The Wilding Probate: A Bucky McCrae Adventure

by D. J. Butler

  “Locked,” I said. “I guess it locked behind you.”

  “Don’t you know any law at all, Becky McCrae?” Evil said. “This is an emergency, and I’m making a citizen’s arrest on this door.” He raised one Redwing-clad foot and smashed the door open in a single kick, ripping the deadbolt right through the wood.

  “You may not have the law quite right,” I told him, “but thank you.”

  The A-frame was tiny. Immediately behind the door there was a kitchen, with a table and two chairs. In the other wall opened a passage with a sleeping cubby on either side of it, ending in a warped white door. The door was open and I saw the tile of the bathroom. Just this side of the door was a ladder set into the wall leading up, so there must be a small loft above us—maybe a third sleeping space.

  “Phone’s on the counter,” Evil said, and he turned the knobs on the kitchen sink. The pipes groaned; brown water spat and bubbled from the faucet. The place had an odor of dust, old-and-mostly-faded body odor, and disintegrating pine that filled my head with visions of swarming spiders.

  “Yuck.”

  I picked up the phone, a flat, angular model the color of an old coffee drinker’s teeth. At least it got a dial tone. I noticed a big duffel bag on the table as I punched in Dad’s cell phone number. Its zipper was open, so I started poking through it.

  Dad picked up immediately. “James McCrae.”

  “Dad, it’s me.”

  “Where are you, kiddo?”

  I didn’t cry, because I wasn’t a little kid and I wasn’t hurt. But I’ll admit the sound of Dad’s voice made me feel a little misty. I opened the duffel wider and shoved my hands inside to distract myself. There was a semi-automatic pistol, a black Glock—probably the gun I’d seen Fellows carrying the day before in Dad’s office—and its shoulder holster. There were two more full magazines for the pistol; I could tell because Glock magazines have holes in the rear-facing surface, so you can see how many rounds they’re holding.

  Under the Glock and its magazines lay a big manila envelope.

  “I’m at Marilyn Wilding’s place,” I said.

  “Thank heaven,” he breathed. “How did you get there? Are you hurt? Thank her for me. Jeez, I’m going to have to give her some free labor for—”

  “Dad!” I cut him off. “I’m not in her house. I’m in…I don’t know, maybe an old hunting cabin on her property.”

  “I’ll call her,” he volunteered.

  “No, I don’t think we can trust her. Anyway, I’m not sure.”

  Silence for several long seconds. “What’s going on, Bucky?”

  Evil set a bottle of water in front of me. “Found these in the cupboard,” he whispered.

  Idly I opened the envelope, which was held closed only by a length of red string. I didn’t want to make Dad nervous, but I didn’t want to hide anything from him, either. “Dad, another man got shot.” Should I tell him that the shooter was Michael Fellows, the man he’d let into his office to be interviewed by his daughter? Better not, I decided. “Killed, on the Wilding place. I’m not sure what’s going on, and I don’t know whether Marilyn is involved.”

  “Becky,” he asked, “are you safe?”

  “No,” I laughed to try to make a joke of it, and my laugh surprised me by almost turning into a sob. Almost, but not quite. “But Evil’s here.” I grabbed the pistol from the duffel bag and felt more reassured than I’d imagined I would. “We’ll be okay.”

  “I’ll tell Sheriff Sutherland.”

  I sniffed the water and it smelled fine, so I took a sip. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I really was until suddenly I’d gulped the entire bottle. “No, Dad.”

  “Him too?”

  I set down the pistol and opened the envelope. Papers fell out, and the words at the top of the first page bellowed at me like a screamo front man:

  LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

  Under the title, the text started I, Aaron Wilding, being of sound mind and body… Aaron Wilding was written in by hand in shaky blue ink.

  “I’m not sure, Dad,” I said. “I have stuff I have to tell you, but I don’t know what’s going on yet.” My hands shook holding the will. “I think this has something to do with Aaron Wilding’s death. Or his property.” My breath came fast and shallow. I shoved the will back into the envelope, tucked it under my arm, and picked up the pistol again. “Right now, I need to get out of here.”

