Follow the Dotted Line

by Nancy Hersage

  Lorna removed her gloves with an air of accomplishment that rivaled any cardiologist wrapping up a heart transplant and picked up a laminated menu. “The Elks are also a service organization,” she explained. “They do a lot of charity stuff.”

  “When they’re not drinking,” Andy reiterated. “Now, what should we order?” She motioned a young waitress over to the Formica-covered table in a booth that had not been reupholstered in 50 years.

  “What can I get you?” asked the bouncy brunette.

  “I want the peach cobbler,” Lorna said, boldly.

  “Make that two, and I’ll have mine a la mode,” Andy said, upping the ante. “What about you, Harley?”

  “Think I could have a hot fudge sundae?”

  “No problem,” said Andy. “And we’ll each have a decaf coffee.”

  The teenager nodded approvingly.

  “Oh, and could you bring me a bag of ice?”

  “Ice?”

  “Yeah. Just put it in a sandwich bag. And add it to the bill,” Andy instructed.

  Unfazed, the girl bounced back through the maze of wilderness kitsch adorning the aging restaurant toward the order window.

  “Why would Tilda go to a club for old guys?” asked Harley.

  “Little pitchers have big ears,” said Andy, winking meaningfully at Lorna and illustrating precisely how winking should be done.

  “Don’t mock me, Andrea,” Lorna warned. “Not everyone is a winker.”

  “Huh?” Harley articulated.

  “You’re sidetracking us, Harley. Let’s leave the Elks until later. Right now I want to know what my CPA knows. Lorna?”

  Lorna pulled out her cell and ruminated—a bit dramatically, in Andy’s opinion, about where to begin. She appeared to be scrolling through something.

  “You took photos of the stuff you found in the desk?” Andy prompted.

  “I did.”

  “Papers?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re taking your time, Lorna.”

  “We need to approach this methodically, if we want to make sense of it. And glean as much as we can.”

  “I don’t have the patience to be methodical.”

  “I’ve noticed. On many occasions.” The CPA kept scrolling. “To begin with, the woman keeps very good records.”

  Andy snorted.

  “Don’t do that, Andrea. It’s unseemly, and it gets us nowhere. We should be thankful she keeps good records. It tells us a lot; it might tell us everything.”

  Not the least bit chastened, Andy said, “Out with it, Lorna.”

  “Well, let me begin with the reason that Ms. Trivette is here in California and in San Bernardino County, in particular.”

  “You actually know?” asked Andy.

  “I do.”

  Their effervescent server suddenly interrupted Lorna’s analysis with the mother lode of sugar and three cups of coffee, which she set before them on the table. “Anyone want cream with their coffee?” she asked.

  “We’re all good,” said Andy, waving her away. “For god’s sake, Lorna, tell us!”

  The waitress dangled a baggy of cubes in Andy’s face. “Don’t you want your ice?” she asked.

  Andy grabbed at the ice. “Oh, great. Thanks. Now go away. We’re in the middle of something here.”

  “If we can’t be patient, Andrea, we can at least be polite,” Lorna said, turning pointedly toward the victimized youth. “This looks wonderful. Tell me about it.” The accountant picked up a fork and tested the cobbler with a slight press of the dough. Andy sensed this was payback for the winking fiasco. She tucked the baggy under her throbbing thigh.

  “It’s the house specialty,” said the girl. “People drive for miles just to order our peach cobbler.”

  “I’ve never had it.” Lorna sliced the fork into the crusty fruit and began to carve out her first bite. “Is it actually made from fresh peaches?”

  Andy could tell the eager beaver server was about to cross from small talk into big talk, so she put her hand on the girl’s arm, smiled sadly, and whispered, “My friend here has type 2 diabetes and gets overly excited about dessert. We never like to encourage her. She could lapse into a coma just from talking about it.”

  The marginally comprehending waitress stared, clearly flummoxed.

  “Really?” She looked from Lorna to Andy, then back to Lorna. “A coma. Oh my god,” she managed. “I am so sorry.” Then she whirled round and vanished into the plastic forest primeval.

