Janet looked at the limo. “It’s time to circle the wagons.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Andy wasn’t the only one who failed Beth,” Janet said forlornly as she stared out the window of her home office, unable to distract herself with work as usual. Once again, she had not been able to sleep. She had tiptoed out of their bedroom shortly before five a.m., thinking she would knock out the work she’d brought home and have the rest of the day for Ellen. It was almost nine o’clock, and she had done nothing but stare.
“What did you say, sweetie?” Ellen stood in the kitchen, packing a cooler before their usual round of golf on Sunday morning. She knew they would both be off their game, but doing something mundane and routine seemed very necessary in the days following Beth’s death and funeral.
“I failed Beth.” Janet rocked slightly in her swivel chair. “I feel as though I lost Melody all over again, only this time it’s permanent with no outside chance of reconciliation. I know I shouldn’t process it that way, but it’s how I feel.” She looked toward the kitchen.
Ellen left the cooler on the floor and closed the door to the refrigerator.
“I’m guilty of the same as Andy.” They talked to the boys throughout the night of the funeral, and it all came back to the same shared regrets. “I had a bad feeling about Lou from the start, and I didn’t try hard enough to prevent Beth from getting in too deep too quick.”
“Now wait a minute, sweetie. Don’t do this to yourself again. How old was Beth then?”
“Thirty-four.” It took Janet only a moment to do the math—Beth had been twenty years younger than her, and Beth had met Lou the spring after the Dolly Parton party.
“She was old enough to make her own choices and old enough not to listen to any of us. You talked to Beth about going slow with any relationship. I talked to Lou about treating Beth right. Andy and I talked to Beth when they decided to move in together. What more could any of us have done?”
“You just had to invite Lou to that damn bonfire when you knew I wanted Beth there for her first party with all the girls.”
Ellen walked over to the doorway. “Whoa, let’s slow this runaway down.”
The telephone rang, creating a much needed break in their conversation. Janet answered and listened. “No, I’m not interested in contributing to the Fraternal Order of Police. You shouldn’t start this conversation by telling me you’re a state trooper and trying to scare the crap out of me.” She slammed the handset down, then looked at the telephone thoughtfully. “Have you checked for messages lately? We’ve been out or at the boys’ most of this past week. So many of the girls are in town because of the funeral, I bet we’ve missed someone.” She picked up the handset. “Yep, I hear clicks. We’ve probably pissed someone off without realizing it.” She punched through to their mailbox.
Ellen couldn’t care less, but she was grateful for the distraction. She was worried about Janet.
“Gayle wants to know if we stay in bed all the time. When we come up for air, give her a call if it’s before Saturday. Oh, well.” Janet cleared the message.
“The boys, calling to see if we made it home okay. Greg’s on his way to e-mail, so you’ll see it and let them know.”
“I did.”
Janet cleared the second message. “Only one more.” Her face froze in horror as she listened. “Oh, no. It’s Beth, on the day before her accident.” Janet stared at the telephone as she heard the message. Her eyes widened and filled with tears. She looked at Ellen slack-jawed.
Ellen started to ask a question but was silenced by Janet holding up her shaking hand.
“What were you doing that Friday that was so damn important you couldn’t answer the telephone?”
“Most likely mowing the yard…outside…where I wouldn’t hear the telephone.” Ellen felt her defenses rising and knew they were sidetracking themselves.
Janet’s face had taken on a gray pallor that frankly scared Ellen. She’d never seen her this way and suddenly feared a heart attack or stroke.
Janet could not take her eyes off the telephone as though Beth was somehow inside with the message. She punched the speaker phone button that she normally used with the office and hit the asterisk and eight to replay the message. She rolled back from the desk as though distance from the speaker would make the message easier to hear.
Beth’s voice came on the line, shaking with emotion.
