With quizzical expressions on their faces, Mrs. Hammond and her son signed their papers then looked up at Nora.
Nora clasped her hands behind her back. “And now sign Mr. Hammond’s full name.”
Two pairs of startled eyes stared at her. Then Mrs. Hammond bent her head to sign her paper, while Billy said, “What? Why do—”
“Just do it, Billy,” Mrs. Hammond said with a tense jaw.
Billy glanced from her to Nora and back again, and then with an air of resignation, he scrawled his father’s name on the paper and threw down the pen.
Nora picked up the pens and papers and stowed them in a large office envelope. She placed another piece of paper on the coffee table and pointed at it. “That’s a copy of some cash advance slips from the Howling Wind casino, Mrs. Hammond, and signatures of your husband’s name.”
Mrs. Hammond looked at the signatures. A look of horror dawned on her face. She faced her son. “Billy, it was you!”
Scowling, Billy glared at Nora.
“And we have a witness,” Nora said. “A cocktail waitress has identified Billy as a regular Tuesday night customer.”
Mrs. Hammond shook Billy’s arm until she caught his gaze. “How could you? And how did you get the credit card?”
Billy clamped his lips tight.
“He took it out of your purse, Mrs. Hammond,” Nora said. “The same way he gets cash from you.”
She turned to Billy. “And I suspect your father kept quiet about the charges for awhile, thinking your mother was gambling and wondering how to confront her. Until he followed her one Tuesday night and confirmed that she was playing Bunko. When did he figure out it was you, Billy? When did he confront you?”
Looking at his mother’s incredulous face, Billy seemed to shrink. “Three weeks ago. Told me I had to stop and pay the money back.”
Nora tapped the copy of the cash advance slips. “This one is for last Tuesday. You couldn’t stop, could you?”
Grinding his teeth, Billy stared at the floor. “No. That’s when he yelled at me, called me a loser, and said he’d turn me in for stealing.”
Mrs. Hammond stifled a sob and addressed Nora. “Herb would have felt awful about turning Billy into the police. So awful that he, he might commit suicide, so the bills would be paid from his insurance settlement. Is that what you think happened?”
“No,” Nora said. “While you watched the football game, Billy thought he would neatly solve his problem and slipped a fatal dose of your sleeping pills into his father’s beer.”
Mrs. Hammond gasped.
Billy crossed his arms. “No way.”
Nora slid another two pieces of paper onto the table. “The first is a copy of your fingerprint record from a juvenile shoplifting arrest years ago. The second is a copy of the fingerprints taken from an empty beer bottle I removed from this house. Along with your father’s fingerprints, Billy, two of the prints match yours.”
“So? He asked me to fetch him a beer.” Billy’s feigned nonchalance was belied by the sweat beading on his brow.
“That bottle had residue of your mother’s sleeping pills in it.” Nora added a copy of another fingerprint document to the pile. “And we found your fingerprints on your mother’s prescription bottle.”
A tear ran down Mrs. Hammond’s cheek. “No, no, no . . .” The words came out in a strained whisper.
Billy’s eyes took on the wild look of a trapped animal. The case was solid, but she wanted a confession from Billy.
Time to fish or cut bait. “Are those the shoes you were wearing Sunday?”
“Yeah, why?”
“May I have them, please?”
“No.”
“Billy,” Mrs. Hammond said, “give Detective Stewart your shoes.”
Nora held her breath.
When Billy didn’t move, his mother reached down and jerked a sneaker off his nearest foot. She handed it to Nora.
Nora fished a magnifying glass out of her pocket. “Tom, Billy’s friend and alibi for Sunday afternoon, told me something interesting.”
She studied the waffle sole of the shoe. “He said you took a long break, supposedly to use the bathroom, while you two were playing video games. I think you returned to your house, to see if the sleeping pills had killed your father or not. When you discovered that he’d gone out, you waited for him to return home.”
