“So about the will,” Gary continued. “Have the rules changed since we were at Boalt?”
“A bit. Remember how it could be invalidated by anything preprinted on it? Like in that case where there was a date stamped on the paper the woman used, and the whole thing was thrown out?”
“Yeah. I remember someone asked whether you could use your own letterhead.”
“That was you, Gary.”
“Probably. And you couldn’t, it seems to me.”
“But you probably could now. Now only the ‘materially relevant’ part has to be handwritten. And you don’t have to date it.”
“No? That seems odd.”
“Well, you would if there were a previous dated will. Otherwise just write it out, sign it, and it’s legal.”
Something about the call, maybe just the melancholy of hearing a voice from the past, put me in a gray and restless mood. It was mid-December and pouring outside—perfect weather for doleful ruminations on a man I hardly knew anymore. I couldn’t help worrying that if Laurie was Gary’s whole life, that didn’t speak well for his marriage. Shouldn’t Stephanie at least have gotten a small mention? But she hadn’t, and the Gary I knew could easily have fallen out of love with her. He was one of life’s stationary drifters—staying in the same place but drifting from one mild interest to another, none of them very consuming and none very durable. I hoped it would be different with Laurie; it wouldn’t be easy to watch your dad wimp out on you.
But I sensed it was already happening. I suspected that phone call meant little Laurie, who was his life, was making him feel tied down and he was sending out feelers to former and future lady friends.
The weather made me think of a line from a poem Gary used to quote:
Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville.
He was the sort to quote Paul Verlaine. He read everything, retained everything, and didn’t do much. He had never finished law school, had sold insurance for a while and was now dabbling in real estate, I’d heard, though I didn’t know what that meant, exactly. Probably trying to figure out a way to speculate with Stephanie’s money, which, out of affection for Gary, I thanked heaven she had. If you can’t make up your mind what to do with your life, you should at least marry well and waffle in comfort.
* * *
—
Gary died that night. Reading about it in the morning Chronicle, I shivered, thinking the phone call was one of those grisly coincidences. But the will came the next day.
The Chronicle story said Gary and Stephanie were both killed instantly when their car went over a cliff on a twisty road in a blinding rainstorm. The rains were hellish that year. It was the third day of a five-day flood.
Madeline Bell, a witness to the accident, said Gary had swerved to avoid hitting her Mercedes as she came around a curve. The car had exploded and burned as Bell watched it roll off a hill near San Anselmo, where Stephanie and Gary lived.
Even in that moment of shock I think I felt more grief for Laurie than I did for Gary, who had half lived his life at best. Only a day before, when I’d talked to Gary, Laurie had had it made—her mama was rich and her daddy good-looking. Now she was an orphan.
I wondered where Gary and Stephanie were going in such an awful storm. To a party, probably, or home from one. It was the height of the holiday season.
I knew Gary’s mother, of course. Would she already be at the Wilder house, for Hanukkah, perhaps? If not, she’d be coming soon; I’d call in a day or two.
In the meantime I called Rob Burns, who had long since replaced Gary in my affections, and asked to see him that night. I hadn’t thought twice of Gary in the past five years, but something was gone from my life and I needed comfort. It would be good to sleep with Rob by my side and the sound of rain on the roof—life-affirming, as we say in California. I’d read somewhere that Mark Twain, when he built his mansion in Hartford, installed a section of tin roof so as to get the best rain sounds. I could understand the impulse.
It was still pouring by mid-morning the next day, and my throat was feeling slightly scratchy, the way it does when a cold’s coming on. I was rummaging for vitamin C when Kruzick brought the mail in—Alan Kruzick, incredibly inept but inextricably installed secretary for the law firm of Nicholson and Schwartz, of which I was a protesting partner. The other partner, Chris Nicholson, liked his smart-ass style, my sister Mickey was his girlfriend, and my mother had simply laid down the law—hire him and keep him.
