The Paradoxical Parent (A Nick Williams Mystery Book 13)

by Frank W. Butterfield

  I walked forward. "My name is Nicholas Williams. My mother was Alexandra Williams. I'm here to talk to Mr. Peterson."

  Her eyes widened and the cigarette dropped out of her mouth. She hastily picked it up off the desk and then put it out in the ashtray. "Gee, you're real, then."

  I smiled slightly. "Yeah. I guess."

  She laughed. "I'm sorry. It's just that when I took this job a couple of months ago, Mr. Peterson told me that someday a man named Mr. Nicholas Williams might walk in the door and that, if he did, I was to find him, Mr. Peterson, I mean, and let him know because he would want to see you." She looked at me closely. "You're that guy from San Francisco." She then looked up at Carter. "And, gee. Wow. I didn't realize you were both real." She jumped up out of her chair, ran around her desk and, before she pushed open the door at the back of the outer office, she said, "Oh, wait right here. Mr. Peterson is in a meeting but I know he'll want to see you. Hold on! Don't go anywhere."

  As she disappeared into the back office, I looked over at Carter, who was grinning.

  Frankie said, "There you have it, folks. You're both real. Now we know."

  Carter asked, "Why does she sound like she's from Iowa?"

  Maria said, "I think there's a big Coast Guard Station nearby. She's the right age to have a husband who might be doing his service."

  "Coast Guard? Iowa?" asked Carter.

  Before any of us could unwrap what was obviously confusing my husband, a man in his fifties emerged from the back office. He sported thick glasses with pomaded gray hair and was clean-shaven. He was wearing a dark brown vest that matched his brown wool trousers with a green wool tie. He walked up to me and offered his hand, which I shook. "Mr. Williams. What a pleasure. Will you wait a moment while I finish up a meeting? I won't be a minute."

  Without waiting for my reply, he walked back into his office. After a long moment, a short, stout man in a black suit walked past, looking us over. As he walked out the front door, I heard him say, "So that's the Williams faggot? Huh."

  I looked at Carter who shrugged.

  Mr. Peterson was back and said, "I'm sorry about that. I won't ask you why you're here. Not yet." His eyes were wide open in surprise, there was no doubt about that. "But I do have to ask, who are your friends?"

  I pointed at my husband. "This is Carter Jones."

  Carter extended his hand which Mr. Peterson shook. "Yes, Mr. Jones. I'm, uh, aware of your connection to the family."

  "And this is Mr. Frank Vasco, a retired New York City police lieutenant, and his wife, Mrs. Maria Vasco. She's a private investigator. They both work for me. Maria, as a matter of fact, is the person who got us here."

  Mr. Peterson shook both their hands and then frowned. "Do you mean she drove you down here?"

  I shook my head and smiled. "No. She's the one who found out that my mother had lived in Vermont."

  "Ah, yes. Grafton. Charming village, or so your mother said."

  I nodded. "Once we made it to Grafton, all the pieces fell into place. We were just at Dr. Farber's office this morning."

  Mr. Peterson made an "O" with his mouth for a long moment. "I see. And did you speak with Dr. Farber?"

  I shook my head. "No. He's in New York. It was Mrs. Brown who told us about the will."

  He pursed his lips. "She really shouldn't have." Then he shrugged his shoulders. "But, here you are." He smiled. "And now I have fulfilled my role in the administration of the estate. So, won't you all follow me into my office? Normally, it would be relatives only but, since, well, I suppose we can almost consider Mr. Jones a relative by what we used to call a Boston marriage." He chuckled at that as he led us into his office. "And, I just couldn't deprive Mrs. Vasco of hearing the details and, well, a New York City police officer deserves the greatest deference." By that time, he was behind his desk. He motioned his hands, indicating we should sit. "Let me get that very special folio and then I will read you the will and explain everything." He paused as he opened a desk drawer. "To the best of my ability, that is."

  Chapter 10

  Offices of Dwight Peterson, Esq.

  Main Street

  Dennis, Mass.