  “That was completely out of line, Andrea. I’ve never been diabetic a day in my life.”

  “You’re trying to make me crazy, Lorna.”

  “A little. Mostly, I’m still processing.”

  “Processing what?”

  “This.” Lorna took a luxurious bite of her cobbler and handed Andy the cell phone. “Take a look at that.”

  As Andy studied the screen, Harley leaned over to take a peek. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Some document,” said Andy.

  “Not just any document. That’s a joint tenancy grant deed,” explained Lorna. “And from the date stamp, Tilda filed it with the county recorder a few weeks ago. That’s why she came here.”

  “O-kay,” Andy nodded robotically. As usual, her accountant’s assessment was miles ahead of her own. Lorna was clearly in view of some significant implications, while Andy’s mind remained a lagging indicator. “Okay,” she repeated. “You mean, Tilda came to California to put her name on the deed to the cabin?”

  “That’s right. As a joint tenant. And that tells us a lot.”

  “What’s a joint tenant?” Harley wanted to know.

  So did Andy; she knew the term but could never recall exactly what it meant.

  Lorna enlightened her eager audience. “When two people hold a deed as joint tenants, it means that when one person dies the property passes directly to the other person.”

  “She’s trying to get her hands on Uncle Mark’s property,” Harley concluded, just before Andy got there.

  “Yes, it definitely tells us that. But it tells us a few other things, as well.” Lorna took her cell back from Andy and looked at her friend’s untouched dessert. “Eat your cobbler,” she ordered. “The ice cream is melting.”

  “I can’t. I’m trying to focus.”

  “Suit yourself,” Lorna said, enlarging the photo by spreading her thumb and finger across the screen. “Look at the signatures at the bottom of the page here.”

  “Tilda’s and Mark’s,” Andy said.

  “Uncle Mark signed the paper?” Harley asked.

  Lorna tapped a perfectly manicured nail on the screen. “That’s a notary’s signature and seal. A notary in Texas. Mark Kornacky had to be present with a picture ID to sign this. Now look at the date. It’s after Mitch received the so-called cremains and after you and Harley visited Texas.”

  “Mark was still alive? Mark is still alive?” Andy stammered, not sure what to think.

  “Well, he was. That’s for certain. Whether he is now remains an open question.” Lorna took another bite of cobbler. “You see why this takes a little time to process?”

  Andy tried to sift through the perverse possibilities, but her mind kept sticking on the binary thought that Mark was either dead or alive. “So he might be alive. But he might be dead. What does all this mean? I don’t get it.”

  “If he’s dead and the cabin is solely in his name, then it would have to go through probate. And that would be a problem for Tilda. But if she files this joint tenancy grant deed before he dies, then the property would pass directly to her, without a court proceeding. So she needs to file this if she wants the property.”

  “That means he must still be alive? Right?” Andy said.

  As a tax consultant, Lorna had a reputation for pointing out worst-case scenarios to her clients. It protected people from the pain of unrealistic expectations. “Not necessarily. Tilda could, theoretically, file it even if Mark were dead. The recorder has no way of knowing. The i
mportant thing is that Mark’s signature on the document pre-dates his death.”

  “And how does this recorder person know when he died?” asked Harley.

  “From an official death certificate.”

  “You mean, it’s possible he signed the document one day, and she killed him the next?” Andy ventured.

  “Exactly. And she’s living here in Big Bear until she receives an official death certificate and she can file it with the county.”

  “So there could be a death certificate, and we just don’t know it yet?”

  Lorna nodded, then added. “Or not. We just don’t know for sure.”

  Harley had completely exhausted his sundae and looked as if he might ask for another. Instead, he said, “But there are no death certificates for Tilda’s husbands. The only reason we know they’re dead is that Aunt Andy found their obituaries in the paper.”

  “And therein lies the rub,” pronounced Lorna.

  “The what?”

  “Never mind,” said Andy. “The point is, every time one of Tilda’s husbands dies, there’s never a body to be exhumed or a death certificate to be tracked.”

  “Which is why this grant deed is so significant,” Lorna said.

  “What do you mean?” Andy demanded, growing tired of eating Lorna’s dust.

