FORGET ME NOT (Mark Kane Mysteries Book One)

by John Hemmings

  “You should take better care of that Chevy, it needs a paint job.”

  “I don’t want to pry into your private life unnecessarily, but I’m sure you’re intelligent enough to realize that the probate attorney is anxious to confirm your identity. It’s not because he personally has any misgivings in that regard – he’s just doing his job. If he doesn’t do his job diligently he could be open to a lawsuit.”

  “Of course I understand that. I’d offer you a DNA swab if it was worth anything, but as far as I know there’s nobody on Gloria’s side of the family to compare it with. It’s not my fault.”

  “Well that’s a good idea that I hadn’t thought about. Probably if you are willing to provide a saliva sample it would put Bill’s mind at rest, although between you and me it’ll be about as useful as ducks at a dog show. Gloria was cremated as you probably know which is why nobody’s thought of that angle.”

  “Her ashes are at the bottom of Greg’s garden,” she said. “Did you know that? He even offered me some of the ashes as a keepsake before he scattered them. Gross.” She shivered exaggeratedly.

  “Did you go to the funeral?”

  ‘No. Greg invited me but it didn’t seem appropriate. I don’t know any of the family. I’d have felt as if I was intruding. Anyway, funerals are pointless. It’s the way you treat people when they’re alive that matters.”

  “But Greg says you continued to visit Gloria after she became ill; even when she could no longer recognize you.”

  “She was my mother. I’d lost her for all those years. It was the least I could do not to abandon her when everybody else did.”

  “Why do you say that everyone abandoned her?”

  “Well, I’m not saying that her family didn’t visit her at all, but let’s just say they didn’t linger. It was like a duty they performed, probably just to keep their father happy. The nurses were kind to her and looked after her as well as they could, but it’s not the same thing.”

  “When you visited her, were you alone with her?”

  “Except for the nurse; the one that came in the evening. I never saw the other one. She always looked relieved whenever I turned up because she’d be able to go outside for a ‘smoke break’ as she called it.”

  “Can you tell me how you managed to find Gloria so many years after you were adopted? What prompted you to make contact when you did?”

  “I’d always known about Gloria. Well, since I was sixteen anyway, when my parents told me about the adoption. They told me that they’d never had direct contact with her but they knew her name, that she was married. They told me her married name. I knew she lived in Boston. They said that one day I might want to get in touch with her. For years I couldn’t see the point, but when I found myself living nearby I guess curiosity finally got the better of me. As a result this is the longest I’ve lived in one place all my life.”

  “And how did you first make contact, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “I telephoned her one day. She was shocked to say the least. She wanted to meet, so we did. The first time was in a coffee shop in Boston, she was worried about me going to the house. Not because she was ashamed of me or anything, but she didn’t want to delay seeing me and she wanted to tell Greg before she introduced us. After that we wrote to each other by email and then Gloria invited me to the house. That’s it really.”

  “Well thank you for your time Susan. I don’t suppose it’ll be necessary for me to see you again, but I hope all goes well for you. Oh, I’d better take the saliva sample you offered, just to keep Bill happy.”

  I took some swabs from inside Susan’s cheek and popped them into a plastic bag that I’d brought with me, making sure the seal was airtight. Ten minutes later I was on the scenic route home. I had a post mortem about my performance. Lucy wasn’t going to be impressed. On the other hand, I had Susan’s DNA sample, so it wasn’t a completely wasted day. Was that a sign that Susan really was who she claimed to be? Or was she simply calling my bluff? Only time would tell.

  I drove to Cambridge to deliver Susan’s sample. Jill wasn’t in but I left it at the reception. They placed it a sealed envelope, wrote my name and address on it and marked it for the attention of Jill Bloom. I asked if it should be refrigerated but was told it wasn’t necessary. I headed home.

  When I got home I called Greg to tell him my news.

  “I managed to get a DNA sample from Susan today, a swab from inside her cheek, and I’ve already delivered it to the lab. Hopefully we’d have the results of both sample tests by the end of next week.

  “Oh, that’s very good news, well done.”

  “Susan volunteered the swabs actually so I can’t really take the credit.”