“Any checks?” I asked.
“Nope. Nothing interesting but a letter from a dead man.”
“What?”
He held up an envelope with Gary Wilder’s name and address in the upper left corner. “Maybe he wants you to channel him.”
The tears that popped into my eyes quelled even Kruzick.
The will was in Gary’s own handwriting, signed, written on plain paper, and dated December 17, the day of Gary’s death. It said: “This is my last will and testament, superseding all others. I leave everything I own to my daughter, Laurie Wilder. If my wife and I die before her 21st birthday, I appoint my brother, Michael Wilder, as her legal guardian. I also appoint my brother as executor of this will.”
My stomach clutched as I realized that Gary had known when we talked that he and Stephanie were in danger. He’d managed to seem his usual happy-go-lucky self, using the trick he had of hiding his feelings that had made him hard to live with.
But if he knew he was going to be killed, why hadn’t he given the murderer’s identity? Perhaps he had, I realized. I was a lawyer, so I’d gotten the will. Someone else might have gotten a letter about what was happening. I wondered if my old boyfriend had gotten involved with the dope trade. After all, he lived in Marin County, which had the highest population of coke dealers outside the greater Miami area.
I phoned Gary’s brother at his home in Seattle but was told he’d gone to San Anselmo. I had a client coming in five minutes, but after that, nothing pressing. And so, by two o’clock I was on the Golden Gate Bridge, enjoying a rare moment of foggy overcast, the rain having relented for a while.
It was odd about Gary’s choosing Michael for Laurie’s guardian. When I’d known him well he’d had nothing but contempt for his brother. Michael was a stockbroker and a go-getter; Gary was a mooner-about, a romantic, and a rebel. He considered his brother boring, stuffy, a bit crass, and utterly worthless. On the other hand, he adored his sister, Jeri, a free-spirited dental hygienist married to a good-natured sometime carpenter.
Was Michael married? Yes, I thought. At least he had been. Maybe fatherhood had changed Gary’s opinions on what was important—Michael’s money and stability might have looked good to him when he thought of sending Laurie to college.
I pulled up in front of the Wilder-Cooper house, a modest redwood one that had probably cost nearly half a million. Such were real-estate values in Marin County—and such was Stephanie’s bank account.
At home were Michael Wilder—wearing a suit—and Stephanie’s parents, Mary and Jack Cooper. Mary was a big woman, comfortable and talkative; Jack was skinny and withdrawn. He stared into space, almost sad, but mostly just faraway, and I got the feeling watching TV was his great passion in life, though perhaps he drank as well. The idea, it appeared, was simply to leave the room without anyone noticing, the means of transportation being entirely insignificant.
It was a bit awkward, my being the ex-girlfriend and showing up unexpectedly. Michael didn’t seem to know how to introduce me, and I could take a hint. It was no time to ask to see him privately.
“I’d hoped to see your mother,” I said.
“She’s at the hospital,” said Mary. “We’re taking turns now that—” She started to cry.
“The hospital!”
“You don’t know about Laurie?”
“She was in the accident?”
“No. She’s been very ill for the last two months.”
“Near death,” said Mary. “What that child has been through shouldn’t happen to an animal. Tiny little face just contorts itself like a poor little monkey’s. Screams and screams and screams; and rivers flow out of her little bottom. Rivers, Miss Schwartz!”
Her shoulders hunched and began to shake. Michael looked helpless. Mechanically Jack put an arm around her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked Michael.
He shrugged. “They don’t know. Can’t diagnose it.”
“Now, Mary,” said Jack. “She’s better. The doctor said so last night.”
“What hospital is she in?”
“Marin General.”
I said to Michael: “I think I’ll pop by and see your mother—would you mind pointing me in the right direction? I’ve got a map in the car.”
When we arrived at the curb, I said, “I can find the hospital. I wanted to give you something.”
