“I’d like to take a little break to allow those who have already received their bequests the opportunity to leave,” Richardson said, nodding at the people in the two rows of chairs, most of whom shuffled out of the room.
Melanie got up to leave, but Mrs. Goodall put a hand on her daughter’s arm and she sat down again.
“I’m not leaving until I hear about the house,” Tillie’s nephew declared.
Samantha Grogan raised her hand timidly. “We didn’t hear our names mentioned,” she said.
“That’s right,” Pettigrew said, scowling at the lawyer. “You said we’re all mentioned in the will.”
“I suggest you three find alternative accommodations, as you may have less than a month to continue as guests of Tillie Mortelaine,” Richardson replied. He removed his half-glasses and, taking in those who remained in the room, said, “That is all I can tell you at this juncture.”
“What are you talking about?” Judge O’Neill demanded.
Richardson cleared his throat. “I’m afraid that there will still be some—how shall I say it?—there remain some unresolved issues.”
“Like the house,” Rocky put in. “Which of us gets the damn house?”
“Unresolved?” Judge O’Neill said. “How can there be unresolved issues? I’m sure Tillie Mortelaine’s last wishes were clearly spelled out in her will.”
“Oh, yes, sir, they certainly were,” Richardson responded, “and I took special pains to see that her wishes were put in unequivocal language, the King’s English, if you will. But as you all know, Miss Tillie had her own—how shall I say it?—had her own peculiar notions of how things should be done. In all my years of practicing law in this fair city, I have never represented anyone quite like her.”
“What does all this mean?” Tillie’s niece asked. “We’re not going to learn who gets the rest?”
“In a sense, that is correct,” said Richardson, replacing his glasses and looking down at the next page of the will. “Let me be specific.” He looked over his glasses at me and asked, “Are you ready, Mrs. Fletcher?”
His question took me by surprise. “Ready for what?” I replied.
He turned from me and said to the others, “When Miss Tillie executed this latest version of her will—and there have been many versions, I assure you—she was explicit in her desire to see the murder of her paramour, Wanamaker Jones, solved.” He peered over his glasses at Joseph Jones. “This should interest you, sir.”
“It does indeed,” he replied.
Richardson continued. “She wanted, however, for that to be accomplished only after her demise. Her instructions were for her friend Jessica Fletcher to come to Savannah after Miss Tillie’s death and apply her—” He adjusted his glasses and read: “ ‘Apply her considerable insight into the criminal mind and her penchant for solving seemingly unsolvable crimes.’ ”
There followed a pregnant silence in the room when he finished reading. People looked at each other, the expressions on their faces testifying to their confusion. Not surprisingly, it was Judge O’Neill who interrupted the hush. “Miss Tillie was obviously demented at the time she made this request. You were a fool to let her get away with it, Rollie.”
“And what does this have to do with the disposition of her estate?” Rocky asked.
“It has everything to do with it, Mr. Kendall,” Richardson replied. “Mrs. Fletcher has one month to solve the murder of Wanamaker Jones. Should she succeed, one million dollars of Miss Tillie’s estate will go to her, with specific instructions that Mrs. Fletcher use it to further the literacy program that these two fine ladies established a number of years ago.”
“And what if she doesn’t succeed?” Rose Kendall asked.
“Whether Mrs. Fletcher succeeds or not,” Richardson explained, “there is a sealed envelope that is to be opened, either upon her successful resolution of the murder or one month from today. It contains instructions as to how the remainder of the estate will be distributed, possibly including the house.” He cocked his head at the Grogans and Pettigrew. “Miss Tillie instructed me that you may continue in residence until that day, and not a moment longer.”
“This is outrageous,” Rocky said.
“It certainly is,” Pettigrew said. “Am I mentioned in that envelope?”
The attorney sniffed. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
O’Neill turned in his wheelchair to face me. “This is why you’ve come to Savannah?” he demanded. “This is why you’re here today?”