  Thursday, March 10, 1955

  A quarter until 5 in the afternoon

  "First, let me say that the terms of this will are the most extraordinary I've come across. I will summarize the terms and then, if you would like, I will read it out in full. You will, Mr. Williams, be receiving the will as it was prepared. I will be asking you to sign a notarized document today acknowledging your receipt of this will, along with a number of other documents and possessions left here by your mother." He pulled out a single sheet of paper from the thick folder that he'd brought to his desk from his office safe.

  "Next, I will confirm that, due to the unfortunate death of your sister, Janet, in May of 1953, you are the sole heir to this estate."

  I nodded.

  He looked down at the sheet of paper and read it for a moment. He glanced up at me apologetically. "I've long wondered if this day would ever come. And, I do want to make sure I give you the correct summary."

  "Thank you, Mr. Peterson." I couldn't think of anything else to say.

  "Now, Mr. Williams. Here are the terms of the will, in summary. First, the will and the fact of your mother's passing were only revealed to seven individuals named in the will, including myself. Second, each person was required to agree, in writing, to never disclose the fact of your mother's death or any information they had pertaining to how she died. Third, in exchange for agreeing to signing such a document, six of the seven individuals were each given a bequest of one thousand dollars, paid at the time of the signing and only once their signature had been procured." He looked over at Maria. "I'm sure you can imagine, my dear, how odd many of these kindly women found this requirement to be."

  Maria nodded with a small smile.

  "Fourth," continued Mr. Peterson, "the seventh bequest was a contribution to Dr. Farber's research in the amount of three million, five hundred thousand dollars."

  Without thinking about it, I asked, "What?"

  Mr. Peterson nodded. "But that must seem like just so much small change to you, Mr. Williams, considering the value of your trust and your business holdings."

  I shrugged. I really had no idea how much that value might be. I said, "I thought my mother's trust was much smaller than that."

  Mr. Peterson looked up. "Oh, it was, Mr. Williams. At first. When she left San Francisco, I believe her trust accounts totaled just under two hundred thousand. And, from what I saw, her trustee had maintained the funds in good, solid bonds, and so weathered the crash quite well, with only a small loss of capital." He adjusted his glasses. "Now, to continue." He cleared his throat. "That seventh bequest went to a special trust account, in lieu of anything personal, to Dr. Farber. He was most understanding of that and seemed to feel that any personal bequest would have been unseemly. I could quite see his point." He looked at me. "Now, the fifth point was the bulk of the estate. It was to be shared by you and your sister, equally, with the proviso that if, upon distribution, either of you should be deceased, then that sibling's share would be given, in whole, to the surviving sibling. The sixth point is that the entire estate would be distributed to Dr. Farber, in that special trust account, if the seventh point was not fulfilled prior to the demise of you both. However," he smiled, "you have fulfilled the seventh point, so I am now prepared to distribute the estate to you, Mr. Williams."

  "What was the seventh point?" I asked.

  "Oh, my. Yes, well that is important to know, is it not?"

  I nodded again.

  "The seventh point was simply this. The only way for the estate to be distributed was if you, or your sister, were to find me before you died."

  Carter frowned. "That sounds like the plot of a bad 'B' movie."

  I nodded in agreement. "Yeah. Why?"

  Mr. Peterson looked at me for a long moment. "I think that, at the end of her life, your mother felt that she had d
one a great wrong to you and your sister for living nearly eighteen years longer than she thought she would. She explained that she thought that the best approach was to simply let the truth out itself on its own. I tried to argue against this, explaining how highly unlikely the event would be that two persons from San Francisco might ever find a small-town lawyer half way down Cape Cod. However, she was quite persistent. In an attempt to explain her motivations, she did explain everything to me. The letters and the telegrams that were never answered. The fact that the maid or, should I say, the housekeeper had admitted to poisoning her. And, of course the fact that your father had admitted to being the mastermind of it all."

  I shook my head and gripped the arms of the chair I was sitting in. "I don't believe it."

