This is what it said:
Will of Daisy Laurel Horton
I, Daisy Laurel Horton, a resident of Los Angeles County California, being of sound mind and deteriorating body on this fifth day of January, 2017, do hereby revoke all prior wills and codicils made by me (often under duress from people I loathe) and declare this to be my only and final Will.
Article One
Family Information
I am a member of a scattered, worthless, and mercifully small family that consists, for the purposes of this Will, of two great-great cousins on the paternal side, Duane Peter Horton and Andrea Horton Phelps. They have endless children, spouses, in-laws, cousins, and other parasites, but it should be understood that any reference to “cousins” in this document refers solely to Duane Peter Horton and Andrea Horton Phelps. It is entirely their responsibility to determine how to share their dual inheritance as it is outlined below.
In the event that one of them should predecease me, all bequests are to be left to the survivor. If they both predecease me, my instructions about the ultimate disposition of the structure known as Horton House, outlined in the paragraphs below, shall be followed.
Article Two
Disposition of Tangible Personal Property
The term tangible personal property refers to the structure known as Horton House and the double lot on which it sits, located at 13217 Windsor Street, Los Angeles, CA 93146 and to all the contents of that house, large and small, without exception. My direction is that the house and all its contents, without exception, shall be bulldozed, intact and unexplored, within a month of my death, and that after said house and contents have been leveled they shall be fed into one or more tree-chipping machines to create debris of a substantially uniform size. This debris shall be taken to the toxic waste site run by Waste Disposal Inc. in Santa Fe Springs, California, with whom I have contracted for its disposal and a subsequent commitment that it will be promptly covered by additional layers of toxic waste. A notarized copy of the pre-paid contract for this disposal is appended to this Will.
The double-lot on which the structure sits, which is worth an estimated $220,000 as of the date of this document, shall be divided equally between my cousins, to be used or disposed of as they see fit.
Article Three
Disposal of Financial Reserves
The term financial reserves refers to several bank accounts and financial instruments, which are to be apportioned as hereby directed.
The two savings accounts in my name at Western Vista Bank totaling approximately $291,000, the money market account in my name at First Security Bank of Los Angeles totaling approximately $610,000, and the checking account at that same bank, containing perhaps $8,500, shall be divided equally between my cousins. If I had been healthier, I would have spent all of it. Bank addresses and account numbers are appended to this document.
A number of fully mature United States Treasury Bonds with a cash value of approximately $75,000 is hereby bequeathed to Paulette Codwallader Creighton, and by her acceptance of this inheritance Ms. Creighton shall be understood specifically to have relinquished all claims to any other property, personal or otherwise, or assets of any kind in the residue of this estate. The details of the Treasury Bond account are appended to this document.
Article Four
Conditions of this Will
1. Trespass in Horton House
All my heirs have been legally and unambiguously informed that access to the structure called Horton House, which I own solely, is forbidden to them whether I am living or dead. If any or all of them should be caught attempting to enter it and to take or otherwise claim even the least of its contents, they forfeit all right of inheritance as outlined above. In the case of such a breach, all proceeds from the sale of the property on which the house sits will be bequeathed instead to The Shure-Shot BB Company of Eddington, Illinois, which makes high-quality air-guns that, I am told, rural children use to kill birds. Birds are a great nuisance.
Additionally, any heir who attends the demolition of Horton House and attempts to remove any item, no matter how insignificant, either before or after the house has been leveled, or while its remains are being chipped, similarly forfeits all legacies contained herein. They are, however, welcome to ransack the chipped remains in the toxic waste site, if they can gain admittance to it.
2. Legal Challenges to this Document
Any legatee who challenges or attempts to challenge any aspect or detail of this Will shall forfeit all right of inheritance to all legacies herein. Those legacies will be bequeathed instead to The Shure-Shot BB Company.
Article Five
Executor
Joseph G. Loeb, of the law firm of Loeb and Hart, shall be charged with administering the terms of this Will. Mr. Loeb’s contact information is attached to this document and he is, I am reliably informed, no one to fuck around with.
The thing was signed, witnessed by no one whose name I recognized, and stamped a bunch of times. Miss Daisy’s handwriting looked like the agitated scribble of a seismograph, running downhill at about a thirty-degree angle relative to the line on which she’d been supposed to sign. Writing, reviewing, and signing it might have accounted for her sloppiness—the sheer venom it contained must have demanded most of the little physical energy she had—or it might have been intentional, a final, editorial up yours to the world she was leaving. One way or the other, however, there was no sense that the sheer force of her malice had been diminished or mellowed as she contemplated a world without her in it. Her eyesight, maybe, her hearing, maybe, but the loathing with which she regarded the world, or at least the parts of it that were unfortunate enough to rub up against her, was defiantly intact.
Who the hell was Paulette Codwallader Creighton? The others, I could understand; they were Hortons, but Ms. Creighton, despite the middle name, was not listed among the cousins. Then I felt like slapping my head. Of course, I knew who she was, at least on one level, and now I could almost see how she fit in.
