by J A Whiting
“We ….” Angie glanced at Jenna. “We’ve been researching our family tree. Some things came up that we wondered about.” She hesitated, not sure how to broach the subject that she wanted to discuss.
“What sort of things?” Shirley narrowed her eyes.
“We have some concerns about the land that Nana leased from the town.” Jenna put her hands in her lap so she wouldn’t fidget with them. “Nana didn’t think the town really owned the land.”
“Did she have an idea about who owned it, if the town didn’t?”
Angie answered. “Nana thought she owned it. She suspected that the land records were incorrect.”
Shirley’s lips tightened. “That’s an interesting theory. What made her think such a thing?”
Angie’s heart sank. She’d hoped that Shirley was going to be the one giving the answers. “Nana believed that her great-uncle John Turner had the land records changed.”
Hearing the name John Turner caused Shirley’s face to harden. “Why would he do that?”
Jenna sighed. “We don’t know why. That’s the reason we’re talking to people who knew Nana. We’re trying to find out what happened and if there’s any substance to Nana’s suspicions.”
Suddenly, Angie picked up on something skittering in the air. She sat straighter and stared at Shirley trying to determine if the sensation was coming from her. Goose pimples popped up along Angie’s arms as a flutter of anxiety washed over her.
Shirley leaned forward. She spoke in a soft voice. “You are treading on dangerous ground.”
What felt like an electric charge struck Angie with such force that it almost knocked her off of her seat. She gripped the sides of her chair to steady herself.
“We were afraid of that,” Jenna said in a whisper. “But it won’t stop us.”
“Then you’d better come to my house to talk.” Shirley left money on the table to pay for their drinks, stood up, and gestured for the girls to follow her out of the café and into the dark night. They climbed the steps of the drawbridge and headed to the other side of the cove.
Chapter 15
Shirley Banks led the girls in silence through several side streets of South Coveside and stopped at a small, white Cape Code style house. “Here we are.” She unlocked the front door and ushered them into a cozy sunroom at the back of the house. “I apologize for being dramatic, but in a few minutes you’ll understand why.” Shirley invited Jenna and Angie to sit, and then she walked to a bookcase and removed a framed photograph. She handed it to Angie. “This is a photo of me and my mother when I was young. We’re standing in front of our former home. That house stood on this lot. We lost it in a fire and my mother had this Cape house built to replace it.”
Shirley sat down in a soft easy chair across from the girls. “I believe John Turner was responsible for the house fire.”
Angie and Jenna’s mouths hung open.
“I was a teenager when it happened. We barely escaped with our lives.”
“How? Why?” Jenna fumbled for words.
“Your grandmother and my mother were friends.” Shirley gazed out the window into the backyard shrouded in darkness. “I swore I would never talk about this.” She took a deep breath. “The time has come to tell what I know. You have to be sure that you want to hear it. It could still be dangerous to know this information.”
Angie’s stomach lurched. She glanced at Jenna out of the corner of her eye to see if she might want to back out of this impromptu meeting. Her sister’s jaw was set and her upper body leaned forward. Jenna’s determination to find out the truth despite the risk helped to diminish Angie’s fear … but only slightly.
Shirley went on. “Your grandmother believed that she owned part of the land on Robin’s Point. She was right.”
Angie reached for her sister’s hand.
“How do you know this?” Jenna asked.
“The summer I was eighteen, I worked for John Turner. I thought he was ancient, but he must have been around seventy. He worked all the time. I did typing of legal briefs and business contracts for him. The Victorian has a carriage house behind it. It’s not an original building. The carriage house that was there was in disrepair so it was torn down and Turner had a new structure built to resemble the old one. He had an office on the second floor where he’d meet with business partners, politicians, sometimes clients.”
“Why didn’t he just work from the house?” Angie questioned.
Shirley chuckled. “Turner was a private man. He didn’t want the servants eavesdropping on his business.” She made eye contact with both girls. “I’m sure you’ve figured out that Mr. John Turner’s dealings were not always above-board. He cheated people, he controlled politicians, he made sure his business deals would pay off big time. He didn’t care who he hurt.”
“He allowed you to work in the carriage house office?” Jenna pushed a piece of her hair behind her ear.
Shirley snorted. “Heaven’s no. I came to pick up work and took it back to my house to complete it. I’d return the work to him when it was done. One day, I climbed the stairs to the office. The door was open. I could hear Turner talking with someone. I froze on the stairs. I thought maybe I had messed up the time I was supposed to arrive. I wasn’t sure if I should knock or go away. If I did the wrong thing, Turner would fire me. The job was important to me because I needed the money to pay for college in the fall. While I was trying to decide what to do, I heard Turner talking to somebody about what they’d done to his mother’s will.”
“He tampered with it?” Angie leaned forward.
“Turner was a lawyer. He got another lawyer from town to work with him. When his mother died, he and his associate forged a new will. Instead of the land on Robin’s Point being split between him and his sister Forsythia, the men changed the will so the land would go to the town of Sweet Cove. The cottage on the point went to Forsythia, but she had to pay the town to lease the land.”
