by Susan Calder
“They’d be stupid not to, with all that money in it for them. Cynthia will be crowing about this.” Brendan sniffed the soup, dumped the can contents into the pot and sniffed the second soup can. “They’re both vegetarian, so Leah won’t mind mixing them together.” He added water and milk, which he also sniffed. From the rack behind the stove he got a wooden spoon.
“Aren’t you going to wash—?”
He plunged the spoon into the pot and stirred.
“When your uncle gave Johnny the envelope, he said the weight of the Beckers was on his head,” Paula mused. “He may have felt Florence was the person to deal with the weight.”
“That was just Uncle Caspar rambling.”
How did he know that? “Before the envelope was opened, I got the sense Florence was afraid it contained something different, something worse than the will.”
“What could be worse? For her, the new will is a gold mine.” Brendan stared into the swirls of orange and cream that resisted merging.
“What if Caspar felt that Florence, with her knowledge of the family, was the right person to decide the future of the house? For instance, you three would probably sell it.”
“We hadn’t decided yet. I might have preferred to keep it as an investment.”
“Cynthia wants to sell. All she’d need is Johnny’s support.”
“It’s all academic now.”
“If the new will is valid,” Paula said. “Florence could leave you a share if she thinks it’s the right thing to do.”
“You don’t know this family.” Brendan turned around to face her. “I grew up in this place, practically living with my grandparents and Uncle Caspar, who had no wife or kids. All three of them doted on me. Oma called me her little prince and Cynthia and Johnny the duchess and duke. Florence was furious when she heard that and lashed out at Oma for viewing them as my inferiors. It was the only time I ever saw her yell at Oma.”
“She admired your Oma and seems extremely fond of her.”
“Florence apologized to Oma later, and Oma never called Johnny and Cynthia that again, although privately I was still her prince. I’d thought Oma figured the duchess and duke suited them because they were snooty to me. All they did was pick on me, and, for sure, neither one will waste a breath to convince Florence to leave me my rightful share.”
Paula realized he was so shaken he hadn’t thought to raise his mask against the apartment odour. “Is inheritance a right, Brendan, or a gift?”
“That people sometimes use for control.” Leah stopped in the hall. She wore a miniskirt, cowboy boots and a T-shirt that concealed her bandanas halter-top.
Brendan scanned Leah’s body and looked away. How long would their platonic arrangement last? Florence and Caspar had worked together for forty years and lived in the same building after that. Had their relationship been platonic the entire time? Johnny’s smirk had implied otherwise, and an affair was the most obvious reason for Caspar redrafting his will in Florence’s favour. Or did Caspar have a control reason? Did Leah consider Paula’s gifting of her house to her daughters a manifestation of her control? Paula had done it to give them a start in life, although it did mean that Erin continued to live in the house and pay Paula rent, providing Paula an excuse to keep tabs on her. But it looked like that situation would soon change.
The soup bubbled. Brendan stirred to stop its spewing from the pot. He rinsed out three bowls and set them on the table in the living room, along with a loaf of pumpernickel bread he’d bought this morning. He opened a package of crackers he was quite sure had been there before his move to Ontario.
Paula crumbled come crackers into her soup in an attempt to obscure the sickly green and bright orange colouring. She leaned forward to eat the brew, to avoid spilling drops on her turquoise bandana. The chunks of vegetables in the thick broth were actually tasty. She must be hungrier than she’d thought. Brendan’s mother, unlike Florence, seemed to have disappeared from the family.
“Where does your mother live now?” Paula asked Brendan.
“San Diego.” He added that she had grown up in Houston and had moved to Calgary in her twenties for a job in the oil patch. She married his father when she was thirty-five. Brendan’s birth five months after the wedding was inspired by Dixie’s ticking biological clock, Brendan had gathered from comments over the years by Oma, Florence and Dixie herself. Her maternal instinct satisfied, Dixie lost interest. That was why she’d agreed to live sandwiched between in-laws whom she, at best, felt indifferent toward. Oma, Opa and Caspar, built-in babysitters with flexible hours, allowed Dixie to spend her time working at the job she loved, hanging out with friends and hobnobbing at business functions with Kurt. Brendan couldn’t recall her once tucking him into bed or reading him a bedtime story, while Caspar had read him the whole Narnia series.
