Was there a connection?
If so, my brain was too tired to make it, and before long, I’d drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep, only to be awakened in what seemed like minutes by a paw tapping on my face and the shrill sound of the telephone ringing right next to my head.
Carefully edging away from Tinkleston, who looked like sleep had restored his devilish side, I picked up the phone and said, “Hello?”
“Daphne!” the caller snapped, in a voice as harsh as the ring. And before I could even guess why my mother was angry with me, she ordered me, in no uncertain terms, “Get over here right now! We are all waiting for you!”
Chapter 36
I’d never been to the reading of a will before, but apparently these events started right on time, as Larry Fox had warned me. And if my first experience was to be trusted, will readings were also formal affairs. Unfortunately, no one had told me that. As I opened the door to a conference room at Larry’s practice, which was located in a stately old brick building just off Market Street, I discovered that everyone was staring at me, impatiently. And I was the only person in jeans.
Asa Whitaker, who fidgeted on one of the metal folding chairs that had been set up to hold the small crowd, looked professorial in a tweedy suit. By his side, his wife, Martha—presumably there on behalf of the library—wore a shirt embroidered with autumn leaves and the slogan, Fall Into Books! But she’d paired that with a black skirt and pumps.
Two rows ahead of them, I spied Pastor Pete Kishbaugh, who hadn’t been arrested overnight. He sat like a black hole in the middle of the room, tugging at the collar of his clerical shirt. Meeting my gaze, he waved. I was still upset with him, but I waved back, on the presumption that, in spite of the evidence I’d found, he was innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
A few chairs over, Tamara Fox, who was probably representing every other charity Miss Flynt had once had a hand in, kept alternately checking a gold wristwatch, flipping her long, dark hair, and sighing, like she had a million other will readings to attend.
I looked between Pastor Pete and Tamara, recalling how they’d argued, heatedly, at the Wolf Hollow Mill.
Did Tamara know anything about Pastor Kishbaugh’s travels?
Had she ever gone with him to Paris or Rome . . . ?
I couldn’t ponder those questions right then. I needed to take a seat, and I edged past a bunch of people I didn’t know—maybe Miss Flynt’s out-of-town, distant relatives?—and Bea Baumgartner, whom I hadn’t expected to be there. She wasn’t exactly dressed like a Talbots model like Tamara, but she had donned dark pants and a conservative, if rumpled, shirt that buttoned down the front.
I still considered Bea a strong suspect in Lillian’s murder, and I didn’t appreciate how she’d pointed a gun at me, but I greeted her, too, as I moved farther into the too silent room, heading toward my mother, who sat in the front row, glaring at me.
Needless to say, Maeve Templeton was dressed in a smart, navy blue suit. The day’s silk scarf, which I knew she would’ve liked to twist around my neck, was pale green and white. And her hair . . .
“Wow, that is an interesting cut,” I whispered, sliding into a seat next to her. “Yikes.”
Even the numbing treatments that I knew my mother indulged in couldn’t keep the corners of her mouth from turning downward. “Don’t make this worse, Daphne,” she warned me, lightly and self-consciously touching the back of her hair, which was clipped short, while the front was rather long. I’d seen similar cuts before, but Mom’s was very dramatic. “I am not happy with you—nor Moxie—right now.”
“I actually like it,” I said honestly. “It takes ten years off your face. And Moxie didn’t even use needles!”
My mother didn’t appreciate the joke. She got a thunderous look in her eyes, and she opened her mouth. But before she could reply, the door at the back of the room opened again, and everybody swiveled around to see that Larry Fox was joining us.
“I understand that we’re all assembled,” he said somberly, while shooting me a very dark look. “Everyone is in attendance?”
I had no idea if everyone affected by the will was there, and I was too distracted to even nod, because, while I’d been ill-advisedly teasing my mother, two other people had slipped into the room.
I first noticed Jonathan Black, who stood against the back wall, leaning casually against the oak wainscoting. I knew that he was very alert, though, and wouldn’t miss a thing.
