Not Death, But Love (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 3)

by Michael Wallace

  “Ah, still here. Good, good. Well, the reason I’m calling is that I am — was — Charlotte London’s attorney and am now the executor of her estate. You knew Miss London, I assume, and heard about what happened?”

  “Yes. Sad and unexpected.”

  “That it was. If it hadn’t been for this, I’d have expected her to live another 25 or 30 years. But of course, we never know. Be that as it may, she was, as I’m sure you know, a meticulous woman, and had planned for the time, whenever it might have been, in great detail.”

  Gordon made a sympathetic noise between a grunt and a murmur.

  “Actually, that’s why I’ve been trying to get in touch with you. Perhaps you knew already, but if you didn’t, you are an interested party in her will.”

  Gordon was speechless.

  “Are you still there? Mr. Gordon?”

  “I’m here — just surprised. This comes as news to me.”

  “I suspected it might. We should probably discuss this face-to-face, instead of over the phone. Are you here for a while?”

  “Until the middle of next week.”

  “Then I’m sure we can arrange something, though given the circumstances, the sooner the better. You’ll understand when we talk. What would be convenient for you? My office is right by the county courthouse.”

  “You said the sooner the better. What’s your schedule like today?”

  “Pretty flexible. You can come over now if you like. Anything to do with Miss London’s affairs moves to the head of the line as far as I’m concerned.”

  “How long do you think it will take to fill me in on this?”

  “Not terribly long. A half hour, 45 minutes at most.”

  Gordon looked at Peter, who was scowling.

  “All right. I’ll be there in ten minutes. I look forward to meeting you.”

  “The pleasure will be mutual, Mr. Gordon. Thank you so much.”

  Gordon returned the phone to the glove compartment and turned to Peter.

  “Sorry. Looks like the fishing is going to have to wait just a bit. That was Charlotte London’s attorney.”

  “Ah.”

  “Apparently I am a person of interest in her will. I figured I might as well find out what that’s about as soon as possible. He said it would only take a half hour to 45 minutes.”

  Peter laughed. “He’s an attorney, Gordon. He charges by the hour. Forty five minutes is what he’s hoping for. Make him do it in 15 so we can get some fishing in.”

  They drove over and parked across the street from the law offices. Gordon bounded up the steps to the front porch two at a time and opened the front door. He was greeted by a plump, fair-haired woman in her early thirties with a cheerful disposition.

  “You must be Mr. Gordon,” she said. “Mr. Winters asked me to bring you straight in.”

  She got up and started down the a hallway, pausing at the first door on her left and knocking on it. A voice called to come in, and she opened the door, standing aside to let Gordon in.

  Cameron Winters rose from behind his desk. He was about 50, six feet tall with a receding hairline and a crew cut. He wore black dress slacks, a grey herringbone sport coat, button-down blue shirt and a red and gray tie of conservative pattern. His eyes smiled behind glasses with thick black rims.

  “So glad you could come on such short notice,” he said, shaking Gordon’s hand. “Please have a seat.”

  Gordon sat in a standard-issue cushioned office chair and crossed his legs.

  “If you don’t mind, Mr. Gordon, I’d like to begin by getting a bit of background.” Gordon nodded. “How do you know Miss London?”

  Gordon shook his head. “It’s the strangest thing. I came up late Sunday for a fishing trip, and Monday morning my friend and I were having breakfast at the Shotgun. She walked up to me out of the blue and said I looked like an honest man.”

  “You’d never met her before?”

  “Not at all. Complete strangers. Anyway, we talked for several minutes, and the upshot of it was that she asked me to hold on to something for safekeeping. An envelope. She said she was in a hurry and would explain later, so we made an appointment to have lunch at Ike’s Lakeside today.”

  “Interesting. And about what time Monday was this?”

  “Around 8:30 to 8:45. I wasn’t really looking at the time.”

  “That fits in. Tell me, to the extent you can, did she seem upset or agitated?”