Leah’s hazel eyes lit up. “I loved those books. Remember, Mom?”
“I remember knocking on your bedroom door to tell you to turn off the lights.”
“I wish my mother had been there to do that.” Brendan looked from Paula to Leah. “Uncle Caspar was a push-over,” he said. “Oma was strict. I slept at their places as much as I did at mine and had my own room in each one, the middle bedroom upstairs and the room Caspar later turned into his den. When it came to giving me attention, my dad was no better than my mother. He was always at work or some networking gig. My mother told me a few years ago, he’d had a lot of affairs, although she said that work was his real mistress.”
“Do you see your mother often?” Paula asked.
“I go down for Christmas. San Diego’s great for a winter escape. My mother moved there after I finished high school, when she figured her job with me was done. We e-mail if something comes up and talk a few times a year. I phoned her about Uncle Caspar’s death. She said, ‘That’s sad’ and got into talking about her work. She’s thinking of retiring.” He shrugged. “That’s how she is and my dad was as well. Oma, Opa and Uncle Caspar filled in the gaps. I didn’t have a bad upbringing.”
“It sounds kind of…lonely,” Leah said.
“Well, I didn’t have brothers or sisters, unless you count Johnny and Cynthia, who were a lot older than me. I liked helping Oma cook and Opa and Uncle Caspar fix things. I see now they were all patient with me.”
“Caspar fixed…?” Paula said.
“Opa refinished and repaired furniture. Caspar was more electrical. Back then, he’d have had those broken can openers singing. Somewhere along the way he stopped fixing but continued collecting. I think it happened as I grew older and away from him.”
Leah gazed at Brendan over her soup spoon. “Don’t blame yourself for the way he became. If my mother goes all weird, it’s not my fault because I grew up.” She cast a teasing glance at Paula.
“I was thinking,” Brendan said. “About Caspar leaving the envelope in the wardrobe. He and I used to play Narnia sometimes. I’d crawl into that wardrobe in my parents’ room—there was actually space in it - and come out into Narnia land. He’d act out the lion, witch and other Narnia parts. Uncle Caspar scared me crazy as the lion, in a fun way. Was he thinking of me when he put the envelope there?” His lower face tightened. “It can’t have been that because his will, in effect, attacked me. His new will is the evil witch.”
“Your life wasn’t so lonely if you played games like that,” Leah said.
Did Caspar put the envelope in the wardrobe to send Brendan a message, or was this Brendan being self-centred about the will being about him?
Brendan asked Leah why she was going to Jarrett’s today.
“I want to talk to him about the car,” Leah said. “He’s been snippy about my taking it, claims I’m trying to isolate him, but I need it to get to work.”
“If he gives you a hard time, you can borrow my van,” Brendan said. “I’ll run my errands in the morning.”
“Don’t you sleep in the van?” Paula asked.
“Right. I for-g-got.” Brendan flushed.
He had
talked so freely about his mother. Did he mind people asking about his stutter? If he did, Paula didn’t mind giving him a stab. “I notice you stutter sometimes.”
“Nowadays, only when I’m upset.” Brendan collected the plates from the table. “This family drives me crazy. Brings me all back to when I was a kid, when there were times I could hardly get a proper sentence out.”
“You talk extremely fluidly,” Paula said.
He ran water into the sink. Paula offered to wash the dishes, while he dried and put away and, she expected, changed the subject to something more comfortable. Leah lingered at the entrance to the kitchen. Was she curious about Brendan’s stutter?
Brendan found a clean-looking tea towel in a drawer. “I’d have outgrown it, I think, if Johnny and Cynthia hadn’t used my speech against me. Johnny would do these imitations he thought funny. Cynthia jumped in to finish my sentences. The grownups listened to me, with impatience. When I was twelve, Oma heard about a children’s theatre program and signed me up. The theory was I wouldn’t stumble over other peoples’ words. Miraculously, it worked. I learned that I could talk like a normal human being. I taught myself to think ahead to words out to ambush me and work around them, using substitutes and tackling them sideways. The result was now I’m not conscious of my speech anymore, except when I get excited or anxious.”
