Hidden Riches

by Felicia Mason

  JoJo made a sound that could have been agreement.

  In her years in Las Vegas, although she had spent many of them as a performer, JoJo had also learned how to tend bar. For a while after losing her last gig, bartending was the way she paid the bills. That experience let her know that Delcine might be taking the long way around but would eventually get back to the topic of her troubled marriage and their dire financial state.

  It didn’t take as long as she thought it might.

  “Who would have thought that of the four of us, Ana Mae would be the one with all the money?” Delcine asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  Delcine sat up and scooted back, bracing herself against the headboard of Ana Mae’s double bed.

  “Clay’s a successful doctor, married to a successful lawyer . . .”

  “Isn’t it a little odd to think of them as being married? I mean married like, like a man and a woman married. Is it like two husbands or is Clay the wife?”

  That earned a little snort-laugh from Delcine. “I suppose it works just like any other relationship.”

  JoJo nodded. “I’m glad he found Archer. They’re a good couple.”

  “Unlike the matches we made.”

  This time it was JoJo who snorted. “Exactly. I was hoping to dump Lester. All I needed to do was save up enough money to pay a lawyer. I’ll never get rid of him now that he knows there are millions of dollars in play that he could possibly lay claim to. That’s why he argued so hard to get us back in the hunt after I lost the quilt.”

  Delcine sighed. “With us, I hate to admit it and am even embarrassed to say, it wasn’t love that brought us together. Winslow and I have always been strategic partners. It made sense professionally and socially for us to marry.

  “For him, a loving wife and two perfect children all but ensured that he would be on the right side of the equation at promotion time and in power-networking situations. On the surface, where many if not most of the Beltway’s married populace reside, all is well. Underneath, though . . . ,” Delcine said, drawing up her knees and wrapping her hands around them on the bed, “. . . underneath the façade, all it is is deception and regret and infidelity.”

  “He cheated on you?” JoJo asked.

  Delcine shook her head. “Not the way you’re probably thinking, but in essence, yes. He cheated and got caught. Or will just as soon as that grand jury indictment is handed down.”

  “What did he do?” JoJo asked, repeating the question that when asked earlier sent her older sister on an extended crying jag.

  “It is all rather complicated—not to mention convoluted, if you ask me—but it boils down to influence peddling and kickbacks on housing projects. There’s also been something in the paper about budget allocations, but I swear, we haven’t seen a penny in any extra or unaccounted-for income.”

  “What about your house, the foreclosure situation, I mean?” JoJo said.

  “Unless about thirty-five grand materializes in the next few days . . . ,” Delcine sighed, then closed her eyes. “I don’t even have a backup plan. I should be at home packing or something, but . . .”

  “Like me, you’re hoping for a financial miracle.”

  It may have been the bleakly wistful tone in her voice, or maybe it was just the words, but Delcine reached for her sister’s hands. “Bad stuff going on with you too?”

  JoJo nodded.

  Then she held out her left hand and wiggled her fingers. “I had to pawn my wedding and engagement rings just to afford the fare to get here for Ana Mae’s funeral. There’s gonna be no divorcing Lester and no getting away as long as there’s a chance I could claim any of Ana Mae’s money.”

  For a few moments, neither of the Futrell sisters said anything, each woman lost in her own dismal thoughts about her marriage and her financial situation.

  Then Delcine, again adopting the airs she usually assumed, said, “We need to go see Mr. Rollings tomorrow and end this quilt treasure-hunt farce.”

  “You’ve solved all nine blocks?” JoJo asked.

  A steely resolve—or maybe it was blind ambition with a double shot of greed and that snooty air of entitlement—filled Delcine’s eyes. She smiled, but it was once again one of those condescending smile-snarls that set JoJo’s teeth on edge.

  Marguerite was back, and the Delcine of yesteryear had been squashed beyond recognition.

  With a confident jut of her chin, Marguerite declared, “I have all the information I need to lay claim to the inheritance left by Ana Mae.”

  20

  The Gathering

  Rollings had not anticipated hearing from the Futrell siblings for quite a while. Since the debacle with that idiot Lester digging up the backyard, he had kept pretty close tabs on the comings and goings of the Futrells and their significant others.

  Winslow Foster, the one who never said much, had scurried back to Maryland or Washington, D.C., leaving his wife to mourn—or celebrate—on her own. The gay lawyer spent most of his days shopping, and a word to County Sheriff Dan Daughtry had ensured that the sleazy one from Las Vegas didn’t stir up any trouble in Drapersville, Ahoskie, or anywhere else in the county. Something about that one just set wrong with Rollings and the sheriff. So keeping tabs on Lester Coston just made good sense.

  “Dad?”

  “In here, son.”

  Rollings was proud of his son, as proud as a father could be. He would one day inherit the law firm, the mortuary services business, and the other enterprises that the Rollings family had built from nothing and groomed until they thrived. He, of course, had had help. And so would his son. All Trey had to do was keep his nose clean and his mouth shut.