Angie’s eyes narrowed. “And what did John Turner get in return?”
“It was a trade. Turner swapped the land on the point for town-owned land on the cove. And Turner got the town contract to develop that land into what is now Coveside. He made millions of dollars. He and his associate forged the will in his carriage house office.”
Angie’s heart felt heavy. So that’s the sadness I felt in the upstairs rooms of the carriage house. What Turner did to his sister still floats in the air.
“Why would he cheat his sister out of the land?” Jenna’s face was flushed with anger.
Shirley sighed. “John Turner hated his mother and sister. He didn’t want witches in Sweet Cove.”
Angie sucked in a breath.
“How did Nana find out what her uncle had done?” Jenna asked.
“I told my mother what I heard and she told your grandmother.”
The girls leaned back on the sofa, stunned at what they’d just heard. John Turner cheated his own sister. He must have known that his mother and sister had powers and hated them for it. Angie blinked from the tears that were hot against her eyes.
Jenna rubbed at her forehead. “What about your family home? You said you suspect John Turner burned it down. Why?”
“The day I heard them talking, the men got up to leave the office. I tiptoed down and hid behind the staircase. I didn’t have time to leave the building. Turner would have seen me. I gave them time to leave and walk to the Victorian. As I was about to sneak away, I noticed sunlight shining on the stairs. Turner had left the door to the office open. I don’t know what possessed me, but I ran up there and saw the two wills on his desk. I grabbed them and ran away.”
“The original and the forged wills?” Angie asked.
Shirley nodded.
“Turner knew you took the wills?”
“He figured it out. After my mother told your grandmother what Turner had done, your grandmother confronted him. He threatened her. He knew I must have been the one who stole the wills. He went to my mother and demanded that sh
e return the wills to him. She refused. He offered her a great deal of money to give the paperwork back to him.” My mother wouldn’t take the money. Shirley bit her lip. “That night our house burned to the ground.”
Angie’s eyes widened. “Do you still have the wills?”
“They burned along with the house.”
Jenna said, “Your family suffered because you wanted to do the right thing. I’m sorry that happened.”
Shirley gripped her hands and placed them in her lap. “Both of our families have suffered because of that man.”
“We went to the town hall.” Angie cleared her throat. “There are supposed to be land records there.”
“But?” Shirley’s eyebrow went up.
“But the ones concerning our Nana’s land are missing.”
“No surprise. All his life, John Turner had town employees in his pocket.”
Angie suddenly thought about the historical society grouch. Tom told them he’d worked at the town hall his whole life. When she saw the grouch at the street festival arguing with Chief Martin, he was driving a fancy Mercedes. Angie remembered Tom saying that the grouch had inherited a good deal of money and had made smart investments. Inherited money? Or money to get rid of the land records? Angie dismissed that thought. The grouch was about Shirley’s age. He wouldn’t even have been born at the time John Turner was cheating his sister and manipulating wills and land records.
“Do you know what happened after the fire? Did Nana continue to look into the will or the land records?” Jenna asked.
“Your mother was about eight or ten years younger than me. She was probably eight or nine when this happened. Your Nana was afraid to keep investigating. She worried about your mother’s safety, so she dropped it.”
Angie sighed. “We’ve heard that when the land leases with the town weren’t going to be renewed anymore, Nana started to investigate again. She went to a lawyer about it, but nothing stopped the proceedings. Nana had to sell her cottage to the town because she couldn’t afford to buy the land.”
Jenna’s voice was hoarse. “Nana died shortly after selling the cottage to the town.”
Angie said, “One person’s misdeeds can have such far-reaching consequences.”
Shirley scowled. “Isn’t that the truth?”
***
When Angie and Jenna returned home, they gathered with their sisters in the family room. Euclid curled up next to Courtney in the easy chair. He stretched out and took up so much space that Courtney had to squish to one side. “We need to buy a bigger chair.”
“Or get a smaller cat,” Ellie said.
Euclid raised his head and gave Ellie a low hiss.
“Oh, I’m just kidding,” she told the cat. “Don’t be so sensitive.”
Courtney chuckled inwardly, amused that the most sensitive person in the room would admonish the cat for a similar characteristic.
Circe settled between Angie and Jenna on the sofa. The girls took turns relaying the information that Shirley Banks had shared with them.
“So many secrets in Sweet Cove.” Ellie picked nervously at the throw blanket she had over her legs.
“How can there be so many mean people in the world?” Courtney’s face muscles were tense. “How can people be so awful to their own family members?” She was thinking of Mr. Finch’s brother who had tried to kill his sibling as well as John Turner and his misdeeds against his sister. Euclid had his front paws on Courtney’s lap and she was absent-mindedly running her hand over the soft fur of his back.
“Do you think Nana died of natural causes?” Jenna asked.
Angie scratched Circe’s cheek. “I hope she did. It would make me feel better.”
“It doesn’t make me feel better.” Courtney frowned. “Poor Nana. She knew her mother was cheated out of the land. She feared for her daughter’s safety if she spoke up about it. If she didn’t meet with foul play directly, John Turner’s actions caused her so much stress and worry that he may as well have killed her with his own hand. And he hated his own mother and sister because they were witches. People with powers aren’t witches. How dare he condemn our ancestors when they were good people and he was the biggest monster of all.”
