A Real Pickle

by Jessica Beck

  I was still trying to come up with something to break the ice again when Moose walked in and the door closed loudly behind him. “Sorry about that.” He spotted me talking to Humphries and walked over toward us. “There you are,” he said.

  Before Moose could reach us, the butler said, “If you’ll excuse me, I must go.”

  “We’ll chat again later,” I called out after him hopefully, but he didn’t even look back.

  “Wow, what did you say to him, Victoria?”

  “We were getting along just fine, and then I asked him how he felt about Charlotte Trane, and he turned to stone on me.”

  Moose shook his head. “Of course he did. She’s the only reference here that he has left. It’s going to be tough enough finding another high-end servant’s job for him as it is, given his history. Humphries can’t afford to have any bad comments coming from a member of the Trane family.”

  “Maybe you can pump him for more information later yourself,” I said.

  “Sure, but let’s give him a little time.”

  “What did Deb have to say?”

  Moose frowned. “I never got her. She’s not due in until three this afternoon.”

  “I wouldn’t mind having those hours,” I said.

  “Not me. She probably works until after midnight, and I for one like my beauty sleep,” Moose said with a grin.

  “We can both use all of that we can get,” I answered. “So, I suppose that we’ll have to wait to find out who Curtis ate with the night before he died.”

  “If Deb even knows,” Moose said. “There’s a chance that no one noticed, or even if they did, they might not be able to identify his dining companion.”

  “Worse yet, even if someone at the restaurant can name names, there are no guarantees that it even had anything to do with his murder.”

  My grandfather smiled. “That’s just part of the joy of investigating, isn’t it?”

  “You like it. Admit it.”

  “I love the challenge of it,” my grandfather admitted, “but I hate that we don’t get involved unless we lose someone who has touched our lives.”

  “It’s what motivates us, though,” I said. “I’m guessing that we’re not going to sit around waiting for Deb to call you back.”

  “Hardly, but where does that leave us?”

  I thought about it, and then I said, “I think we should speak directly with the lawyer who amended Curtis’s will,” I said. “I’d love to know what changes he was going to make before someone stopped him.”

  “Whoever it is, he’s not going to tell us anything.”

  “That might be true, but he’ll tell Jeffrey, don’t you think?” I asked as I started for the library.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Moose said.

  We found the chauffeur sitting at the table studying a document in front of him. Renee was leaning over his shoulder, touching him lightly, as she peered at it as well. There was no hint of impropriety, but that didn’t keep her from jerking up and away from him when we walked in. Was Jeffrey blushing a little?

  “What can I do for you?” Jeffrey asked as he shuffled a few papers on the library table.

  “Have you seen the will?” I asked him.

  “It’s here somewhere,” Jeffrey said as he nodded. Renee helped him search, and a few seconds later, she pulled a thick document from the pile. “Got it.”

  “May we see it?” I asked Jeffrey.

  “Of course,” he said.

  I took the will and saw that it was dated two years before. I started scanning through it, searching for beneficiaries. When I found the right section, I found that Charlotte inherited half the money, while Tristan and Sarah split the other half. I showed it to Moose, who was still reading it as I asked, “Is there any chance we can find out what Curtis’s new will said, the one he hadn’t signed yet?”

  “I don’t know,” Jeffrey said. “I’m not sure that he’ll tell me.”

  “Of course he will,” Renee said. “You’re the estate executor. There’s a great deal of power associated with that. I’m certain that if you call and ask, he’ll tell you anything that you want to know.”

  “Honestly?” Jeffrey asked. “That’s all that it will take?”

  “Jeffrey, your position is to act as Curtis’s representative. This is not the time to be timid.”

  “Let me give him a call then,” Jeffrey said.

  As he made the phone call, I said softly to Renee, “How’s it going?”

  “Slowly but surely,” she said with a smile. “I don’t know whether to thank you or curse you for bringing me in on this.”

  “It’s your own fault, you know,” I said with a grin of my own.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “If you didn’t want to me to call you, you shouldn’t be so good at what you do.”

  “Guilty as charged,” she said. “Honestly, though, it is fascinating. Curtis Trane left an amazingly complex estate behind.”

  “It’s hard to believe that it all started with pickles,” I said, remembering my late friend’s penchant for giving away little plastic pickles.

  “It may have started that way, but he’s a long way from that now. The estate owns an interest in the Charlotte football team, did you know that?”

  “I didn’t have a clue,” I said.

  “It’s in here, and so is his minority ownership in the North Carolina Philharmonic. The man had his fingers in dozens upon dozens of pies in the state. It’s going to take years to straighten it all out.”

  “You just smiled as you said that,” I said.

  “What can I say? I’ve always loved a challenge.”

  I looked over at Jeffrey, whose face had gone white all of sudden as the telephone dropped out of his hands.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him softly, concerned for the man’s health.

  Jeffrey shook his head from side to side, nodded, and then he shook his head again. What was that supposed to mean? As he picked the telephone back up and continued to speak, he grew more and more ashen, and I was beginning to wonder if we should call a doctor for him. It was quite cryptic trying to make sense of the conversation based strictly on his part of it, and when he finally hung up, I was even more concerned about him.