  Evil moved to the cabin door and stood pressed against the wall to keep out of view, peering outside.

  “Got it.” He considered. “Maybe I can drive into Marilyn’s driveway and make up a reason to talk to her…about the court filing. You can sneak into the car.”

  “Dad,” I said. “I have the will.”

  “What? Bucky, are you saying you took it from the office? What’s going on?”

  “No. I…” It was too complicated to try to explain, and I only had guesses. I didn’t know whether the copy of the will Michael Fellows had was the one Dad apparently hadn’t been able to find in his files. It might be a different will entirely. It might be older, or more recent. And anyway, I imagined Dad stepping out of his Taurus in Marilyn’s driveway and getting shot by Michael Fellows. “It’s too much to try to explain. And I have a better idea. You go park at the marina, and we’ll come find you.”

  “That’s a bit of a hike.”

  “Yeah, it is.” My feet ached at the thought. “And Dad, you better drive the long way around. And be sure no one’s following you.”

  “Got you. It’ll be an hour and a half, then.”

  “Yep. And Dad, do you have FindMe?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I’ll see you in an hour and a half.”

  “Rebecca?”

  “Yeah, Dad?”

  “I’m proud of you. You can do this. You’re going to be fine.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” I laughed a little, and felt lighter. “You too.”

  I hung up the phone.

  “Psst!” Evil hissed, stepping back from the door.

  “What is it?”

  “The shooter is back. He’s coming this way.”

  I cursed mentally. “We can kill him when he comes in the door.”

  Evil raised one eyebrow at me. “Are you ready to do that?”

  “No,” I admitted. “But if it’s necessary—”

  “If it’s necessary,” Evil cut in, “I’ll shoot the son of a bitch. Killing a man’s gonna look funny on your law school applications, even if it is justifiable homicide.” He held out his hand and I gave him the pistol. He was right. He was probably a better shot than me, too, and frankly, I wasn’t sure I could trust myself to pull the trigger.

  “The loft,” I said, and pointed. Before Evil could say anything else, I scooted up the slats of the built-in ladder. The sleeping cubbies were useless as hiding places, just bare flat holes a hunter could throw a sleeping bag into, and the bathroom was no better. At least from the top we could get the drop on him if we had to.

  Of course, we’d have to. We had his gun, and Evil had smashed the door open. He’d know we were here.

  “The gun,” I whispered. “Put it back.”

  The loft was formed by two-by-eights nailed as planks across more two-by-eights as rafters. I stretched flat on it, sending up billows of dust.

  “Too late,” Evil hissed, lying down next to me with both hands on the pistol grip. “Besides, he won’t know when I took it exactly. I might have taken the pistol when I escaped from the bathtub.”

  That was when I realized I was still holding the will. I bit back a curse just as the door banged open.

  I didn’t dare peek, and I didn’t dare move. I lay still and listened to the little cabin creak as Fellows stepped inside.

  “Damn,” he said.

  The two bottles of water. I kicked myself mentally. He knew we’d been here.

  I heard the soft click of icons being tapped on a phone, then a pause.

  “You really should stay away,” Fellows said. Talkin
g to someone on his phone. “People are dropping dead around here, and the dying isn’t finished. Not…quite yet.”

  It seemed impossible that Michael Fellows couldn’t hear my heart, it was pounding so loud. I breathed slowly through my mouth, to avoid any sniffing sound.

  “I don’t know how much they know,” Fellows said into the phone, “but there are two witnesses. Loose ends, and I’ll tie them up. Not that you care.”

  During a pause I looked at Evil. He lay flat on his belly with both hands on the stolen pistol. His eyes showed the tight focus of concentration. He looked as if he was lying in wait for a deer, and that made me feel a little better.

  “It’s better that I don’t tell you who. But I’ll take care of them. They have the old will, so I’ll get that back from them.”

  What did Michael Fellows mean by the old will?

  I looked at Evil and arched an eyebrow. I meant it to be quizzical, but he just winked at me.