Then I spied a pale young woman, who lurked in the far, back corner of the room, her arms folded around herself, like she was trying to blend into the woodwork.
Gasping, I clutched my mother’s arm, which was also the wrong thing to do.
“Daphne,” Mom snapped, but quietly. She tried to peel my fingers off her suit jacket. “Get a hold of yourself! You’re making a scene!”
“I’m sorry,” I said, releasing her. She clearly wasn’t in the mood for more drama, but I couldn’t help confiding softly, “I think my stalker is here!”
Chapter 37
It was very difficult to concentrate on Larry Fox’s sonorous reading of Miss Flynt’s last will and testament. As he droned on about “probate,” “residual estates,” and “lapsed gifts,” I kept sneaking peeks at Jonathan, who never seemed to lose focus. His posture remained relaxed, but I could tell that he was following every word and simultaneously watching all of us potential inheritors.
I tried to catch his eye, so I could silently urge him to notice the young woman in the corner of the room, but his attention remained trained on Larry, and he wouldn’t even look at me. So I had to check in with her now and then myself, usually to discover that she was observing me.
As Larry flipped yet another page, still not getting to the actual dispersal of property, I risked my mother’s censure and turned around one more time, just as the younger woman quickly looked away, pretending like she was staring at something out the window.
I took the opportunity to study her again, as I’d done the night of the Fur-ever Friends gala. Only this time, the light was better, and I could estimate her age at about twenty-five or twenty-six. She was pale, as I’d judged before, and her complexion was washed out more by an old-fashioned ivory blouse with a lace collar. Her gaze darted nervously around, and she kept playing with a lock of her curly, shapeless, brown hair.
She seemed awfully timid, for a stalker. . . .
“Did you hear me, Miss Templeton?”
“What?” I asked, spinning around, because apparently Larry Fox had addressed me. He sat behind a gleaming mahogany desk at the front of the room with the will in one hand, his reading glasses pushed up into his thick, white hair, and a deep, disapproving scowl on his tanned face. “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “What did you say?”
I expected him to tell me to face forward and pay attention. He seemed to be taking his job very seriously.
Instead, he slipped the glasses back onto his nose and resumed reading on behalf of Miss Flynt, telling me and everyone else, in a voice much deeper than Lillian’s, “And to Daphne Templeton, I leave my beloved Persian cat, Budgely’s Sir Peridot Tinkleston, trusting that she will care for him until his natural demise.”
“Yes, I saw that coming,” I whispered to Mom, who turned to me and made a shushing motion, with one finger to her lips.
Assuming that my part in the proceedings was done, and that the reading would go on for a long time, I started to stand up and make a discreet exit. I also hoped that the young woman in the corner would follow me, so I could ask what the heck she wanted with me.
Then my butt plopped back down onto the metal chair when Larry Fox added, “I also bequeath to Daphne Templeton the oil painting entitled Woman in Red Three, with faith that she will intuit and fulfill my wishes, regarding that piece.”
“No . . .” I was pretty sure Martha Whitaker launched that soft protest. Apparently, she’d hoped for the painting. Maybe to display it in the library?
I, meanwhile, was b
affled. It probably wasn’t proper protocol, but I couldn’t help breaking into Larry’s narrative to ask, “What does that mean? What are her ‘wishes’?”
My mother had discouraged me from grabbing her, but she squeezed my arm so hard that I was afraid I’d get a bruise.
She was silencing me because, in her opinion, I was once again making a scene. But she was also trying to hear Larry, who ignored me and forged ahead, reading, “And I leave my ancestral home, located at 2331 Wallapawakee Vista Drive, to the Sylvan Creek Historical Society, for the property’s maintenance, in perpetuity, as a museum dedicated to the history of the community I so loved. . . .”
Behind me, I heard Asa Whitaker hiss, “Yesss!” I could imagine him doing some sort of historical version of a fist pump, whatever that might be.
Was that wise, given that his wife had just been disappointed by the inexplicable bequest to me?