  “Oh, really? Well, perhaps we’ve misjudged her then. I’m glad you called. I can arrange for you to see Mrs. James and Mrs. Munro tomorrow if it’s convenient. Saunders has contacted them and they will be happy to come to my house in the morning if that’s all right with you. I don’t recognize their names but I’ll probably recognize them when I see them.”

  Pauline James and Sandra Munro were the signatories on Gloria’s will.

  “Okay, let’s say ten o’clock then, shall we? Or later if you prefer.”

  “I’ll arrange it for ten. If there’s any change I’ll let you know; if not I’ll see you then.”

  Lucy dropped in at seven. She couldn’t help noticing the box of orchids which I’d placed in the center of the dining table.

  “Greg sent those for you,” I said. “He grows them in his greenhouse.”

  “They’re beautiful,” she said, leaning over to smell their fragrance. “Why don’t we share them?” Then, as if the orchids had prompted the thought, she said: “we’re doing yard work tomorrow.” Apparently she hadn’t deemed it necessary to consult me about the matter first.

  “Well it won’t be until the afternoon. I’m off to Greg’s tomorrow morning to interview a couple of ladies from the Boylston Club.”

  “Ooh, can I come?”

  “I said from the club, not at the club. They’re the two that attested to Gloria’s signature on the will. I’m going to find out whether she was dealing with a full deck at the time.”

  “You haven’t mentioned your interrogation of Susan, so I assume you’ve got nothing to crow about there.”

  “As a matter of fact I got a sample from her to test her DNA.”

  “What did you do, retrieve one of her cigarette butts from the trash?”

  “She doesn’t smoke.”

  “Steal one of her coffee cups before she had a chance to wash it?”

  “I got some swabs from the inside of her cheek.”

  “What, without her knowing about it?”

  “Lucy, she volunteered it, you dummy.”

  “Hmm, well that puts a different complexion on it. Perhaps she’s been falsely maligned.”

  “Nobody’s maligned her. She’s under suspicion, that’s all. And anyway I don’t think you should read too much into it. She’s a smart cookie and she’s probably confident that we don’t have anything to compare it with. She knows that Gloria was cremated and that she has no living blood relatives. None that we know about anyway. Any luck with the plane crash?”

  “I don’t think ‘luck’ and ‘plane crash’ can really be used in the same sentence,” Lucy said.

  “Well, have you?”

  “Not yet, no. They say that if you die in a plane crash your whole life flashes in front of you. Before you die, obviously.”

  “The people who say it aren’t dead Lucy; how would they know?”

  We went to sit out on the porch for a while.

  “So did you find out anything useful about Susan’s background today?”

  “She’s gay.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She told me. It’s about the only thing she did tell me, and I don’t think that information is going to help. She told me that the reason she contacted Gloria when she did is because she happened to be working near
by where Gloria lived. I’ve asked at the restaurant where she worked and it checks out.”

  “Okay, then yard work after lunch tomorrow. Don’t forget.”

  She set off on her short journey home.

  Chapter Ten

  The Witnesses

  “They’ll be here shortly. They seem to know me, so I’ll probably recognize them when I see them.”

  I was back at Greg’s house for the meeting with the two ladies from the club.

  “Well it shouldn’t take long. I’m just curious about why Gloria wouldn’t have chosen people she knew better. It all rather tends to suggest that she was purposely trying to keep the matter confidential; even from you. And from what you’ve told me about your life together that would tend to suggest that she wasn’t in her right frame of mind.”

  “It seems to be the only explanation.”

  “Suppose I determine that Susan is who she says she is, would you want to challenge the will on the basis of her mental incompetence?”

  “I think that’s something I’d have to discuss with the boys.”

  “Perhaps with Susan too,” I said, “she might be prepared to relinquish some of her share, which is seemingly disproportionate, in the interests of a speedy settlement.”

  “From what you told me yesterday about her volunteering for a DNA test it appears likely that she is Susan.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend jumping the gun at this stage. When I saw her yesterday she was just as evasive as the first time I met her.”

