by Leena Clover
Stan dismissed it as unimportant. I decided to talk to Ryan about it again. Anything Stan ignores deserves a second look in my experience.
“Did he remember where Amanda was?” Stan asked.
I shook my head.
Stan hadn’t talked to anyone since last night but he had done some thinking.
“What if there was an outsider? That house is big enough to hide a few people.”
Stan scratched his stubble, mulling over this new scenario.
“We should have checked that window first thing. Now it’s too late.”
“Can’t we go into the room and see if it is locked?” I asked.
“There might have been footprints outside,” Stan said. “But we’ll never know.”
The snow would have erased any evidence of them.
“I thought of this last night too.”
I told him about the trouble at the Frank Foods plant.
“There is talk of letting people go. What if an angry employee came here to talk to the old man? They got into an argument and he killed Mr. Frank.”
“How did this person get into the house? Weren’t you having some kind of party?”
“He could have been hiding in the house all along. Anyone could have let him in.”
“That William Derry fellow works at the plant, doesn’t he?”
I had momentarily forgotten about William Derry.
“That’s right! William Derry could have let someone in. He didn’t have to know why. He could just be doing a favor for a coworker or a friend.”
“Why hasn’t he told us about it then?” Stan demanded.
“He’s afraid, of course,” I shot back. “Would you own up to something like that if there had been a murder?”
“So he’s an accomplice then?”
I shrugged. William Derry didn’t look like a cold blooded killer to me. He was too simple to orchestrate a murder.
“Are you sure there were going to be job cuts?”
“Noah said so. They do it every year in January.”
“Why kill the old man then? Why not Ted Junior? Isn’t he the one who works the most at that factory of theirs?”
I gave it some thought.
“Ted Junior keeps talking about expansion. He was trying to convince Mr. Frank about adding new products. He was going to bring in new partners.”
“That doesn’t have to mean new jobs,” Stan protested.
“No, but that could be the impression the workers had. The old man was totally against this. He could be seen as a roadblock.”
“So some enterprising employee thought they would get him out of the way?” Stan thought aloud. “It sounds farfetched but there’s no telling what a twisted mind might get up to.”
“So you’re saying a crazy person did it?”
Stan shook his head.
“We should run this by Ted Junior. See what he thinks about it.”
Stan needed to talk to him anyway. I hadn’t come across Ted Junior much since yesterday.
We reached the group fiddling with the trucks. It looked like Ryan and Tony had figured out how to attach the snowplow to the front of the truck. Henry Robinson stood with her hands on her hips, bossing over the men.
“Have you ever driven one of these?” Tony asked Ryan.
Even in the cold, he was drenched with sweat and his hands were covered in grease. Ryan hadn’t fared any better. Noah must have been a silent spectator because there wasn’t a speck of grime on his person.
“There’s a certain technique,” Noah spoke up. “Let me show you.”
He jumped into the cab and started the truck.
“Are you going to clear the internal roads first?” I asked Ryan.
“That’s the plan. We’ll head out of the main gate after we are done here.”
“Can we get some coffee from the main house?” Tony suggested.
Stan and I watched as the truck started making its way to the house.
“We need to ask Amanda where she was, Stan.”
Stan didn’t want to put her on her guard.
“Let’s ask the others about it first. We will talk to her once we have a general idea.”
“You are fine with asking the others? What if one of them tells her?”
We both agreed that was a problem. Then I had an idea.
“What if we ask each person about two or three other people? One of them can be Amanda. That way we won’t give the game away.”
“I guess we can do that,” Stan conceded. “Let’s hope we can still use Ted Junior’s study.”
“Does Ryan get along with his mother?” Stan asked.
“I didn’t get a sense of that.”
“What could he have done to help his mother?”
“I don’t think he will lie on purpose. Otherwise he wouldn’t have told us about Amanda’s affair.”
“Did you think Noah was being sincere?” Stan asked me.
Noah wasn’t really an ideal son or brother. He was living a life of luxury without lifting a finger to help his family. But he was open about it. He was getting along with the old man. Why would he have wanted to upset the apple cart?
“He’s crazy about Amanda.”
“Crazy enough to do her bidding?”
“Amanda should definitely stay on our radar,” I emphasized. “We can’t establish her position at the time of the murder. And she was cheating on her husband.”
“Adultery is not the same as murder, Meera.”
“I think she’s cunning. I don’t think she has any feelings for Noah. She is just using him to get Ted Junior’s attention.”
“Flirting with Noah would have been enough,” Stan said. “There was no need for actually carrying on with him.”
“Maybe she secretly hates Noah. She wanted to drive a wedge between the brothers. Ted Junior and Noah would fight over her and Ted Junior would drive Noah out of the house.”
“Can he do that?” Stan asked. “Who decides who can live in the Frank House?”
We felt as if we were going around in circles.
“Have we made any progress since yesterday?” Stan asked, biting his lip in frustration.