  The latter, so far, had proven less of a concern than Rollings anticipated. Trey quickly and early on figured out the benefits of keeping some family secrets within the family. In both the legal and the death industries, perception counted for a lot. If you looked the part, people tended to believe what their eyes told them. Rarely did anyone delve deeper. And for lo these many years, that had been to Rollings’s advantage.

  “Thank you, Ana Mae,” he murmured as Trey came in.

  This morning, Rollings worked on the legal side of the street. Buttoned down in his uniform—three-piece suit, conservative tie, and wing tips—he approved of Trey’s wardrobe choices for the day.

  Tall like his father, Trey sported the blue blazer and gray slacks and shirt of a mortuary intern. Although he had completed law school—Wake Forest, of course—and passed the North Carolina state bar exam in a top percentile, Trey’s education was not yet complete.

  Another young man may have balked at the very notion of remaining in a small North Carolina town that some called backward to learn the family funeral business once he had the impressive legal credentials to work at any large firm of his choosing, but Trey Rollings’s temperament did not run along those lines. He got that passivity from his mother. It was one trait, along with her fair complexion and eye color, that Rollings sometimes wished were not stamped on him. While nothing could be done about the skin, brown contact lenses took care of the eyes.

  But all in all, he remained pleased with his son. He just needed to keep Trey otherwise occupied while the Futrells were all in town and talking to Ana Mae’s friends. The faster they got done with Ana Mae’s little venture, the faster Rollings could again breathe easy. For all of these years, no one to Rollings’s knowledge had ever suspected anything. And if they did, they’d kept it to themselves.

  “I was just passing through,” Trey said. “Maria said to tell you Mrs. Marguerite Foster called. She and her brother and sister would like to see you as soon as possible.”

  Rollings briefly wondered if Ana Mae had somehow heard and acted on his request. If the Futrells wanted to meet, they were probably ready to present their findings.

  “Thank you, Trey. How are things going on the other side?”

  Trey Rollings lounged against the doorjamb. “Good, really good, actually. We’re going out to the Cam
pbell’s in about twenty minutes. They want to have a memorial service in their backyard instead of here or in a church. We’re going to see what we need to do to facilitate that.”

  Rollings nodded. “Be sure to suggest the cooling misters along with the large tent. It will be hot, and if they plan on anything longer than fifteen or twenty minutes, it will be pretty much unbearable out there.”

  “Cha-ching.”

  “Trey. Decorum, please.”

  “It’s just us, Dad. And besides, that is why you’re suggesting those misters.”

  His son had him there.

  When it came to profits and making money, Trey had inherited his father’s skills and none of his biological mother’s indifference to money, even though she was rolling in it these days. Trey’s biological mother was content with life’s basics, tending to her garden or just watching the day go by without accomplishing a single thing. It had been a while since he’d visited Nell Fisher. Their sons looked nothing alike, which helped in the complicated agreement Rollings, his wife, and Nell had come to all those years ago: Nell would raise Jeremy as her only son, and the Rollingses would raise Trey.

  While his sons knew of each other, they lived separate lives—one family in Ahoskie and the other in Drapersville.

  Ana Mae had known his secret. And to this day, Rollings didn’t know if she’d sussed it out on her own or if Nell had told her. If he were given to bets, he’d put money on the former. Ana Mae had been a wise woman, and he knew she had reason to relate.

  “Dad? You all right?”

  Rollings blinked. He focused in on Trey, leaving the past where it belonged.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I’m fine. Make sure you highly recommend the misters to the Campbells.”

  The profit margin would be slim enough on the Campbell funeral, so they would need to increase it on value-enhanced services. In this case, though, those cooling misters would be true value added as the family and friends of Reed Campbell said their farewells to him. It was one of those hot summer days that made a person just want to sit under the cool shade of a big tree with an icy pitcher of sweet tea at the ready.

  The image reminded him of another summer, one long before Trey was conceived, and the cool sweet tea he enjoyed with a special girl...

  The swing on the front porch could hold three people, but two could cozily share it. He liked spending time with her. She had a way of making him feel important. She believed in him when few others thought he would ever amount to much, given his humble background. They were a lot alike in that regard, but she had two parents who loved her even though her daddy wasn’t always around much.

  The other thing he liked about her was that Ana Mae could keep a secret. They had never been lovers. She knew she wasn’t his type. But they had been close, practically best friends, way back then before their lives took separate paths. Everett went on to study law and mortuary science. Ana Mae took after her mother and became a domestic. She’d gone to her grave still keeping his secrets, and in return, he kept hers.

  “Hey, Dad? You all right?”

  Rollings blinked again, then shook off the reverie. “I’m fine, son. I am just fine. You should get along now or you won’t have much time for lunch before the Campbell family consultation.”

  “All right. See you later,” Trey said, departing.

  Rollings watched him go and continued to stare at the spot where Trey had stood long after he’d left the office.

  Sitting back in his chair, he steepled his hands, resting his chin on the point where his fingers met. He sat that way for a bit in quiet contemplation, and then, as if speaking to someone right in the understated but luxurious law office with him, he said, “Just like your son Howard, my boys—both of my boys, Jeremy and Trey—turned out to be good young men,” he told the empty room. “All three of them are good men, Ana Mae. I’m really, really proud of all of them.”

