Fatal Trust

by Todd M Johnson

  “This should work,” Ian said, warming to the thought of being back in the courtroom—even if only to represent his serial client again. “Yeah, Willy,” he finished with conviction. “Let’s go teach the prosecutors another lesson.”

  5

  MONDAY, JUNE 4

  5:40 P.M.

  LYNNHURST NEIGHBORHOOD, MINNEAPOLIS

  The cul-de-sac in his parents’ old neighborhood was quiet, reminding Ian of spring days growing up. No lawn mowers. Not a break in the blue sky. Only a lone tree trimmer buzzing in the distance.

  The image buoyed Ian, whose mood had slipped again in anticipation of this visit. The mother of those years seldom waited for him inside the home where he grew up; that Martha Wells emerged unpredictably, like sunlight through a bank of clouds. He walked to the front door, knocked twice, and was pulling out his key when his cellphone rang.

  Katie again. “What’s up?” Ian asked. “I thought you were heading home.”

  “I was. Hon, I don’t like being the dark messenger, but we’ve got a problem.”

  He took a breath. “What now?”

  “A former client of your dad’s—one of the estate-planning ones on a will your dad prepared. A couple of the heirs are suing the office for malpractice. We just got served.”

  Ian’s stomach slid. “Which estate is it?”

  “Claire Holtzberg’s. Apparently Claire died a month ago. Two of her kids in the will claim your dad helped the other kids strong-arm Claire into giving them less. You know it’s hogwash, Ian. Your daddy was straight up the most honest lawyer this town’s ever going to see.”

  He didn’t need that assurance, after reviewing every page of his dad’s files after he died. Not only was the work pristine, the man never once even chased a client who failed to pay a bill.

  “Which law firm is representing the heirs?”

  “Treacher and Gunney.”

  Bottom-feeding lawyers for bottom-feeding clients. Perfect symmetry. And they said dogs came to resemble their masters.

  “Alright.” Ian sighed. “Let the malpractice insurer know.”

  “Uh, Ian,” Katie began again softly, “we let that go, hon. With Dennis retiring this year and money so tight, you told me to hold the check back.”

  Ian closed his eyes as his heart accelerated. “I thought I told you to hold back on the malpractice insurance check for a while.”

  “You did. But since then, your half of the money to cover the premium hasn’t come in. I put the notice of cancellation on your desk two weeks ago and told you about it. I just checked again. The policy lapsed last Monday.” Her voice grew defensive. “I’ve been trying to get your attention, hon. You’ve been so distracted. And I thought maybe you’d decided to drop the insurance.”

  The pile in the right corner of his desk. Perfect. And yeah, he’d been distracted. With his mom’s illness and the costs piling up, he’d put money out of his head as often as possible.

  “Does Dennis know?” he asked.

  “I called you first.”

  “I’ll tell him,” he said, then ended the call.

  The world around him became an abstraction. How could he have forgotten about the policy payment? Now the firm had a lawsuit without insurance coverage. Even if the claim was bogus, he and his partner were personally on the hook for the attorneys’ fees to defend it. Just as Dennis was preparing to retire.

  He tasted blood in his mouth, realized he was clutching his tongue in his teeth. He spit into the rosebushes beside the stoop, closed his eyes, and leaned down with his hands on his knees. Stood again.

  The Holtzberg estate, he remembered it now. It ran over a million dollars. Even if they won the case, the firm could be out a hundred thousand for defense costs before it was through.

  The sky looked darker now, yet there wasn’t a cloud in sight. He couldn’t let Dennis carry this one. He’d have to figure out how to pay the costs of defense for both of them. And deal with any judgment that might come along.

  In a jagged haze, he stepped inside the house.

  The living room, usually so neat, was cluttered with dozens of stacked boxes. Like a storage shed, he thought grimly.

  “Happy birthday, Ian!”

  Livia Santara stood in the hallway to the bedrooms, wrapped in a blue apron. The tiny woman smiled widely as she approached, her arms out.

  Though he didn’t have it in him, Ian obliged with a hug. “What’s with all this?” he asked. “And where’s Mom?”