“You know what it is?” Louie said.
“No,” I said. “What is it?”
“Only thing she cares about in the whole world is totaling that house and every fucking thing in it, all the way down to the mice. Only reason she left that money to those people was to give them something to lose if they tried to save the place, or steal stuff out of it, or whatever. She’s trying to protect something that’s in this house, even from the grave.”
“A lot’s already been stolen,” I said. “The paintings, most of the furniture—all of it pretty good, too, probably. That’s what I’ve got to talk to this guy about.” I touched my shirt pocket again, and my phone buzzed, indicating another text. Without looking at it, I said, “The woman you sent to UCLA is doing a hell of a job. What time is the library likely to close down?”
“Nine, nine-thirty,” Louie said. “Why don’t you answer her text and ask her yourself?”
I said, “Good thinking,” and pulled out my phone. But what was on the screen wasn’t a text. What was on my screen was a view of my entry hall at the edgwood, and someone was just stepping out of camera range.
28
The One Thing That Doesn’t Fit In
Within a few seconds I was on Louie’s side of the booth and we were crowding each other, practically cheek to cheek, for a better view of the screen. At the moment, no one was visible although the front door was ajar by a few inches. I wasn’t even aware of Glinda refilling my cup until she said, “Glad to see you guys are getting along.” Then she was leaning down next to me, squinting at the screen and saying, “Hey. Where’s that?”
“My place,” I said.
“Nice. You leave your door open all the time like that?”
“Someone just opened it.”
“Maybe you should call the—Yikes, that’s a serious nose. Friend of yours?”
“Not even remo
tely,” I said. Without the big 1968 Afro wig, he was a skinny, hawk-nosed, thin-lipped guy in his damaged late forties who looked like he could bite things in half without using his teeth and couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed. He pulled the door toward him a few inches, sighted through the opening, and then, slowly and obviously quietly, closed the door. Then, for good measure, he put an eye to the peephole.
“You know,” Glinda said, “we own the cops around here. I could probably have a squad car there in about six minutes.”
“It’s in Koreatown,” I said.
“Okay, twelve minutes. Maybe ten.”
I thought about it for a moment. Cops in my house. My emergency cash was no longer there, since it was in the trunk of the car, and most of the stolen stuff at the edgwood had been swiped so long ago it wouldn’t be on anybody’s hot list. But suppose the cops answered the call and caught Mr. Nose, and then I showed up. Where would that conversation take us? It’s not like you can say to the cops, “Can I have a word in private with my burglar?” We’d all wind up downtown and someone down there would have heard my name in the past few years. Not being arrested isn’t the same thing as not being suspected. It was hard to tell where the chain reaction might end up.
I said, “No, thanks. I’ll call security in the building, though. Maybe.”
She turned to look at me, so close her nose almost brushed my cheek, and then she straightened up. When I turned to her, she wasn’t exactly smiling, but she wasn’t exactly not smiling, either. She said, “Got it. No cops.” She put a hand on her hip. “Property reallocation, huh?”
“It’s a living,” I said. “Louie, could you text the woman in the library for me? Tell her I want her to jump ahead to when Codwallader is in London and give me as much of it as she can. She can skip everything until then.”
Glinda said, “Ah, there’s your cheeseburger,” and headed for the counter and the pass-through window.
“London, huh?” Louie said, texting. He was a lot better with his thumbs on the phone’s keypad than I was. “Whoa,” he said, looking down at the screen on my phone. “Who’s that?”
And there she was, at last. She was in her late forties or early fifties, older than I had thought, square-jawed and broad-shouldered, with blondish hair in a short, businesslike Hillary Clinton bob, minus the symmetrical curl that softened the haircut on Clinton. Her hairline was lower than Sean Hannity’s—she could almost have combed her eyebrows back to close the gap—and the low forehead, combined with the long, clearly defined jaw, made her look like her features had all been placed a little too high in her face, painted on by some neophyte with astigmatism. Without the orange bangs she had worn, the fatty prosthesis that had softened her jaw, and the 1950s glasses, I never would have recognized her if I hadn’t known who she was. She had the solid, curve-free frame of someone who was packing aggressive muscle, and when she walked her shoulders tick-tocked from side to side like a metronome.
Louie fired off his text, watched the woman on my screen, and said. “Bad hip. That’s how Alice walked before she had her replacement.”
“Her hips are going to be the least of her problems when I’m done with her,” I said. “Have you got anybody in one of your cars down near K-Town?”
“I got no cars out, period,” he said. “I know a couple people who live down there, though.”
“Any of them know how to do a tail?”
“I don’t have people fill out forms.”
“Well, hell,” I said. “What good are they?”
At the moment, no one was on the screen. She’d gone toward the living room, and he was on the other side of the entry hall, to the right, from the camera’s perspective, where the kitchen, pantry, library, and bedrooms were. I said, “I wish I could pan this damn camera.”