  The front door bell rang. Pauline and Sandra arrived together in a dark green Mazda MX5. The roof was down. As usual at Greg’s the sun was sparkling overhead and only small fluffy clouds could be seen sweeping westwards on a light breeze. The ladies came in and introduced themselves to me. They were a good deal younger than Greg. A good deal younger than Gloria would have been.

  “I don’t think we’ve met before,” Pauline said to Greg, “but we often used to see you and Gloria together in the club, didn’t we Sandra?”

  “We used to call the pair of you the love birds.” Sandra giggled.

  “Gloria loved birds,” Pauline said. “If she saw a bird she would always know its name. We didn’t see her much on her own, but occasionally she’d join us for a drink when we were in a group. We were terribly sad when we heard she’d passed away.”

  “Yes, we’re so sorry Greg. It must be hard for you,” Sandra said.

  “Well, life moves on,” Greg said stoically.

  Greg thanked them both for coming and showed them through to the living room. They sat next to each other on the chesterfield and I sat in Greg’s usual armchair. Greg said he’d make us some coffee and give me time to talk to them.

  “It’s about Gloria’s will,” I said, “as I’m sure you know.”

  “Yes, Bill told us,” Pauline said. “He said there was some question about Gloria’s mental condition at the time she asked us to witness her signature at the club. We had no idea she was ill, it came as a shock to both of us didn’t it Sandra?”

  “There was a gradual decline in her health. She developed Alzheimer’s disease,” I said.

  Greg came in with the coffee and laid everything out on the small glass-topped table in front of us.

  “We had no idea at the time, but we heard about it afterwards. I hope we haven’t done anything wrong,” Sandra said.

  “No, not at all. But I thought it might be helpful to see if you can recall how Gloria was at the time. I don’t suppose it’s every day that you get asked to witness a signature.”

  The two ladies looked at each other. Then Sandra said:

  “I don’t remember anything unusual about her.” She thought for a while before adding, “Except she seemed a bit distracted; as if she had something on her mind.”

  “She wasn’t her usual jolly self that day, was she Sandra?” Pauline said.

  I couldn’t imagine Greg being married to a jolly person. Perhaps he was jolly himself before Gloria’s death, I thought.

  “But she seemed perfectly normal. Sandra and I talked about it together after Bill called us. She was behaving perfectly rationally as far as I can remember.”

  “Did you know that the document you were asked to sign was a will?”

  “No,” Pauline said. “She had the paper folded. She told us that it was a legal document and she just needed us to confirm that it was signed in our presence; that we were confirming that the signature was hers. I remember because I said to Sandra ‘I hope we’re not signing our lives away’, and we both laughed didn’t we Sandra?”

  “We didn’t ask her what it was,” said Sandra. “I assumed it was something private.”

  “Do you recall if Mr. Philips was in the club at that time?”

  “If he’d been there they would have been together,” Pauline said. “I never saw Greg at the club without her, but Gloria would occasionally come by herself.”

  We’d finished our coffee and there seemed to be nothing more I could usefully enquire about.

  “Well, I won’t keep you ladies here any longer. You’ve been very helpful.”

  We left together, Pauline, Sandra and me.

  “What a lovely antique,” Sandra said, as I climbed into the Chevy; “the cars they make these days don’t have the same character, do they?”

  I stopped on the way home for a snack, trying unsuccessfully to think how I could worm my way out of doing the yard work Lucy had threatened me with. She’d decided that we should tidy up my back yard, about a hundred feet of rough grass. She’d fixed us some iced lime sodas.

  “You’re supposed to be picking up the stones,” she said, “and putting them in the bucket”.

  “What I can’t understand is how the stones got there in the first place. I mean there are no nearby glaciers that could have dumped them, no rivers overflowing their banks and depositing debris. The whole thing’s a mystery to me.”

  “Life’s a mystery,” said Lucy.

  “Maybe the previous owner was pissed because they didn’t get enough for the place,” I said. “Maybe they hired someone to bring a truckload of stones and scatter them over the yard as an act of revenge.”

  Lucy looked over at me pityingly. “The exercise will do you good,” she said.