  “Martha’s out in the backyard. I insisted tu madre take a break from the boxes.” Livia raised her hands to the ceiling. “‘Go out back and work in the vegetable garden,’ I told her. You know it’s her favorite place in the world.”

  Ian looked over the living room again. “Okay. But what’s the project?”

  The part-time care assistant shook her head helplessly. “Your mother, she came in Saturday afternoon from the front flower garden when I was cleaning. She was wild-eyed. She said we had to empty the attic ahora mismo. I tried to change her mind, but there was nothing on earth that would keep us from cleaning out the attic.”

  Even dulled by Katie’s news, Ian felt renewed alarm shoot through him.

  Livia smiled calmingly. “It’s okay. It’s okay. This happens sometimes with Alzheimer’s. I’ve seen it before. People like your mother, they get bursts of energy or take on mystery projects. Don’t let it trouble you, dear. This is why you hired me. I’ve got it under control.”

  “If you say so,” he replied skeptically.

  Livia put a hand on his arm. “I do. This behavior is new for Martha, but it’s still under control. And now I have to tell you I must have some time off.”

  “I know,” he said, still surveying the mess. “You already told me you need Thursday off. That’s why we’re having the early birthday party.”

  “No, Ian. More than that. Mi madre took a fall last night. Hurt her hip. I need more time. Ten days, I think. Starting Tuesday—tomorrow.”

  Ian shook his head at this newest buffet. “What am I going to do?” he muttered vaguely—before realizing how cold the words must sound to Livia.

  “I’m sorry, Ian. I think maybe you could manage things yourself by staying over the nights. I can stock the refrigerator in the morning. I think it will be okay so long as someone is here at night to check on her and make sure she’s eating and getting to bed.”

  “Look, Livia,” Ian apologized, “I’m sorry about your mother. I’m just a little . . . out of it right now. Your mother going to be okay?”

  “She will be fine. But you can stay, right?”

  Ian tried to gather himself. “I’ve got an appointment later tonight. But I’ll swing by my apartment after that to pack some clothes and be back here this evening.”

  “Good,” Livia said. “Good. Just ten days. That’s settled.”

  Still off-center, Ian noticed an old photo album propped on the couch, open to a leaf of color pictures. He pointed. “Mom looking through that?”

  Livia smiled. “We came across it in the attic. I made Martha sit and look through it this morning. Anything that takes her back a few years seems to root her. Settle her down, you know.”

  He made a mental note.

  “Ian?”

  His mother stood in the hall to the kitchen in jeans and a dirt-stained gardening shirt. “Ian, what are you doing here?”

  “Why,” Livia said, “we’re celebrating your boy’s birthday a little early, Martha. Remember? We made the cake this morning. And that’s pork roast you smell.”

  “Oh,” Martha said, smiling slowly. “Of course.” She crossed the room and gave Ian a hug. “You two be patient. I’ll take a quick shower and change.”

  Ian waved at Livia as she drove away. With much effort he’d made it through his birthday dinner. Now he had to get his mom settled for the night before heading to his appointment.

  In the kitchen stacked with plates, Ian saw his mother shuffling to the counter to turn on the coffeemaker. Ian opened the
sliding glass door to the backyard deck and walked outside.

  This was the deck his dad was one day going to convert into a three-season room, Ian recalled while looking out into the fading light. He’d talked about it every summer for years—one of many home projects left unfinished.

  His mom appeared, holding two steaming cups. They sat down together on porch chairs.

  Martha was more herself tonight, a bright spot ending a bleak day. As they sipped coffee, she began the ritual of reciting local news: family friends, neighbors, church activities, the garden. Especially the garden. Ian listened as best he could. Most of it he’d already heard—a symptom of her fading memory. He was beginning a dutiful question when Martha stopped speaking and leaned forward, locking onto Ian with serious eyes.

  “Connor,” she began in a conspirator’s whisper, “we need to talk about something important. I didn’t want to bring it up while Ian was here. If you’re tired, maybe you could come home from the office at lunchtime. But it’s urgent we talk.”