Some stuff flew across the screen, too fast for me to see what it was. The blur was followed by a cushion from the couch and then the vase into which Ronnie had put the carnations, which broke into a thousand pieces and splashed water all over the hall. Within a second, Mr. Nose was hurrying across the hall, hands out, palms down, pushing them repeatedly toward the floor. Message: Shut the fuck up. Eight or ten seconds later he came back, went to the door, and peered through the peephole to see whether the noise had drawn any curiosity or, perhaps, a do-gooder. He obviously knew nothing about the clientele at the edgwood, most of whom wouldn’t open their doors if a circus were parading down the corridor, elephants and all.
“How’d they get in?” Louie said. “You got all those Koreans with the muscles.”
“Same way I’d get in. The guards are in the lobby. Mr. Nose there jumped three, four feet in the air, grabbed the lowest extension of the fire escape, and pulled it down, and then they climbed up to my floor and came in through the window that we’re supposed to go out through.”
“Not locked?”
“These are not actually buildings people break into,” I said. “If you don’t know what they’re like inside you’d figure nobody who lives there has anything worth stealing, and if you do know what they’re like inside, then you also know they’ve got more guns per square yard than the White House.”
“Well, they seem to be in there, anyway.”
I looked at my watch. “Rush hour is pretty much over,” I said, “but there’s still the rain to slow me down. They’ll probably be gone by the time I—”
I broke off because Mr. Nose had trotted by again, holding something—a drawer from the dresser in the bedroom—and as he neared the camera his eyes, just for a tenth of a second, darted up to the camera and back again. She came into view from the living room and took the drawer from him and they talked for a few seconds. It was one of Ronnie’s drawers, and it pissed me off to see them handling it, even though I knew there was nothing in it that they’d want or, for that matter, that she’d miss.
“They’ve spotted the camera,” Louie said. He leaned closer in, lowering his voice as though he was afraid they might hear. “Probly figured out you’re watching. They’re taking their time because they’re betting you’re coming and they can take you.”
“Yeah. That’s what I think, too.” We watched them talk for a moment or so. Their body language said nothing about their relationship except that the thrill, if there had ever been one, was long gone, probably without leaving an imprint on the sheets; they could have been cousins, a couple who had been living in each other’s pockets for twenty years, members of a long-lived business partnership, or simply people who were profoundly indifferent to each other.
“’Scuse,” Glinda said, and I lifted my hands so she could slide the burger onto the mat. “They dangerous?” she said, leaning down to look at the screen.
“Very,” I said.
“Must be somebody in property reallocation you could call,” she said. “Get him to take care of them.”
I said, “Maybe you’re in the wrong business.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” she said, and turned to go back to the counter.
“Okay,” Louie said, looking at his phone on the table. “She says she’ll skip to the part where he’s in England.”
I was watching Glinda, hearing again what she’d said. “What?”
“Where’d you go?” Louie said. “What I said was—”
“Yeah, yeah, sorry, I heard you. I was thinking about old man Horton’s books. One of them was an autographed first edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. He had a lot of very nice nineteenth-century first editions, but only one of them was signed to him by the author. You know, Herbie used to say, ‘When you see one thing that doesn’t fit in with everything else, it’s probably the most important thing.’” I focused on my burger.
“Is that right?” Louie said. He didn’t sound like the words had changed his life. “So,” he said, “what are you going to do about them?”
“What can I do? I go there and shoot them, it’ll
be a situation. I go there and they shoot me, it’ll be a worse situation. So,” I said, “I’m going to chew and swallow. My mother always said, ‘The food you don’t eat nice is the food that you’ll see twice.’ And I’m going to find something to read. Then, if they’re still waiting for me, I’m going to scare the shit out of them.”
It took all of two minutes on the Project Gutenberg site to find and open The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. To make sure it was the same twelve stories, I looked for “Miss Violent,” but Gutenberg’s type wasn’t taken from the First Edition, so the page numbers were different. I did remember the name of the first tale in Horton’s book, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” and it was right up front where it should have been. With no idea what I was looking for, I read the first couple of stories as I ate. By the time I was halfway through the second, “The Red-Headed League,” I had decided that I’d much rather sit next to Watson than Holmes on an airplane, and that, in fact, I’d try to arrange it so someone I really disliked, someone who loved the sound of his own voice, sat next to Holmes. He’d be lucky to get through a sentence fragment before Holmes overrode him. Beside me, Louie nervously fidgeted his way through yet another piece of pie. Every now and then he’d tap my arm as a prompt, and I’d abandon Holmes temporarily and go back to Anime’s app. The second or third time, I thought they’d gone because no one crossed the screen during the two minutes we watched, but the next time I looked, about ten minutes later, Mr. Nose sauntered past in the direction of the library, yawning. When he was most of the way across, he turned and said something over his shoulder, so she was obviously in the living room.
“Pretty relaxed,” Louie said.
“I think they’re exhausted,” I said. “Probably almost as tired as I am.” I squeezed my eyes shut and widened them, and started to skim the third story, which was called “A Case of Identity.”
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