She lowered the magnifying glass and stared at the young man. “You knew he’d be unsteady on his feet and carrying packages, so you hid behind the door and tripped him when he entered, hoping to set up what looked like an accident scene. After he conveniently hit his own head, you waited, didn’t you? Watching until he drew his last breath. Then you ran back to your friend’s house.”
Mrs. Hammond burst into tears.
Pointing at the sneaker, Nora said, “I’m sure the lab will verify that these two bits stuck between the treads of your shoe are guppy remains.”
Billy’s mouth gaped open like a fish out of water. He collapsed back on the sofa. “I’m screwed.”
His mother clutched his arm with fingers curled like talons. “Why would you kill your father, Billy? Why?”
“For the effing insurance money, why else?”
Nora breathed a sigh of relief. Thank you, Mrs. Hammond.
Billy moved toward the kitchen, where the patrolman stood, slapping his nightstick against his palm. When Billy turned his wild gaze to Nora, she shook her head.
“You’re under arrest for murder, young man. You’ve got nowhere to go. Nowhere at all.”
__________
Beth Groundwater writes the Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery series and the RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series. She enjoys exploring her native Colorado outdoor settings and sports for both series. Beth’s a proud Guppy and grateful she’s been allowed to stay in the pond. Find out more at www.bethgroundwater.com.
THE FRAIN LEGACY, by Darlene Ryan
Reid Frain pulled his Lexus into the driveway and shut off the engine. He peered at the old house through the rain spattered windshield. Lord, it was ugly. Those old windows with the thick glass made everything outside seem slightly out of focus, and the worn wooden shingles needed scraping and painting every second year. And stuck on the end, that stupid round room, the Frain library, that looked like it should have been part of a castle with some blonde babe up in the turret hanging her long hair out the window. Two floors of musty, moldy books that should have been hauled away in a Dumpster years ago.
He glanced at his watch. Good. He was three minutes early. The last thing he wanted was a lecture from Aunt Grace about punctuality. Frain men were always punctual. And according to Aunt Grace, Frain men were also well-mannered, impeccably groomed, restrained in their behavior and opinions, and maintained good posture. Frain men didn’t have much fun, either. As the last of the line, Reid figured he had an obligation to all his polite, well-dressed, standing-up-straight-and-had-to-be-miserable male ancestors to enjoy life any chance he got.
He pulled up the collar of his coat and ran for the house, stopping in the back porch to shake off the rain. How many times had he told her to keep the doors locked? Stuck out here by herself, who knew who could come walking in, hit the old girl over the head and . . . what? Reid shook his head. What was there to steal? Old books? Old wood furniture? Old velvet curtains and lace tablecloths? Who’d want the stuff?
“Reid, is that you?” a distant voice called.
“It’s me, Aunt Grace,” he replied, stepping into the kitchen. “Where are you?” He heard the sound of creaking wood and slow footsteps coming up from the cellar. The basement door opened and Grace Frain appeared.
She crossed to the sink, set a large flashlight on the counter, and began to wash her hands. She was, as always, dressed in a blouse, dark skirt and matching cardigan, with her gray hair twisted in a bun at the back of her head. She looked like the librarian she’d been. Reid tried to picture her dressed like the old doll in the condo next to his. Mrs. Minton wore sw
eatpants and sneakers all the time and had an outlandish collection of tee shirts. That morning in the elevator she’d been wearing one that said, I’m Old But I Have Money. Reid couldn’t help smiling. He couldn’t imagine Aunt Grace in sweatpants. Her only vanity was shoes—high heeled ones. Except when she was working in the yard, heels were what she wore from morning to night. In his opinion she was way too old for that kind of shoe. One misstep could end in a broken hip. He’d even tried to talk to her about it. She’d dismissed him with a wave of her hand.
“I put on my first pair of heels when I was twelve years old,” she’d said. “I didn’t fall then and I’m not going to fall now.”
Reid rubbed his hands together. “It’s cold in here,” he said.
Grace finished drying her hands on a small white towel. She hung it on a hook by the sink, and turned to face her great-nephew. “I’ve told you before, Reid, a good quality thermal undershirt and a sweater vest and you wouldn’t notice the cold nearly as much. Your grandfather added a sweater vest to his suit on the first day of October every year and wore one every day until the fifteenth of April.”