I handed him the will. “This came in today’s mail. It’ll be up to you as executor to petition the court for probate.” As he read, a look of utter incredulity came over his face. “But…I’m divorced. I can’t take care of a baby.”
“Gary didn’t ask in advance if you’d be willing?”
“Yes, but…I didn’t think he was going to die!” His voice got higher as reality caught up with him. “He called the day of the accident. But I thought he was just depressed. You know how people get around the holidays.”
“What did he say exactly?”
“He said he had this weird feeling, that’s all—like something bad might happen to him. And would I take care of Laurie if anything did.”
“He didn’t say he was scared? In any kind of trouble?”
“No—just feeling weird.”
“Michael, he wasn’t dealing, was he?”
“Are you kidding? I’d be the last to know.” He looked at the ground a minute. “I guess he could have been.”
* * *
—
Ellen Wilder was cooing to Laurie when I got to the hospital. “Ohhhh, she’s much better now. She just needed her grandma’s touch, that’s all it was.”
She spoke to the baby in the third person, unaware I was there until I announced myself, whereupon she almost dropped the precious angel-wangel and dislodged her IV. We had a tearful reunion, Gary’s mother and I. We both missed Gary, and we both felt for poor Laurie.
Ellen adored the baby more than breath, to listen to her, and not only that, she possessed the healing power of a witch. She had spent the night Gary and Stephanie were killed with Laurie, and all day the next day, never even going home for a shower. And gradually the fever had broken, metaphorically speaking. With Grandma’s loving attention, the baby’s debilitating diarrhea had begun to ease off, and little Laurie had seemed to come back to life.
“Look, Rebecca.” She tiptoed to the sleeping baby. “See those cheeks? Roses in them. She’s getting her pretty color back, widdle Waurie is, yes, her is.” She seemed not to realize she’d lapsed into baby talk.
She came back and sat down beside me. “Stephanie stayed with her nearly around the clock, you know. She was the best mother anyone ever—” Ellen teared up for a second and glanced around the room, embarrassed.
“Look. She left her clothes here. I’ll have to remember to take them home. The best mother…she and Gary were invited to a party that night. It was a horrible, rainy, rainy night, but poor Stephanie hadn’t been anywhere but the hospital in weeks—”
“How long had you been here?”
“Oh, just a few days. I came for Hanukkah—and to help out if I could. I knew Stephanie had to get out, so I offered to stay with Laurie. I was just dying to have some time with the widdle fweet fing, anyhow—” This last was spoken more or less in Laurie’s direction. Ellen seemed to have developed a habit of talking to the child while carrying on other conversations.
“What happened was Gary had quite a few drinks before he brought me over. Oh, God, I never should have let him drive! We nearly had a wreck on the way over—you know how stormy it was. I kept telling him he was too drunk to drive, and he said I wanted it that way, just like I always wanted him to have strep throat when he was a kid. He said he felt fine then and he felt fine now.”
I was getting lost. “You wanted him to have strep throat?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what he meant. He was just drunk, that’s all. Oh, God, my poor baby!” She sniffed, fumbled in her purse, and blew her nose into a tissue.
“Did he seem okay that day—except for being drunk?”
“Fine. Why?”
“He called me that afternoon—about his will. And he called Michael to say he—well, I guess to say he had a premonition about his death.”
“His will? He called you about a will?”
“Yes.”
“But he and Stephanie had already made their wills. Danny Goldstein drew them up.” That made sense, as Gary had dated his holograph. Danny had been at Boalt with Gary and me. I wondered briefly if it hurt Ellen to be reminded that all Gary’s classmates had gone on to become lawyers just like their parents would have wanted.
A fresh-faced nurse popped in and took a look at Laurie. “How’s our girl?”
“Like a different baby.”
The nurse smiled. “She sure is. We were really worried for a while there.” But the smile faded almost instantly. “It’s so sad. I never saw a more devoted mother. Laurie never needed us at all—Stephanie was her nurse. One of the best I ever saw.”
