimes, right?” Flint framed it like a rhetorical question. “I know I’ve had my share of sad, lonely folks spill their whole life story for me. It happens.”
“Not to me.” Larry actually looked a little hurt as he said that, like maybe he was doing this whole attorney thing wrong if people didn’t want to spill their hearts out to him. “Honestly, I didn’t even do most of the Will. I just made some small changes here and there. The big stuff was all done already.”
“What were the changes you did?” asked Rowen, unwilling to accept that this was a dead end— not after she had dragged Eric and Flint all the way out there despite their insistence that it was a waste of time.
“Mostly, I divided the inheritance up between the generations. Everyone has an equal share now instead of everything that isn’t going to the Stonewalls only going to her daughters.” Larry opened up a drawer. After thumbing through some files, he pulled out Grammy’s Will and laid it on the desk between them. “Everyone inherits a whole lot less now, but it’s something.”
Rowen looked down at the document. It wasn’t much all split up like it was. Not that Rowen cared… Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The Stonewalls got a big lump sum. She didn’t like the look of that at all. “And she didn’t mention the money going to the Stonewalls even a little?”
Larry looked at the Will himself. He stared at it for a few seconds like he was genuinely trying to remember. “Maybe,” he said, finally. “I think I asked her if she wanted to divvy up the Stonewall’s funds too.”
“And?” prompted Rowen.
&nbs
p; Larry shrugged. “She told me not to. She kind of looked annoyed and said they could sort that out amongst themselves… I think.”
“You think?”
“This was years ago. You’re lucky I remember anything at all.”
That was fair. “Thanks for the help.” Rowen had hoped for more, but she couldn’t really complain. She was lucky he remembered anything at all. She stood.
“Is that all you need?” asked Larry, sounding surprised.
Rowen hesitated. Her instincts told her that there was still something to learn here. “How did the Stonewalls know that they were going to inherit anything? Did you contact them ahead of time?”
Larry nodded. “That’s part of the job. I let people know when they stand to inherit something, just in case they want to be at the reading.”
