"Where were you the night you were released?" Axell asked as calmly as he could. For Maya's sake, he wanted to believe her sister. But the circumstances definitely looked questionable.
"I was here!" Cleo gestured at the stairs. "I got a ride, found the key over the sill like Maya said, and came in and inspected the place. I went upstairs and went to bed. Stevieboy came in around three and woke me. He can verify I was in bed."
"At three. News of the murder was all over town before midnight," Axell replied with resignation. "I don't suppose you know the name of the person who drove you here? I don't know the exact time of death. There might be a chance..."
He saw the exchange of looks between the sisters and knew that alley was a dead end.
Cleo shrugged. "He's not a reliable witness."
Axell cringed at the defeat in her voice. He thought he understood something of how a person could be used for a doormat for so long, they began to think that's all there was to life. Beaten down by circumstances all their lives, with no money, no resources, no friends or family for support, the doormats of the world existed to take the blame for others.
He turned to Maya and recognized the gleam of confidence in her eyes as she watched him. She thought he could solve her sister's problems.
Logically, he should run the other way.
Insanely, Maya's faith and trust in him pumped new energy through Axell's blood, inflated his heart—and probably his head, not to mention other parts of his anatomy—and released something previously fettered and downtrodden in his soul.
He thought it was hope.
Chapter 34
It IS as bad as you think, and they ARE out to get you!
"You'll understand that we haven't talked with Mr. Pfeiffer since the will was signed. He gave us this list of his properties, but they could have changed since then. All except his house are in the name of his corporation, so it's merely a matter of listing you as the new stockholders of the corporation, and filing a deed on the house."
The lawyer sipped his martini and sampled one of the stuffed mushroom appetizers Axell's chef had brought back to the meeting room. Maya clung to the seat of her chair and tried not to squirm as he chewed. She couldn't label her emotion. She'd lost a grandfather she hadn't known she had. She wished they'd known him while they were growing up. Dumping a lifetime of memories on them after he was dead didn't seem right.
She glanced at Cleo. Her sister had flattened her hair into something that almost looked normal and Peter Pannish. She still had tired circles under her eyes and looked brittle enough to crack, but she seemed more connected to this conversation than Maya was.
Maya couldn't get beyond the grandfather part. Cleo had already nailed the lawyer for a list of properties. The list wasn't long. Maya had no clue if any of the places listed were valuable. She simply understood that her school was one of them.
Cleo had passed the list to Axell, who scanned it with more knowledge than the others. He'd grown up here, and most of the places listed were in the area.
"Does the corporation have a bank account?" Selene inquired.
Maya had insisted that Selene be part of the meeting. Axell would have the best interest of his family in mind. Selene would favor the school. Maya didn't know which way to turn.
"We have a list of bank accounts, and we've notified the banks of the death and change of ownership. The court will issue releases when the paperwork is complete. We asked for account balances for estate-tax purposes." The lawyer slid a paper to Cleo, who sat next to him.
Cleo's eyes narrowed as she scanned the list. Shrugging, she handed it to Maya. "The properties better be in good condition. He didn't leave enough to pay the electricity."
"One of them is the condemned shop," Axell pointed out. "It will cost to have it demolished." He took the bank list Maya handed him and grimaced.
"Mr. Pfeiffer said he'd given his cousins and his wife's nieces and nephews countless loans over the years that had never been paid back. He left his sister the small house he lived in the last few years." The lawyer popped a mushroom in his mouth and savored it before shuffling through his notes again.
"I understand the rents have decreased as the properties deteriorated, so there may not be much cash. Most of the Pfeiffer family possessions were apparently divided among the family when he moved out of the big house, with the exception of the few he took with him and that his sister inherits. He considered that inheritance enough for the extended family." The lawyer sipped his drink and sat back. "We're still looking to see if any accounts have been overlooked. The relatives haven't been very cooperative."