  “She seemed preternaturally calm, which in hindsight is kind of surprising. I mean, she made what a lot of people would think was an outrageous request. And yet, she did it so matter-of-factly that I got sucked right into it.”

  “She had that effect on people.”

  “She certainly did on me.”

  “Do you mind if I ask what was in the envelope? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but it may be germane to the matter on which I called you here.”

  Gordon hesitated. Miss London had trusted her envelope to him, a stranger, presumably because she wasn’t comfortable giving it to someone she knew. Someone in town. Did that include her attorney and executor? Until he knew more, he didn’t want to disclose too much, so he settled on a general answer and a lie of omission.

  “It was a floppy disk and a couple of sheets of paper that indicated the disk contained a family history. We tried putting the disk into a computer, but it didn’t read.”

  “All right, then. Things begin to make a bit of sense, anyway. That is, aside from the fact she trusted a total stranger she’d met in a café five minutes earlier. But even that was Charlotte. She was quite proud of her ability to size people up and utterly confident about it. She told me just last year that she’d only been wrong about a person once in her life.”

  “An impressive record, if true.”

  “I daresay it was. We gossiped from time to time, and she was spot on about the people we both knew.”

  “Maybe you could answer a question for me,” Gordon said. “This family history — if that’s what it was — had she talked about that with you?”

  “Some. About a year ago, she talked about it a lot. She had just retired, and this was the big project she was embarking upon. But now that you bring it up, she really hadn’t been saying anything about it the past couple of months. That may mean something, or it may mean nothing at all.”

  “At any rate, that doesn’t answer the question of why I’m here.”

  Winters nodded and leaned over to get something from a leather briefcase on the floor next to him. Gordon looked around the office. There was a large window, offering a view of the house next door and a partial look at the street. Winters’ law degree (Santa Clara, ’71) was on the wall by the window and next to it a framed copy of the Rotary Four-Way Test. The two side walls were mostly filled with large oil paintings with Western themes. One showed a stagecoach riding through a Monument Valley landscape and the other a gathering of Native Americans. The attorney fished a folder from his briefcase and set it on the desk.

  “You say you talked to Charlotte a bit before nine o’clock on Monday. Well, at 9:30, she came here for an appointment, and somewhat to my surprise said she wanted to add a holographic codicil to her will. She wrote it out on this desk, with a bit of help from me, and I called in the usual witnesses — the retired couple next door — to validate it. The original is in my safe, of course, but this is a copy.”

  From the folder he removed two sheets of paper stapled together and set them on the desk in front of Gordon. His first thought was that the handwriting, crisp clear and confident, must have looked great on a classroom blackboard. It covered the top two thirds of the page, leaving room for the witnesses’ signatures, and read:

  June 17, 1996

  I hereby add and incorporate this handwritten codicil to my last will and testament, dated July 10, 1995. In order to ensure that my family history is carried through to completion, I appoint Mr. Quill Gordon of San Francisco my literary executor. He is to be granted full and complete acc
ess to all papers, documents, and relevant computer files in my possession. Any properly documented financial claim made by him upon the estate in connection with the completion of the family history shall be promptly honored by the executor prior to distribution of the residue of the estate.

  When he finished reading, Gordon realized he had been holding his breath and exhaled. He lifted the top sheet and saw that the bottom one consisted of a photocopy of the business card he had given Charlotte London Monday morning.

  “That seems clear enough,” Gordon said. “But why? Why me? Wasn’t there someone else she knew who could have done this?”

  “She has friends, certainly, and her brother lives here. I believe they’re on cordial terms. But I’m afraid I can’t answer your question. I won’t deny that I was surprised when she asked for this Monday morning, but she was sharp and collected as always, so I went forward. Charlotte was difficult enough to counsel, and arguing with her was out of the question.”

  “I don’t suppose there are any papers left after that fire?”

  “Afraid not. I spoke with the assistant fire chief yesterday. He said they were able to save the skeleton of the building, but the fire was so hot that any paper inside the house was burned beyond ashes and any computer equipment was melted beyond saving. She left no papers with me, either. No, Mr. Gordon. It may well be that what she gave you Monday morning is all that’s left.”

