Fortunately, it was all laid out clearly. Omar had left half of his estate to his brother. He had left a generous amount to Marissa and some of his other longtime employees. The rest was to be divided among Gretchen, Pippa, Federico, and Mitchell.
Aside from being blown away by the magnitude of Omar’s wealth, nothing else here surprised me.
In fact, I was about to close the folder and put it back where I’d found it when one last thing caught my eye. Stuck in back was a single piece of lined loose-leaf paper, the kind with holes punched along the sides. On it was a single paragraph, handwritten in a script that looked similar to the one used to write all the other notes I’d spotted on Omar’s desk.
“I, Omar DeVane, revoke all previously executed wills and codicils . . . ,” it began.
I checked to see if he’d written a date.
Sure enough: there it was, right on top. August 1. Just a few days earlier. And just a few days before he had been killed.
My mouth was dry as I started reading again.
“I leave my entire estate, including all my business and personal holdings, to the Omar DeVane Foundation . . .”
I gasped. I knew exactly what I had just found. In my trembling hands I was holding a new version of a will that Omar had been working on at the time he was murdered, one designed to replace his earlier will. And instead of dividing his fortune among the people around him, once death was imminent he had decided to leave everything to charity by way of his foundation.
I suddenly understood why a dying man had been murdered. Omar had been killed in order to prevent him from changing his will.
My head was spinning. It looked as if I had been correct in my belief that his murderer had been one of the people closest to him.
And that person’s motive had been greed.
I hurried over to the copier, switched it on, and made a copy of Omar’s handwritten revision to his will. I checked the copy to make sure that everything had been printed clearly—especially the date. Then I tucked the original back into the folder and put it back in the drawer.
The person who had pushed me down the stairs and locked me in had undoubtedly been trying to scare me away from the investigation of Omar DeVane’s murder. Instead, that individual had done me a huge favor by bringing me one giant step closer to discovering his or her identity.
* * *
“I’m surprised you got into Omar’s studio, since this part of the house is always kept locked,” Marissa said as she unlocked the door and freed me from my glamorous basement prison.
“That’s funny,” I replied. “The door was unlocked.”
“But what surprises me even more is the fact that you got locked in once you were down there,” she added.
Another shrug. “I guess the door locked automatically when I closed it,” I said. Ignoring the puzzled look on her face, I casually asked, “Do you know who has a copy of the key besides you, Marissa?”
Marissa frowned. “Federico, certainly. Mitchell, too. But aside from those two, I have no idea who else Omar gave the keys to.”
The image of Gretchen draped across the couch a few days earlier, holding a long silver nail file, popped into my head. I’d seen enough spy movies to know that when it came to picking locks, nail files were the number-one tool of choice.
It occurred to me that there was someone else who had the keys, too. And that was Marissa.
She was the housekeeper, after all.
The idea that she might actually belong on my list of suspects was one I’d never taken seriously. But just as I’d seen plenty of spy movies, I’d also read tons of murder mysteries. And in the classic tales, it was always the butler who did it.
* * *
Once I was home, I realized I should tell someone about what had happened that afternoon. After all, the fact that someone might have been trying to kill me, or at least inflict serious bodily harm, was worth mentioning.
But I didn’t think that someone should be Emma. The last thing I wanted was for my teenaged niece to start worrying about her wayward aunt. As for Grams, she was even lower on the list of people I wanted losing sleep over my sleuthing-related activities.
That left Jake.
Right after dinner, just as I was getting ready to call him, I heard a footstep on the creaky front porch. It was heavy enough to sound definitively male. It seemed the man had saved me the trouble of phoning him.
I figured that Digger must recognize his smell by now, since the scruffy little ball of fire was standing with his nose pressed against the door, wagging his tail wildly.
Which is why I was shocked when I threw open the door and found Brody standing in front of me.
“Brody!” I cried. “What a surprise!”