"The relatives know about the will?" Maya asked with a tremor of fear.
"We've told them we're executors of his estate. I'm not entirely certain they understand the meaning of that. We did not notify them of the will until it was officially accepted by the court."
Maya glanced at Axell, who was beginning to look exceedingly grim. Maybe she should go check on the children. She'd left Constance and Matty eating supper in the restaurant kitchen. She glanced at Alexa sitting contentedly in her chair, sucking her fist. She never cried when Maya needed a disturbance.
"There are some old papers and junk in the attic of the school," she said tentatively. "Should we turn them over to the family?"
The lawyer shrugged. "The house and its contents belong to you. You might want to check and see if there are any bank statements that could lead us to other accounts."
"I can get on that tonight if there's electricity up there." Cleo glanced at Maya.
"There's just one of those old work lights hanging from a beam. We need to carry the stuff down and go through it."
The lawyer shoved back his chair. "I really should be going. If you have any questions..."
Axell rose with him. "You'll need to eat. My chef will prepare you something. Relax and enjoy before you drive back."
MacGregor smiled and patted his rounded stomach. "If the entrees are as good as the appetizers, I'll be delighted to take you up on that offer."
The women watched as the two men wandered into the restaurant. Selene was the first to speak.
"Well, ladies, looks like you got a corner on the market of the hottest real estate in the state. How does it feel to be slumlords?"
"Slumlords?" Maya bit back a giggle and glanced at the list. They were just addresses to her.
Cleo leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. "We'd better choose which ones we're going to sell. We'll need the cash for lawyer's fees when the family finds out."
Selene beamed approvingly. "You got your head on right. Maybe instead of rooting through attics, you ought to be finding a good Realtor. You'll need cash to maintain these places, cash to tear down that junk heap... Pfeiffer didn't do you any favors by draining the corporation."
Maya listened in amazement as her sister and Selene dived into an animated conversation on real estate economics. All she wanted to know was if she could keep her school. It wasn't in the corporation. It was a separate property. The lawyer had said it belonged to her and Cleo now.
An awful thought occurred to her. What if Cleo wanted to sell the school? All that acreage was outrageously valuable. It would provide the cash needed for all the things Cleo and Selene were discussing right now.
Maybe selling the school was the best solution. Maybe she was the only one who thought it special. What did it matter if that land had been in the Pfeiffer family for generations? The Pfeiffer family had never considered her and Cleo as members.
Its historical value was meaningless. It wasn't as if George Washington had slept there or anything. Just because she thought it an ideal location for her school, that the children loved the yard and the huge rooms and all the nifty secrets old houses and gardens concealed—none of that mattered when it came down to the almighty dollar.
How long would it take before Selene and Cleo reached that conclusion? Maya figured Axell had reached it the minute he'd seen the nonexistent ban
k accounts. He was just being polite and letting someone else say it out loud.
She'd quit following the flow of conversation but a sudden silence drew her back in. She looked up to see both Cleo and Selene watching her. Well, that didn't take long.
"I don't want to sell," she said firmly.
* * *
"You're a pig-headed jackass, Maya," Cleo complained as she rifled through a trunk of old photos Axell had carried down from the school's attic. They were working beneath the bare bulbs of the upstairs bedrooms, and she squinted at the spidery handwriting on some of the letters.
"A jackass, a moron, a ditz, whatever," Maya replied with unconcern as she flipped through an ancient ledger. "I don't want to sell."
"When was the last time Maya behaved like a jackass?" Axell inquired as he carried in another box.
Cleo halted, stared at him, stared at Maya, then shrugged. "All right, you got me. Stubborn, she's not. Stupid, she is."
Maya ignored both of them. "You realize this is our family history in here," she marveled, glancing at entries dating back to the 1800's. "These things belong in a museum."
"Charlotte is full of attics with this kind of stuff. Unless you come across a reference to Robert E. Lee, no one's interested." Axell opened a carton that looked slightly newer than the rest. "I don't think you're going to find what you're looking for in here."
