Generous Death

by Nancy Pickard

  “You and I know that none of us would,” I said. “But consider it from the point of view of the general public. Or Ailey Mason, for that matter…”

  “Speaking of limited points of view …”

  “First, one of our major donors is killed …”

  “But he did not leave us any money,” Derek objected. “You’ll notice the operative word is not. So where’s our motive?”

  I thought out loud, playing devil’s advocate.

  “Well,” I mused, “maybe we killed him because we thought we’d get the money. Then when we found out the truth about the new will, we got desperate for funds to support the museum and so we killed Moshe for his money.”

  “But that won’t help the museum, Jen, or at least not directly. We’re supposed to use his dough to support the theater. And B’nai Brith, etcetera, etcetera.”

  He signaled for a left turn into the parking lot. “Yes,” I said, “but I don’t think the general public will understand those fine points. They’ll just see that The Foundation gets the money, period.”

  He grunted, unconvinced, as he made the turn.

  “With all due respect, boss lady, may I just say bull roar. You don’t really believe people will believe something like that, do you?”

  “Probably not anyone who understands how The Foundation operates, no. But Derek, if a rich person gets murdered … who comes under suspicion first?”

  “The beneficiaries,” he said grudgingly. He skidded over a patch of ice into an empty parking space. I held my breath as we missed the fender of a new Mercedes by a quarter inch. I yearned for spring, for dry streets, warm weather, green leaves. Derek said, “But we’re not the only ones to inherit. How about Ginger Culverson? How about Moshe Cohen’s family?”

  It was my turn to look disbelieving.

  “Oh come on, Derek. What do you think, that it’s a conspiracy between those two families? I think I’d believe you did it before I’d buy that!”

  He switched off the ignition. But instead of opening his door, he leaned his back against it, slung his left arm over the steering wheel and his right arm over the back of the seat and faced me.

  “Jenny …” he said, with the tentative air of someone with a pregnant idea.

  “Now don’t get settled in for a long winter’s chat, Derek. This car’ll get cold fast.”

  “I know, but listen, okay? So far, all we’ve really considered is the crazy idea that someone connected with The Foundation has murdered two people in order to help us.”

  “That is crazy, you’re right. So?”

  “So …” He looked embarrassed. “Oh hell, this is going to sound nuttier than pecan pie.” He turned back around in his seat and reached for his door handle. “Never mind, it’s a dumb idea.”

  “Wait, Derek! What’s your idea?”

  “Oh hell, I’ll just’ say it,” he said. “What if somebody killed the philanthropists in order to harm The Foundation?”

  The absurd notion hung in the frosty air between us.

  I decided it was time to calm the troops.

  “I don’t think we ought to jump to any dramatic conclusions one way or the other,” I said carefully, not wanting to put him down. “I know it sometimes seems as if the whole world revolves around The Foundation, but we’re not that important. I’ll grant you we’ve been seriously affected by the murders, but we’re hardly the only ones. Whole families have been disrupted. The theater, the museum, other charities have suffered. Besides, if someone wanted to ruin The Foundation, surely he wouldn’t have to kill two people to do it.”

  Derek’s grin was shamefaced as if to say he knew he’d overreacted. “I knew it was a dumb idea,” he said. “Let’s go inside before we freeze.”

  As we walked over the snowy sidewalk, he said, “I notice they quoted your old high school buddy in the story about the murders in the paper this morning. I don’t believe I’d want him chasing me.” He threw me a sly, sidelong glance. “Unless I were female, of course.”

  I hardly heard him. I was thinking, instead, about the advice I had just given him. I believed what I had said, of course I did. It was absurd to imagine some anonymous fiend wished to destroy The Foundation and would commit murder to accomplish that end.

  I reached the door first and held it open for Derek.