“Yes,” I said. “I assure you that I was as surprised at Tillie’s request as all of you are. I debated long and hard about accepting her challenge, and decided that the literacy project was important enough to pursue the million dollars. Frankly, I wish that Tillie had simply left the money to the project, but that isn’t what she decided to do. And her wishes are to be respected. After all, it’s her money and her right to have it distributed as she saw fit.”
“She distinctly told me she was leaving me the Meissen figurines,” Rose whispered to her brother.
“So we have to wait another month to find out if our aunt left us anything else?” Rocky grumbled.
“Unless Mrs. Fletcher solves the murder sooner than that,” said Richardson. He had a tiny smile on his lips, and I suspected he was enjoying this.
Dr. Payne spoke up. “An interesting conundrum isn’t it? If Mrs. Fletcher fails to solve the murder, there’s a million dollars that might go to someone at this table—a good reason to hinder her investigation.”
“An equally good reason to help her,” Richardson said, “provided you believe in the literacy project that meant so much to Miss Tillie, and obviously to Mrs. Fletcher.”
“What about the house?” Rose asked. “Surely that’s not bound up in this ridiculous investigation Mrs. Fletcher has been asked to undertake.”
“And the furnishings and her various collections?” Rocky added.
Richardson held up his hand. “I’m afraid that everything else is on hold until Mrs. Fletcher either identifies who killed Wanamaker Jones or fails and a month passes.”
“And do we get them if she fails?” Rose asked. “I’ve already had an offer from the hotel next door.”
“You mean we’ve already had an offer,” her brother amended, shooting her an angry look. “They want to annex Aunt Tillie’s house and make it part of the hotel.”
Another silence engulfed the room.
“We’re her only living relatives,” Rose said, looking at the faces around the room. “It should come to us. It’s only right.”
Richardson held up a sealed envelope. “Who inherits the house is yet to be determined,” he said.
Tillie’s niece and nephew stood in unison. “There’s no sense in sitting here any longer,” Rocky said. “Frankly, I’m disappointed in Aunt Tillie. She’s always been a game player, but this borders on cruelty.”
O’Neill signaled to his nurse, who was sitting along a wall, to come get him.
“I hope you’ll give my best to your sister, Charmelle,” I said. “We met when Tillie and I were putting together the literacy project. I understand she’s not well.”
“That’s an understatement, Mrs. Fletcher,” her brother answered. “Good day—and good luck!”
The judge’s abrupt departure kept me from asking if I could stop in to see Charmelle. Before I discovered she was ailing, I had been counting on her to tell me about the relationship between Tillie and her fiancé and what important events, if any, may have led up to the day Wanamaker Jones was killed. I still had hopes of talking with her, even if only for a few minutes, but her brother’s gruff attitude did not bode well for accommodating my request. Still, I’d gotten around obstinate people before. Perhaps I could find a way to convince the judge to allow me to pay a visit to his sister. I hoped so. My task was difficult enough without losing the few witnesses from that time who would be able to provide, if nothing else, a starting point for my investigation.
Soon, I was lef
t in Richardson’s office with only the attorney, Joseph Jones, and Dr. Payne.
Wanamaker’s nephew, a man in his mid-forties, was dressed casually in neatly pressed slacks and a white polo shirt with a red collar. The thumb of his left hand was hooked under the collar of a sports jacket flung over one shoulder. Tillie had left him a small bequest, “a token in memory of my affection for his uncle.” He came around the table to where I sat and extended his right hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Fletcher. I wondered why I would be mentioned in Miss Tillie’s will to begin with. Frankly, I’m surprised that she left me anything, but maybe it’s just because she wanted the family to know that she intends to succeed where the police have failed.” He pronounced “police” in the Southern manner, with the emphasis on the first syllable. “Truthfully, the best bequest she could give us would be to solve his murder. I hope you find out who killed my uncle.”
“I certainly intend to try,” I said. “I understand he was quite a colorful man.”