  “Is it really all that bad?” I asked him.

  “I need some water,” he croaked out.

  I reached for the pitcher, but Renee was quicker. She poured some hastily and handed him the glass. Jeffrey’s hands were shaking as he took it, and after gulping some of it down, he promptly started choking. Moose patted him hard on the back, a move I wondered about, but it cleared up soon enough.

  “Are you all right?” Renee asked.

  “I think so,” he said, his voice a little hoarse from his recent ordeal.

  “What did he say that shook you up so much?” I asked him.

  “I don’t even know where to begin,” Jeffrey said.

  “I’ve always found that the beginning is as good a place to start as any,” Moose said.

  “It appears that Curtis signed a new will after all just before he was murdered,” Jeffrey said ominously.

  Chapter 19

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Are you out as the executor now?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, the only thing in the entire document that Curtis changed was his list of beneficiaries,” Jeffrey said.

  “I didn’t think he had time to change it,” Moose said.

  “That’s what everyone thought, but the attorney came by late the night before Curtis was murdered and brought a few witnesses with him. I wondered why he sent me out for a quart of black cherry ice cream. He must not have wanted me to know about it.”

  “Why would he hide it from you?” Renee asked.

  “Evidently because I’m in the new will,” Jeffrey said.

  “That’s sweet of him to remember you,” I said. “You were a good friend to him all the way to the end. It should give you some real comfort knowing that he thought just as fondly
of you as you did of him. Will it be enough to make a difference in your life?”

  “You could say that,” Jeffrey said. “He left me everything.”

  Chapter 20

  “He did what?” I asked. “Are you serious?”

  “Evidently it’s true,” Jeffrey said. “I can’t believe that he did that.”

  Was it possible that the chauffeur was upset about the latest twist? “Jeffrey, aren’t you happy about it?” I asked him.

  “It’s no wonder that he sent me out and kept this from me. If he’d breathed one word of it to me beforehand, I would have left on the spot.”

  “Why would you do that?” Moose asked. “It’s what he wanted, after all.”

  “You don’t understand. The three of us were the only people in his life that he considered his real friends, not people bought and paid for,” Jeffrey said. “He tried to triple my salary three weeks ago, and I flatly refused. As a matter of fact, I made him give me a cut in pay, or I threatened to go on strike,” Jeffrey added with a grin. “It wasn’t about the money, not in the past year, anyway.”

  “You could just give it all away if you wanted to,” Renee said, her first input into the conversation since Jeffrey first dropped the bombshell.

  “Is that what you think I should do?” he asked her intently.

  “Hang on a second here,” I said. “Let’s not make any crazy decisions just yet.”

  Renee stopped me with an icy glare. “Victoria, I believe that Jeffrey just asked me a question, and if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to answer it.”

  “Sorry,” I said. It wasn’t really any of my business. I just hated seeing him throw away such a vast fortune just to make a point of his loyalty to his late employer.

  “It’s okay,” she said with a smile before she turned back to Jeffrey. “Victoria is right about one thing. You need to think this through before you do anything. There’s a great deal of good you can do with the resources we’re talking about here.”

  “That’s true,” he said. “I never thought about it that way.”

  “Perhaps you should,” she said. “Besides, it’s not in your pocket yet, not by any stretch of the imagination. I have a feeling that the family isn’t going to accept this without fighting you first.”

  “You’re right about that,” Jeffrey said with a grin. “Curtis would have relished the battle; I’m sure of that much. Okay, for now, we’ll just proceed as we have been. After all, in the end it doesn’t matter who inherits Curtis’s estate. All that we need to worry about is straightening out this mess of paperwork.”

  “It matters a little,” Moose said softly, but I didn’t think anyone else heard it.

  “What was that?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Not important. Can I ask you for a favor, Jeffrey?”

  “Anything,” he said.

  Moose grinned. “You need to be very careful now about saying that.” Funny, I’d given him the exact same advice earlier, but it meant a great deal more now that he was going to be rich.

  “Note taken,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “It’s not really a favor; it’s more like a piece of advice. I wouldn’t be in any hurry to tell the others about this new development.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Renee said. “There’s no use stirring up any more trouble at the moment than you’ve already got on your hands. You have enough to deal with as it is.”

  “Okay, I can see that. We’ll just keep this between ourselves for the time being.”

  “We’ll leave you to your books, then,” I said.

  As Moose and I left them, I couldn’t help but notice that it mattered to someone else, too.

  Renee was a good three feet away from Jeffrey now, a dramatic change since he’d learned that he was going to be rich beyond all dreams of avarice. I hoped that she didn’t let that put a stumbling block between them, but I promised myself that I’d butt out and leave them to figure it out for themselves.

  Unless they made the wrong decision, of course.

  “We need to talk to Sarah,” I told my grandfather once we left Renee and Jeffrey.

  “You’re thinking about that checkbook ledger entry, aren’t you?”