  Ian held his mother’s gaze for a moment. He set down his cup. “Mom,” he said gently, “I’m Ian, not Dad. It’s just me at the office now. Me and Katie and Dad’s old partner, Dennis Hoy.”

  Martha leaned back in her chair, stabbed with confusion.

  Ian took a deep breath. “Remember how I took over for Dad at the office when he died five years ago? Right out of law school?” He pointed toward the living room. “That stuff from the attic, probably a lot of it is Dad’s old things from the office. Think, Mom. Do you remember?”

  Her eyelids shut. She took several breaths, then reopened them over a light smile. “Oh, of course, Ian. I don’t know what I was saying. You look so much like your father these days.”

  Ian smiled back. Her excuse was absurd, her smile certainly a cover. Still, he retrieved his coffee and let her slide into silence. He had no stomach for more chatting anyway.

  He clenched his cup tightly. His dad should be here now to take care of Mother. He had no business dying in his fifties with a mortgage on a house needing work, leaving behind a wife destined for early Alzheimer’s. It shouldn’t be Ian swimming in debt trying to keep the only house Mom had ever known.

  “You always gave Dad too little credit.” It was Adrianne’s voice, and the accusation she’d slung at Ian at the funeral home the day they’d buried him.

  Really? All those years of steady, slogging legal work and so little to show for it, and it was Ian giving Dad too little credit?

  “Yes,” she’d followed when he shook his head. “And you did it because you’ve always been too protective of Mom.”

  Exactly the caliber of analysis and tact he’d expect from a psych student still three years from her PhD, delivering a diagnosis the day they were burying their dad. He’d barely accepted Adrianne’s apologetic look moments later when she’d taken his hand and gone mercifully silent.

  What a crazy notion it had been. Martha Wells had always been the “people person” of the family, never forgetting names or faces or the emotional baggage attached to them. She was the one who smoothed bruised egos, diverting social train wrecks before others even saw the engines converging on the same track. She could make more friends in a single afternoon than quiet Connor had in a lifetime. She didn’t need any protection from her son. Not then anyway.

  A breeze blowing across the deck recalled Ian to the present. He looked up to Martha smiling at him. He took her hands, callused and rough. At least worrying about her tonight had stopped him from lingering on his own problems.

  “Now,” Ian said lightly, “tell me why you decided to get all the boxes down from the attic.”

  His mother paused before shaking her head. “Oh, I just wanted to clean things out.”

  The vague answer didn’t reassure. Before Ian could ask more, she perked up.

  “I’ve got your birthday gifts,” she declared. Martha stood and hurried from the porch, returning moments later with two wrapped packages.

  Ian made a show of shaking the first, by shape and weight a book. He tore off his mother’s signature perfect wrapping. A Pat Conroy novel, his favorite author. And the same one she’d given him the year before. “Thanks so much, Mom,” he said. “This is terrific.”

  The second was larger, a shoe box. He weighed it in his hands. “Much heavier. What is it?”

  She thought for a moment. “Something of your father’s I found in the attic,” she replied.

  He tore off the purple wrapping. The box had a red X in masking tape on one corner. He lifted the lid. A scent of grease rose up. He looked closer into the box. The object inside had a dark metal sheen.

  He looked at his mother in unfeigned shock. “Mom, this is a handgun.”

  Martha nodded. “I know.”

  “I didn’t know Dad even had a gun.”

  “Yes. But I remember now. It wasn’t supposed to be a gift, not really. I . . . I don’t know why I wrapped it. I want you to get rid of it for me. Don’t sell it. Please. There must be someplace they can destroy things like guns. Could you do me that favor?”

  “Sure,” Ian said, his shock replaced by amusement that she’d think he’d consider leaving the gun with her. After all, he’d hidden her car keys a year and a half ago. “It’s fine, Mom. I’ll take care of it. I was just a little surprised.”

  He stayed another half hour until his mother no longer insisted he stay. Then he put her to bed and left the house, stowing the shoe box in his Camry’s trunk. Sliding into the driver’s seat, he rested his forehead on the steering wheel.

  A miserable day, ending with a difficult night. The bank turning down the loan. The malpractice suit. Dread of his coming conversation with Dennis festering in his stomach. Punctuated by his mother mistaking him for Dad. And now he got to go see a client at nine o’clock at night.

