Gracie Greene Mystery Box Set

by Jack Parker

  Predictably, everyone at the table stuck out their tongues, including Clarissa. Gracie clarified the spelling.

  "I've heard of that," Clarissa said. "It's old-school, but supposedly produces a lovely finish. I can certainly see that someone who works at a stressful job might well enjoy a little physical labor. It would also allow her to spruce up her office without spending so much money. But I get your picture of making appearances. Any one – especially someone with experience as a lawyer - would love to act as a Trustee, because it doesn't require a lot of work for the money. Get a dozen Trusts and he or she could make rent without breaking a sweat. Where's her office?"

  "Near downtown," Gracie said. "In an old house that's been made into offices."

  "There's a lot of that going around," Clarissa commented. "It's recycling, Gracie!"

  Gracie looked surprised. "I guess it is, in a way."

  "That would explain at least part of why she's so anxious about Mrs. Redmond and Ms. Rodgers challenging the Trust," Kelly said thoughtfully. "If her finances are precarious she wouldn't want to lose the easy money."

  "Loretta Logan thinks she's embezzling from the Trust," Gracie mused. "If she isn't making enough money it sure might be tempting."

  "Surely she didn't say anything that made you think that!" Cheryl said.

  Gracie thought about that for a minute. "No, but there's something funny going on."

  "Like, what?" Shawna asked.

  "Well, while I was waiting to talk to her I saw a pile of mail on the fake secretary's desk. A big pile, like she hadn't opened it for several days."

  "Probably had bills in it," Cheryl suggested.

  "It did," Gracie agreed. "It also had an unopened letter from Robbie Redmond, and the cancellation stamp was dated the day before she died."

  "Really!" Shawna said. "Did you steal it?"

  Gracie turned a withering stare on her friend. "This from the girl who refused to even look around Loretta's house? No, I didn't take it!" She paused, looking at the others. "Thought about it, though," she muttered.

  "I doubt she'd have missed it if you had stolen it," Kelly said. "Except that if it said something important Ken wouldn't have accepted it."

  Gracie winced at the reminder of her not-so-successful stealth mission. "Not to mention that it wouldn't have been the right thing to do."

  Clarissa smiled gently at her daughter's moral decision.

  "And that's not all," Gracie continued. "There was another one in the trash can under her desk."

  "Letter from Robbie?" Cheryl asked.

  "Unopened," Gracie stated. "Why was she sending letters to her husband's Trustee?"

  "Because her answering machine is on the fritz and she's not getting her messages," Cheryl suggested.

  "The question is why is Robbie trying to contact her at all?" Clarissa said.

  "That's the part I don't understand," Gracie said. "Ms. Canardi told me that she hadn't been practicing law since before John's death, but that when Robbie got John's Will from her Robbie never asked for her services for the probate case. She also said she told Robbie that the Estate has to be probated before she can get money from the Trust fund."

  Shawna looked at Gracie across the table. "She can claim she said anything; Robbie's not here to say different."

  "But didn't you say Robbie had retained another attorney?" Clarissa asked.

  "Yeah," Gracie said.

  "So she didn't need Canardi's services on the probate case, and surely the new man told her about the need to get that resolved before she can access the Trust," Cheryl pointed out.

  "Maybe she didn't think to ask the new guy about it," Shawna said. "She might not have understood what Ms. Canardi said and didn't realize it would be a problem."

  "She heard what she wanted to hear," Clarissa put in. "Your Aunt Jeanine does that all the time!"

  "That might explain the letters, and supposed phone calls," Kelly said. "She's trying to get the Trustee to start giving her the money."

  "Then why wouldn't the Trustee just tell her she has to wait?" Cheryl wanted to know.

  "If she was planning to abscond with the money she probably wouldn't want to talk to her at all," Clarissa said.

  "Certainly not by mail, which would leave a paper trail," Kelly said.

  "I wonder if Loretta knows anything about it," Cheryl mused.

  "Let's see." Gracie jumped up to grab her phone and called Loretta. "Hi Loretta, it's Gracie Greene. Cheryl and I were just thinking about your mother's Trust fund."