  “That’s a lot to process.”

  “Take your time by all means. We’ll need awhile to close out the estate. It’s easily worth a few million, but a lot of it is tied up in the London & Paris Land Company, and it’ll take some time to sort that out. The good news, at least as far as your responsibility goes, is that the land company paid regular dividends, so she had a nice chunk of cash in the bank. If you incur any expenses in relation to your duties, I can get you a check right away.”

  “Thank you. That’s good to know.” He stared at the Native American painting, turning things over in his mind. “I don’t know if it’s appropriate for me to ask, but could you tell me the terms of her will?”

  Winters leaned back in his chair, pressed his hands together, and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds.

  “I don’t see why not. You’re an interested party, and when it goes to probate, it’ll be a public document. Last-minute codicil aside, it was pretty straightforward. She left cash bequests of $50,000 each to her niece and nephew, and her house jointly to them. They’re both grown and out of the area, so I guess it was for vacations and family gatherings. She left $2,000 a year for the next 20 years to the high school library for buying books, and $10,000 to her friend Gina Lindsay, with the direction that it be used to travel abroad. Beyond that, what’s left over after expenses is the residue of the estate.”

  “A few million, you said. And where does that go?”

  Winters blinked. “Planned Parenthood of Northern California, with the directive that it be used to expand services in this county.”

  “Planned Parenthood. Did she say why?”

  “She never did, but I think I can hazard a pretty good guess. You see, Mr. Gordon, this is a small town with conservative, traditional values. Everybody who lives here will tell you that. But conservative, traditional values don’t always trump young hormones. They didn’t when I was growing up, and probably less so now. We have a bear of a teenage pregnancy problem in this county, and working at the high school, she was face to face with it every day. She has told me on a couple of occasions that one of the great frustrations of her job was seeing so many bright young girls who could have gone on to college getting pregnant and marrying straight out of high school. She felt it was a waste of human potential, and I suspect she concluded this was one way she could do something about it.”

  “Sure. That makes sense.”

  “Well, Mr. Gordon, I’ve given you a lot to chew on, and it must have been quite a surprise. Do you have any other questions?”

  “Not right now. I’m still taking it all in.”

  “If you think of something, call. I’ll help any way I can. And if anything else comes up, I’ll be in touch with you straightaway. How much longer did you say you were going to be here?”

  “Until next Wednesday morning You can page me or leave a message at Stanhope House.”

  “Good enough. Oh, and one more thing. I’d try Charlotte’s floppy disk in another computer if I were you. I know that once or twice I’ve had problems calling up things she did on her computer.”

  “Will do,” Gordon said rising. Winters also stood, and they shook hands. “Thank you for everything, and I’m sure we’ll be in touch.”

  He walked back outside, where it was still windy, crossed the street, and got into the Cherokee. Peter gave him a quizzical look.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Gordon said, handing him the copy of the codicil.

  FROM ARTHUR, they again drove south down the state highway that followed the lake and kept going when they reached the dam. Beyond it, the road dropped steeply through a canyon, after which it traversed a lush, green valley with cattle grazing in the open meadows. They climbed a slight rise, dropped into another valley, then followed the highway through another canyon with a roiling stream tumbling downhill to their left.

  “Is that the Hawk?” Peter asked.

  “Nope. Hiscox Creek. A tributary. We’ll be getting back to Hawk River not too far ahead.”

  “Who was Hiscox?”

  “How the hell would I know? Probably some early settler.”

  “Something bothering you, Gordon? You’re usually quite loquacious when it comes to filling me in on the local lore.”

  “Yeah, something’s bothering me. I’m starting to get more than a little bit of a resentment toward Miss London and her presumptions. I came up here to go fishing, not to spend half the rest of my life finishing a family history. If she wanted me to do that, the least she could have done was ask me beforehand.”