  Mr. Peterson raised his eyebrows. "Which part don't you believe?"

  "That my father had anything to do with this."

  "There is a letter in this collection of documents that purports to be from him. You can read it if you like."

  "Give it to Carter. I'm afraid I'll rip it up."

  "Very well."

  Carter stood and walked over to the side of the lawyer's desk. Mr. Peterson handed him the letter.

  Carter looked at the envelope. He said, "It looks like your father's handwriting. And it's postmarked July 16th of 1947."

  I shook my head. "I still don't believe it. Read it."

  Carter stood where he was and opened the envelope. He pulled out the letter. Even from where I was sitting, I could see my father's monogram. It was definitely his stationery. Carter read it over silently, frowned, and then read it aloud:

  July 15, 1947

  1198 Sacramento Street

  San Francisco 9, Cal.

  My dear Alexandra,

  I know how surprised you will be to receive this letter after so many years. I have spent many restless nights thinking about my role in separating you from your children and how much I have hurt you all.

  Therefore, I write to let you know, quite simply, that your original illness was never a cancer. It was, in fact, arsenic poisoning, which I instructed Zelda to administer to you, in small doses, beginning in the spring of 1929.

  It had been my hope that you would have simply passed into that long night of sleep and never awakened. However, when you decided to travel to Mexico, I couldn't stand in your way, lest I reveal my role in your demise.

  I am hoping you will be able to forgive me for this. I beseech you to come home to me and to your children. We are happy here, for now, and our lives would be richer for your return.

  Your husband,

  Dr. Parnell Williams

  I breathed out a sigh of relief and then said, "Carter, can you read it one more time?"

  He nodded and did just that. When he was finished I asked, "Are you sure it says 'San Francisco 9' at the top?"

  He nodded again.

  "And you're sure his middle name is not in the signature?"

  He nodded a third time.

  I jumped out of my seat, punched the air, and said, "That goddam crazy bitch was just not goddam smart enough." I walked over to Carter, put my hands on the side of his head, and pulled him down to kiss him hard on the lips.

  Mr. Peterson said, "My goodness! Well, can I suppose from your rather vigorous reaction that this letter is a fake?"

  I turned, leaned over, put my hands on his desk, and said, "Your damn right it's a fake! My father couldn't tell you what postal zone he lived in to save his goddam life and he has never once, since he was probably six years old, left off his middle name in a signature. He's such a pompous ass, at heart." I plopped down in my chair and sighed. "And he's a pompous ass that I really do love."

  . . .

  Once Mr. Peterson had passed some brandy all around, we regrouped around his desk.

  "The other thing that's obvious to Carter and me, at least, is that last little bit about how happy we all were together." I rolled my eyes. "I hadn't seen my old man since 1940, except in court. That news must have made it east." I took a sip of brandy. "Homosexual comes into large fortune left by more notorious homosexual. Family sues." I looked over at Mr. Peterson. "You must have known about that."

  The lawyer shook his head. "I'm afraid not. Not until your sister's death, that is. Only then did I read about it. Otherwise, at the time, it was just of local interest to San Francisco, I would imagine." He nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, I see. If your mother had been aware of that suit, she would have known the final paragraph was not only a lie, but an attempt to entice her to return." He looked at all of us. "But for what purpose, I wonder?"

  I shrugged. "I think, by then, after almost eighteen years, Zelda must have known my father was a lost cause."

  Carter cleared his throat. "You'll have to ask him, but I think the timing has to do with an affair he was having at that time."

  I looked at Carter. "An affair?"

  "Sure. Marlene, the one whose lover killed Janet, wasn't the first. There had been several other women he'd dated, or whatever you'd call that. I seem to remember him once telling me there was some gal he'd known in the summer of 1947." Carter snapped his fingers. "Yeah. He did. It was when I told him about how we met."

  I sat up and put the tumbler of brandy on the desk. "You told my father how we met?"

  "Sure. It was in October of 1953. He was acting friendlier than usual and I decided to give it a try. That's when he said it was a coincidence since he almost got married around the same time we met."

