“Can I just ask you, is everything I say to you in confidence; like a lawyer I mean? I don’t think I’ve ever met a private investigator before.”
“Generally speaking that’s the case. There are exceptions of course, but none which are likely to arise here.” Unless he admitted to poisoning his mother, I thought. “If there’s anything you say to me that you don’t want revealed to anyone else then you can tell me and I’ll respect your wishes. Greg is my client of course, but I doubt there’ll be any conflict of interest between you and your father over what I’m investigating.”
“I don’t have any secrets from Sally either. She’d be here herself if she didn’t need to pander to the assembled masses out there.” He gestured towards the study door.
“It’s clear that you have things which you want to get off your chest, so why don’t you start?”
He took a deep breath, spread his arms and laid his palms flat on the desk.
“My father tells me you’re an educated man,” he said, “a lover of literature. Do you know that passage from Hamlet? ‘Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not seems’.”
“Yes,” I said, “I’m familiar with that.”
“Well what you see here is the opposite. It’s all an illusion. Nothing is as it seems. Everything you see here is a mirage; neither the house, nor the cars nor the furniture really belongs to us. I mean it’s ours, but everything’s mortgaged up to the hilt. We’re living on borrowed money and borrowed time.”
“You need the probate expedited I take it?”
“We over-extended and got hit hard by the recession. We’ve not been able to recover. I have a good business and lots of potential clients. I have a good reputation too; but I can’t survive for much longer. If my clients even got a whiff of my true financial position they’d drop me like a hot brick. That’s why we have to maintain this elaborate deception, hoping against hope that things will improve. We’ve exhausted all the usual ways of raising funds and we’re hovering on the edge of the precipice of financial ruin.”
“Could Greg help?”
“I don’t want to take the risk. He doesn’t know about all this. He’s comfortable financially but not wealthy, and with Susan’s Damoclean sword hanging over his head as well as ours his financial future is precarious. Oh, he’s sanguine about it, and he’s not the sort to wear his heart on his sleeve, but if this wretched woman gets her hands on my mother’s estate he’ll probably have to remortgage his home.”
“Are you unhappy about Susan’s credentials or do you think that she’s manipulated her claim to a large part of the estate?”
Simon let out a long sigh and poured himself another drink.
“Look, I have nothing against Susan personally. To be honest I haven’t the faintest idea whether Susan is really who she claims to be, although I strongly suspect she’s guilty of some sort of dishonesty. Maybe she took advantage of Gloria when she was ill. The real problem is the complication in obtaining probate because of all this. You see if the will was straightforward then I could probably raise sufficient finance against my inheritance. It’s not strictly collateral but with the right terms I could raise money against a future bequest. But Saunders won’t budge until the Susan factor has been resolved. Obviously a DNA test would be wonderful, because it would clear the way to probate whichever way it went. But I understand you’re still waiting for the result.”
“Yes, and if it’s not possible to obtain a profile from the hair there’s always a chance that we can find an alternative method, by tracing living relatives of your mother. It’s one of the things I’m working on at the moment.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not greedy. I’d be content with my share of Gloria’s estate if Susan turns out to be a genuine claimant. Gloria was a good mother. You probably know she’s not my real mother. Well she was my real mother, just not related by blood that’s all. Her wishes should be respected, provided she hasn’t been duped in some way. It just needs to be resolved one way or the other.”
“You say you’re financial position was damaged by the recession, so I take it you’ve had this problem for some time?”
“Since well before Gloria died. That’s the crazy thing. They say that God moves in mysterious ways, well check this out as an example: at the time Gloria lost her grip on reality she was going to help us. She knew about our situation. Sally and she were close, and I always found it easier to discuss this sort of thing with my mother. She could easily afford it and she had no other commitments. Then I kept putting it off, telling her we’d try to manage, that we didn’t want to take anything from her unless we had no other alternative. By the time we knew there was no other alternative she was unable to do anything because of the sudden deterioration in her condition. So she wanted to help, but circumstances intervened to prevent it. She’d be turning in her grave if she knew how things worked out. It’s not what she would have wanted.”
Simon leaned back in his chair and reached over for the decanter. He poured a large drink and then gulped it back in one go and made a slight grimace, as if he was drinking an unpleasant-tasting medicine.
“You know, when Gloria died I thought all our troubles were over; and now this. That probably sounds callous to you, but Gloria had no quality of life, and she was only going to get worse. I’m sure her death was the proverbial merciful release. She’s at peace now. As Greg says, she’s with her feathered friends, free as the breeze.”
Chapter Seventeen
The Long and the Short of it
The guests had left by the time we got back to the drawing room. I’d told Simon that I had a few questions for Sally, so the three of us walked back to the patio and sat around one end of the table. Simon was a little under six feet and dark haired, but Sally was tiny and blonde. I doubt she was much more than five feet tall. Lucy would have called them ‘the long and the short of it’, I thought.