“Like while reading your uncle’s revised will?” Paula asked.
“Uncle Caspar was closer to me than my own dad.” Brendan’s voice choked. “I don’t… Why would…Why did he shut me out?”
* * *
In her car parked in front of the Beckers’, Paula phoned Mike. She described the discovery of the holograph will and summarized its details. “I expect the Beckers have already contacted Garner for confirmation. I doubt you can take him by surprise to get his immediate response.”
“We’ll want to talk to him, of course. Today here at the station is nuts. I don’t know if we can spare anyone.”
“I’ve got the afternoon free,” she hinted.
“Can you devise an insurance reason to see Garner?”
“I’m sure I’ll think of one.”
“I’ve got to take my nephew to the dentist. We should be home by four, if you want to stop by and fill me in, although it is out of your way.”
An invite to Mike’s home? “Where do you live?”
“Rundle.”
She was right about him living in the northeast. “From the Deerfoot it will take me no time to get there.”
Swinging by Mike’s would delay supper with her mother. Erin might enjoy taking her grandmother out to a meal. Paula felt like Brendan’s parents, sloughing her mother off on family members. As she was about to phone Erin, Sam called. He was slogging away on the Czech proposal. It looked like the developer in Edmonton had scheduled public meetings for both Saturday and Sunday which, in Sam’s opinion, was coddling the protesters too much. He asked if she’d talked to her mother about the trip.
“I’m waiting to see how my workload shapes up.” Paula noticed Johnny staring from the kitchen window and signed off with Sam.
Erin leaped at the dinner opportunity. “It will get me away from these bozos at home.”
Behind the window, Johnny lowered his cowboy hat, shading his whole face. Paula thought of calling her whiplash claimants but couldn’t focus with Johnny watching. She raised her hand to him in farewell, resisted an urge to give him the finger and set off for Garner’s.
Chapter Eighteen
“I suppose this is to talk about that blasted will,” Garner said.
Paula entered his workshop garage. “I gather the Beckers contacted you.”
Garner resumed rubbing oil on the back of a cane chair. Beside him stood three more chairs caned with yellow and purple crosshatching. Four days ago, those seats had been fraying beige.
“Florence is hopping mad,” he said.
“Why? She’s the one who inherits if the will is valid.”
“I signed the damn thing, but a holograph will requires two witnesses. Doesn’t it?”
“In Alberta it doesn’t need any.”
“That can’t be right.” He looked over his glasses that had slipped to his nose bulb. “How would you prove that it’s legal?”
“Handwriting analysis. The police experts will verify Caspar’s will, in addition to your confirmation.”
Garner pushed his glasses up to his eyes. “That will is real, unfortunately. I expect it’s too much to hope Caspar changed his mind and wrote another one afterwards.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police about it?”
“Done.” He rested his hands on the back of the freshly caned chair. “What do you think of the colours? Buttercup yellow and aubergine.”
“They contrast well.”
“Not my taste, but they match the curtains we found for my daughter’s kitchen last year. There’s a spot of sun in the lane. Do you want to sit out and hope no one runs us over?”
Paula welcomed the sunshine after spending the day inside. She noted the SUV was gone from the lane. Garner said his wife was out visiting one of their children. He carried the teak oil container to the garage’s shelves arranged neatly with assorted refinishing and repairing products while Paula brought two chairs to the lane. She had concocted a reason for showing up, but he seemed to be expecting her. Garner offered her a drink from the bar-sized fridge. She opted for Diet Pepsi. He chose Coke.
“Regular,” he added. “Rosalie’s not here to harp on my diet.”
Garner settled on his chair, dressed in the coveralls that were spattered with more colours than any rainbow. He jiggled the armrest. “Solid. I fixed these chairs last month. They’re hybrids. A third chair donated its tubing.”