“We were going to talk to four people. We ruled out Julie for sure. I think Noah and Ryan can be ruled out too.”
Stan dragged his toe through the snow moodily.
“They wouldn’t have done this on their own. But I still think either could have helped Amanda in some way.”
“When are you talking to Ted Junior? We are not sure if he was in the living room either.”
“I will start with him,” Stan promised.
“Do you think there’s any point in talking to that psychic again? We never asked her why she went into Mr. Frank’s cabin or what they talked about.”
Stan didn’t see any point in that. We went back and forth over it and found we had reached the main house.
Dad paced outside, talking on his phone. He frowned when he saw me. I didn’t read anything special in that. It’s his usual reaction on seeing me.
“Where have you been, Meera? Your mother wants to talk to you.”
He held out his cell phone and I grabbed it a bit too eagerly.
Sally told me they were all looking forward to being together for Christmas. She was at an airport store looking at scarves. She wanted me to choose between red or turquoise.
If my mother had known me even a little bit, she would know I would always go for the turquoise. I told her that. Just my choice, that is. There was a whoop of laughter in the background. I could hear Cristina and Jeet high fiving and yelling.
“Jeet can’t wait to eat your cooking,” she told me. “Cristina wants to go shopping with you the day after Christmas. She wants to shop for school.”
Cristina has a Bel Air wardrobe that would be the envy of the town. I don’t know why she wanted to shop in Swan Creek.
“Don’t worry about coming to get us,” Sally went on. “We’ll stay in a hotel tonight. I don’t want you risking your
life on those roads.”
She finally paused to take a breath, giving me a chance to hang up.
“What did she say?” Dad asked.
He had a silly grin on his face. He had been standing close to me so he had probably heard everything. My parents were rediscovering each other after being apart for seventeen years. Actually, my mom had no memory of their earlier time together so it was like a new relationship for her.
“They are staying over in the city tonight.”
“Don’t worry,” he slapped me on the back. “The trucks are half way here. We’ll get to the city and maybe we’ll all stay over.”
The living room windows were wide open, giving me a clear view of Stan and Ted Junior. Would we identify the killer before we left this place?
Chapter 24
Stan crooked a finger and beckoned me the moment I went into the house. He headed back to Ted Junior’s office.
“I talked to him. He says he was in the living room saying goodbye to you Patels.”
“A lot of them were gathered around us,” I agreed, trying to visualize the scene from two nights ago. “But I don’t particularly remember him. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t there though.”
Stan rifled through his papers, reading off them.
“Why don’t you arrange them in order?”
He had started a fresh page for each person we interviewed. And then there were some pages with random notes. I made a pile of all the interviews and started skimming through them. One item circled twice caught my attention.
“Of course!” I exclaimed. “We forgot about this.”
I handed over the paper to him. Crystal had told us about a new will old Mr. Frank had been working on. We had forgotten all about it.
“How could we overlook that?” Stan grumbled. “Now what?”
“We have to start asking people about this second will. If he confided in Crystal, he confided in someone else.”
“Chamberlain!” we both exclaimed at the same time.
Chances were, if there was a new will, Chamberlain knew all about it.
I picked up the intercom and requested Chamberlain to come see us in Junior’s study.
“I’ll make him talk,” Stan vowed, biting his lip.
I crossed my fingers, hoping Stan wouldn’t end up alienating him. We would get nothing out of Chamberlain if that happened.
There was a knock on the door and Chamberlain came in. I urged him to take a seat. I had a sense this was going to be a long conversation.
“Let’s get to the point, Chamberlain,” Stan began. “We have information Mr. Frank had a second will. One newer than the one we found in his study. What do you know about it?”
Chamberlain wavered. It was the first time I had seen him exhibit any emotion in the last two days.
“I was instructed not to talk about it.”
“By Mr. Frank?” I stated the obvious.
He nodded.
“Mr. Frank isn’t around here anymore,” Stan pointed out. “And there are bigger things at stake. I am sure you want to get to the bottom of this as much as we do.”
Chamberlain couldn’t argue with that.
“I come across a lot of things in the course of my work,” he droned. “Discretion is the cornerstone of my service.”
“You are doing an impeccable job here,” I coaxed. “But some things need to come out in the open. We need to establish the right motive. And the will plays a big part in that.”
Chamberlain reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a large roll of paper. I grabbed it, as eager as Stan to find out what it held.
“I am not sure if this will is legal,” Chamberlain said. “Mr. Frank wanted me to witness this.”
“We’ll look into all that,” Stan waved him off. “You can go now.”
Chamberlain stepped out soundlessly without another word.
Stan unrolled the paper and began reading. I jumped up from my chair opposite him and went around behind his back. I pored over the document and we both sucked in a breath at almost the same time.
“Noah!” we exclaimed in one breath.
I blinked in surprise. Was I a bit too much in sync with Stan Miller?
To say that the new will was revolutionary would have been an understatement. There was one major change and that was going to affect Noah the most.