  Except it was a client, and one claiming to have a ten-thousand-dollar retainer. There must be a good amount of work to be done. Grabbing that “up note,” he straightened, started the engine, and backed out of the driveway.

  Minutes later, on the freeway to St. Paul, an old memory returned—resurrected, he supposed, by the box in his trunk.

  He was a young teen at the time, standing in the same kitchen he’d just left. Dinner was over and he held a wet towel in his hand. His younger sister was up to her elbows in a sink of soapy water, advocating her superior knowledge of American indie rock and nearly everything else. Half listening, Ian had accepted another wet plate and turned toward the living room, where his father sat resting by the fireplace—as his mother always insisted he do after dinner.

  Connor Wells was hunched over a card table covered with a jigsaw puzzle, its borders assembled, the remaining pieces scattered about. Firelight danced over his graying hair. From the box resting on the floor, Ian could see it was the puzzle of the Minneapolis skyline, one his father had already assembled a dozen times before, like all the puzzles in the house.

  As with so many things that year and in the teen years to follow, the sight plucked a chord of challenge in Ian. Dish and towel in hand, he approached his father.

  “Dad,” he said as he neared, “what are you doing that puzzle for? You’ve done it a hundred times. Why not buy a new one?”

  His father’s tired eyes looked up at him. Ian’s judgmental tone couldn’t have been lost on him. He smiled, yet his voice sounded weary. “Because, son,” he answered, “knowing exactly what my efforts will produce is a rare comfort these days.”

  Returning unsatisfied to the sink, Ian told himself, with all the certainty of youth, that the moment had captured everything there was to know about his dad. He was a man who preferred a familiar puzzle to the fresh challenge of a new one. That image of a safe and timid man became locked in his mind, anchoring his opinion of his father forever.

  Or at least until the last few months—and tonight. Because recently Ian had begun to understand how someone battered by life might long for the old and familiar over whatever new hurdle the next day could bring. And
tonight his assumptions had been challenged again by something Ian hadn’t seen or even imagined before—a stray piece to the puzzle that was Connor Wells that Ian hadn’t finished as he’d imagined. One that fit nowhere in his memory of a quiet man who, for all his limits, Ian deeply wished was here now to care for Mother.

  And for some reason, as he struck up a labored whistle for the remainder of the drive to St. Paul, it was that new puzzle piece—more than his mother’s fading memory or the malpractice suit or the money problems—that wouldn’t let Ian go.

  6

  MONDAY, JUNE 4

  9:13 P.M.

  SUMMIT AVENUE, ST. PAUL

  Ian strode up the sidewalk to Sean Callahan’s address, a three-story house with rounded windows and gables overhanging a front porch, with a wide lawn stretching down to the boulevard. He thought it probably had been majestic once, but now, in the moonlight, the lawn was sparse and spotted with weeds, the paint peeling from window frames and walls that looked decades past a serious encounter with a brush. Unusual for the upscale neighborhood where F. Scott Fitzgerald was raised. Ian wondered why someone hadn’t maintained such a house, and whether what he was about to discuss had any bearing on it. He also hoped it wasn’t a sign Callahan was puffing about the promised ten thousand dollars. He was in no mood for more disappointment today.

  The door swung open just as he was reaching for the bell. A bulky man in a tight T-shirt, more muscle than fat, filled the doorframe. He looked to be in his thirties.

  “Mr. Callahan?” Ian asked, surprised. Given the voice over the phone, the young man before him wasn’t what he’d expected.

  “No,” he answered stiffly. “You the lawyer?”

  Ian nodded.

  “Follow me.” The man turned, the entryway light revealing a six-inch Marine Corps tattoo in deep-blue ink high on his neck.

  They walked down a hallway of shaded light and thick carpet into an equally dim living room with drawn shades and a tall fireplace at one end. The room was filled with thickly stuffed furniture upholstered in rich green, suggesting a faded country estate more than an urban home. The sole exception to the monotony of color was a high-backed plush chair near the fireplace done in bright orange.