His grandfather. The sainted stick-up-his-butt Eben Alexander Frain. In the almost twenty years since he’d died he’d gotten more perfect. The great Eben Frain went to the office until the day he died. That was where he’d died. The great Eben Frain didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t swear. The great Eben Frain was in the second pew on the right every Sunday morning. It sometimes amazed Reid that he had the great Eben Frain to thank for his existence. It was hard to believe the old guy had ever done the deed that resulted in Reid’s father.
He took a breath and let it out. “Aunt Grace, it would take more than a vest to be warm in this house today.”
“I’m aware of that,” she said. “That’s why I was in the cellar. I was putting wood in the furnace. It seems ridiculously early to have to do so, but that’s what happens when as a society we allow development to go on unchecked. The ground and air become contaminated and we have December weather the last week of September.”
He’d heard Aunt Grace’s speech about development dozens of times. Frain land went back for acres and acres behind the house. Across the road, just beyond the trees, was a small pond where Reid had gone skating as a kid and where he’d stuck his tongue in the warm and willing mouth of thirteen year-old Lacy Dennis. All of that was Frain land, too. One developer or another had been trying to buy some part of their property for as long as he could remember. And Aunt Grace had been saying no. Reid had tried a couple of times to convince her to sell. One small section could easily bring in a million dollars.
“That land is part of the Frain legacy,” she’d say, squaring her shoulders. “Your legacy.”
The freaking Frain legacy. The land, the old house and Lord knew how much money, his legacy, all in the hands of his Aunt Grace. Reid’s grandfather had died at ninety. Eben’s other sisters had made it to ninety-six and ninety-nine, respectively. Grace was only eighty-four and the healthiest of the lot. Reid’s father was the only Frain to die young and that had nothing to do with his genes and everything to do with a drunk behind the wheel of an SUV. By the time he got his hands on the Frain legacy, Reid was going to be too old to enjoy it.
The furnace came on then with a groan and a whoosh. Reid put his hand over the grate in the floor. The air was barely warm. “It’s not very hot,” he said. “I’ll go down and take a look at it.”
“Here, you better take the light.” Grace handed him the flashlight. “Though I don’t know what you think you can do.”
Reid felt his way down the steps. The light wasn’t much help. The basement air was stale and cold. The stone foundation may have been old, but it was solid.
The furnace sat in the middle of the cellar like a giant gray octopus, ductwork snaking out from it like tentacles. It was noisy, inefficient and older than he was. It was like everything in the house—past its time. Of course Aunt Grace wouldn’t have it replaced—it still worked. She used the oil as little as possible. Instead she hired someone to cut, split and stack wood from Frain land to heat the house, just the way it had always been done.
Reid looked the furnace over—not that he knew anything about how it worked. He tried moving some of the leads. Maybe they were clogged and he could shake something loose. Everything seemed solid until he got to the flue, snaking into the stone chimney. It would come out in his hands if he pulled. He sighed. That meant a trip to the hardware store for some duct tape to seal it in place until he could get a technician out to check the furnace and be sure the house wasn’t going to fill up with carbon monoxide.
He trudged up the stairs. Aunt Grace was waiting in the kitchen. Behind her the cold water tap dripped steadily in the sink. The faucet was so old they didn’t make washers for it anymore, but she refused to have a new one put in. “That would be money down the drain,” she’d said. He didn’t think she’d intended the pun. So instead she shut the water off under the sink when she wasn’t using it.
Reid opened his mouth to tell her he was going to the hardware store but she spoke first.
“You bought a new car,” she said.
“I did,” he said. “Do you like it?”
“Since it’s not my car it hardly matters whether I do or I don’t like it.” Her hands were clasped in front of her, her stance as perfect as if she were balancing a book on the top of her head. “What does matter to me is the amount of debt you’re carrying. That condominium, the furniture you bought for it, that was all completely unnecessary. You could be living here with me. There’s plenty of room for the two of us.”