His nephew laughed. “That’s what everyone in the family says. Anytime you want to talk to us about him, we’ll be more than happy.” He handed me a card with his contact information.
“Thank you, Mr. Jones. I’ll probably take you up on your offer.”
He said good-bye and left the office.
“Well, well, well. Looks like Miss Tillie was not the only one keeping secrets,” the doctor said, stretching back in his chair and looking from me to Roland Richardson.
“I didn’t feel at liberty to inform you of Tillie’s requirement until it was made official this morning,” I said.
“And quite right,” Richardson put in. “Now, if you two will excuse me for a few minutes, I want to give Amber some instructions.”
“You have your work cut out for you, Mrs. Fletcher,” Payne said as Richardson left the room. “I don’t envy you.”
“I don’t envy me, either,” I said with a rueful laugh.
“I know where you might start.”
“Please tell me.”
“Get ahold of Sherry Buchwalter.”
“She is?”
“It’s a he. Sherry for Sheridan. Retired policeman. Sherry was a detective on the Wanamaker Jones murder case.”
I noted his name on a small pad I’d placed in front of me at the start of the meeting. Dr. Payne gave me what he thought was Officer Buchwalter’s address. “Sorry,” he said, “but I don’t have his phone number with me. He’s a crusty guy, and smart. Sherry’s been a patient of mine for years.”
“I get the impression that you probably know just about everyone in Savannah I might need to talk to.”
His laugh was gentle. “I’ve treated a few local folks in my fifty-some years as a physician. If you’re suggesting that I might help you in your investigation, I’ll consider it.” He reached for the pad I’d been writing on and scribbled his number at the top of the sheet. “Call me anytime, Mrs. Fletcher. This promises to be more fun than when our Saint Pat parade’s grand marshal fell off his horse thirty years ago. Damn fool was drunk. Lucky for him all he suffered was a whole mess of bruises and an equally bruised ego. Yes, do call me, Mrs. Fletcher. You and your literacy project are going to need all the help you can get.”
Chapter Nine
I showed Melanie the address Dr. Payne had given me for Sheridan Buchwalter. “Do you think you can take me there?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am. I kind of know where it is. It’s an area called Southside. Does he know you’re coming?”
“I hope so. Dr. Payne said Mr. Buchwalter was expecting us, but when I called for directions, I got his answering machine. I left a message telling him we’d be there this morning.”
“Well, if he’s not home, we can always go to the mall,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “There’s a sale at Old Navy I wouldn’t mind checking out.”
Melanie was dressed in a short black-and-white-striped jacket with flared cuffs and a wide leather belt over a pair of black denim jeans embroidered in gold thread. Around her neck she had arranged a turquoise and gold scarf in a complicated bow that would have taken me a month to learn how to tie. In my serviceable taupe pantsuit that always traveled well, even with a favorite gold brooch I’d pinned on the collar, I was reminded that although I had no desire to dress like a teenage fashion plate, I seemed to have left behind my days of more elegant attire when I gave up the apartment I used to have in New York City. Perhaps some shopping was in order.
“If we stop at Belk’s,” Melanie said, seeming to read my mind, “I bet we could find you a nice red top to go with that suit. I’m guessing red is a good color for you.”
“I do like red,” I said, “and I’d enjoy shopping, but we have important business to attend to first.”
As I sat back in Melanie’s blue Honda, I thought about how I could organize this murder investigation. I hoped Detective Buchwalter would cooperate. He had worked on the case, but it had probably been relegated to the cold files even before he’d retired. Would he be resentful of interference, concerned that what I might find would show him up and make him look foolish? That was certainly not my intention. I only hoped that a fresh look at the murder from a distance of many years could yield new information. Perhaps people who were hesitant to speak up in 1967 would feel freed by the passage of time and be willing to share what had been hidden so long ago. I needed the detective’s insights. Without them, I would be left adrift. There were few witnesses to begin with, and those who were around—with the exception of Dr. Payne—did not seem eager to help me.