  Maria said, "That would explain why Zelda would have sent the letter. Maybe she could see where things were going."

  I nodded. "Yeah."

  Frankie, who'd been quiet through the entire meeting, finally piped up and said, "I hate to ask an impertinent question, here, but how much dough are we talkin' about?"

  Mr. Peterson smiled and then looked at me. "Not impertinent at all, Mr. Vasco. Rather to the point." He pulled out another sheet of paper and looked at it. "As of the end of the last quarter, on December 31st of 1954, the estate trust was valued at fourteen million, nine hundred thousand, and sixty-three dollars."

  Carter whistled.

  I smiled at him.

  Mr. Peterson said, "Of course, if this is disbursed, the estate is subject to a high level of taxation by both the commonwealth and the Internal Revenue. I am not your attorney, Mr. Williams, and cannot possibly advise you, but might I suggest you consider assigning the trust to someone other than yourself? There is a tax benefit if the proceeds of the trust are paid out while the principal is maintained."

  I smiled and nodded. "I'm way ahead of you on that, Mr. Peterson."

  Carter said, "Ed."

  I nodded. "Yep. Good ole Dad."

  . . .

  "Mike?"

  "Yeah, Nick. How are you?"

  "A lot better. We know my father had nothing to do with it."

  "I'm real glad to hear that."

  "Yeah. And the way we know for sure is because he's such a pompous S.O.B."

  Mike laughed. "You'll have to tell me all about it when you get home."

  "I will. Meanwhile, what about my so-called friend? Ricky?"

  "Nothing. Have you seen the latest papers there?"

  "No," I said, a knot forming in my stomach. "What happened?"

  "He tried to get to Mr. Zimmerman."

  "Who's that?"

  "The man who owns the clothing store in Lebanon. After I called there this morning, the local cops put a man on him. They caught Ricky. But he somehow got away. No one was hurt, though."

  "That's good."

  "So, keep an eye out."

  "We will."

  "And come home soon."

  "It's gonna be at least one more day. We need to go back up to Grafton before we leave. We'll be at The Commander tonight and then drive up to Grafton in the morning. After that, I'm not sure."

  "Why Grafton?"

  "Because my mother was a millionaire when she died. I'm gonna give the money to the sheriff."

  "The sheriff?" />
  "Didn't I tell you?"

  "No."

  "He's practically my stepfather. But not exactly."

  Mike laughed. "Your mother was living in sin?"

  "Yep."

  "Good for her."

  "Yeah, I think it was."

  . . .

  Mr. Peterson drove, not surprisingly, a Plymouth. We followed him down the road from his office. After about half a mile, he made a left down a gravel road that took us by the Dennis Congregational Church that was housed in exactly the kind of white steeple New England church that I always saw in the movies. There was a cemetery behind the building and, in the fading light of the day, Mr. Peterson made a right down a narrow lane and then stopped after about a hundred feet.

  We all piled out of the car. He led us down a row of a mix of new headstones and ancient ones. Some were so faded by the elements that their inscriptions were no longer readable.

  Mr. Peterson stopped in front of a simple granite marker that was obviously of the newer variety. It was unadorned and the inscription was simple.

  Alexandra Margaret Davies Williams

  1902—1948

  Carter took my hand as we walked up to it. I knelt down and ran my right hand over the cold gray stone. I could feel the tears making their way to the surface. The shock of it was surprising, considering I hadn't really expected anything different.

  Carter knelt next to me and took my left hand in his right. After a long moment, he very quietly said, "I hope you don't mind too much that I'm in love with your son, Mrs. Williams. I promise I'll always be good to him."

  . . .

  As we were driving back up to Boston, I looked through the box that Mr. Peterson gave me. He'd said that my mother had given everything away and that the contents of the box were all that were left. I found the deed to her house in Grafton and some letters she'd received from Ed during '40 and '41, before she'd moved to Vermont. There was a small album of photos of Janet and me from when we were babies. And there was a beautiful pearl necklace. I knew exactly who to give it to.