  “No, it’s not her problem. I keep telling you to keep her out of this, keep her ignorant, don’t bring her here. I’ll do what needs to be done.”

  It took a real effort not to gulp.

  “If she keeps pushing, tell her bears in swimming suits want her to stay away.”

  Huh? I tried to remember…hadn’t Charlie Herbert said a similar thing?

  But no, Charlie had muttered something about bears and balloons. If I’d even heard him right in the first place. Maybe bears in pantaloons? But swimming suits weren’t pantaloons, either.

  “Just stay away. I’ll call you.”

  Fellows knew we had the will. That meant he had looked inside his duffel, which meant he also knew we had taken his pistol. I imagined him pointing the rifle at me through the cheap plywood of the loft, and it took a real effort not to raise my head and peek.

  Instead, I turned and looked at Evil again. He still looked cool and focused.

  I took a slow, deep, silent breath.

  I heard the soft bang of a shutting door. I was about to sit up, but Evil grabbed my wrist, then motioned me with a finger to wait a minute.

  I waited at least a minute, but it seemed like ten. I just watched Evil and waited, and then he lurched forward to the edge of the loft, pistol first.

  “He’s gone.”

  My soft, controlled breathing exploded into a noisy puff.

  “Did you hear all that?” I asked.

  Evil nodded. “That guy wants us dead.”

  “There was more to what he said than that,” I objected.

  “Yeah, but that’s the piece I cared about.” Evil crept down the ladder and peered out the windows. “His car’s gone.”

  “We have to find out what’s going on. And we have to warn…people, I don’t know. Dad.”

  “We have to get to safety. And right now, that means the marina. Which is a long hike, and we just lost ten minutes to playing hide and seek with a hitman, so we’d better get started.”

  Evil was right. I folded up the will and shoved it in my jeans pocket. Which will was it? Was it, after all, the will Dad had on file in his office? Or some other will?

  Had the men who had broken into Dad’s office—Michael Fellows and the other one, who was still a mystery—been after the will? And had Michael beat the other fellow to it, or were they in cahoots? And what had Charlie Herbert been doing there? And who was Michael Fellows working for?

  Evil snapped his fingers in front of my eyes. “You’ve got your thinking face on,” he said. “Ordinarily, I don’t object. But right now, we need to have our running and hiding faces.”

  “Yep,” I agreed. “Let’s go.”

  Evil led the way, and we headed north. The marina was a collection of docks on the Millard J. Fillmore Reservoir, where a few people kept boats and more people dragged boats up behind their trucks, to go fishing, waterskiing, or just boating. It was several miles’ hike, and not on level ground.

  We’d meet Dad, I’d tell him what happened, and we’d plan.

  Just as I was telling myself that, we crossed an asphalt drive. I stopped.

  “Evil,” I said, “aren’t we still on the Wilding property?”

  “Yep.” He nodded, but his eyes moved constantly in a circle around us, watching. “We haven’t hit the barbed wire on the other side yet.”

  “The driveway must go out the other side of the property, right?” I pointed. “West? So what’s this?”

  Evil shrugged. “A private road. It ain’t illegal to put in your own road on your own property.”

  “Aren’t you curious?”

  “Sure. I also want to avoid getting shot.”

  “This kind of heads our direction.” I turned right and walked along the asphalt. “Let’s just see where it goes.”

  “Bucky,” Evil snorted, following. “This may not be the right time.”

  He was right, of course. But I was sick of running away, and sick of having my hand forced. I wanted to be the hunter for once, not the prey. “Something’s going on up here, and I want to find out what. Besides, Fellows went the other way, right? So unless he suddenly goes off-road with that Corolla of his, he’s nowhere near us. Just keep an eye behind us in case he doubles back.”

  The thought of him doubling back made me uncomfortable, so I picked up the pace. That hurt, but I could survive an awful lot of bruised feet and strained ankles. The feeling of being on the chase was exhilarating.

  “Doggone it, Bucky,” Evil puffed on my heels, “you’re not supposed to run toward danger.”