  Absurd, I repeated to myself as he punched the button on the elevator. The murders don’t have anything to do with The Foundation, I told myself, at least not in the way of a motive. It was sheer coincidence that by killing two major donors in one week, someone had just happened to demoralize my staff, wreck our projected growth, devastate our plans for the museum, force us into court fights we couldn’t afford, frighten prospective donors, infuriate our trustees, disquiet our bankers, cast suspicion on all of us and generally disrupt business as usual. I felt like a winning quarterback who’d just been viciously sacked for a big loss, and it hurt, I put a reassuring smile on my face as Derek and I walked into the office.

  Still, I thought, absurd.

  I continued to think that all morning, up until ten-thirty when Edwin Ottilini called to tell me that Mrs. Charles Withers Hatch had not appeared for a scheduled meeting with him that morning. He wondered if she might have called or stopped by The Foundation.

  “No,” I said, “we haven’t seen her and she hasn’t called. Did you try her home?”

  “Of course. I’m afraid I frightened the maid. She said that Mrs. Hatch went to a meeting last night and told her husband not to wait up, that she’d probably be late. Evidently Charles left for the office this morning without having seen her—I guess they keep separate bedrooms.” He cleared his throat with embarrassment at that little bit of confidentiality. “By the time I called, Mrs. Hatch had not yet been down to breakfast. The maid went up to get her, and found that her bed had not been slept in. I told the maid to call Charles and see if he knows where his wife might be.”

  I thought of Derek’s play on words…

  Somebody is Killing the …

  Arnie had died at his favorite Charity and Moshe at his. Mrs. Hatch might support the museum with small gifts now and then; she might donate funds to build a civic memorial or plant a garden. But her deepest concern lay with the Welcome Home for Girls. It was her pet project, the prototype of several other homes for juveniles that she hinted The Foundation might be able to finance with the generous bequest she might leave us. If she ever got around to making a will, which so far, to my knowledge, she had not.

  I suggested that Mr. Ottilini might wish to meet me at the Welcome Home. I didn’t offer a logical, rational reason and he didn’t ask for one. He just said it would take him five minutes to rearrange his schedule.

  Derek lent me his car keys when I asked for them. He also gave me a look of intense curiosity.

  I walked calmly out of the office, gently closed the door and ran like hell for the elevator as if something possessed me.

  It did—terrible, intuitive, gut-wrenching fear.

  Chapter 11

  I feel like a fool,” I whispered to Mr. Ottilini. We sat on a dilapidated couch in the living room of the Welcome Home.

  “I, too,” he whispered back. “But if you don’t tell anyone, I won’t. Then they’ll never know.”

  We traded sheepish grins. I’m not sure what hideous thing we expected to find there—Mrs. Hatch chopped up in little pieces and filed under “H,” perhaps—but we hadn’t. On the pretext of making a surprise inspection for The Foundation, we’d managed to examine every nook and broom closet, not to mention all six bedrooms, the kitchen, living room, dining room, staff offices, recreation room, sleeping porch and basement. The worst thing we found was an unmade bed.

  “She undoubtedly forgot our appointment,” Mr. Ottilini said, hardly any doubt in his voice by that time. “I will admit that is out of character for her, but God help us if we can’t be unpredictable now and then.”

  “Even you, Mr. Ottilini?” I dared.

  “Even I,” he said with more tha
n a hint of a twinkle. He’s the only trustee I called mister, but just because he was formal didn’t mean he wasn’t human.

  “But how do you account for the fact that her bed wasn’t slept in?” I persisted.

  “As we age, we sleep less well, my dear.” He patted the air above my hand. “I expect she dozed off on a sofa instead, and then got dressed and left this morning before the rest of the household was up and about.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’re right,” I sighed. I wished I could forsake this wild goose chase and return to my office. But we had to wait—to our mutual embarrassment—for the director of the home to bring the coffee she’d insisted we needed. After putting her to so much trouble, we could hardly refuse. Besides, I knew it was important to the director, Allison Parker, to make a favorable impression on the controllers of the charitable purse strings in town.

  She rounded the corner from the kitchen, treading carefully on the worn carpet. With both hands, she carried a plastic tray—left over from Christmas, judging by the holly pattern around the rim—on which were balanced three cups full of coffee and napkins and spoons.