“I guess you’re not home yet, Janet, and Ellen is doing her usual ignoring the telephone. I heard them, Janet, I heard them talking about what it would take to be together. Lou and Patti. It’s all been a sham. I don’t care about me anymore, but oh, my God, Janet, they were trying to figure out how to be rid of Will and me so they wouldn’t lose any of the cash or real estate. Both of us. Both of us. I promised Keith to look after Will.”
The line went dead and the mechanical voice repeated itself. “One saved message from Friday, April 28, at 3:14 p.m.”
The women stared at each other.
“I hate that goddamn message service. I’m buying an old-fashioned machine with a tape and a blinking light.” Janet ripped the telephone loose from the cord and threw it across the room toward Ellen.
“Hold on just a minute. Don’t direct this at me.”
“Don’t say it. Don’t say anything. I don’t want to hear you reason us out of this.” Janet was, as Ellen’s mother used to say, beside herself.
“Honey—”
“Don’t, don’t, don’t.” Janet put her hands over her ears. “I didn’t make her understand that Lou was completely wrong for her. I made jokes about how horrible ‘spineless Will’ and ‘snake Patti’ were. I knew Beth was struggling with Keith’s death. I heard Will torment her about Lou. My dumb ass sat there and told her that Lou seemed sincere, and she ought to give Lou and Will another chance. I let her keep going back to that damn house when I knew part of it was that she didn’t have an agreement or contract to get herself out of that place solvent. She still loved Lou. How Lou used that. I know the signs. I’ve been trained to recognize abuse of all kinds. I knew Beth was in bad shape. I knew those women were capable of anything.” Janet stared at Ellen. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
Neither of them wanted to be the first to say it aloud.
“Don’t cancel the service until you record that last message.”
“We have a tape recorder at the office we use for conference call transcriptions. I’ll do it from the office tomorrow.”
“Let’s run over there now. I can make duplicates here, but I want to be sure we have that message saved on tape and CD.”
Janet nodded in agreement. Her voice sounded very far away when she spoke next. “They killed her. They killed her, and I have to figure out what to do about it.” She reached for a fresh legal pad as a reflex.
“Beth said ‘be rid of.’” Ellen reminded her. “And we have to figure this out.”
“They killed her. You know it as well as me. Beth called me to save her. I missed her cry for help. I could have prevented what happened that Saturday. How in the hell do I live with that the rest of my life?”
Ellen shook her head slowly.
Chapter Nineteen
Janet’s former boss, and the county’s commonwealth attorney, Ben Richards, agreed with Ellen about the semantics of Beth’s message. This did nothing to improve Janet’s mood.
“The shelf is not crooked,” Janet mumbled to herself. She straightened the row of handmade figurines that she had collected during jaunts into the surrounding counties exploring craft fairs. The small, delicate birds appeared to be listening for something as they listed to one side. They gradually moved forward on the shelf when she wasn’t looking, from her footsteps across the floor.
“I’m telling you, the board is not level. All you had to do was wait for me to help you, and I would have put it on the wall correctly.” Ellen’s voice carried up the stairwell from the basement.
“How many GD years would I have had to wait
for that effort to take place?” Janet clenched her hands at her sides, forcing herself not to take each bird from the shelf and hurl it across the room.
“Let’s check it to be sure.” Ellen walked into the room with a two-foot carpenter’s level.
“What’s that?” Janet felt the rage building within herself. She regretted saying anything about the shelf and the lack of Ellen’s carpentry expertise after she became impatient and hung it herself. Whether it was hormones or schizophrenia, she didn’t know, and at this point, didn’t care. Her hands went to her hips as she began to formulate her defense for whatever Ellen said.
Ellen eased around her to the wall and placed the level along the front edge of the shelf, then back to front. “My eye is no good for something like this. The way the house has settled, I don’t trust measuring from the ceiling or the floor.” She nodded toward the bright yellow bar. “See, if the bubble was exactly in the middle it would be balanced and the shelf level. I’ll fix it for you, sweetie, next time I’m here by myself. Don’t want any of those slipping off and breaking.” She kissed Janet’s cheek and went to the den.