  The road didn’t go far. It wound down a slope and then up a hill and stopped, in about ten minutes’ walk, in front of a little house. One of those one-bedroom, pre-fab kind of houses, that you buy from the company and it just comes out and drops the house on your lot in an afternoon. A kit, and one that had been assembled here years ago, judging by the deep sag of the porch. The house was painted the same bleached shade of yellow as the tall autumn grass.

  There was no car parked in front, no number on the door, no mailbox.

  “Bucky—”

  “Fellows isn’t here.” I stepped onto the porch.

  “But you don’t know who is.” Evil quick-stepped to get in front of me, took one last look around from the porch, and then tried the door handle.

  It turned, and he let himself in. I followed.

  The interior smelled like stale sweat but it was neat, mostly because there wasn’t much in there. A single ratty La-Z-Boy by one of the windows and two bookshelves built of cinder blocks and long planks made up the entire furniture of the front room. The shelves were packed with worn paperbacks. I didn’t recognize all the titles, but the ones I knew were science fiction: Dune, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Empire of Silence, and so on.

  “A nerd lives here,” I said. “And he lives alone.”

  “Could be a woman,” Evil shot back. “Don’t be sexist.”

  “Could be, but I’m just playing the odds.” I picked up several of the books and looked inside them. They all had the same name penciled on the inside front cover in a ragged, loopy-looking hand. “And look at that, I win. This is Charlie Herbert’s house.”

  “That’s the guy who got shot in your Dad’s office last night.”

  I nodded and kept looking around.

  Two-thirds of the little house comprised a single space, shaped like an L. The front of that space was the Spartan living room, and the back was a kitchenette. The cupboards were full of beans and canned soup. A dish drainer on the countertop held a couple of bowls and some silverware.

  In the window over the kitchen sink was a single plant. I stared at it.

  “That,” Evil said, “is marijuana. Skunk. Pot. Grass. Reefer. Burrito. Broccoli. Hash.”

  “Broccoli?” I asked. “Really?”

  Evil nodded. “Mary Jane. Stinkweed. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “I just haven’t seen it in real life. In pictures…you know.” Dad had represented plenty of kids, and adults too, busted for possession ov
er the years. I’d been offered a joint once or twice, but I’d never taken it. I’d even seen marijuana as a processed product, ready to smoke but balled up in the sheriff’s evidence bags, but I’d never seen an actual growing plant.

  “Huh. Funny life you lead, Becky McCrae.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?”

  I poked around in the rest of the building, but there wasn’t much else to see. A bedroom with a single, tiny, sagging bed, and a bathroom with a toilet and shower. All of it not particularly clean.

  Out the window in the kitchen’s back door, by accident, I caught a glimpse of something more interesting.

  “What do you make of that?” I asked Evil, pointing.

  He looked. “There’s another road. And a truck.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Another road, not the same road. This house isn’t on a single road, it has two roads that lead to it.”

  “Weird.”

  “Or one road that leads to it, and one that leads away.” As I said it, I tried to digest what it might mean.

  Evil stepped into the bedroom to look out the window there. “Want to hear something even weirder?”

  “Why are you teasing me?” I joined him to look.

  He pointed out the window. A fence ran from the side of the house out a hundred feet or more to a rock wall. “What do you make of that?” he asked.

  I thought about it. “This house isn’t on a road,” I said. “This house blocks the road. It’s like a gate. It stops you from going any further, unless you get out, and switch vehicles to that truck back there.”

  “There’s something down that road,” Evil suggested. He’s not dumb, Evil Patten.

  “And Charlie Herbert was the gatekeeper. Whatever’s down that road, to get there you had to pass Charlie.”

  “Or maybe he was the only one who was supposed to go there. He wasn’t all that scary, as guards go.”

  I nodded, trying to remember what Charlie had said, when I’d nearly shot him at the Fun Lanes. Something about trailers…he’d gone to the wrong trailer, he’d said.

  “Would you call this building a trailer?” I asked Evil.

  He stared at me. “Nope. This is a house.”

  “What about that cabin? The A-frame?”