Old Mr. Frank had stipulated that Noah start putting in time at the Frank Foods plant. The will went on to say how Ted Junior was overworked and needed a hand. Mr. Frank hoped his other son would start taking an interest in the operation of the plant. He envisioned that Noah would take care of managing the people and their problems, leaving Ted Junior to focus on production and marketing. This was a great fit for his two sons, according to the old man.
Noah would get double the amount of allowance he was getting now. In return he had to spend half a day at the plant for three days a week. The old man surmised that would be enough to carry out the tasks allocated to Noah. There was no option for getting the old allowance and not being involved in the plant. In short, Noah wouldn’t be able to live the retired life he was living right now.
Another clause gave Noah one vote in every big decision concerning the plant. This meant Ted Junior couldn’t do anything unilaterally. The old man had shackled him, to put it mildly.
Chamberlain and some other estate worker had witnessed the will. We didn’t know if it had been filed with his lawyers though. As expected, there was a small amount of money put aside for Crystal’s education provided she met certain conditions.
“Let’s take Crystal out of this,” I said and Stan agreed right away.
We sat stunned, processing the new information for a while. I needed some good hot coffee and I requested a pot.
“Is this good news or bad news?” Stan asked. “Any normal person would be happy about this.”
I told him we were talking about Noah.
“What’s your read on Noah?”
“You don’t think he would go for this, huh?” Stan wondered. “He gets double the money and a lot of power. Only a fool would give that up.”
“He wasn’t given a choice.”
The twist in all this was that Noah got all or nothing. He could take the old man’s offer or be on his own.
“This is a motive alright,” Stan said, scratching at his chin.
The door opened and Julie came in carrying a tray.
“Chamberlain fixed your coffee,” she told me.
I thanked her curtly and she didn’t linger. I took a big sip and picked up the conversation.
“Say Noah learned about this will. He saw his life falling apart. No more gadding about with Amanda while Junior’s slaving at the office, no more spending his days fishing on the lake, no more golfing on his private course…”
“We know he’s not eager to break a sweat,” Stan added. “He shoots the old man before he has a chance to put this new will into effect.”
“I’d say that’s a strong motive,” I agreed.
“What about Ted Junior?” Stan asked me. “He ran stuff by the old man but he’s pretty much the boss now. You think he would have enjoyed having Noah breathing down his neck?”
“You mean Ted Junior has an equally strong motive? We need to ask them about this new will.”
“Would you own up to knowing about this?” Stan was skeptical. “Admitting any knowledge of this will puts them both under suspicion.”
I told Stan it was his call. He decided to watch their reaction.
Noah came in and greeted us. He looked relaxed and a gentle smile rested on his face. Stan didn’t waste much time in bringing him up to speed.
Noah turned ashen and started to stutter. I had so not expected this reaction from him. If he was faking his surprise, he was in the wrong place. He could mint money in Hollywood.
“This is a total shock!” he exclaimed. “He had the last laugh after all.”
“What do you mean?” Stan asked.
“The old m
an went on and on about me taking my rightful place at the plant. He said things would be great after I joined the business. We all thought he was kidding.”
“So it’s not a surprise then?” Stan was disappointed.
“Yes and no,” Noah mumbled. “Can’t say he didn’t warn us. None of us thought he would go through with it. I thought he was doing it to get Junior see things his way.”
“This would have put an end to your cushy lifestyle.”
“Maybe not, Officer,” Noah said with a spark in his eye. “You can only go fishing so many times. It gets old.”
“Are you saying you actually wanted to go work at the plant?” I burst out.
“I’m not,” Noah said, holding up a hand. “That wily old man…he knew how to push my buttons.”
Stan and I were both equally agitated. Noah sighed.
“I might have done it. And I might actually have enjoyed it too.”
“Who would give up that kind of money?” Stan rolled his eyes. “Of course you wouldn’t have any choice in that situation.”
“It’s not the money,” Noah said softly. “This is an act of love. Don’t you see? The old man finally accepted me.”
“You were living here, weren’t you?” I demanded.
Opening your house to a stranger wasn’t easy. Even if you were related to that stranger by blood. My own struggles with Sally had brought home the fact for me.
“Have you seen the size of this house?” Noah asked. “Crystal lives here too. There could be ten more people living here and they wouldn’t cross paths with the old man.”
“The plant meant everything to him,” I nodded in understanding.
“Giving me a say in running the plant means a lot.”
My eyes met Stan’s and I shook my head. Stan must have made a big effort to hold back on any allegations. He let Noah go.
“That’s quite a change of heart,” Stan said sarcastically. “So what? He’s Slacker of the Year and suddenly he wants to put on some big boy clothes and go work in an office?”
“He was getting a lot of money,” I reminded Stan. “For doing practically nothing.”
“Do you buy this whole crap about love and acceptance?” Stan thundered. “I say he’s leading us on.”