  “Well, it’s fairly easy for Tilda to take a man’s money if it’s in a bank,” explained the CPA. “She simply gets her name on his accounts. But if he owns property, well, that’s a bigger challenge. She not only has to get her name on the deed, but she has to prove he’s dead before she can get her hands on the house. And that always takes a death certificate. You see?”

  “I’d like to see, Lorna, but I don’t. I can wink, but I damn well can’t see. What in the hell are you trying to tell me?”

  “That if any of Tilda’s former husbands owned property, she had to present a death certificate in order to get her hands on it.”

  “So we what?”

  Harley nearly rocketed out of his seat. “I know,” he said, raising his hand.

  “What? What do you know?” Andy asked, feeling as if the dumb were leading the blind.

  “We find a relative of one of the husbands, and we ask, right?” he said to Lorna. She nodded, so he sailed onward. “We ask if he owned property. And if he did, we contact one of these recording studios and find out what happened to it. Simple.”

  “Simple,” Lorna agreed. “Very good, Harley. A downright elegant deduction.”

  It was, Andy had to admit, and still she was annoyed with him. “It’s not a recording studio,” she instructed her nephew. “It’s a recorder’s office. And how do we find these relatives?”

  “Online,” said Lorna. “It’s worth a try, Andy. It might help explain what this woman is up to. Or . . .” She decided to abandon the thought.

  “Or what?” Andy wanted to know.

  “I’m not sure I should say it.”

  “Say what, Lorna? What have you already thought of that won’t occur to me until next week?”

  “Well, there’s one other way to find out what Tilda has in mind.”

  “Which is?”

  “We could just wait.”

  Andy tried to look ahead and see the implications of that strategy. She couldn’t. “Fill in the blanks, Lorna. Please. I clearly can’t keep up with you.”

  “If Tilda really is after Mark’s cabin, then she’s only half way there. We could just wait until she takes the next step.”

  “The next step?” Andy asked, unconsciously squinting her eyes.

  Harley leaned excitedly into the conversation, like a man with X-ray vision. “You mean, we could wait until she files Mark’s death certificate, don’t you?” he nearly squealed, “because if she does that, then we’ll know for really, truly certain that he’s dead!”

  Dawn finally arrived, and Andy saw the horizon. They could keep chasing Tilda’s backstory and see what more they could learn about the grant deeds of Mark’s predecessors. Or they could let whatever was happening between Tilda and her former husband play itself out until the bad news arrived at the recorder’s office in the form of a death certificate.

  “So we shouldn’t wait around. We should keep investigating?” Andy asked.

  “That’s up to you,” Lorna replied.

  “But this woman is truly wicked. We’re sure of that now. I’m not crazy?”

  “You’re not crazy, Andrea. You’re absolutely right.”

  Andy looked down at the lake of melted ice cream that now swamped her uneaten cobbler. Maybe it was time to walk away from all this saturated evil before it caught up with her.

  “Andy?” Lorna asked.

  “I’m thinking.”

  “About the cobbler?”

  “Metaphorically.”

  “Hmm.” Lorna looked down at Andy’s plate. “You’re wondering if you should finish the mess sitting in front of you?”

  “Uh huh. Or if I should just get up right now and leave it behind.”

  “That is the healthy option.”

  “Probably.” But Tilda, like sucrose, was physically addicting; everything about the woman energized Andy. The rush was irresistible, even though she sensed, somewhere, there was going to be a crash. “What would you do, Lorna?”

  A question the account had undoubtedly heard a million times. “Not really my choice, is it? This one is entirely up to you.”

  Andy smirked. “Always the consummate professional. I hate it when people let me make my own decisions.”

  “So?” Lorna wondered.

  “So,” Andy said, picking up a soupspoon and diving into the creamy quagmire before her, “let’s hear what else you found at the cabin, my friend.”

  Without uttering a word—or winking—Lorna managed to convey her approval. She returned her eyes to her phone screen and began scrolling.