“A good surprise, I hope,” he said, grinning. He thrust out a stack of shiny bags printed with pictures of mountains and pine trees. “I brought us some snacks.”
I had gotten over my surprise enough to hope that he’d brought something sweet and tasty, snacks that would go well with ice cream. That, of course, was always my first priority when it came to anything edible.
Brody crouched down to give Digger a good head-scratching as I looked through the packages.
“Oh, yum!” I said, swallowing hard. “Peanut-and-Dried-Cranberry Quinoa Fuel Bars!”
“There are protein balls there, too,” he pointed out enthusiastically. “And fruit leather. No sugar added, of course. And there’s salmon jerky!”
Could I ever be serious about a man whose idea of a snack is a protein ball? I wondered.
But then Brody abandoned Digger, coming over to plant a kiss on my cheek. At the same time, he gave my shoulder a little squeeze.
“It’s so nice to see you again, Kate,” he said softly, practically whispering in my ear.
Okay, so maybe snacks weren’t the most important thing in a relationship.
“I should put these into bowls,” I said, even though I wasn’t quite sure if foodstuffs like these belonged in a bowl. Surely the people who liked this kind of thing didn’t eat out of serving dishes. They were more likely to cram this so-called snack into their mouths straight from the bag as they fought the white waters of the Colorado River or kicked snow off their boots at the top of Mount Everest.
And I certainly had no idea about the proper way to serve salmon jerky. Perhaps on a silver tray lined with paper doilies?
But before I had a chance to consult Martha Stewart’s web site on that issue, there was another knock at the door.
No, I thought, my heart sinking. It couldn’t be happening. Not again.
Sure enough, when I opened the front door as tentatively as if Freddy Krueger was my next-door neighbor, there was Jake. He, too, was bearing gifts.
“I brought you some fancy hot fudge I found in a gourmet market!” he greeted me, proudly holding up a glass jar. “It’s guaranteed not to be as good as yours, but I thought you might be interested in keeping an eye on what the competition is up to.”
Jake definitely won that one.
But as soon as he stepped inside and saw that Brody had already marked this territory, the air became so charged with electricity that I was surprised my hair didn’t stand up.
And I’m not talking about good electricity, the kind that makes toasters—and ice cream makers—run. I’m talking about the kind that means that trouble is a-brewin’.
Every muscle in Brody’s body seemed to grow tense as he glanced up at the man he clearly thought of as an interloper.
“You again,” Jake said under his breath.
“Funny, I was about to say the same thing,” Brody shot back.
Digger was the only one who was pleased about what was happening here. Ecstatic, in fact, leaping around gleefully and barking and generally acting as if two six-foot strips of rawhide had just entered the room.
It was definitely time to call for backup.
“Emma!” I yelled, my voice edged with hysteria. “Could you please come down here?”
A
second later, I heard her bedroom door open. My niece came trotting down the stairs with a sketch pad under her arm, her halo of curly black-and-blue hair pulled back into a haphazard ponytail. She froze when she saw that, once again, we had a bit of a situation on our hands.
“My goodness!” she cried with forced cheerfulness. “Jake! Brody! How nice to see you both again!”
“I’m going to get some bowls,” I said, dashing toward the kitchen.
But of course I couldn’t stay in there forever. Not without some excellent excuse that, at the moment, I was much too flustered to think up.
So I had no choice but to go into the living room with my mouth-watering offerings: dried fish, dried apricots, and cold quinoa with protein powder. Digger was underfoot the whole time, sniffing the air hungrily and poking his nose around the coffee table. He was obviously a much bigger fan of dehydrated food products than I was.
“We’ll have ice cream later,” I reassured everyone as I set the bowls down.
“I imagine that Brody can’t stay very long,” Jake commented. “Someone in the adventure industry probably has to get up really early. I imagine that sunrise hikes are a big part of that business.”