  We gradually worked our way down to the bottom of the yard. I don’t think I’d ever been to the bottom of the yard before and Lucy discovered a pet’s grave. There was a wooden plaque attached to a short stake bearing the legend: ‘Skipper 1994-2005’, and underneath, ‘Our beloved Pooch’. Lucy insisted that we should make a feature of it and found some round flat stones with which she formed a circle around the plaque. She straightened the stake too. I didn’t argue because it’s pointless to argue with Lucy about things like that.

  “Right now it’s really too close to call” I said.

  “I haven’t found any reports of the alleged plane crash. That’s suspicious in itself isn’t it?” Lucy said.

  “Suspicious, but hardly conclusive. Perhaps she remembered the date wrong. Or perhaps it simply wasn’t reported. Let’s just hope that Jill manages to scrape together some DNA, then I can wrap this up and move on.”

  “What happens if it’s decided that Gloria wasn’t mentally fit when she made the will?”

  “I guess that’ll only be looked into if somebody contests its validity. I don’t know what Greg’s sons think about the matter. I haven’t discussed that aspect with him and I haven’t had any contact with them myself. Fortunately it’s not part of my job.”

  We’d finished tidying the yard which, apart from the lack of stones, looked no different than it did before we started; except that Skipper’s grave was now a focal point that I was still coming to terms with.

  “Perhaps you can think of a way to get us invited back to the country club again. Greg’s a member isn’t he? Couldn’t you say you needed to see the witnesses again at the locus quo?

  “And what would be my excuse for inviting you along?”

  “I’d thin
k of something; the need for a woman’s intuition perhaps.”

  “The will’s jake as far as the formalities are concerned.”

  “Sam Spade never had the benefit of things like DNA, nor did Perry Mason,” Lucy said, by way of a complete non sequitur. Lucy was a master of the non sequitur; or a mistress.

  “Nor cell phones, internet, video games or the ubiquitous Facebook either,” I said. Happier times in my opinion.”

  “That’s because you’re an old fuddy duddy.”

  “Skipper, kill,” I said.

  Still smarting from Susan’s criticism of my apparent lack of care of the Chevy I had dropped it off at the shop for a service and detailing on the way home, so I was effectively stuck there now. The Chevy had been a gift from my brother way back when he’d given up on his boyhood dream to see the USA in a Chevrolet. It was already old then. I hadn’t seen Duncan in a long while and made a mental note to get in touch. He ran a school for survivalists in Vermont. Without the car I was at a loose end. Lucy had the answer to this, as always; I should have a hobby, and drinking didn’t count. Reading and listening to music weren’t real hobbies either, she had explained. Now we’d discovered Skipper’s final resting place she thought that a pet of some kind might do the trick. I let her ramble on.

  Her earlier remarks had got me thinking about the two sons, though. Greg had mentioned nothing at all about his sons’ reaction to Susan’s bequest, except how upset they were at the fact of her existence.

  When reading through the will I’d noticed that Gloria had worded the bequest carefully: ‘To my natural daughter, Susan Granger, born….’ Suppose that Susan wasn’t who she said she was, but suppose the real natural daughter was somewhere out there, still alive? I wondered how the lawyers would deal with that possibility. I guessed that it would be a matter of gazetting the matter for a period of time to give the beneficiary the chance to claim her bequest. The birth certificate was in the name of Susan Granger, so presumably Susan was the name that Gloria had chosen for her daughter. Although none of this was strictly relevant to my assignment I didn’t like loose ends. Perhaps whilst waiting for the DNA result I could ask if I could go through Gloria’s papers. Perhaps there was something on her computer. Susan had told me that her parents knew about Gloria, including her married name and where she lived which suggested, if it was true, that Gloria may have had details of the adoptive parents too. If she had, it was unlikely that she would have discarded them. The more I thought about it the more I was convinced that when Susan had first made contact with Gloria she would have checked the records against what Susan had told her. Although I knew little about Gloria herself it was obvious from the furnishing and decoration of the house that she was meticulous by nature. She surely must have a kept a copy of the adoption agency and the adoption records. It was something I ought to raise with Greg next time I saw him. If she had such records they may have been lodged with her attorney. Then again, if Gloria was familiar with computers she may have scanned copies of documents onto the computer’s hard drive.