"Yeah, the recent stuff is probably in the house the sister inherited. She won't be too happy to hand it over. This moldering mansion is her family home." Cleo reached in the new box and removed what appeared to be a black-bound journal. A yellowed, much-folded letter fell from its pages.
"The sister doesn't have kids," Maya pointed out. "She's an old lady without the resources to maintain a place this size. She would have sold it. Mr. Pfeiffer knew that."
"Says who?" Cleo replied belligerently. "He never mentioned it to me. I don't remember you saying you had any long, heart-to-hearts with him."
Maya glared at her sister. "Don't you have any understanding of human nature? He—"
"Ladies," Axell interrupted, blowing dust off his hands, "I think we can give up any hope of finding anything tonight. We need to get the kids home and look for other options in the morning."
"It's early yet. I'll stay here," Cleo declared, flipping through the journal.
Maya intercepted Axell's look and shut her mouth. Cleo was probably safer out here in the rural isolation of the school than at the shop with drug dealers running loose. "It feels odd having ancestors." She stood and brushed herself off.
"You want ancestors, start with the living ones," Cleo called, carefully opening the crumpled letter. "Our father has aunts and uncles and cousins out the wazoo back in Texas and Tennessee. You can have a family reunion."
Maya didn't comment. Her sister remembered their early days of traveling from place to place much better than she did, and even she remembered all the long-boned, harsh faces of distant aunts and uncles frowning on them. She didn't think she wanted to get better acquainted with all those grim relatives who hadn't wanted them.
"All right, so we fell from a lousy family tree. It makes a good excuse for our faults and foibles," she replied airily, skirting around boxes toward the door. "Maybe the one we really ought to dig into is our mother's maternal side of the family. Someone had to pass on good sense."
"I promise you, you don't want to go there," Axell muttered, opening the door and pointing to the hall. "Believe me when I say you came by your eccentric genes naturally."
Cleo shot Maya a look of disgust. "Homeboy knows something."
Maya grinned back. "Homeboy has connections." She smiled sweetly at her husband. "Headley's been at it again, hasn't he? Spill."
"It's hearsay," he warned. As both women watched him expectantly, he sighed. "According to Headley, your mother's mother was the black sheep of the Arnold family."
Cleo looked blank. Maya grinned wider.
"The mayor's family? We're the black sheep of the mayor's family? Can we call him up and tell him now?"
Axell caught the nape of her neck and shoved her out the door. "Don't you dare. And if you greet him in church as 'cousin,' I'll disown you."
"Won't be the first time," Cleo called airily as they departed.
"Daddy! Daddy!" Constance shouted in alarm as they reached the bottom of the grand staircase.
"Mr. Axell, Mr. Axell! Fire!" Matty yelled in excitement, rushing down the hall toward them.
Exchanging looks of panic, Maya and Axell dashed down the hall toward the kitchen.
Through the window over the sink, they could see flames licking at the walls of the woodshed. The smell of wood smoke seeped beneath the kitchen door.
Axell slammed his cell phone into Maya's hands. "Get the kids out and call 911. I'll look for a hose."
"There's a connection on the right," she shouted as he raced toward the kitchen door. "Cleo!" she yelled up the back stairs. "Get down here now! Fire!"
Pounding the cell phone, gathering up Alexa, and shooing the two excited children toward the front door, away from the fire, Maya didn't even consider what valuables might be left behind. She'd never learned appreciation for material things, but she knew the value of human life.
Shouting directions into the phone, she listened for Cleo's feet on the stairs, and satisfied she heard them, herded everyone out the door.
She couldn't leave the children to help Axell. Anxiously, she sought a place in the side yard where they could keep an eye on him. The old shed contained nothing more than spiders and snakes, as far as she was aware. It was the proximity to the house and Axell's determination to stand between it and the fire that scared her. She heard the hiss of the hose and smelled the smoke the instant he turned the water on the flames.