“I’m sorry for your situation, Sally,” I said. “I can only promise that I’ll do my best to get this sorted out as soon as I can. There’s something I want to ask you though. Greg says that Gloria asked you to deal with some matters which involved Gloria’s email account and she gave you the password. As part of my investigation into Susan Granger I’d like to have access to that account. Susan claimed there was email correspondence between them and it might shed light on some things which I don’t yet know about. Greg has no objection to me accessing the account, so I’d be grateful for your assistance.”
“Yes, of course. The password is ‘simpau’, the first three letters of her son’s names, so not easy to forget, especially as I’m married to one of them.” She laughed and playfully slapped Simon on the butt. His lack of reaction suggested that this was not an uncommon manifestation of her affection.
“When you looked at her email account do you remember seeing any correspondence between Gloria and Susan?”
“I don’t know. It wouldn’t have meant anything to me. In any case I wouldn’t have read Gloria’s private emails. She only wanted me to deal with some recurring subscriptions and things like that.”
“And do I take it that neither of you knew anything about Susan before Gloria’s death?”
She looked at Simon, who shook his head.
“No, the first we learned of it was when the will was released. Greg knew of course, but he didn’t ever say anything to me. Or to you, did he Simon?”
“No, nothing at all. I was rather angry with him at first. Not because of the will but because I suppose I felt slighted. It kind of shocked me to find out that Gloria had kept this from us. I was stupid to blame Greg; I’m sure he was only doing what Gloria wanted. And I guess that Gloria had her reasons. Paul and I were adopted, as you know. Perhaps she felt we would feel less important to her or something. We shall never really know, I suppose.”
Now I’d got them both together I decided to briefly explain the ramifications of what Simon had referred to as ‘the Susan factor’.
“I know that you both want any issues
about the will resolved as soon as possible. To be frank, unless I can recover sufficient DNA for a comparison with Susan then I doubt I can take the matter much further. Susan’s background is such that it’s virtually impossible to check and I don’t even have copies of the adoption documents. I’m not quite finished with this aspect because I’ve yet to examine the computer that Gloria used. There could be important documents that she may have saved there. Assuming though that I draw a blank on all this there is still the issue of Gloria’s competence. She made the will after she had started exhibiting signs of dementia, although before she became severely affected. I’ll need to discuss her medical records with her doctor to see if he can offer an opinion as to her mental state at that time. If it was found that she was not mentally competent at the time she signed the will then I need to check with her lawyer to see if he’s aware of any earlier will. If there isn’t one then she would be treated as having died intestate and the estate will be distributed according to the rules of intestacy. In that case Susan would not qualify as a member of the family for the purpose of inheritance, but the distribution of the estate would likely be very protracted.”
Saunders’ description of ‘a nightmare’ came uninvited into my head.
“I’ll let you know if there’s anything else I need from you. I’m trying to fix a meeting with Paul, but he’s proving a bit elusive at the moment. I’ll keep you all in touch with any developments there may be. In the meantime please rest assured that I’m moving on this as quickly as I can.”
We waved our good-byes as I reversed out of the driveway and headed home. Armed with the email password I called Lucy and asked her to get to work on the emails. It didn’t matter whether she did it home or in the office. It probably wouldn’t be a very lengthy task. Either way, I asked her to print out all the emails rather than only the ones that she considered useful.
“Needs a proper sleuth to look at them,” I said. She hung up. I could almost see her eyes rolling.
Having been relatively frugal with my drinking earlier I rewarded myself with a slug of whiskey when I got home and pondered the day’s work. There was no doubt that Simon had a motive for wanting to expedite his mother’s death. I hadn’t asked him how often he visited Gloria in her last few weeks, but I could get that information from Greg or from the nurses. I understood they were agency nurses and I would have to get their details from Greg in any event.
Simon had seemed very frank with me, but I wondered whether he would have been so forthcoming if he had known that I was aware of the real cause of Gloria’s death. It seemed entirely possible to me that Simon had wanted to speed up his mother’s death due to his financial predicament, especially as he could salve his conscience by the belief that he was being merciful. It was a complicated crossroads between criminality and morality. As for euthanasia I wasn’t sure which side of the fence I was on. In some places in the United States it was legal in certain circumstances, although only with the acquiescence of the victim; but what about a person who was unable to consent because of physical or mental impairment?
Assuming Simon had both the motive and the opportunity it put him slightly higher up the murder suspect league table than Susan, or at least equal top with her. The missing link with Susan at the moment was motive. If Susan didn’t know about the will then she had to motive to kill, because unless she had been specifically included as a beneficiary she would not have a claim to any part of the estate because of her adoption. I was hoping that something in the emails might shed some light on this.
I could just as well have started through the emails myself. I had Gloria’s user-name from Greg and the password from Sally; and I had a computer. I even had the know-how to the limited extent necessary. But I decided that since I’d delegated the job to Lucy I may as well have another shot of Jack Daniels, so that’s what I did. I was in the kitchen looking through the window into the back yard when I caught sight of Skipper’s grave. I took my drink and walked down the grass idly looking for stones that I might have missed at the weekend and feeling more than faintly ridiculous. I sat down beside Skipper’s grave with my drink.