  Since she'd put the phone in speaker mode everyone seated around the table could clearly hear the other side of the conversation.

  "Hi, Gracie! How you doing, Kiddo? I sure did enjoy your visit; you and Cheryl need to come finish looking through the rest of the photo albums."

  "We'll do that real soon," Cheryl said while shaking her head to visually negate that statement to the group.

  "What about the Trust, Loretta?" Gracie inquired again.

  "What about it?" Loretta replied as if she'd never heard of it before.

  "Do you know if your mother ever tried to get money out of it?"

  "Shesaid she tried to call that Ms. Canardi several times, but she never got to talk to her. I guess she's busy. That's why she hired that Allison man, to probate John's Will."

  "Didn't she ask Canardi to do that for her?" Cheryl asked.

  "I think she meant to, but it's impossible to do if the woman won't take her calls," Loretta said.

  "But wouldn't she have asked her when she got John's Will from her?" Gracie asked reasonably.

  "You know, I think she said she had," Loretta said. "But when she couldn't get hold of her to tell her to get started I tried calling." She laughed. "I guess Canardi didn't recognize my name on Caller ID so she talked to me. But she didn't say very much; just that there wasn't anything left and Meredith had gotten her inheritance with that car and there wasn't anything to probate." Her laugh this time held a decidedly sneering tone. "I know she tried to clear out John's business account but the bank wouldn't give her the money."

  "How do you know that?" Cheryl asked.

  "Oh, Mother was just furious about it!" Loretta said cheerfully, as if the bank's refusal thrilled her. "She might well have told us all that she couldn't get to the money so she could waste it away and then play the destitute widow card and beg us to help pay the bills. But she wouldn't be that mad unless it really happened."

  "But what about the Trust?" Gracie asked for the third time. "Did she get a copy of the agreement when she got the Will from Ms. Canardi?"

  "Guess not," Loretta said. "'Cause the only copy she had is one I printed off the web for her after it came out in the probate proceedings."

  "So you didn't have a copy, either," Cheryl said. "Until you found it on the court's website."

  "Nope! No one did. Meredith said she didn't even know about the Trust until John's friend told her about it. I guess John didn't want any of us to know the details, only that it existed."

  "Do you know if Mr. Allison told Robbie that she couldn't get any money from the Trust until the probate was done?"

  "You know, she did say something about that, but I don't think she believed him because every now and then she'd say something about 'when I get the money from John's Trust'," Loretta replied. "But I don't know why you want to know all this; that Trust isn't good anyway."

  "We don't know that for sure yet," Gracie reminded her. "Hey, have you found Robbie's Will yet?" She couldn't resist throwing in the question.

  "You'd have to ask Jason," Loretta told her. "He's the one looking for it. What's with all the questions, anyway?"

  "Oh, we're just being nosy," Gracie said. "I for one don't like being a murder suspect."

  Loretta laughed heartily. "Well you can be nosy anytime! Give me a call – or better yet come over – and I'll give you the scoop. But I think you're barking up the wrong tree over that Trust!"

  CHAPTER 79

  Monday

  Gracie
sat there drumming her fingers on the face of her cell phone. "Everyone says it can't be about the Trust." She turned to look at her friends. "That makes me suspicious."

  "I just don't see how it could be connected," Cheryl said. "Robbie wanted it to be invalid so she could get the money immediately. And Canardi can't embezzle now, not with the court checking into things."

  "What if she's already taken the money?" Shawna asked.

  "That would explain why she fought to keep the info from the other lawyers," Kelly spoke up. "If that whatchamacallit doesn't exist it'll all come out."

  "But how would killing Mrs. Redmond help?" Clarissa asked reasonably. "That wouldn't stop anyone from finding out about the embezzlement."

  "No, it wouldn't," Gracie allowed. She took a piece of cantaloupe and ate it slowly, obviously thinking. "What if she had a different plan?"

  "Like what exactly?" Cheryl asked.

  "Do your computer magic, Cheryl," Gracie said. "See if you can find the relevant documents online. Mom, don't mortgages have to be filed with some government office, so everyone knows they exist?"