“They are,” Brody replied, grabbing a handful of that peanut-and-quinoa thing and gulping it down. “But aren’t cows famous for needing to be milked super early in the morning?”
“I don’t actually milk the cows myself,” Jake retorted. “I have people to do that.”
“Ah,” Brody said. “And here I thought milkmaid was no longer a viable career path.”
Emma and I exchanged nervous glances. Even Chloe, curled up on the window seat, seemed to be wearing a tense expression. This was going to be a long night.
Unless one of us did something. Fast.
“Let’s play Trivial Pursuit again!” I said. “That was so much fun.”
Jake glanced at me warily. “I really don’t think—”
“That’s a great idea,” Emma agreed. Her eyes were shining in a way I wasn’t sure I liked as she added, “Only this time, let’s do things a little differently. Let’s play the girls against the boys.”
Alarms went off my head as loudly as if I’d just burned a pan of chocolate brownies and the smoke alarm went berserk.
“Emma,” I said, “I don’t know if that’s such a great idea.”
“Sure it is!” she insisted. She’d already pulled the game off the shelf. Before I could suggest that she and I talk in the other room, she was setting it up, this time on the dining room table.
“Jake, Brody, come on over and take a seat,” she insisted in an impressively no-nonsense voice. “The boys’ team can even go first.”
Reluctantly, the two men pulled themselves out of their seats and shuffled over to the next room. I had no choice but to do the same, bringing along a couple of bowls of snacks.
“Brody, why don’t you go first, since you’re the new guy in town,” Emma said as soon as we’d all sat down at the table.
“Sure.” He picked up the dice, threw them, and moved his team’s marker to a pink square.
“Pink!” Emma cried. “That’s the Entertainment category. I’ll read out the questions, Kate, if you don’t mind.”
“Be my guest,” I replied. Frankly, I was happy to have as little to do with this misadventure as possible.
“I never know the answers to the Entertainment questions,” Jake mumbled, looking sullen.
“Me, either,” Brody added, his level of enthusiasm just as low.
“Okay,” she said, peering at the card. “Here’s the question: Who played the lead role in the 1986 movie Aliens?”
“I didn’t see that movie,” Brody said.
“Me, either,” Jake said.
“Come on, guys,” Emma prompted. “You have to give me an answer.”
“Hey, I think it was that dark-haired actress,” Jake said.
“Which one?” Brody demanded. “There’s only like a hundred of those.”
“She has a funny name,” Jake said.
“Great,” Brody muttered. “That’s really helpful.”
“I think she was in Ghostbusters,” Jake said. “But, darn, I still can’t remember her name.”
“Give up?” I asked, feeling I needed to contribute something.
Jake leaned back in his chair and did a man-spread thing, suddenly taking up more than his share of room at the table. “Yeah, we give up.”
“I didn’t give up yet,” Brody said sharply.
“I thought you said you didn’t know,” Jake challenged.
“I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to give up already,” Brody said. “We should at least guess.”
“Okay, guess.”
“Uh, Jodie Foster?”
Jake glared at him. “She doesn’t have dark hair.”
“Nobody said the star of Aliens had dark hair.”
“I distinctly remember that she had dark hair,” Jake insisted. “I can picture the movie posters.”
“Fine,” Brody shot back. “Then, I don’t know, Debra Winger.”
“No way was it Debra Winger!”
“Maybe we should have a time limit,” I suggested. Either that or start passing around antacids.
“Let’s just say Debra Winger so we can move on,” Brody said.
“Fine,” Jake grumbled. “Whatever.”
“So your answer is Debra Winger?” Emma said.
“Yeah,” the two men mumbled.
“The answer is Sigourney Weaver,” she told them.
“There’s the funny name,” Brody grumbled.
“I told you I never get these,” Jake said.
“Yeah, me either,” Brody added.
“Our turn!” I said brightly.
The girls’ team also landed on pink. But Emma and I both knew immediately that the planet Superman came from was Krypton.