Chapter Eighteen
The Emails
Lucy turned up at six. “Did you print the emails?” I said.
“No.”
“Don’t tell me you were too busy.”
“There weren’t any.”
“So they must have been deleted; perhaps saved before being deleted. So I’ll need to get hold of Greg’s computer, or perhaps I can ask him if you can spend an hour or two in his house if you promise not to steal the silver.”
“I can’t do that.”
“What, promise not to steal the silver?”
Lucy sighed impatiently. “I can’t retrieve the missing emails myself.”
Lucy was in my kitchen making some herbal tea. It was hers, not mine. She hadn’t brought it with her so she must have stored it in my food cabinet. I hoped that wasn’t a thing that was going to escalate – her encroaching on my space. Maybe I’d put a couple of my beers in her fridge and see what her reaction was.
“I thought you said if I had the computer you could retrieve the deleted or saved emails.”
“You need to listen more carefully. I said it may be possible to retrieve them, I didn’t say I would do it.”
“Why, because I haven’t given you a raise yet?”
“Because we need a special computer program which we don’t have. At least I don’t have it and I’m pretty damn sure you don’t. What we need is an expert to copy Greg’s hard drive and then print out all the hidden stuff. Well, anything that’s been deleted but not overwritten. And if she saved the emails they’ll be on her computer’s hard drive.”
I was beginning to experience déjà vu from last night.
“How long would an expert need to make the copy?”
“I’m not sure. A couple of hours or so, I guess. But if the emails have been deleted it’s very likely that they were saved on the computer first. I checked the options box in Gloria’s email account. The emails were not set to be deleted automatically, and there are lots of other emails, both sent and received, that haven’t been deleted so Gloria must have deleted them deliberately. But those emails would be important to her, wouldn’t they, given the circumstances?”
“I imagine so.”
“Well, probably before Gloria deleted the emails she saved them somewhere on the computer. So if we can get a copy of the hard drive I can look through all the places where she is likely to have put them. The problem is that there are thousands of places she could have stored them, not all of them obvious − but if I can’t locate them then the expert should be able to help.”
I couldn’t remember seeing Lucy so pleased with herself for a long time. It made me feel like reaching for the Tyelenol. I had to admit she had a point though.
“But I had another thought too,” Lucy said. “We’re assuming that the emails were deleted by Gloria, but suppose there was something in the emails that Susan wanted to destroy after Gloria became sick? Have you checked to see whether Susan might have had access to the computer when she went to see Gloria?”
“No, I haven’t checked that because Susan wouldn’t have had Gloria’s password. Or if Susan somehow did have Gloria’s password she wouldn’t have needed the actual computer. She could have accessed the emails from the comfort of her own home,” or the discomfort of her own home, I thought, “so that idea doesn’t even get off the starting blocks.”
Lucy was a little crestfallen. I decided to cheer her up by rubbing salt into the wound.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It takes years to develop the kind of incisive, analytical brain that a detective needs.” I gave a kindly smile to soften the blow; the sort you might give to a child who has made a silly mistake. She decided on a swift change of subject to mask her embarrassment, or perhaps to stop herself from hitting me.
“Let’s get some dinner, I’m famished. My treat tonight,” she said.
&n
bsp; Lucy’s treat was Burger King. She munched happily on her burger while I sipped something which I was told was coffee but didn’t taste much like it.
“I just can’t understand why Gloria would delete emails that she either received from or sent to Susan, can you?” Lucy said.
“No I can’t. But what’s more to the point right now is why you brought me here. I’ve got a perfectly decent barbecue at home and you know I don’t eat fast food. It’s some kind of punishment I presume.”
Lucy looked at me with a wide grin and sparkling eyes.
“Sometimes you have to suffer for your art,” she said.
“You should’ve seen the lunch I had today. It was like a gourmet restaurant at Simon’s place,” I said, licking my lips theatrically.
She stuffed the remainder of the bun in her mouth and let the sauce trickle down her chin on purpose.
“Yummy,” she said as she wiped her mouth and chin with a napkin, drained what was left of her coke and slapped her stomach with both hands.
“Anyway,” I said, “Gloria might not have deleted the emails. She may have archived them.” I sat back in my chair and stared at her challengingly.
“I’m impressed,” she said. “Have you been reading that book ‘Computers for Dummies’ that I gave you for your birthday?”
“I know a great deal more about computers than you think I do,” I said, lobbing the ball high over the net.
“Well, you couldn’t possibly know less than I think you do,” Lucy said, slamming the ball to the baseline, and out of my reach.
“Enough of this badinage,” I said. “There’s serious work afoot.”
“Okay, I won. Now, to recap,” she said. “The best thing is to ask Greg if we can have the hard drive of his computer copied by an expert. Any geek from a computer shop will probably know how to do it. They take an image or something, I’m not sure of the technical details. Anyway, we can then ask the expert to extract the deleted files on the computer and print them out for us. If we can’t find Gloria’s saved files then he can help with that too”
FORGET ME NOT (Mark Kane Mysteries Book One) Page 12