  "Sure," Clarissa said. "They need to be made public knowledge, so they're filed with the County Clerk. That way people will know that one person owes money and the other has income. Banks would check on that before making a loan."

  Cheryl had retrieved her laptop from her backpack and set it up on the dining table. She Googled for the county clerk's site, muttering as she read through the possible links. "Oh, here it is, I think." She typed in 'Redmond, John' and hit the enter key.

  Gracie got up and walked around the table for a better view. "There must be 20 entries! How do we find the one we're looking for? Can you sort it somehow?"

  Cheryl clicked on several spots, but couldn't find a way to sort the information.

  Kelly came over to see as well. "There's a column labeled 'other name'. Let's look down it for the guy who bought John's business."

  "You'll have to go to the court site, Meredith said there's a copy of the Mortgage there," Gracie said.

  Cheryl opened a new tab for the court site and, after a few tries, found the Mortgage listed as an exhibit to some motion and got the buyer's name. She went back to the County Clerk's site and ran her finger down the column as she read off names. "Nope, not here. Let me search his name." She did so and came up with a mortgage for his home along with the Release of Mortgage showing it was now paid off. "Just for grins…" she said as she clicked on the link to the mortgage. A copy of the document came up.

  "Wow, you can see everything!" Kelly commented.

  Gracie shook her head. "Except for the mortgage he gave John. Canardi didn't file it. What about the Trust Agreement? See if you can look up mine, Cheryl."

  Cheryl searched for 'Greene, Charles' and, after looking down a lengthy list containing a lot of lawsuits with Gracie's father both Plaintiff and Defendant, found the Trust. "It's here, but it wasn't filed until after your dad died." She pointed out the date on the screen.

  "Trusts are a different animal," Clarissa told them. "Your father left the papers with his attorney because he didn't want them available to the public while he was alive." She grinned. "He didn't want you or your brothers to know what you'd get. I think that's pretty standard procedure."

  "Where are you going with this, Gracie?" Shawna inquired.

  Gracie sat back down on her side of the table. "Loretta said nobody had a copy of the Trust and it wasn't filed with the County Clerk so that means nobody could prove it existed. The mortgage wasn't filed, either, so nobody knew that John had payments coming in."

  "Officially, anyway," Kelly amended her statement.

  "Nobody could prove it existed," Cheryl said. "Canardi could've claimed she'd never heard about that Trust."

  "Robbie knew about it because her husband told her," Gracie said. "And she told her kids all about it. John's friend told Meredith about it; he knew about the mortgage and the Trust. That would be enough to show that something existed, so it would be hard for Canardi to pretend she didn't know about it."

  "That wouldn't keep her from taking at least some of the money, though," Shawna said. "She could always cook the books and hope Robbie didn't notice."

  "Or…," Gracie began melodramatically. "She planned to put her off as long as possible."

  "By not taking her calls?" Kelly asked.

  Gracie nodded. "Right now she's got a good excuse in that the Estate isn't probated yet. She could always fake up a copy of a letter telling her just that, and nobody could prove she hadn't really sent it to Robbie."

  "Piece of cake," Cheryl said brightly.

  "And after the Estate is out of probate?" Shawna asked.

  "She'd just keep doing the same thing," Gracie told them. "She probably uses the 'trouble with my answering machine' excuse to any one she doesn't want to talk to; it's just too convenient. And, like the letter I found in her trash, she could throw away her letters and claim she'd never gotten them."

  "Until Robbie sent one via registered mail," Clarissa put in. "Then she'd have a signed receipt proving someone had received it."

  "How would Canardi get around that?" Kelly asked.

  Gracie frowned in thought for a moment. "She could still 'miss' some phone calls and 'lose' some letters, and take her sweet time answering the ones she didn't."

  "Refuse to talk to her if she just showed up at her office?" Shawna suggested.

  "Yeah, that too. Though I didn't have any trouble getting past the group receptionist; I just told her I had an appointment and she didn't ask any questions," Gracie mused.

