Your Killin' Heart

by Peggy O'Neal Peden

  I thanked her, took the papers, and climbed the stairs to the circuit courtroom on the fifth floor. I slipped in and found a seat in the back row. Doug was at the front on a bench along the side wall, and I smiled when I caught his eye to let him know I was there.

  I haven’t spent a lot of time in courtrooms. I’d met Doug there a few times and even held a friend’s hand during her divorce hearing. But the actual atmosphere in a courtroom has always amazed me. On Perry Mason, it was so solemn, all the energy and attention focused on the witness and the opposing attorneys unless Della or Paul interrupted with an important message that always changed the case. In real life, at least in my very limited experience, it’s entirely different, both more boring and more fascinating. Things happen slowly, with lawyers asking witnesses to repeat information that seems obvious. The courtroom was like a three-ring circus. There was something to watch everywhere I looked.

  The clerk was flirting with the bailiff. The court reporter looked simultaneously bored and focused. The waiting attorneys were talking quietly, planning golf dates, probably. The audience came and went; babies squirmed. Every type, every economic class. Through it all, the judge droned, rarely surprised out of his routine. What was there to excite him? He’d seen and heard it all.

  I liked watching Doug work, though. He’s always well prepared and thorough, has documentation for every contingency. “Judges don’t want to waste their time listening to attorneys be impressive,” I’d heard him say. So he prides himself on keeping his briefs brief, condensing everything to its essential elements, a thin file folder. “That way the judge won’t feel his lunch or late-afternoon golf game is threatened.” In his briefcase, though, I knew there were stacks of citations, precedents, and information, ready to be pulled out if the judge needed convincing.

  I settled in to see what I could learn from the papers. The will had been drawn up by Franklin Polk less than a month before Jake died. Most of the estate was set up as a trust. Hazel inherited fifty thousand dollars outright, but everything else—publishing rights, royalties on recordings, licensing, proprietary rights to Jake Miller’s name and anything associated with it—all went into a trust, even the house. Hazel had use of the house and income for her lifetime or until she remarried. In either of those cases, the remainder of the estate would be divided among Jake’s children. That’s the way it was worded—“any child of mine surviving.” I knew of only one—Jacqueline. I’d have to ask Doug, but it appeared to me that Jacqueline would have the right to sell assets of the estate. Not Hazel.

  The terms of the will might explain Hazel’s loyalty to Jake’s memory all these years. As long as she remained unmarried, she was potentially a very wealthy woman. I suspected her fifty thousand dollars was long gone. On the other hand, if the estate were cash poor, only Jacqueline could sell off the assets, and she could only do so after Hazel’s death.

  My next document was almost as interesting. It was a copy of a petition, brought by Hazel M. Miller, for the discharge of Franklin Polk as administrator of the estate of Jacob Elijah Miller. There was a copy of a final accounting by Polk and a judge’s order, sealed for twenty-five years, dismissing a claim against the estate made by Ruth B. Laine. A claim for support for a child. Was there competition for Jacqueline’s claim to her father’s estate?

  * * *

  I met Doug in the hallway when he was through. Without talking we started down the stairs, and he nodded to acquaintances on the way out.

  When we got to San Antonio Grill on Commerce, the waiter came over to take our drink orders.

  “Iced tea, unsweet, lemon and lime,” I said.

  Doug looked at the waiter. “I’ll have sweet tea, lemon.”

  I picked up my knife, wondering if I really could cut this tension with it.

  “What’d you find?” Doug didn’t want me poking around, but I was stubborn enough to pursue the case in spite of Doug’s demand that I leave Hazel’s death alone. Or maybe because of it. Either way, I needed his help in understanding the documents, and he was clearly curious enough to help.

  Doug heard me out. “The dead hand.”

  I felt my eyes go wide. “The dead what?”

  “The dead hand. Legal term for someone trying to control his estate—and his heirs—from beyond the grave.”

  “Oh,” I said, enlightened. “The lifetime-use thing.”

  Doug nodded. “You can’t control what happens with your estate forever. But one generation. Yeah.”