“Mine feels as good as new.” Paula put on her sunglasses.
Garner tipped his paint cap forward. “I didn’t agree with the will. That’s why I didn’t report it. I was hoping it went up with the flames and assumed it had when the police and you didn’t ask me about it.”
“Why did you disagree with it?”
Garner stared at his neighbour’s board fence. “After his wife, a man should leave his money to the next generation which, in Caspar’s case, is the nephews and niece. That was his parents’ intention when they had him draw up the original will.”
“You know this?”
“You think Caspar would have got around to making a will without their push? No chance,” Garner said. “He should honour his parents’ wishes. Their hard-earned money bought the place.”
“Why did he write the new one?”
“He told me he’d been mulling things over and had decided to leave the property to Florence for her lifetime of service to the family. He said the grown-up nephews and niece should make their way on their own, as his parents had. Florence was getting older and had no family to speak of, outside of the Beckers. When she retired from the business, the old folks gave her a cash settlement in lieu of a pension. Caspar didn’t believe it was much.”
“Apparently, she has enough saved to invest in substantial improvements to the property now, if she wants.”
“I don’t know about that and, I guess, neither did Caspar, although…I wondered about her working all those years in her in-laws’ business after she divorced Caspar’s brother. I don’t want to suggest….” Sunshine bounced off his eyeglass lenses. “Why else would a man leave his property to a woman who’s no relation by blood or by marriage anymore?”
“You think Florence and Caspar were involved romantically?”
“Before Caspar came up with this will, that idea would have knocked me over with a feather. Rosalie says I’m naive about noticing such things. I met Florence a few times. She’s not what I’d consider an attractive woman.”
“Beauty is—”
“I know. I know. I tend to prefer women who are softer, on the outside, anyway.” He guzzled some Cola. “When you look at it, Florence and Caspar were colleagues in that small business for forty-some years. Af
ter his parents passed away, she lived upstairs. The separate apartments are connected by an inside staircase. Did you know that?”
She nodded. “Do you think the family was in the habit of travelling between their apartments and not locking their interior doors?”
“That’s the impression I got on my visits there, especially so in winter and bad weather.”
“An effect of Caspar’s new will is that Brendan probably won’t inherit.”
“You got that, as well? Florence isn’t likely to leave her property to a boy who isn’t her own. I pointed this out to Caspar, but he insisted Florence would be fair. And Rosalie calls me naive.” Garner waved at a woman down the lane who was setting out her garbage can. “For all those years, the Beckers lived almost like an extended family. It gradually got reduced to Caspar and Florence. He and she might have turned to each other. I honestly don’t know if something developed between them, and I wouldn’t suggest she manipulated him into leaving her the property.”
He had suggested exactly that. “Florence seemed surprised by the will and its contents. Why was she hopping mad?”
“Isn’t she always?” Garner’s rosy cheek dimpled. “Every time I’ve seen her, she’s angry at something or other. In this case, I’d guess she’s annoyed at Caspar for complicating the situation.”
“She could simplify it by writing a will that gives Brendan an equal share, if she believes it’s right, and signing the property over to the three children.”
“Do you think Florence is the type to make matters simple?” Garner shook his head. “Young Brendan was like a son to Caspar. True, he took off to that eastern school and forgot about Caspar. Kids can be thoughtless. You don’t always agree with their choices and actions, but you don’t disinherit them.”
“You think this was Caspar’s intention?”
“He balked at my questioning him on that point, so I stopped asking. Do you have kids?”
“Two daughters.”
“Me too, as well as two sons. Rosalie and I are closest to two of the four. It just worked out that way. One of the others has made what we consider mistakes in life. This has led to some arguments and tension between us. Our youngest son married a woman who keeps him and their children distant from us. It breaks Rosalie’s heart. Our estate will go equally to all four kids. We also do our best to give each a fair share of our garage sale pickings. It’s right.” His face was flushed red from the rant. “I know Brendan and those other two are nephews and niece, not Caspar’s children. It’s the same thing, in my opinion.”