“That’s an easy one,” Jake complained.
“I thought yours was pretty easy, too,” I told him, letting my irritation show.
“Everybody knows Superman is from Krypton,” Brody declared.
I cast a look at Emma that said, “Tell me again why we’re doing this . . . ?”
She and I got the next question wrong. Our green Science and Nature question was, How many of the planets in our solar systems have moons? Neither of us knew the right answer. For future reference, the answer is six.
It was the boys’ team’s turn again. This time, they ended up on an Arts and Literature square.
“I never get these either,” Jake said.
“This is an easy one,” Emma insisted as she glanced at the card. “What was British novelist C. S. Lewis’s full name?”
“Never heard of him,” Brody said with a sigh.
“I have,” Jake said. “He wrote those Narnia books.”
“Oh, yeah?” Brody said. “I liked those. When I was a kid, I mean.”
“Me, too,” Jake agreed. “But I have no idea was his name was.”
“We should guess.”
“I know: his full name was Debra Winger Lewis.”
Even though the two men had barely made eye contact up to this point, Brody looked over at Jake long enough to glare at him.
“Your answer?” Emma prompted.
“Charles Steven Lewis,” Jake guessed.
“That’s not what I was going to say,” Brody insisted.
“Oh, yeah? So what’s your answer?”
“He was English, so how about Cecil Something?”
“Cecil ‘Something’?” Jake repeated scornfully. “You think that’s better than Charles Steven?”
“Not ‘Something,’ ” Brody shot back. “I’m just saying if he was British, maybe his name was Cecil. I have no idea what his middle name was.”
“I’m thinking we need to have a time limit,” I suggested once again.
“I’m starting to agree,” Emma said. “So what’s your answer? ”
“Cecil Steven,” Brody said at the same time Jake said, “
Charles Steven.”
“I’m afraid both answers are incorrect,” Emma said. “C. S. Lewis’s full name was Clive Staples Lewis.”
Our turn again. We got Literature, and I knew that the musical instrument Sherlock Holmes played was the violin. Then we got Science again and struck out on what atmospheric layer lies between the troposphere and the mesosphere. (Answer: stratosphere. We should have been able to guess that one.)
“Your turn again,” Emma said, handing over the dice.
Jake scooped them up and rolled them half-heartedly.
“Orange!” Emma announced. “That’s Sports and Leisure.” She picked up a card. “This is a tough one, but let’s give it a try. Ready? How many Super Bowls have the Denver Broncos won?”
“I sure am glad we didn’t get that one,” I commented.
But no one seemed to be listening to me.
“They won in 2016, that’s for sure,” Jake said.
“Defeated the Carolina Panthers 24 to 10,” Brody added.
“Really?” I said. “Guys remember this stuff?”
“That was some game,” Brody said. “Peyton Manning at his best.”
“He was a quarterback, right?” Emma asked, blinking her eyes innocently.
Jake snorted. “Only one of the best ever.”
“His stats at Super Bowl 26 were almost identical to John Elway’s first Super Bowl win,” Brody noted.
“And of course the Broncos won two consecutive Super Bowls in 1998 and 1999,” Jake said.
“Right,” Brody agreed. “In 1998 they won against the Green Bay Packers, and in 1999 they defeated the Atlanta Falcons.”
“Go, Broncos!” Emma exclaimed. “So . . . what’s your final answer?”
The two men looked at each other. “Three,” they said simultaneously.
“So your answer is three?” Emma said. “Jake? Brody? You both agree on that?”
“Yup, three,” Brody said.
“Yeah, three,” Jake seconded.
“That’s right!” Emma announced, slapping the card down on the table.
“Hey, we finally got one!” Brody cried. “Good job!”
“You, too!” Jake returned.
When the two of them high-fived each other, I nearly fell off my chair. I glanced over at Emma and saw the triumphant look in her eyes. It had turned out that my clever niece had known exactly what she was doing.
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