Was Asa in for another tongue-lashing from Martha, like he’d experienced the night of Miss Flynt’s murder?
Whatever fate he was destined to suffer, it probably wouldn’t compare to the fury my mother was about to unleash on Larry Fox.
Maeve Templeton didn’t like outbursts, and she didn’t often show emotion, but more than anything, she hated being cheated out of a million-dollar real estate deal, and she nearly pushed me off my chair as she leaped up to her feet, roaring, “No! This was NOT Lillian’s intent!”
Chapter 38
“Maeve, please calm down,” Larry urged, raising one hand. “I promise you, the will represents Lillian’s final wishes, and it is duly witnessed.”
“Of course it is,” Asa Whitaker interjected. I turned to see him half rising from his chair, but Martha pulled him back into his seat, with a strong arm and a sharp, silencing glance.
“I want to see those signatures,” my mother demanded. I’d seen her scrappy side before, many times, but I’d never seen her in full fight mode. The sight was quite impressive. Grabbing her tote bag from the floor, she slung it over her shoulder and stormed up to the desk, her Ferragamo pumps clicking on the hardwood floor. “I want to see the date—and the time, if possible—that this document went into effect!”
“The time is not available,” Larry said. “You know that, Maeve. You deal with many legal documents”
“Show me the date, then,” Mom repeated, thumping her tote bag down onto the desk. I wasn’t sure why she was carrying that along everywhere, but I assumed she had her reasons. She glared at Larry Fox, Esquire, like he was the cause of the mix-up. Which was possible. He was in charge of the estate. “Now, Larry.”
I glanced over my shoulder to see how Jonathan was reacting to the type of drama Moxie had warned me might break out, but he maintained his SEAL composure and observed impassively.
Then I looked to the other side of the room, trying to keep tabs on my stalker. But she was gone.
I didn’t know what to make of that, and I faced forward again, in time to see Larry flip through the entire will, to the last page, which he spun around so my mother could read the signatures, right side up.
The whole thing wasn’t really my business, but I drifted up to join my mom, reading over her shoulder.
Then my eyes got huge, because if the date written in Lillian’s handwriting, and affixed again by her witness, Larry Fox, was correct, the will had last been updated the day of Miss Flynt’s death.
That had to mean something. And my mother didn’t miss the significance, either, although she wasn’t interested in catching a killer. Just reeling in a big sale.
“I have a listing agreement dated from the morning of that same day,” Mom said, dumping the entire contents of her tote bag onto the desk. She wasn’t normally a disorganized, flustered person, but there was a lot at stake, and she let everything tumble out of the bag—including a bunch of stuff she’d taken from the mansion when she’d swept it clean prior to Elyse’s arrival. As usual, she hadn’t returned the clutter. A few pens and a paperback novel skidded across the shiny desktop, followed by a wadded up ball of fabric. “Lillian Flynt committed to selling her house—in writing,” Mom insisted, locating a paper she’d kept tucked in a black folder. She held the document up for Larry’s inspection. “Like her will, my listing agreement is valid under Pennsylvania law. It is a contract between Lillian and myself, which could not be voided without her written consent. Which she did not give me.”
Mom had a decent point, but I was only half listening by then. My attention had been drawn to the pile of fabric, which looked like a jacket.
As Larry and Mom argued over which document took precedence—a fight that I could imagine going all the way to a real courtroom—I unfolded the windbreaker, which smelled musty and felt damp, like it had been crumpled up while wet.
The beige jacket was nondescript, except for an insignia on the chest. The small symbol, which incorporated a bird flying out of a burning book and an old-fashioned pen, looked vaguely familiar to me.
I was trying to place where I’d seen that mark when someone reached past me and took the garment from my hands.
Jonathan Black studied the jacket, too, for quite a long time. Then he interrupted the ongoing argument between realtor and attorney by asking my mother, quietly but firmly, “Is this yours, Ms. Templeton?”
I wasn’t sure why he seemed so deadly serious, until I recalled that whoever killed Lillian Flynt had almost certainly gotten wet in the process.