  “What a tea service!” she laughed as she set it on a coffee table and then lowered herself into a lumpy armchair. “But you know how it is—everything we have is secondhand and cracked.” She smiled brightly. “Not that we don’t appreciate it, goodness knows what we’d do without secondhand and cracked! But I will admit, it’s not quite the tea service my dear mother dreamed of for me!”

  Allison spoke in exclamation points and dealt in guilt. She knew how to shovel it out in thick, rich piles so the more fortunate among us would ante up for her girls. She was just barely five feet tall with round blue eyes and curly red hair, and she looked more like one of the girls than the director of the program. Contrary to the appearance of sweetness and light that she tried to present, however, I knew her to be a tough twenty-five-year-old with sufficient steel in her backbone to discipline hard cases and a master’s degree in social work to qualify her academically for the job. The mother she had spoken of had died when Allison was thirteen years old; I knew that much from the soap opera life story she’d told me soon after she was hired. The only thing she didn’t say was what became of her father, though I gathered that he either had not been able to or had not wanted to take care of Allison and her two brothers. So they were placed by the state in juvenile detention centers—hard, tough places where they didn’t deserve to be—of the very sort the Welcome Home was meant to replace. “I know what it’s like to be one of these kids,” Allison said in a rare moment of grim candor when she was hired, “I belong here.” Still, she was young and probably immature for the load of responsibility she carried. But we had to hire young, cheap staff since the home budget did not allow for the luxury of more experienced and costly employees.

  And yet somehow Allison managed. On a pittance of state aid and private donations, she managed to feed, clothe, educate, entertain and provide counseling for twelve girls. Most of what little private money there was came from Mrs. Hatch’s pocketbook, which was irregularly and unpredictably opened now and then to the home. I knew that Allison was also going to have to learn how to wheedle donations out of the community at large, a community that didn’t even like to admit it had poor or abused children, or, God, forbid, both.

  “I hope you don’t take sugar,” she said, just as Mr. Ottilini was, I guessed, opening his mouth to request that very thing. “Our government commodities are late this month, so we’re making do with leftovers. And I’m sorry to say, there’s no sugar left over.” Her face brightened like a child’s at Christmas. “Oh! But there’s brown sugar, would that do?”

  Mr. Ottilini bravely swallowed a gulp of the tepid, bitter instant coffee and said, No, he didn’t need a thing, thank you.

  “I’m fine, too, Allison,” I said to the questioning expression on her round face. “Can you even spare this coffee?”

  “Absolutely!” she fluted. “There’s at least enough for the houseparents tonight. I can do without, quite easily.”

  As usual, I fell for her guilt games. I told her I’d drop off a pound of coffee and a box of sugar later that day.

  “You’re such a dear, Jenny!” she exclamation-pointed at me. “I don’t know what this old house would do without friends like you and Mr. Ottilini!”

  We generous ones shifted uncomfortably on the lumpy couch, thinking of our own plush furniture and the wasted coffee we’d poured down our sinks that morning. Allison did that to people—made them feel inadequate and guilt-ridden even while she gushed compliments upon them—and I found it a most unlikable trait. But I admired her dedication, so I just endured her like everyone else, and smiled fatuously back at her and gritted my teeth. And, of course, I handed down to her the secondhand and cracked of all my belongings.

  “Well!” she said with the bright smile that the professional of any field uses to put laypeople in their places. You don’t know beans, that smile says, but I’ll condescend to pretend you do. “Well! How does our little house look to you good people this morning? I’m awfully sorry about that unmade bed. But of course, if we had known you were coming…”

  She was all smiles and regret and helpfulness.

  Mr. Ottilini apologized, on cue, for our having barged in.

  I indulged in a delicious moment of fantasy in which Allison suddenly leaped to her feet, tired eyes blazing, and told us to go jump. In my fantasy, she yelled, “How dare you drop in here like you own the place, even if you practically do! Would you surprise your fancy friends early in the morning before they’ve had a chance to make their beds? Would you barge into an office without an appointment? Don’t we deserve such simple courtesy, too? Out, both of you! My rug is not swept, my bathtub has rings and you can just get the hell out!”

