“You all know why you’re here.” he began bluntly and without his usual grace.
“Minnie made provisions for you all ” he continued. He flipped over some pages impatiently and began to read.
“For Moon Godwin, Minnie provided income, property in the form of a house, house keeping provided by his current arrangement with a cleaning service and cook, and financial support administered by trustees who will be mentioned later.
For Michael Godwin, he is to continue in his current position as farm and horticultural manager of Au Naturel, Inc. and subsidiaries for as long as he wishes to be involved in the business. Minnie considered his contributions invaluable and has left him a sum of money and another farm to manage as he elects either for his own projects or for ANI. His home where he is currently living is his, along with five acres of land free and clear from the original farm which is adjacent to the newly purchased land.
Mrs. Gena Wadkins Godwin is to receive the title to the house where she resides with Rory and Pete along with financial support to be administered by trustees who will be mentioned later. She may distribute funds to her sons according to her discretion. Some limitations defined by the estate trustees will protect the principle from premature liquidation or unwise investment.
Gena spoke up, tears in her eyes. She was a world champion cryer, able to turn them on at a moment’s notice. She was good at manipulating people, especially men, but as her beauty faded she became less and less effective. “I know Minnie would have provided a stock position for us in the family company. We’ll need more than mere support. We also need management positions for Rory and Pete. She knew I always wanted that for my boys,” she said, conspicuously excluding Michael from the magic circle.
Amanda felt sorry for him as she had many times. Gena never changed. Michael just looked down at his hands and ignored his mother.
“Minnie made no such provisions.” Tom told her bluntly.
“My boys are ready for this challenge. I’ll help them along. Minnie understood that they could contribute.” She sobbed theatrically into her handkerchief and looked at Amanda. “Don’t you agree that you’ll need he help and advice from us now, dear?”
Tom stepped into the conversation before Amanda could frame a reply. “Minnie made provisions for company management that specifically exclude all of you except Michael, Gena.”
Gena started to speak up again and Tom interrupted her. “If you will let me continue…Heather Ann Godwin shall receive a cash settlement and a condo adjacent to the club where she is employed. She may administer the money herself. “
“Any contest of the will by this branch, which is not related by blood, but only by marriage will result in the designated funds being returned to the estate.”
Tom said, “You know what that means, Gena? You accept what she’s offered or you get nothing.”
Gena sputtered, “This is ill considered. I know Minnie could not have meant this!”
Tom ignored her and forged on. “Amanda Ray Godwin will administer and inherit the control and assets of Au Naturel Products, Inc. in their entirety except for stock owned by Michael Godwin.
Minnie said since she is under thirty she will be assisted in managing the business by Gabriel Hall, a consultant who has been helpful to her in recent years as the business has grown. Minnie felt Gabe could help Amanda get up to speed on the things she doesn’t know if Minnie was not there to finish her education.”
Amanda watched helplessly as Tom struggled with his emotions momentarily and then went on, ”He’s already here, Amanda. Minnie had him here doing some stuff before the accident.”
“I have met him,” she said. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Tom was obviously upset and it made Amanda wish her aunt was still around to control him and keep him on track like she used to do. She had a sense, a whisper of Minnie’s voice that told her he was leaving stuff out. It made her reach out with her own instincts and look for Minnie on some unearthly level.
She wanted to tell Tom to hush so she could hear but he continued obliviously, sensing nothing except the temporal plane and so self centered, even it barely. “If it’s O.K. with you, Amanda, I’ll pick you up on Friday at 10:00 A.M. Gabe will meet us at my office. He and I can go over some points with you about the business and then lunch at the Beehive Café.”
Tom ate at the Beehive every day and had done so for all the years he’d been widowed. It was named for the sixties style hairdo, not bees. It was unlikely he would change his habit for anyone, much less her.
Amanda nodded, “O.K.” There was a lot of tension in the room. She looked around. Gena was furious. Pete smiled flirtatiously. She supposed he meant it to be his interpretation of a sensual look. He was successful only in annoying her…again… and her eyes traveled past him quickly. Rory snorted and wiggled in his chair. Heather ignored them all. Tom and Gena were both sweating visibly.
“I think I should be at that meeting, too,” Gena said. “Anything that has to do with the business should not exclude us.”
“Well Minnie said different, so you’d better get used to it. ” Tom said, his voice shaking with emotion. “She left a few minor bequests to some others, and me but that covers the lion’s share of the estate. She has appointed an out of town group as trustees for Gena and you boys. This envelope has the particulars and how to reach them.” He shoved the envelope in Gena’s direction. She grabbed it before the boys could. Her tears were no longer in evidence.
“This is the same deal for you, Moon. This is your information.” He shoved another envelope in Moon’s direction.
Tom levered himself out of his chair with some difficulty. Amanda jumped up to help him too late. “Meeting adjourned,” he said.