Janet looked about her office that had last been used as a teenager’s bedroom before she and Ellen bought the house in 1983. She breathed in and released a deep sigh. Her mood was not Ellen’s fault. She kept bringing work home and not doing any of it while more piled up at the office. She kept enough insurance in place to practice law from home as needed and as agreed to by her business partner. She liked being able to help friends with minor, but necessary, wills and powers of attorney without having to go through the overhead of the firm. It didn’t help her workload that Beth’s death had nudged several of the girls into finally wanting their last wishes in writing. “Where did all this crap come from?”
Janet began to shuffle piles around, straightening papers and adding more to stacks. She finally sat down at the Singer cabinet that held her computer and sighed again.
Ellen stopped in the hallway while en route from den to kitchen. “Sweetie, what in the world is wrong? Do you need to get out for a while? I’ll drive you if you don’t feel like it. I know you took something for your sinus headache and should be groggy by now,” she said the last to herself. Ellen would drive Janet to the office and walk her to the front door if it would help her mood.
“It’s not that. I can use a day here to catch up on things. My raccoon headache is better than it was early this morning.” She rubbed her eyes and cheekbones.
“You can’t get Beth off your mind, can you?” Ellen gauged Janet’s reaction. “The last straw is being her executrix, isn’t it?
Janet nodded. “I’m so sorry for being such a bitch to you lately. How do you put up with me?”
“Years of practice,” Ellen said. She had known all along that Janet wasn’t angry with her. She was just a convenient punching bag, something they each had to do for the other at times. “May I come in?”
Janet nodded. “Damn Ben for not doing anything with that phone message.”
“Sweetie, he didn’t have much choice.”
“I know. I’m the friggin’ attorney, and you have a better grasp of the law about this than I do.”
“Don’t you hate it? I owe it all to Court TV.” Ellen leaned over the chair and hugged her.
“If you pat my back, I’ll slug you.” Tears rolled down Janet’s face. She was so damned frustrated with all of it. She knew—and she now had the burden of proof of that knowledge—that something was not right about Beth’s death. It was as though Beth had forewarned her in the hospital; that in itself creeped Janet out. “You’re being so nice about everything. Now I feel as though I’ve let you down as a partner. That damn Lou.”
Ellen stood back and raised her eyebrows questioningly.
“She lied to me. You know how I detest that. She asked me to talk to Beth since Beth was so depressed. Lou was trying to set me up to be part of something. That’s why she was in such a state of shock at the hospital.” Janet paused to think.
“If Lou thought she could manipulate you, she was sadly mistaken.” Ellen stood and looked at the shelf again. “I’ll fix it for you now while we talk.”
Janet slammed her fist against her desk. “Something went wrong with whatever Lou’s plan was. I know it also involves that bitch Patti.” Janet visibly fumed as she waited for Ellen to return with her toolbox.
“If anyone can figure out what happened and hold Lou and Patti answerable, it’ll be you. Don’t overthink it. Gather your evidence and think through it all as one of your puzzles. I’ll help you and so will the boys. Between all of us, we’ll nail those bitches.” Ellen carefully set each bird away from the work area.
Janet reached for the mouse to bring the computer out of hibernation. “You’re a dear to give up part of your baseball game, your precious Yankees. Finish that later, honey. I’m all right now. I’m going to revisit Beth’s e-mails and check if I missed something between the lines. If there’s more to know, Beth left me a map somewhere, I just have to find it.” Janet reached for her rainbow frame reading glasses. “Victor/Victoria indeed.”
Janet had to admit that she loved her computer and the Internet, not that she understood any but a small operational part of it. To think that all that information and ability to communicate was at her fingertips through a keyboard was amazing to her. She had caught herself at the grocery store reading the computer magazine covers instead of the celebrity tabloids. Ellen had a knack for computers and electronics that Janet envied.