  “What’s so funny, Jenny?” Allison turned her Little Orphan Annie eyes on me.

  “Was I smiling? I didn’t mean to smile,” I said inanely. Then realizing how stupid that sounded, I really did laugh. She and Mr. Ottilini gazed at me with the tolerance usually reserved by the sane for the looney. I tried to get my face under control. I said, “I’m sorry. It’s been a long week.”

  “But Miss Cain,” said Mr. O, “it’s only Monday.”

  “Oh God,” I said, “only Monday.”

  “Oooonly Mon-day!” Allison chirped in an absurdly cheerful singsong that very nearly undid me. I had to slurp coffee to keep from chirping back at her, “Tra la!”

  One of the girls who lived at the house saved me by appearing in the living room.

  “Telephone, Allison!” she yelled.

  “Who is it, do you know, dear?”

  “Beats the fuck out of me,” said the little girl. She popped her gum and walked out again.

  A frozen silence descended on the adults in the living room. I prayed for deliverance from hysterics. Allison located her most sincere smile once more, pasted it on her face and turned toward Mr. Ottilini. It must have taken some courage; I gave her full credit for that. The old lawyer’s face was scarlet, though I detected that twinkle again.

  “Well!” Allison said brightly. “If they were little angels they wouldn’t be here, would they?”

  She excused herself, rather quickly I thought, and went out of the room, either to answer the phone or to pin one teenager up against the wall.

  Mr. O pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his bony nose.

  “I think we may safely go now, Miss Cain.”

  “I’m sorry I suggested this.” I stood and searched in the pockets of my suit for Derek’s car keys.

  “No,” he demurred, “I would have come anyway. Better to err on the side of caution, as we lawyers would have you believe. And speaking of caution, I suggest we depart by the back door. With any luck, we shall escape unscathed by further coffee or guilt.”

  He led the way along the narrow hallway with its peeling wallpaper to the back door with its broken storm window. Everywhere I looked, the Welcome Home for Girls cried out for m
assive infusions of money—the kind that a generous bequest from Mrs. Charles Withers Hatch would mean.

  Mr. Ottilini, old-fashioned gentleman to the core, held open the door for me against the cold stiff wind that was huffing down from Canada. We walked down the neatly shoveled back steps, causing my guilt to rise again as I thought of my own hazardous steps that I still hadn’t shoveled. And that reminded me of the modem sculpture in my front yard. I had not had time yet that morning to call the Standard station and ask them to haul it out for me.

  I reached out a hand to the lawyer.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr. Ottilini. I suppose it didn’t hurt to tour the place.”

  “No, it’s good for us, I think. Reminds us of how much there is to do for it. And how much The Foundation could help if only we had the money.” He didn’t shake my hand, but took it in a fatherly fashion between the two of his. “Let’s don’t tell Mrs. Hatch how foolishly we worried about her, all right?”

  “Fine.” As I returned his smile, I glanced over his shoulder. Snow was sliding in a small pointed avalanche off the roof of the garage. He turned to follow my glance.

  “I forgot about the garage,” he said casually, apologetically. “You don’t suppose we ought to look inside, do you? Just to set our minds completely at ease?”

  “Well, you know what lawyers would have us believe,” I said and I started to wade through the foot of snow in the back yard to the detached garage that was used for storage instead of cars. “Better to err on the side of caution.”

  I heard his dry, whispery laugh behind me.

  God, I felt stupid, plowing through the snow to open a frigid garage to see if Mrs. Charles Withers Hatch was among the items stored there. Of course, she was not.

  We closed the garage door and exchanged, those sheepish grins again. We were getting good at it. If Mrs. Hatch only knew, she’d die, I thought. And then I took one last look around the property—this time around a corner of the garage—and saw the secondhand badly cracked refrigerator. It was one that Mrs. Hatch had given to the home last year; obviously, it had not lasted long. It stood white and solitary in the snow under a low-hanging branch of a maple tree. Its aluminum shelves were propped against it; they sparkled in the cold sunlight.