  “So Jake is still pulling the strings.” I shivered at the image of a hand from the grave controlling his family. “It’s Jake’s fault!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Odds are, Hazel is dead because of that will of Jake’s.”

  “You’re being way too melodramatic,” Doug said, a little stiffly, “but basically, you might be right. My guess is there wasn’t much cash in the estate. I don’t think Jake was a particularly rich man when he died, and fifty thousand doesn’t go as far as it used to. He was popular, but he wasn’t a legend until after he was gone. And country-record sales weren’t the big money back then that they can be now. His records are still being sold, and everybody’s recorded his songs, so there would always have been some income, but the one-time potential of selling publishing rights would be worth millions. There’s no telling how much that could bring.”

  “That makes Jacqueline look like a suspect. She wanted to get her hands on those publishing rights.”

  “Campbell!”

  I changed the subject. “You going to the game this weekend?” Doug was a Vanderbilt fan. He had gone to college and law school there.

  “No, it’s a road game. Ole Miss in Oxford. I’d like to go, Saturday in the Grove, but I’ve got too much to do.”

  Southeastern Conference football was an easier topic.

  “How do they look this year?” I asked.

  Doug shook his head. “We’ve got some talent. That linebacker from Lipscomb High looks good. The quarterback’s throwing well, but we need a bigger O-line. We might win some games if they’ll give this coach time to build a program. He seems to be able to recruit.”

  We spent the rest of lunch analyzing the conference. Tennessee and Florida had the best recruit classes. Ole Miss had a Heisman prospect running back. Auburn was a wild card. Did A&M and Missouri really belong in the SEC?

  Safe ground. Nothing about old country singers or frustrated artists.

  After paying the check, Doug stood. “Go back to work, Campbell. Do your job. Go home. Someday, if it turns out there was a murder and if it turns out Jacqueline did it, you can tell all your friends that you had it figured out first. I’ll attest to that.”

  As we walked back up the hill to the courthouse parking lot, I refused to be put off by his patronizing. “So why did Hazel petition to have Franklin Polk removed as administrator?”

  “Who knows? Maybe she didn’t like him. Maybe she was mad at him because of the trust and lifetime-use clause. That’s not the kind of thing Jake is likely to have thought of on his own.

  “No, you’re right,” Doug continued. “If I were Hazel, I’d want someone I thought was more on my side. She’s lived pretty well, though. There must have been a lot of money over the years.”

  “But why couldn’t she pay Kenneth for the paintings then?” I asked.

  “Didn’t,” the lawyer corrected. “We don’t know that she couldn’t. Maybe she changed her mind. Decided she didn’t want them.”

  “Okay, but why would Jacqueline be so desperate to get her hands on more money? She’s a physician; she’s very well-off.”

  “Apparently.”

  “You mean she’s not?”

  “I don’t mean anything. I mean stop speculating. How would you like it if someone were digging into your past, suggesting that you had murdered your stepmother?”

  “Stepmother?”

  Doug looked stricken. I suppose the last thing he wanted was to give me any information that might fuel my spec
ulation.

  “Doug! Was Hazel not Jacqueline’s mother?”

  He sighed. “No. Yes, legally, of course she was. I thought you knew about all that. You’re more of a country-music fan than I am. They adopted her as a small child, although the rumor was that she was actually Jake’s daughter.”

  “Jake’s? By another woman?”

  “Surely you’ve heard this.”

  “No! I’ve never heard anything about that!”

  “The birth mother supposedly brought her to Jake. She wanted Jake to support the child. This was way before the DNA tests they can do today. The child might have resembled Jake, but how could you prove anything? Especially if you had kept your relationship secret—if it actually was something that could be called a relationship. Jake and Hazel didn’t have any children. Story is, Jake told the woman he would raise her child, adopt her, make sure she never wanted for anything, but she could never ask for more, never contact them again, never reveal the story.”

  “And she agreed to that?”