Everyone was up and chasing him, but he was too quick for them. He was through a door and gone before anyone realized what he was doing.
“I don’t think he felt like taking questions.” Amanda said. She was angry with him. He had let her and Minnie both down by being insensitive and wanting to be a dominant male. She felt like punching something. Pete wrapped an arm around her at just the wrong moment. His hand cupped the top curve of her hip and strayed downward. It was not appropriate for a familial touch, and openly sexual. She took his hand and shoved it back to him.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, squeezing his hand hard and letting go quickly.
“Don’t you fret about a thing, Honey? We’ll take care of you.” He said. His hand came her way again and she nimbly stepped away bumping into Michael who startled up as much as she had when Pete grabbed her.
“I’m sorry, Michael,” she apologized. “I’m feeling so out of sorts I can’t even walk straight.”
Michael looked at her, really seeing her for a change, not distant as he usually was. He ran his eyes over her and then his family. He held his hand out to her palm up and said, “Easy, Amanda. Come, I’ll escort you to your car.”
She scanned the faces around her, seeing the predatory looks and not for the first time. They were annoying her more than usual, starting to creep her out, for sure. Deciding she needed to get away while she was still in control of her impulse to scream at them, she slapped her palm into Michael’s and allowed his escort.
Gabriel Hall and his friend and coworker Henry Scofield, AKA Scooby, sat on a park bench at the library next door to Harold’s office and watched the group exit the meeting. They knew all the players from their dealings with Minnie. Michael and Amanda came first, walking fast and looking tense and unhappy. They did not look like heirs with the lion’s share of the assets, nor did they look at each other or speak until they reached Amanda’s car.
Amanda looked up at her cousin briefly and spoke, saying something short he couldn’t hear before she cranked the car and drove away. Michael stood watching her until his mother approached. She threw a short, low voiced communication in his direction during which he neither looked at her nor answered. She left him standing with his head down and his cheeks flushed red with anger o
r humiliation or both. He suddenly gathered himself and walked to a battered pickup truck and drove away.
‘Such a loving parent ’ Gabe thought, sympathizing instantly with Michael. His siblings, all of them adults, were giggling at the reprimand like bad children. The hair on the back of his neck suddenly stood up. He realized how dangerous adults could be if they had none of the normal curbs on their behavior that people should learn as they mature.
Scooby said, “I’ve got a feeling. I had one after Minnie’s accident already, but I have it more now.”
“I have one, too,” Gabe agreed. “I want the whole team here, now…today if possible.”
The rest of the people gathered for the reading of the will climbed into two cars, Heather in her own car, and the boys and their mother in another and pulled out of the parking lot. After they were gone Moon stepped from the building. He stopped and drew a flask from his pocket. He took a long, apparently satisfying drink from it and then climbed into his own vehicle and left, too. Gabe knew he had no driver’s license, but he was still driving.
The next day Gabe asked to meet with Amanda in her office at Au Natural. Because she knew Minnie had hired him, for something that her aunt considered important she decided to meet with him. She met him outside her office in the lobby of the building. He was tall, dark and attractive in a rough sort of way, not classically good looking in the way blond men often were. Gena’s Pete was blond and did not turn her on at all, as much as he wanted her body or her assets…whichever it was that he wanted. She was all too sure that she herself as an individual mattered little in what Gena and her Whitfield offspring wanted from her.
She wanted family ties. She was alone in the world except for her cousin Michael and desperately wanted a family. Still, she wasn’t desperate enough or dumb enough to mistake what Gena and her children were offering for even affection, let alone love.
She watched Gabe walk toward her briskly, not really hurrying but as though he had things to do…responsibilities. Gabe looked dark and a little rough even in carefully pressed slacks and a starched shirt. His eyes were very dark and extravagantly lashed, big and expressive. He was well built and his clothes were perfectly tailored, but loose enough for comfort. His pants were a softly draped fabric with enough ease to disguise the details and give air to his package. She realized she was looking at his crotch, enjoying the view. He wore either hangers or no underwear. The thought of it was tantalizing. His shirtsleeves were rolled up revealing hairy muscular forearms and big masculine hands. She always looked at men’s hands…imagined them on her body. It was usually the first place she looked after their eyes. But she had looked first at Gabe’s crotch, not his hands. Not that it mattered. She wasn’t looking for love. She was avoiding it, if anything. Her fantasies were as close as she was getting to a real man.
He walked to her and she turned and led the way into her office. She was attracted and reluctant to shake his hand or touch him at all.
“Can I offer you coffee?” she asked to cover her standoffishness.
“No, I’ve had a few cups already.” He stood without restlessness and waited with apparent patience until she offered him a chair in the small conversation grouping that served as a conference area in Minnie’s office. He sat as soon as she chose a chair across from him.