  "What if Robbie figured out she had to send everything registered?" Clarissa asked.

  "Hmmm," Gracie mumbled. "She used to be a lawyer. She creates legal delays. She said John wanted to be sure Robbie's living expenses were covered, so she'd have to be careful what she gave her. She could use that as an excuse to demand proof of everything Robbie asked for."

  "Like copies of her utility and medical bills, estimates for repairs to the house, maybe even proof that her TV didn't work before she'd pay for a new one," Clarissa elaborated.

  "Exactly!" Gracie said. In the beginning she might insist on some kind of budget; you know, how much money does she get from Social Security and how much she spends on utilities, groceries, gas et cetera."

  "How much she might have gotten from life insurance policies, any retirement funds, or maybe military widow's pension," Clarissa added. "John would be of an age that he might have served in Viet Nam. I hate to say it Gracie, but that would only be good stewardship of the Trust."

  "Well, yeah, but it would also take time, especially if she didn't process it for a while," Gracie argued. "In the meantime maybe the widow would die."

  "And if Robbie didn't go along with Canardi's plan and kick the bucket on schedule?" Cheryl inquired.

  "Then she'd dole out the least amount of money that she could," Gracie answered. "She'd nitpick each and every request, and take her time about it. To use Mom's example, she might allow her enough money to buy a cheap TV instead of the fancy one she asked for."

  "Okay," Kelly said. "So she's being chintzy and waiting for Robbie to die. What happens then?"

  Gracie smiled. "That's the easy part – and the devilish plan. Nobody has a copy of the agreement, so no one knows what it says about the distribution after Robbie's death. John told her about Robbie's shopping habit and Ms. Rodgers' sale of the car. He probably also mentioned that he didn't hear much from his sister."

  "Are you trying to say that she knew that Ms. Rodgers didn't have much to do with any of the family, especially Robbie's kids?" Clarissa asked.

  "Yes, I am," Gracie agreed. "That's the devilish part. Robbie's kids would assume any money left over went to her heirs – i.e., them. All Canardi had to do was tell them John had left the balance to his sister."

  "Wouldn't they be surprised?" Shawna asked. "I mean, they all thought Ms. Rodgers didn't get along well with him."

  "But she is his only blood re
lative," Cheryl said. "It's possible he'd rather she had the money regardless. Blood tells."

  "And Canardi didn't think Ms. Rodgers even knew about the Trust, so she wouldn't be likely to call about it," Gracie added.

  "Loretta said Ms. Rodgers didn't know about the Trust until the friend told her about it," Cheryl reminded the group.

  "And Meredith told me that Canardi refused to give her a copy of it, telling her that her brother had told her not to," Gracie said.

  "So if Ms. Rodgers did call about it the Trustee could tell her that Robbie's kids got the money and she wouldn't know the difference," Kelly summed up.

  "Neither side would be likely to spend money to hire a lawyer to prove they really got nothing," Clarissa said.

  "And since they don't talk they'd never know that she'd lied," Shawna said. "Brilliant!"

  Cheryl opened her laptop and went back to the probate case on the court's website. She pulled up the Trust and scrolled through it. Since the document had been scanned in they could clearly see handwritten signatures on the last page. "Look here," she said, pointing to the relevant paragraph naming residual beneficiaries.

  Everyone crowded around to see.

  She scrolled to the top and then the bottom of the page. "There's nothing handwritten on the page, it's just text. "If anyone got ugly and demanded proof all she'd have to do is alter that one paragraph and send them a copy. End of problem."

  "Leaving Ms. Canardi the only person left," Gracie said. "The buyer would continue sending in his monthly payments, but it wouldn't be any of his business to ask where the money was going. In fact, he probably wouldn't even know John and Robbie had died."

  "Canardi could take it all at that point, with no one the wiser," Clarissa said. "She might have to do some creative accounting to get the money out of the Trust account, but then she is the Trustee so I doubt that would be difficult."

  "There's just one thing wrong with all of this," Gracie said sadly. "Because the Trust Agreement is now public record she can't put that scheme into action. Everyone knows the money's split five ways."