Cleo ran out carrying an armful of old books and letters. Frantically, she glanced up at the house, then back to where Axell fought the flames. She dropped the papers at Maya's feet. "It's not at the house yet. Are there blankets in there?" Apparently remembering the stack of cots and blankets in the back room they'd passed, she darted back up to the porch.
"Cleo! Wait!" Maya screamed after her, but bent on helping, Cleo dashed inside.
"Mr. Pig!" Matty wailed. "The fire will hurt Mr. Pig!"
Oh, Lord, please don't... Maya couldn't phrase the petitions she wanted most. Save Axell, save Cleo, save the school, save the animals... The list was too endless for debate, and she wafted wordless prayers heavenward as she crouched beside Matty, and hugging him as well as Alexa, watched the flames leap higher.
Constance gnawed on her bottom lip and clenched her little hands as she watched the shadows illuminated by the growing fire. Axell attacked the highest flames with the hose. Cleo ran out the back door with a stack of blankets and began beating at the sparks leaping to the dry grass and dead brush of the uncleared lawn between shed and kitchen.
As sirens wailed in the distance, Maya wondered what could possibly have set off a fire in an unused shed. There was no wiring, no cans of gasoline, no gas lines, no heaps of chemical-laden rags, no nothing but old wood and spiders.
And spiders didn't light fires.
Chapter 35
I'm not a complete idiot. Some parts are missing.
Soot-coated, soaked, and sweating, Axell wearily trudged past the charred embers of the woodshed and the storage building containing all the school's yard maintenance equipment. Volunteer firefighters continued dousing the back of the house and the smoking ruins of the outbuildings with water pumped from the school's well.
They'd managed to protect the school building from all damage except to a few charred boards of the kitchen porch. They hadn't managed to protect Axell's sense of security.
Floodlights illuminated the overhanging shrubbery and trees of the front yard, where neighbors had gathered in the balmy Carolina night. Mosquitoes buzzed and fireflies flickered in the shadows of the fence rows. Normality was slowly returning, but not for him. He'd never be the same again.
He
could see Maya relentlessly hugging Alexa, her other arm around Constance's shoulders, while Cleo sat on the ground with Matty clinging to her neck. Neighbors had brought pots of coffee for the firefighters, people milled about the lawn, but Maya and the children formed an island of their own, an island he'd almost lost.
Insides wrenching, Axell strode briskly past firemen rolling up their hoses and hauling down their ladders. The damned school wasn't worth it. Maya could start one somewhere else. He should have let the thing burn to the ground. That would have ended the debate once and for all.
The fire chief had confirmed arson.
Axell wanted to believe that whoever had set the fire didn't know anyone was inside. Normally, no one would be at this hour. He just couldn't imagine how anyone could miss the lights upstairs and the car in the drive. Someone had tried to kill his family.
He couldn't face that kind of loss again. He'd survived the deaths of his parents, his wife, and his son, but he didn't think he could accept the loss of Constance, or Maya or Alexa or Matty. He didn't want to remember the blank, lonely existence he'd led before their arrival. He didn't want to admit his failure to protect them.
It was time he started listening to his head instead of the mindless muscle below his belt—which stirred predictably the instant Maya buried her face against his filthy shirt, unheeding of his stench and grime.
Axell gathered her up for a brief moment of thanksgiving. Then, ignoring the turmoil of his heart, he kissed her hair, checked Alexa's serene expression, and set Maya back on the ground. "Take the kids home. I need to talk to the officers. They'll give me a ride later."
Maya stared at him with eyes wide with hurt. She was so damned transparent sometimes, it scared him. She wasn't going to like what he was about to do. The knowledge cut like a scalpel through some vital part, but he would endure whatever it took to see her safe.
Dixie Rebel (The Carolina Magnolia Series, Book 1) Page 29