  “I think it’s interesting that she got twenty thousand dollars, but Tristan didn’t,” I said. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Maybe for us,” Moose said, “but was it much more than pocket change for Curtis?”

  “He might have been rich, but I don’t think that he ever threw it away.”

  “If Sarah is still posing for her brother, should we wait until they’re apart to ask her about it?” Moose asked me.

  “Actually, we might get better results if we ask her in front of Tristan,” I said.

  My grandfather smiled at me. “You never were afraid to stir the pot, were you?”

  “I just think we have a better chance of seeing their true characters if we press them together. Who knows? Maybe there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for it.”

  “I’m looking forward to hearing it,” Moose said.

  Humphries was in the hallway, so I called out to him, “Do you have a second?”

  “Certainly,” he said.

  “Where might we find Tristan and Sarah?”

  The butler frowned before he answered. “Mr. Wellborne doesn’t like to be disturbed while he’s working. He can be quite emphatic about it.”

  “Don’t worry. We won’t tell him how we found him,” I said.

  Humphries nodded. “His studio is in the loft above the garage. It has its own separate staircase.”

  “I thought Jeffrey’s apartment was above the garage,” I said.

  “It is, but he only has a small portion of it, hardly bigger than a closet. The main space is Mr. Wellborne’s art studio.”

  It was ironic that Jeffrey had been living in such a small space before, and now he was going to own everything of value around him, including a great deal of square footage. “Thank you, Humphries,” I said.

  “For what?” he asked with a slight smile.

  Moose grinned in return. “That’s right, Victoria. I’m sorry that Humphries couldn’t help us, too. We’ll just have to find Tristan and Sarah on our own.”

  “Why don’t we look above the garage?” I said, getting into the spirit of things.

  “It’s as good a place to begin as any,” my grandfather said.

  Humphries managed a smile as we walked past him. Maybe I’d made amends, but I wasn’t about to press him soon about anything.

  Moose and I walked outside, and the dark clouds above us were again ominous. It had been raining, storming, or just about to rain or storm since we’d gotten to the Pickle Palace, and there was a small, albeit irrational part of me that thought it was Curtis showing his anger from the great beyond about being murdered. It was nonsense, of course, but I still couldn’t help thinking it.

  A set of iron steps ran up one side of the garage, and Moose and I mounted them gingerly. We were about to intentionally irritate two of our suspects, and one of them was possibly a murderer. Hopefully it would get results. We were running out of time, and nobody was more aware of it than we were. Curtis’s memorial was scheduled for the next morning, and at that point, we’d lose access to nearly all of our suspects.

  It was time to turn up the heat.

  “No one is allowed in here while I’m working!” Tristan snapped at my grandfather and me as we walked into the studio uninvited.

  “In our defense, we knocked first,” I said, trying to be heard over the loud music playing in the background. “Can you turn that down a little?”

  “It helps me focus,” he said loudly.

  Sarah was sitting on a chair holding a parasol and looking absolutely bored to tears. “For heaven’s sake, Tristan, it’s giving me a headache, too.” She stood to turn the music down.

  “Sit back down!” he commanded her.

  “Then turn the music off,” she shouted back.

  He did it,
although it was clear that it was a reluctant decision on his part. “What do you two want?” he asked as he turned to us. I couldn’t see his canvas, and as tempted as I was to walk over and take a peek at it, I decided to fight the impulse.

  “We need to speak with Sarah,” Moose said.

  “She can’t be bothered right now. My work is at a critical stage.”

  “You don’t need to do anything,” I said. “Sarah, would you mind answering a question for us?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You two are as bad as my brother.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked her as his brush hovered above the canvas.

  “Everyone wants something from me,” she said. Sarah turned to me and asked, “What is it that you want to know?”

  “Why did your uncle write you a check for twenty thousand dollars last week?” I asked.

  “He what!” Tristan shouted. “That’s ridiculous. You must be mistaken.”

  “We saw the entry in his checkbook ledger ourselves,” Moose said matter-of-factly.

  “What were you doing looking at that?” Sarah asked, nicely sidestepping our question. “I was willing to put up with the inconvenience of having you compiling something about my uncle, but you’ve gone too far. There’s no reason at all for you to look through his personal things.”

  She wasn’t about to put me off that easily. “We have Jeffrey’s full approval for everything that we’re doing,” I said. “If you have any problem with that, you’ll have to take it up with him.”

  “I will,” Sarah said as she stood again.

  “Sarah!” Tristan snapped.

  “Oh stuff it, dear brother,” she said as she threw down the parasol that she’d been holding. “I’m tired of this.”

  As she walked straight at him, he tried to stop her. “It’s not ready yet.”

  “Too bad. I’ve at least earned the right to look at what you’ve been doing.” She pushed past him and then stood in front of the canvas for a full ten seconds before she spoke. “This is what you’ve been doing all of this time? Are you kidding me?”

  It was too good a chance to pass up, so I walked toward the canvas as well. I got there before Moose, but not by much. The vivid dabs of paint on his palette, the selection of brushes, the scent of the turpentine, even the structured lines of the canvas and the easel made him look like a real artist.