“You here working even before Minnie died?” she said. “She introduced us.”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “I was here a couple of weeks.”
“Why were you really here?” Instinctively knew she Amanda had to know, needed to know.
“Minnie was concerned about some money that was missing from some of the company accounts. I had been called in to investigate, but did not find any answers before she died.” Gabe told her. I had placed some equipment in the main offices and just started some surveillance to increase security here. We were obligated to see that employees and customers were aware their conversations might be recorded for quality control and/or security. We didn’t make a big deal about it. We just wanted to be sure it was in employment contracts and all.”
“What did the two of you think was going on here?” Amanda asked him.
“She thought some money was being embezzled. I do, too, though I had not yet done the accounting checks.” Gabe told her. “I was going on what Minnie had told me, but we both know she would know what she was talking about.”
Amanda felt her body tighten from shock. She thought, ‘Oh, Yeah, Minnie would know. She was a great mathematician.’
There it was, the wrongness she had felt put into words. Amanda’s vision seemed to shrink to a point of light and then pure rage seemed to pour through her. “What are you saying, Gabe?” Her voice was choked and hoarse. She had felt the wrongness of it. Minnie had been murdered. She knew it, now.
“Easy, Amanda. I don’t know anything substantive to tell you. Stuff happened, money went missing and Minnie’s dead, but we don’t know and have no facts to support that Minnie’s death was anything but an accident.”
Amanda found herself on her feet heading for the door. Gabe was somehow right with her. “Wait “ he said. “Do you really know where you’re going?”
He was right. She didn’t know. He was not fool enough to touch her when she was so angry. Amanda was not a small woman and she was in great condition, if not at her best at the moment. If he’d touched her at that moment she might have hit him. He somehow kept her in the room without touching her, or provoking her past bearing.
“Amanda, please stay a few minutes. We don’t know anything that points to your aunt’s death being anything except an accident. Minnie would have called it ‘cosmic bad luck’. You know she would.”
Amanda headed back to her chair. She gathered her composure and straightened her backbone. She knew it was ‘cosmic bad luck’ only in the sense that someone wanted her aunt out of the way. “Tell me what you know.”
”We really have just started the investigation,” Gabe told her.
“Do you want to continue it?” he asked.
“Yes, I do,” she told him. She looked him straight in the eye. “I want to be part of it, not just kept in the loop.”
“Count on it,” he said. “I have another person here. His name is Henry Scofield. He agrees with me that something is up. We just don’t know what. I’m going to get with him and some of our other people. Minnie already paid us, so I feel obligated to do the job. I hope you understand.”
He stood up and she stood also and escorted him to the door. This time she offered him her hand. He took it and she put her other small hand over his. “Find the answers. All of us here need to know what’s going on.”
“I know,” he told her. “I need to know, too.”
Amanda got through the day. Her time was taken up with transitional decisions and she avoided thinking about what had happened to Aunt Minnie so she could function. She finished for the day and went home to an empty house needing distraction. She picked at a frozen dinner, but finally dumped it in the trash. She took a hot bath and had some chamomile tea, hoping it would help her sleep. She climbed into bed naked, no gown. Her skin seemed to need to be bare. It felt almost as irritated as her emotions. She tried to lie quietly but her mind wouldn’t rest. Finally her mind found distraction in daydreaming about Gabe…naked. He had a soft touch with a woman’s hand, always a good sign that a man knew how to touch and give pleasure.
Most men she had known didn’t give pleasure very well. They knew how to take, not how to turn women on, but still Amanda had hope that true love existed. Until she found something better she took care of her own pleasure. She closed her eyes and thought of Gabe. She imagined his hands gentle on her breasts. She stroked herself and rubbed her nipples while imagining his hands on her body. It seemed more stimulating than her usual movie star fantasies. Gabe was bigger and more masculine than little, macho guys that made movies until they were decades older than their female costars. Ignoring their wrinkles and bellies got to be a strain. She couldn’t think of a singl
e one who would compare favorably standing next to him. Her fantasy life had found new inspiration. She felt her arousal increase just imagining Gabe in bed with her. She imagined him touching her breasts and kissing her. She ran her hands down her own body while she wished for something…someone else…to play with.
Gabe’s hands passed that intangible test she gave all men. She liked the way they looked…how they would look on her body. She kicked the cover to the end of the bed and spread her legs. Her hands wandered to the sensitive spot where she wanted Gabe. He made her feel hot and bothered, almost desperate for sex. It was new for her. Sex had been something she did without. She was soaking wet, ready for the man she wanted, unique from all others, and special to her. Her fingers strayed to her mound and parted her labia. She was wet and needy. She put two fingers in her passage and the fingers of her other hand on her clit. She thought of Gabe and the thought did it. She came. She had to make herself come two more times before she could sleep, dreaming of Gabe all the time.
Chapter 2
Minerva's Ghost Page 2