The room fell silent. No one knew what to say or how to add to Courtney’s comments. The corners of Angie’s mouth turned up. She loved her sister’s strong sense of right and wrong. She knew her sister would defend the family to the death.
“You’re right,” Jenna told Courtney. “There’s no way to know for sure what happened to Nana. Our great-great-grandmother’s original will burned in the house fire along with the forged version, so there’s nothing to do about that. Is there anything else we can do?”
Angie’s eyes went wide. “Ellie, tomorrow will you call Attorney Ford? Ask him if he found anything in the state’s land records. Ask him if attorneys keep copies of someone’s original will. Wait. Will you ask him if he can just come here to the house? We need to tell him what we’ve discovered and ask him how we should proceed.”
Jenna patted Circe. “But Turner and whoever he was in cahoots with must have destroyed their copy of the original will.”
Angie thought of something. “How did Professor Linden find out that her father had done bad things? She went to Attorney Ford about it shortly before she died. She must have recently found something that indicated Turner’s wrong-doing.”
“What could she have found?” Ellie asked.
“And just as important ….” Angie glanced out the window at the carriage house. “Where is the information she found?”
Chapter 16
“Does anyone know when the two apartments were built on the second floor of the carriage house?” Angie stood at the window of the family room looking outside. “Tom said he did a lot of work around here for Professor Linden. “Is it too late to text him?”
“I’ll ask him if he did those renovations. He’s probably still up.” Jenna reached for her phone and sent a text.
“What are you thinking?” Courtney came over and stood next to Angie who was staring out the window at the carriage house. “Are you thinking that Professor Linden found something in the building when she had it renovated for the apartments?”
Angie said, “Wait. Who do you think put that box of ripped up photographs in the den wall? John Turner or Professor Linden?”
Courtney’s face clouded over. “John Turner. Why didn’t he just burn them in the fireplace? Why did he bother hiding them in the wall?”
“The den wasn’t original to the Victorian.” Angie started pacing. “Turner must have been the one to have the den built.”
Jenna’s phone buzzed. “Tom says he didn’t do the carriage house renovations. He had two big ongoing projects at the time and had to pass on the job.”
Angie turned to Jenna. “Will you ask him when the apartments were put in?”
Jenna tapped on the screen of her phone. “I texted the question to Tom. Why do you want to know?”
“I wonder when the renovations were done. I wonder if during the renovations of Turner’s carriage house office the professor found something that incriminated her father and caused her to see a lawyer. Turner hid pictures in the Victorian’s den wall. He could have hid items in his office, too.”
Jenna’s phone buzzed for a second time. “Tom says the carriage house apartments were put in about a year ago. The professor thought of using them for summer rental income.”
Ellie said, “So it wasn’t that long ago. That was about the time Angie moved to Sweet Cove to start her bake shop.” Ellie shifted her gaze to Angie. “The professor got to know you from the bake shop. If she had recently found documents that indicated her father’s wrong-doing and then met you, the relative of the person he hurt, well, I can see how she might be moved to leave you her Victorian.”
“I guess that makes sense.” Angie started pacing back and forth. Her mind was racing. “Shirley Banks said she worked for Turner when she was about eighteen. That was probably about fi
fty years ago. How old would Turner have been back then? Where’s the family tree?”
Ellie lifted the family tree from the top of the desk by the window. “Turner died twenty-five years ago. Wow. He was ninety-five when he passed away.”
“Only the good die young.” Courtney pulled her legs under her. She had more room in the chair now that Euclid had moved over to sit on the coffee table to watch Angie pace.
“So, I’m guessing that Shirley Banks must be around sixty-eight now. Fifty years ago she worked for Turner. He would have been … um, what? Seventy?” Angie was thinking out loud. “He must have had the den added to the Victorian when he couldn’t climb the stairs to his office in the carriage house anymore.” She sat down on the sofa, her jaw muscles tight in concentration. “Where are those photographs Tom found in the wall?”
Ellie had put the box of photos on a book shelf. “Here they are.” She placed the box on the coffee table next to Euclid.
“There were two photographs. One of three men on a sailboat and the other was of two men dressed in suits standing side by side. Names were written on the backs.” Angie started to shuffle through some of the pictures.
Each sister took a few of the photos and thumbed through them.
“Here. Here’s one.” Ellie handed it to Angie.
Angie turned it to the back. “John T and Richard W.” She smiled. “Why do you think someone would go to the trouble of ripping up photographs and then hiding them inside a wall?”
Jenna said, “Turner must have ripped them up in a fit of anger. Then he decided to keep them, but wanted to hide them away from people.”
Angie asked another question. “If you didn’t want anyone to see the photographs, why wouldn’t you just burn them?”
Courtney’s face was serious and then her eyes sparkled. “Well, maybe Turner kept the photos to control those men, get them to do what he wanted. If Turner’s associates ever got caught and they lied that Turner forced them to do wrong, then Turner could use the photos to prove they were friends.”