  “She didn’t have any money, probably couldn’t take care of the child. The child’s real father, especially a country-music star like Jake, must have seemed better than anonymous adoptive parents. If there’s anything to the story.”

  “So, Jay Miller?” I asked.

  “Jay Miller?”

  “Jacqueline’s son. Calls himself Jay. He’s a rock musician. Alternative.”

  “Alternative to what?” Doug asked.

  “Alternative rock, alternative music. You’re out of touch with the new generation, aren’t you?”

  “By choice. So what is alternative?”

  “That’s hard to define. A band starts out, doesn’t quite fit a mold, but then they get hot, so I suppose that makes them mainstream, therefore, not alternative. I heard an alternative song in a Muzak-type arrangement in a department store the other day. If you’re on Muzak, you’re definitely not alternative.”

  “You listen to this stuff?”

  “Yeah, sometimes.”

  “Okay.” He looked dazed. “Well, I guess the alternative Jay Miller is the grandson by adoption of Jake Miller and most likely also his biological grandson.” Doug had talked himself back to comfortable ground with legalese.

  “But not Hazel’s.”

  “Right. Well, not Hazel’s biological grandson. Her grandson by adoption, certainly. And in the eyes of the law, an adoptive child—or grandchild—has the same rights as a biological one.”

  “So, when he yelled, ‘I’ve got rights’…”

  “What are you talking about?” Doug said.

  “At Hazel’s house that afternoon. He was the boy in the truck with the earring and the attitude.”

  “How do you know that?” he asked.

  “Hey, if you’re going to be mad at me and not call, I have to find some other way to spend my time.”

  * * *

  Later that day, as I drove home from work, traffic was bumper to bumper on 440. I passed the time trying to figure out how all my pieces of information fit together. There were too many mismatched edges no matter which way I turned the pieces.

  I crawled I-40 east out to the Briley Parkway exit, passed the Wave Pool, Opry Mills, and the Opryland Hotel, which keeps growing and growing and growing. Every time I figure out a decent place to park for events there, they announce a new addition and put my parking place under glass.

  I took the Opryland Hotel/Music Valley Drive exit, past the time-shares, all the way to the river, where the road ends and you have to turn either right or completely around. That’s where I live, on the banks of the Cumberland River, eroding ever faster now, thanks, some people say, to the riverboats and water taxis.

  The house is built out of the limestone that lines the Cumberland, grown out of the rock beneath it as if part of the cliff, and the mosses and lichens that grow around the small yard see no reason not to climb up the stone as well. If I didn’t have so many windows, it might be dark and gloomy, but the windows bring in the sky and the river, which change with the seasons, weather, and hours. Sometimes I can sit on the flagstone patio staring at the muskrats playing on the opposite riverbank and shut out the rest of the world. I understood why Mr. Morgan didn’t want to leave.

  I went inside, dropped my files on the table and myself on the couch. My walls are all white, and the rooms are sparsely furnished. My friend MaryNell told me once that when my house is cleaned up it looks like a really great furnished time-share. I think she meant it as a compliment. Uncluttered? Tasteful? Or is it just impersonal, a house for someone a little too closed off, afraid to let too much of herself show?

  I had found the perfect spot, though, for the bronze sculpture Kenneth Elliott had given me. I had put it on a plant pedestal under a recessed spotlight and still hadn’t tired of looking at it. Every time I passed by, I had to touch it, feel the strong lines. I wondered what kind of work Kenneth had done. Doug had said he painted, but oil, acrylic? What style? What would he be doing now if he’d kept painting? Would he still be stretching, learning, or would he have finally settled for decorative accessories?

  I put the kettle on to make some hot tea, strong, sweet, with a lot of lemon, and took my glass outside to the patio. The crisp air felt good. The red geraniums were beginning to get a little leggy, but I couldn’t bear to prune away what might be the last of my summer color. That’s my problem with gardening, not ruthless enough.

  The river was still, too cool now for water-skiers and too early in the evening for the water taxis and riverboat dinner cruises. It was my favorite time of day, just me and the muskrats and the river.