“I didn’t know Stephanie was a nurse.” The last I’d heard she was working part-time for a caterer, trying to make up her mind whether to go to chef’s school. Stephanie had a strong personality, but she wasn’t much more career-minded than Gary was. Motherhood, everyone seemed to think, had been her true calling.
“She didn’t have any training—she was just good with infants. You should have seen the way she’d sit and rock that child for hours, Laurie having diarrhea so bad she hardly had any skin on her little butt, crying her little heart out. She must have been in agony like you and I couldn’t imagine. But finally Stephanie would get her to sleep. Nobody else could.”
“Nobody else could breast-feed her,” I said, thinking surely I’d hit on the source of Stephanie’s amazing talent.
“Stephanie couldn’t, either. Didn’t have enough milk.” The nurse shrugged. “Anyone can give a bottle. It wasn’t that.”
When she left, I said, “I’d better go. Can I do anything for you?”
Ellen thought a minute. “You know what you could do? Will you be going by Gary’s again?”
“I’d be glad to.”
“You could take some of Stephanie’s clothes and things. They’re going to let Laurie out in a day or two and there’s so much stuff here.” She looked exasperated.
Glad to help, I gathered up clothes and began to fold them. Ellen found a canvas carryall of Stephanie’s to pack them in. Zipping it open, I saw a bit of white powder in the bottom, and my stomach flopped over. I couldn’t get the notion of drugs out of my mind. Gary had had a “premonition” of death, the kind you might get if you burned someone and they threatened you—and now I was looking at white powder.
I found some plastic bags in a drawer that had probably once been used to transport diapers or formula, and lined the bottom of the carryall with them, to keep the powder from sticking to Stephanie’s clothes.
But instead of going to Gary’s, I dropped in at my parents’ house in San Rafael. It was about four o’clock and I had some phoning to do before five.
“Darling!” said Mom. “Isn’t it awful about poor Gary Wilder?”
Mom had always liked Gary. She had a soft spot for ne’er-do-wells, as I knew only too well. She was the main reason Kruzick was currently ruining my life
. The person for whom she hadn’t a minute was the one I preferred most—the blue-eyed and dashing Mr. Rob Burns, star reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Using the phone in my dad’s study, Rob was the very person I rang up. His business was asking questions that were none of his business, and I had a few for him to ask.
Quickly explaining the will, the odd phone call to Michael, and the white powder, I had him hooked. He smelled the same rat I smelled, and more important, he smelled a story.
While he made his calls I phoned Danny Goldstein. “Becky baby.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Terrible about Gary, isn’t it? Makes you think, man.”
“Terrible about Stephanie too.”
“I don’t know. She pussy-whipped him.”
“She was better than Melissa.”
Danny laughed unkindly, brayed you could even say. Everyone knew Gary had left me for Melissa, who was twenty-two and a cutesy-wootsy doll-baby who couldn’t be trusted to go to the store for a six-pack. Naturally everyone thought I had Gary pussy-whipped when the truth was, he wouldn’t brush his teeth without asking my advice about it. He was a man desperate for a woman to run his life, and I was relieved to be rid of the job.
But still, Melissa had hurt my pride. I thought Gary’s choosing her meant he’d grown up and no longer needed me. It was a short-lived maturity, however—within two years Stephanie had appeared on the scene. I might not see it exactly the way Danny did, but I had to admit that if he’d had any balls, she was the one to bust them.
“I hear motherhood mellowed her,” I said.
“Yeah, she was born for it. Always worrying was the kid too hot, too cold, too hungry—one of those poo-poo moms.”
“Huh?”
“You know. Does the kid want to go poo-poo? Did the kid already go poo-poo? Does it go poo-poo enough? Does it go poo-poo too much? Is it going poo-poo right now? She could discuss color and consistency through a whole dinner party, salmon mousse to kiwi tart.”
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 146