Looking at the jacket again, I also finally noticed something that Jonathan had probably spotted right away.
A few small specks, near the left cuff, that looked a lot like dried blood.
Chapter 39
“I’m not surprised that you were remembered in Lillian’s will,” Piper said, as she rode with me, Moxie, and Socrates to Flynt Mansion the day after the fiasco at Larry Fox’s office. Piper was in the backseat, by choice. She wasn’t a fan of my driving and would’ve insisted that we take her Acura to go check out my inheritance, if the sedan hadn’t been in the shop—not because something was broken, but for preventative maintenance, in anticipation of winter. My sister always kept her car in tip-top shape. “Lillian always spoke very highly of you,” Piper added. “She admired your work with rescue dogs, in particular, and told me several times that you should run Whiskered Away Home.”
“Really?” I asked, turning onto Lakeshore Drive. The surface of Lake Wallapawakee was churning that day, the water gray under an equally leaden sky. “Because she usually treated me like an intern. I didn’t expect to inherit anything but Tinkleston. And I don’t understand why she didn’t leave detailed instructions about the painting. How am I supposed to know what to do with it?”
“Maybe she just wants you to hang it over your mantel,” Moxie suggested, leaning forward, because Socrates had somehow nudged her out of the front passenger seat, so she was riding in the back, too. “That’s possible.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I got the sense that Miss Flynt had bigger plans for the Woman in Red Three.” I met Piper’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Seriously, don’t you think the whole thing is a little strange? And—again—why me?”
“Lillian was eccentric,” Piper reminded me. “And she saw something in you. Some promise that, let’s face it, I don’t always see. Especially when I’m riding in a van that might not make it up a small hill, thanks to your neglect, while I’m seated on a 2012 calendar so I don’t get poked by the spring that is sticking up out of the backseat.”
I grinned at Socrates, who was enjoying riding shotgun. He looked almost happy. “I knew that calendar was in here somewhere!”
“I can’t believe you’re getting a painting and a cat,” Moxie noted, dropping back against her seat again. “It’s like winning the lottery, only sadder. And a little scary, if you don’t like being pounced on.”
Moxie had visited Plum Cottage that morning and, while Tinkleston was warming up to me, he’d attempted his trademark refrigerator launch on her. Fortunately for Moxie, the icebox was o
nly about four feet high, and he’d slammed harmlessly into her shoulder before plopping to the floor and running away. Still, I apologized again. “Sorry about that. I’m pretty sure that happened to Mom once, too.”
“Do you think she’s really in trouble over that jacket?” Piper asked, sounding concerned. Of course, I’d filled her and Moxie in on everything that had happened at the reading of the will. “Surely, Detective Black doesn’t believe that Maeve Templeton would own, let alone wear, a cheap nylon windbreaker. She dragged him all over creation to look at houses. He must’ve noticed that she never wears anything without a designer label.”
“I’m not sure,” I said, pressing the gas pedal, because we’d turned onto the hilly road leading up to Flynt Mansion. Ahead of us, the house loomed ominously against the dark clouds. “He seemed pretty grim.”
“Where did your mom get the jacket, anyhow?” Moxie asked.
“She snatched it off the floor, from behind a chair near the back door, when she did her last minute, preshowing straightening at the mansion,” I explained. “She jammed it into her tote and promptly forgot about it.”
“Sounds like the jacket might belong to the killer, huh?” Piper ventured. “If, of course, the spots really were bloodstains.”
“Jonathan said it’ll take a day or two for the lab to determine if the stains are blood, and—if so—whether the blood is Miss Flynt’s,” I said. “In the meantime, Mom’s not supposed to leave Sylvan Creek.”
“I remember getting that order,” Piper said glumly.
“Let’s not get too worried yet,” I urged, parking the van in front of the estate’s high iron gates. Then I got out and helped Socrates hop down from his seat. Now that the car ride was over, he didn’t seem excited to return to the mansion that had yielded Tinkleston. His tail hung lower than usual.
Dial Meow for Murder Page 16