Right. Move in to the mausoleum with her and never have a bottle of wine, a cigar or a woman ever again.
“Now you’ve added to that debt with a new car.”
Reid ran a hand through his hair. It was the only part of the Frain legacy he’d gotten so far. Thick, blond and it didn’t go gray until way after everyone else. Of course, as far as Aunt Grace was concerned, it was always a bit too long to be respectable.
“I can handle the payments,” he said. And he could. He’d done well for himself in the almost ten years since he’d graduated from college. Frains had a knack for making money. His grandfather had been a successful stockbroker. So had his father. So was Reid. He didn’t know if it was talent and their la-di-da private school educations or more the Frain looks, charm and a healthy dose of good luck.
“That is not in dispute,” she said, primly. “What concerns me is the way you’re managing your money and your life.”
“I’m taking care of everything, Aunt Grace,” he said evenly, forcing a smile he didn’t feel. “You don’t need to worry.”
Anger gathered into a tight, hot knot in his stomach. He wouldn’t have had to take on any debt if she’d given him some of the Frain legacy she was always going on about. He wouldn’t have had to spend his days sucking up to people who didn’t have one tenth his skill at making money. He should have been the one managing the Frain legacy and turning it into a Frain fortune.
She looked at him for a long time and when she spoke it seemed more to herself than to Reid. “I guess there isn’t anything else to say.” She brushed some invisible lint from her skirt. “Reid, would you bring in some wood from the pile by the back door, please?” she asked. “I have a phone call to make.” She turned on those ridiculous high heels and left the room.
He just stood there for a moment. Then he remembered that he hadn’t told her he needed to get to the hardware store before it closed. His hand was on the handle of the French doors into the living room when he heard her on the phone. He squinted through the wavy glass.
“Timothy Hawthorne, please,” she said. “It’s Grace Frain calling.”
Timothy Hawthorne, of Harris, Hawthorne & Townsend, the Frain lawyer. He reminded Reid of a lizard with his thin lips and knobby head. Reid could picture the man, sitting behind the massive desk in his stuffy office, his tongue darting out to lick his lizard lips
&n
bsp; He took a step back from the door. What was she doing?
“Timothy, I need to see you tomorrow,” Grace said. “No, it can’t wait. I need to make some changes to the family trust. I’m sorry it’s come to this, but it has, and I have to do the right thing.”
The right thing. The old bat was going to cut him—him, the last Frain—out of the Frain legacy. Reid turned and walked carefully, quietly, all the way out to the porch. His heart was pounding. He clenched and unclenched his hands trying to somehow get hold of his anger.
The cold seeped through his trench coat and suit, but it didn’t cool his temper. How many holidays had he spent sitting in that gloomy dining room eating freaking roast beef and Yorkshire pudding—the Frain tradition for all holiday meals—when he could have been skiing with his friends, or lying on a white sand beach with a blonde in a bikini? How many Saturdays had he given up to clean half-rotted leaves out of the gutters, or pick sour, spot-pocked apples? How many armloads of wood had he lugged down those creaky old basement stairs?
He glanced over at the cellar door. The furnace was still laboring to warm up the old house. The furnace, with that loose, leaky flue that needed fixing. The flue that could be leaking carbon monoxide into the house.
Then again, what did he know about furnaces? As Aunt Grace was always pointing out, he hadn’t inherited his grandfather’s mechanical abilities. He could be wrong.
He stepped out the back door and quickly gathered an armload of wood. Downstairs he dumped it in the wood box. There was a blue silk handkerchief in the breast pocket of his suit. (Frain men always wore a matching tie and handkerchief.) Reid used it to cover his hand before he took hold of the pipe leading into the chimney. He pulled it from side to side. Bits of some kind of seam sealer, dried-out and gray with age, fell onto the floor. He bent down and scooped them into his handkerchief, stuffing the whole thing in his pocket. Yes, that pipe definitely was loose.
Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology Page 23