  “Bank statements.” she said. “I’ll print these out and show them to you when we get home. Not long ago Mark liquidated all of his assets. I suspect at Tilda’s urging. These were hefty accounts, and her name was on each one of them. She didn’t need him alive to drain these. She could have done that all by herself.”

  Harley, who had been curious about the cobbler all evening, unconsciously picked up a spoon of his own and reached for a bite without asking.

  Damn it, thought Andy. Now there’s a metaphor.

  “And her passport,” Lorna added to the list of her ‘finds.’

  “She has a passport?” Andy asked. She tried to imagine if someone could be clairvoyant in other countries—and which ones. “Did you get a look at it?”

  Lorna arched her pencil-perfect brow. “Someone was in a rush to leave,” she observed, wryly.

  “You mean Aunt Andy, right?” Harley asked, now fully committed to the cobbler and eager to point out that their early departure was definitely not his fault.

  “Okay, musketeers,” Andy sighed. “Mea culpa. Anything else?”

  “That about does it,” Lorna said.

  “You’re amazing, Lorna. Forget those cigar-smoking P.I.s. Give me a CPA with a good manicure and perfectly plucked brows any day.”

  The well-worn vinyl behind Andy creaked, as she leaned back in the booth and conceded the leftovers to her nephew. The ice cubes under her leg had melted, and water was dripping through the plastic. “I think it’s time to go back to your cabin, Lorna.”

  “Amen to that,” said Lorna. “We could all use a good night’s sleep.”

  They wound their way back to the large log house through a noiseless neighborhood on the brink of tucking itself in. Exhausted and thoughtful, the trio said little. Still, there was a feeling of triumph among them, as well as an unspoken agreement that it would be bad form to gloat over the success of what was, after all, a break in.

  “I think we should go home in the morning,” Andy said, as the car rolled into Lorna’s driveway. “We’ve probably learned everything we can here.”

  “What about the Elks Lodge?” Harley asked.


  Lorna turned off the engine, and both women looked quizzically into the depths of the backseat, where Harley reclined across the entire spread of new leather.

  “The Elks Lodge?” asked Lorna.

  Pleased by the attention, he hoisted himself onto an elbow. “We could hang out there tomorrow and find out who Bernie is.”

  “I don’t really want to know,” Andy said, tuckered out by the mere idea of additional surveillance.

  “And if Tilda shows up to meet him, she might recognize either you or Andy,” Lorna posited. “And that would tip her off to what we’re doing.”

  “Oh,” said Harley, unable to hide his disappointment. “I guess. It’s just that—I like what we’re doing. What we’ve been doing so far. It’s kind of fun, you know. And exciting. Truth is, I don’t actually want to go home. All that much.”

  Andy sighed with the weariness of someone who had only one obstacle left between misery and a good night’s sleep. “You don’t want to go home all that much, Harley, because you don’t have all that much to do once you get there. Spreading the Good News used to pretty much fill up your dance card. Now all you’ve got is that yarmulke.”

  “What’s a dance card?” he asked, blankly.

  “Never mind. Listen to me. You can’t rely on women of a certain age to provide you with high quality entertainment 24/7. You’re going to have to get a life. And as soon as you do, we’re going to call your mother and explain what it is. Until then, I’m putting you to bed whenever I want. Which is now. And I’m going, too. So let’s get moving.”

  Moments after they walked through the door, Andy collapsed into bed. Not surprisingly, home invasion was a highly effective sedative. About midnight her phone chimed with a text message from Edinburgh, which went unheard and unread until the next morning. She woke reasonably rejuvenated, tapped on her messages, and received the news she had been hoping to avoid for the rest of Harley Davidson’s life.

  Yo. Just home from the motherland. Lecture went great. Met with local researcher. Found records of the relatives. We’re definitely part of the Chosen People. What was God thinking?

  Of course we are, Andy thought, mindlessly rolling over on her battered thigh. “Jesus H. Yaweh!” she hissed, taking the name of both her old and new God in vain. She carefully repositioned her body so that she was aimed toward the bathroom, then rocked off the mattress onto the floor. As she put one foot in front of the other, she found herself speculating on how long it would take Harley to talk her into buying him a ticket to Israel.