  Rosalee Jenkins couldn’t get off work until two o’clock. She hadn’t had a chance to talk to Reverend Toussaint about what she’d discovered while rummaging through the old archives at the Drapersville Times & Review. She had been stunned to discover that the paper had that sort of information, let alone published it. That no one remembered it she found even more remarkable.

  Then again, a whole lot was going on across the country back then. So much bad stuff on the TV and on the front pages of not just big-city papers like the News & Observer out of Charlotte or the Atlanta Journal Constitution farther south. Even the Northern papers like the Washington Post and the New York Times were paying a lot of attention.

  It would have been easy, not to mention likely, that somebody would have overlooked a little item like that in a small-town weekly paper. If Rosalee hadn’t been specifically looking for it, she would have missed it too.

  She wanted to tell Reverend Toussaint what she’d found, but it didn’t look like she would be able to before the meeting at Everett Rollings’s office. Apparently, one of the Futrells was ready to claim the money.

  When Rosalee arrived at the Rollings and Associates law office, everyone was there already—all of the heirs who were at that first gathering, which seemed so very long ago but actually took place just a little more than a week earlier.

  JoJo and Lester. Clayton and his boyfriend, husband, man. Delcine, in another one of her don’t–even-think-about-messing–with-me power suits, but not her husband.

  Someone over at the barbershop said they spotted him in that big Lincoln headed toward the interstate a day or so ago. Since no one had seen hide nor hair of him since and they’d checked out of their hotel, the odds were that Delcine was gonna lose the race to claim Ana Mae’s money.

  Although it didn’t seem pertinent to her—interesting, but not pertinent—the information Rosalee found over at the newspaper office would help Ana Mae’s longtime friend Toussaint le Baptiste the most.

  Reverend Toussaint wore a rather dazed expression on his face. Occupying a chair at the foot end of the table, he had his Bible with him, and his hands were clasped together as if in prayer on top of the holy book. He seemed riveted by Ana Mae’s quilt, which was again on display near the head of the table.

  Next to the reverend sat a smug-looking and -acting Delcine. She came across as if she had all of the answers and would dare anyone to say differently. In an empty chair between JoJo and her sister were their purses; Delcine’s big and expensive designer bag—one of those numbers that cost an amount of money any normal person would use to pay three or four months’ worth of rent—and JoJo’s knockoff, an identical bag to the one Rosalee saw at the flea market not too long ago.

  As usual, JoJo was in something too tight and too short, and her eye makeup had been applied with a too-heavy hand.

  JoJo’s husband, Lester, prowled the conference room, looking at the books, staring at the fish, and pausing every now and then to scowl at either his wife or the quilt. He probably thought his slicked-back hair gave him a cool, Rat Pack look. What it screamed, at least to Rosalee, was hide your purse and your car keys or they might mysteriously turn up missing.

  What JoJo saw in that loser was beyond Rosalee—or any of the folks over at Junior’s Bar and Grille or at the barbershop.

  As she moved toward the empty chair next to Clayton’s gorgeous man, Archer, Rosalee greeted the room.

  “Hey, everybody.”

  Clayton nodded at her. Delcine didn’t even look in her direction, and Rosalee couldn’t be sure if Reverend Toussaint had even heard her.

  “Hi, Rosalee,” JoJo said.

  Archer smiled at her and rose. He pulled the chair out for Rosalee and got her settled.

  “Thank you,” she said, a little surprised and flattered at the attention from such a good-looking man, even if he was a blond-haired, blue-eyed white boy.

  Before Rosalee could spend any more time thinking about Archer, Everett Rollings came in.

  “Good afternoon,” he said. “Thank you all for gathering on such short notice.”

  H
is assistant, the ever-efficient and mostly silent Maria, came in, handed Rollings a manila file and a remote control, and then slipped out just as quietly. Rollings pulled out the chair at the head of the table near the quilt stand.

  “Mr. Coston, if you’d have a seat, please, we can begin.”

  For just a moment, it seemed Lester might protest. Apparently deciding to keep it cool, he headed around the table toward a seat near his wife. A glance at JoJo quelled that notion, though. He took the chair across from Delcine and between the Reverend and Clayton.

  “I understand that you have succeeded in your quest,” Rollings said.

  “What we have succeeded in,” Delcine said, as usual taking the role of spokeswoman for the family, “is deciding to end this little farce. We have spent the better part of a week running around this godforsaken town talking to people who knew Ana Mae. What that exercise has gotten us is precious little except wasted time.”

  “On the contrary, Delcine,” Clayton said, leaning forward and bracing his elbows on the table, his hands clasped. “I’ve learned more about Ana Mae this week since she’s been gone than I ever did while she was alive.”

  “I did, too,” JoJo said quietly. “I met and talked to a lot of her friends.”

  Delcine’s brows knit. “Friends? When?”

  JoJo glanced at Reverend Toussaint, whose attention was on Clayton. “What I learned,” she said, “is that she lived her life with honor and integrity. That’s something we should all try to do.”

  She directed the word all specifically toward her husband, who frowned at her.

  “What?” Lester said.