Ellen had recently convinced Janet to bundle their Internet service in with their satellite dish provider. Getting rid of dial-up had been what really hooked Janet; she had barely been able to tolerate the interminable waiting of phone line access. All of it was now readily available in the blink of an eye. She hated to admit that she was as bad as Ellen about preferring e-mails to telephone calls. She couldn’t remember the last time she wrote anyone a letter or even a note by hand. The worldwide research and shopping capabilities just blew her away. She found that once she logged on and started following the cyber trails of her thoughts, time lost all context. The difficulty was in pushing the chair back from the screen.
Janet signed in with her e-mail provider and began scanning her archived files. She thought about Beth’s e-mails while she opened the one immediately following the talk in the clerk’s office. Janet realized that Beth wrote to her to assure her that she was fine, not so much as what was on her mind but updates of all that she was doing. That in itself was not bad, but she should have recognized it was Beth’s method of blowing smoke.
“Hallooo, Auntie, what are you doing at home?” Queen_of_ Denial, a.k.a. Greg Davis, popped up in her instant messenger text box.
“Damn, I forgot that you can see when I’m online. How do I block that?” Janet typed back.
“Sick?”
“Sinus headache again.”
“Pulease, it’s stress. Try a warm compress and turn your brain off for a while. Do something non-productive. Surf aimlessly like the rest of us. Why are you really at home today?”
“Making myself start the paperwork on Beth’s estate.”
“Oh, bummer. Bless your heart.”
“Something’s bothering me.”
The text block blinked as no immediate answer came back. Then came the message that Queen was composing.
“Andy too. Sit tight for a minute.”
Janet looked at the screen and frowned. She made use of the time by grabbing a Diet Coke from the kitchen. Still no message.
“Greg, have to go.”
“Wait.”
She touched the Candler folder. It was not as though she really wanted to start the filing with the county. Beth’s estate was only a little convoluted by the sale of the farm and moving Keith into the cottage at Lou’s. Janet cringed at how Beth had insisted her will be written.
Beth and Lou had simplified things. Lou added Beth to her deed, giving her half interest in the property and keeping the mortgage in her name
to hold the interest rate. Beth made improvements equal to the half interest from the equity in her city house and part of her inheritance. Their wills left the half interest to each other. Probate was not one of her favorite processes. At least Beth had taken time for the handwritten codicil to list specific bequests. Janet needed to review the list, yet had procrastinated unfolding the paper once she read the sticky note attached by Beth telling her what was in the envelope mailed to her.
“Andy has agreed to me forwarding an e-mail to you that Beth sent him. He’s been worrying about what to do with it ever since the accident. He thought you already had too much on your mind. First impulse was Will, but we know how much Will enjoys our company—not. It will be to you in just a few minutes. Andy’s forwarding it to me—can’t find you in his address book—then me to you. Sorry in advance, Auntie, come over for dinner and drinks to talk.”
Janet stared at the screen. Finally, the voice she wanted to hear. “You’ve got friggin’ mail.” Impatiently, she moved the cursor to the inbox item from Greg with the subject line “Auntie Em…Auntie Em….” He included no introduction to the message. She saw that Beth had sent Andy the message about six weeks after Keith’s death, shortly before the horrendous beach trip.
I feel as though Jerry Springer’s booking agent will be calling me any time to check my availability for a show. Andy, what the hell is wrong with me? I must be the crazy one. I’m seeing it in everything that happens between the four of us. And I feel them watching me. You know how a room goes quiet just as you walk in…that’s how the four of us feel now.
I was just getting my brother back. Now he won’t look me in the eye, and he refuses to talk about Lou and Patti. He will not entertain the notion of what I feel, with everything in me, is going on. He thinks I’m jealous because Lou spends so much time with Patti. Patti’s nicer to me than ever before. She and Lou act so hurt if I question them about anything. Lou keeps saying it’s all Patti’s curiosity about our lifestyle, and that they’re just friends.
The Arcanum of Beth Page 13