  “We were supposed to be having lunch with her today. Maybe she was going to ask you then.” Gordon made a noise that was a cross between a grunt and a snort. “Probably not her fault that she died first. And grumpy as you are, I’m sure she’d rather be with you at one o’clock today than lying on a slab in the morgue, or wherever she is.”

  “I know that. And I know I shouldn’t be feeling the way I do. I just don’t appreciate her trespassing on my good nature.”

  “At least you have a good nature. Nobody ever said that about me.”

  “No comment.”

  “You know, Gordon, I’m beginning to feel this fishing trip start to slip away from us. It’s not what I expected, but I’m all right with it. I was there when Miss London approached us in the café, and even at the time, I thought it was an amazing leap of faith for her to trust a complete stranger that much. I don’t see that you have any choice but to carry out that trust.”

  “Neither do I, dammit.” He sighed. “I’ll get over it, I guess. And I’ll probably feel better after we get some fishing in today.”

  A few miles later they came to a stop at a T intersection. The north-south state highway was meeting up with an east-west state highway. A left turn would have taken them 12 miles to Adams, the second city, such as it was, of Forest County. They turned right onto the highway, which, taken to its end, followed the river 60 miles downstream to the vast Central Valley. Two miles down, they passed a road on the left that crossed a rickety wooden bridge to Steinhart’s Lodge and Resort, Est. 1924.

  “In a mile or so,” said Gordon, feeling better, “there’s a dirt road that goes down to a little flat just above the river. This is the Middle Fork of the Hawk, but from the flat we can walk down to where the North Fork joins it.” He looked at his watch. “We should have just enough time to fish our way down and back.”

  The dirt road Gordon spoke of was unmarked, and a casual observer would have missed it. But knowing where it was, he was able to veer sharply to the left, in front of an oncoming pickup. The road was
barely wide enough for one car, and went straight downhill at a 30-degree angle for a hundred yards before ending at a flat, gravelly area of about 100-by-150 feet. A red Chevy pickup with license plate guards from an Adams dealership was parked there, but its occupant was nowhere to be seen. Gordon parked parallel to it, 25 feet away, and hopped out of the Cherokee. At the edge of the flat, which commanded a good view of the gorge, he looked downstream, then up, and pointed upstream.

  “He’s up there,” he shouted to Peter. “We stick to the original plan.”

  They put on vests and waders, grabbed their rods, locked the vehicle, and started down a steep narrow path to the river 20 feet below. The highway was far above them now, and the only noise that could be heard from it was when a large truck shifted gears with a growl. Cut into the canyon walls on the opposite side of the river was a railroad track, and in the time they were fishing, two long trains passed on it. The morning breeze had, if anything, picked up, and the river canyon was serving as a giant wind tunnel. The wind stung their cheeks and threatened to blow away their hats. The noonday sun, almost directly above them, lit the landscape with a burning clarity. Its reflection off the white boulders in the river was only partly mitigated by their polarized sunglasses. The combination of wind and sun was an assault on all their senses.

  The river was running high, fast and relatively clear. Gordon stuck a hand in the water, and quickly pulled it out. It had clearly been snow not so long ago. They worked downstream, fishing dry flies in the comparatively slower sections. He caught one fish, a beautifully colored 10-inch Brook Trout, and both of them missed hooking a couple of fish that rose to their flies. The current was so fast and the fish were striking so quickly, there was almost no time to react.

  On the way back, Peter kept fishing the moving water with dry flies. With experience, his reflexes improved to the point where he was able to catch and release two Rainbow Trout, 11 and 14 inches. Gordon switched over to nymphs, which he fished below the surface in the larger pools. The fast water was sweeping the flies through the pools before they could sink deep enough, so he clipped a small weight to the line just above them. That got the flies down deep enough to be seen and gobbled by several trout, the best of which was an 18-inch Brown in the pool just before they got back to the flat. The Chevy pickup had vanished, and they had the flat to themselves as they chugged soft drinks from the cooler and removed their waders.