My return to Tillie’s house from the attorney’s office the day before had been greeted with mixed reviews. Melanie had been excited and had offered to be my assistant. “I can drive you anywhere you want to go,” she said happily. “I’ve lived here my whole life.”
“I’m happy to take you up on that, Melanie, so long as your mother doesn’t object.”
“Oh, she won’t. It’s spring break. She likes it when I’m occupied.”
I intended to get a confirmation of that from Mrs. Goodall, but she had largely avoided me. I’m not certain if it was intentional. She was preoccupied with a leak that had apparently developed while we were out and had left a large wet spot on the carpet in the study. Unsure of its source, she’d left a message with a plumber and hastened to find towels to soak up the water and a bucket deep enough to keep the drips from continuing to splash on the cream-colored Oriental. When I attempted to speak with her later in the day, she shooed me from the kitchen, citing dinner preparations and an imminent callback from the plumber for why she had “no time to chat.”
Meanwhile, the Grogans had taken their month’s notice as permission to speed up the pace of their paranormal investigations. When I went upstairs to wash for lunch, the door to the bathroom was blocked by an elaborate contraption on a tripod with wires extending in all directions.
“Don’t touch that,” Samantha screeched when I approached the door. “You’ll reset the calibration it took Artie an hour and a half to tune.”
I’d had to use the bathroom off Tillie’s bedroom, passing by the gruesome painting Judith Holding the Head of Holofernes, which Mrs. Goodall had relocated to the wall above Tillie’s fireplace.
I felt vaguely disoriented using Tillie’s bathroom. All her personal items were still arrayed on a mirrored tray atop an antique cabinet next to the sink—bottles of perfume, jars of face cream, a comb, a medicine container, a silver cup in which she’d left a pair of earrings, even her toothbrush and a half-used tube of toothpaste. It looked as if she were still alive, had left only a few minutes earlier, and would be back shortly to straighten up. Perhaps Mrs. Goodall couldn’t bring herself to put these things away, I thought as I washed my hands with gardenia-scented soap. Perhaps she felt closer to her longtime friend and employer by leaving evidence of her daily life in place. For me, it was as if I were invading Tillie’s privacy—peeking into a part of her life that was intensely personal—even though she had invited me to do just that with h
er demand that I solve the murder of her fiancé.
On my way out, I deliberately turned my head away from the disturbing oil painting and noticed for the first time that there were several photographs on Tillie’s bedside table. I stopped to look at them, thinking that those pictured must have been very dear to her if she kept them where she would see their faces every morning when she awoke. I picked up a silver picture frame. It held a shot of a very young Tillie and an equally young Charmelle, their arms twined around each other’s waists. Tillie was grinning at the camera, and Charmelle’s soft smile was directed at her friend. I’ve always felt that photographs reveal more about their subjects than the people posing ever realized. Here was a perfect example, with an extroverted, impish Tillie facing the world straight on, and a shyer, quiet Charmelle not quite ready to show her true personality.
Another frame held a picture of a young soldier in uniform, one foot resting on the running board of a car I gauged to be of 1930s or 1940s vintage. His head was cocked to the side and one hand was raised as if he were giving instructions to the photographer. This had to be the husband Tillie lost in the war. I smiled at the image. He had a sweet and open face, and I’d bet he had his hands full with a spunky wife like Tillie. And she had given him the greatest gift of love—she had never forgotten him.
The last picture was the one I’d been expecting. It was a professional portrait like those Hollywood photos that actors send to their fans and had even been signed: “To my darling Tillie, from your devoted W.” I noted how handsome he’d been. Wanamaker Jones must have easily captured hearts with his thick, wavy hair, movie-star looks, and the devilish expression in his eyes. He had a small scar that intersected one eyebrow, adding a dash of rakishness to a face that was close to being pretty.
Murder, She Wrote: A Slaying in Savannah Page 8