  The leaves were off the dogwood by my patio, but it was full of red berries. A lone mockingbird fussed at me. Usually there were several, a whole family with great voices. Good gene pool, I guessed. They reminded me of a family from the church I attended as a child. Six children, all of them beautiful singers, the Morrises. I’d gotten to the point where I thought of my mockingbird family as the Morrises. But today there was just one bird, left to tend the crops for winter. “The berries are all yours, buddy.” He wasn’t convinced. I sipped my tea and thought back to Hazel Miller.

  Doug was right, of course. Hazel’s death was none of my business. Anything I might figure out would make amusing dinner conversation, but it wouldn’t make any difference. Doug was right about a lot of things, I supposed, and that was a bad sign. Whenever I start to think Doug’s view of life is right, it’s a sure sign of depression coming on. I went inside to take a long, hot bath and practice the reflexology massage I learned on my last cruise.

  I lay in the hot water, half dozing and thinking about Jake Miller. He’d been dead for decades, but he was still controlling things. One thing was clear: Jake hadn’t trusted Hazel to manage his estate. She must have been furious. That trust, set up to protect the estate from being dissipated in Hazel’s lifetime, offered at least two people a pretty substantial motive for murder. Jacqueline would inherit. For Jay to inherit, Jacqueline would have to die, too. But maybe Jay could persuade his mother to sell some of the estate’s assets. Maybe he had known for years that she planned to do so when Hazel died.

  Who would know better than an anesthesiologist what amounts of different narcotic and depressive substances a human body could take and how they might interact?

  And what about Jacqueline’s biological mother? Did Jacqueline know who she was? Was she still alive? Did Jacqueline know? The biological mother could have found out the terms of Jake’s will as easily as I had. She’d want to know that he’d kept his promise to provide for their child. But who was she? And how did Rosie Layne fit into all this? Did she want Hazel out of the way so her daughter could control Jake’s assets, maybe even share them with her?

  Jake Miller had died a long time ago, and the way she had abused her body, Hazel Miller couldn’t have lived a lot longer than she had. What was the hurry? Who would kill a lonely old lady for money that wasn’t really hers?

  Chapter Seven

 
You say that you love me;

  I know that it’s true.

  We’ve been through so much for so long.

  You’ve been here beside me;

  You’ve tried hard to save me;

  You’re the best friend that I’ve ever known

  Except for this bottle right here.

  —Jake Miller, “The Best Friend That I’ve Ever Known”

  The drive to work the next morning was breathtaking. It’s true that morning rush-hour driving in Nashville often takes my breath away, but that morning it was because every tree seemed to have put on its most brilliant colors overnight. Leaves had already started falling, but the trees that turned colors hadn’t changed until that evening. The maple beside the stop sign at the end of my street had turned a brilliant yellow gold, and when the sun shone through it just right, it glowed like a giant yellow lantern. Every stop sign should have such a tree beside it. It would go a long way toward eliminating road rage.

  I didn’t have much time for Jake Miller and his family and friends once I got to work. One of the agents in the office was having a crisis. A late-season tropical storm was threatening Puerto Rico, and she had clients booked on a Saturday cruise out of San Juan. The cruise line wasn’t ready to cancel or even move the embarkation to another port. Tropical storms are unpredictable. In two days, San Juan might be in the clear, and the alternate port might be stormy. But the clients naturally wanted to know what was going to happen. Would their money be refunded? Were weather conditions going to be safe after all? They didn’t want to spend all that money to fly into a dangerous area and be stuck there. We pulled up the Weather Channel Web site and followed the storm forecasts, just as the executives of the cruise line were likely doing. Everybody’s best guess was that the storm was going to turn northeast. If that happened, San Juan and the cruise itinerary would be spared.

  A call from a regular client, a huge University of Tennessee fan even though his daughter is on a full cheerleading scholarship at Alabama, reminded me that Bowl season was approaching. The Bowl Championship Series rankings had just been announced, and even though they weren’t the final rankings, it was time to start looking for Orange Bowl packages. This year he might have two bowls to juggle.