by Sue Grafton
Donovan said, “Is he married?”
“I didn’t ask if he was married, but he didn’t seem to be. He never mentioned a wife. His housing’s provided by the church in exchange for his services. The place is pretty funky, but he seems to manage all right. I grant you these are superficial judgments, but I didn’t really stop to investigate.”
Bennet shaved an olive with his teeth and placed the pit on a paper napkin. “Why Marcella? That’s a dirt bucket of a place.”
“The pastor of this fundamentalist church picked him up hitchhiking out on 101 the day he left home. Essentially, he’s been in Marcella ever since. The church he joined seems pretty strict. No dancing, card playing, things like that. He did say he had a beer now and then, but no drugs. That’s been for the better part of fifteen years.”
“If you can believe him,” Bennet said. “I don’t know how much you could tell from the brief time you spent. You were there for what, an hour?”
“About that,” I said. “I’m not exactly an amateur. I’ve dealt with addicts in the past and believe me, he didn’t look like one. I can spot a liar, too.”
“No offense,” he said. “I’m skeptical by nature when it comes to him. He always put on a good show.” He finished his martini, holding the glass by the stem. The last vestiges of the gin formed a distinct scallop along the rim. He reached for the pitcher and poured himself another drink.
“Who else did you talk to?” Donovan asked, reasserting his presence. He was clearly running the show and wanted to make sure Bennet remained aware of it. For his part, Bennet seemed more interested in his martini than the conversation. I could see the lines of tension in his face smooth out. His questions were meant to demonstrate his control of himself.
I shrugged. “I made one stop in town and mentioned Guy in passing to the woman who runs the general store. There couldn’t be more than five or six hundred residents and I figure everyone there knows everybody else’s business. She didn’t bat an eye and had no comment about him one way or the other. The pastor and his wife seemed genuinely fond of him and spoke with some pride of the distance he’s come. They could have been lying, putting on a show, but I doubt it. Most people aren’t that good at improvising.”
Jack picked up a cracker and lifted the dollop of Cheez Whiz off the surface like he was licking the filling from an Oreo. “So what’s the deal? Is he born-again? Has he been baptized? Do you think he’s accepted our Lord Jesus in his heart?” His sarcasm was offensive.
I turned to stare at him. “You have a problem with that?”
“Why would I have a problem? It’s his life,” Jack said.
Donovan shifted in his seat. “Anybody else have a question?”
Jack popped the cracker in his mouth and wiped his fingers on a napkin while he munched. “I think it’s great. I mean, maybe he won’t want the money. If he’s such a good Christian, maybe he’ll opt for the spiritual over the materialistic.”
Bennet snorted with annoyance. “His being a Christian has nothing to do with it. He’s penniless. You heard her. He’s got nothing. He’s flat broke.”
“I don’t know that he’s broke. I never said that,” I interjected.
Now it was Bennet’s turn to stare. “You seriously think he’s going to turn down a great big whack of dough?
Donovan looked at me. “Good question,” he said. “What’s your feeling on the subject?”
“He never asked about the money. At the time I think he was more interested in the idea that you’d hired someone to find him. He seemed touched at first and then embarrassed when he realized he’d misunderstood.”
“Misunderstood what?” Christie said.
“He thought I’d been asked to locate him because of family interest or concern. It became obvious pretty quickly that the point of the visit was to notify him of his father’s death and advise him he was a possible beneficiary under the terms of Bader’s will.”
“Maybe if he thinks we’re all kissy-kissy, he’ll give up the money and opt for love instead,” Jack suggested.
Donovan ignored him. “Did he say anything about talking to an attorney?”
“Not really. I told him to get in touch with Tasha, but she’s the attorney for the estate and she’s not going to advise him about that aspect of the situation. If he calls her, she’ll refer him to a lawyer unless he already has one.”
Donovan said, “In other words, what you’re saying is we don’t have any idea what he’ll do.”
Bennet spoke up. “Of course we do. There’s no mystery. He wants the money. He’s not a fool.”
“How do you know what Guy wants?” Christie responded with a flash of irritation.
Bennet went right on. “Kinsey should have asked for his signature on a quitclaim. Get him signed off. Make a settlement before he has a chance to think too much.”
Donovan said, “I asked Tasha about that. I suggested we draw up a disclaimer, thinking Kinsey could take it with her. Tasha nixed that. She said a disclaimer would be meaningless because he could always maintain later he wasn’t properly represented or he was unduly influenced, overcome by the emotions of the moment, shit like that, which would make it useless. I thought her point was well taken. Tell the man his father’s dead and then whip out a quitclaim? It’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull.”
Christie spoke up again, saying, “Kinsey had a good idea. She pointed out that since the two wills were drawn up just three years apart the witnesses for the second will might have been the same as the ones for the first. If we can track down the witnesses, it’s always possible one of them was aware of the provisions.”
“Like a secretary or a paralegal?” Donovan asked.
“It’s possible. Or maybe the clerk/typist acted as a witness. Somebody had to be involved in the preparation of that document,” I said.
“If there was one,” Jack said.
Donovan’s mouth pulled down as he considered the point. “Worth a try.”
“To what end?” Jack asked. “I’m no, saying we shouldn’t make the effort, but it probably won’t do any good. You can be a witness to a will without being aware of what’s in it. Besides, what if the second will left everything to Guy? Then we’d really be screwed.”
Bennet was impatient. “Oh come on, Jack. Whose side are you on? At least the witnesses could testify the second will was signed. I heard Dad say half a dozen times Guy wasn’t getting a thing ��� we all heard him say that ��� so wouldn’t that make a difference?”
“Why should it? Dad had the will. He kept it in a file right upstairs. How do you know he didn’t revoke it in the end? Suppose he tore it up before he died? He had notice enough. He knew his days were numbered.”
“He would have told us,” Bennet said.
“Not necessarily.”
“Jesus, Jack. I’m telling you, he said Guy would get nothing. We’ve been over this a hundred times and he was adamant.”
“It doesn’t matter what he said. You know how he was when it came to Guy. He never stuck to his guns. We might have been forced to toe the mark, but not him.”
Donovan cleared his throat and set his glass down with a sharp tap. “All right. Knock it off, you two. This is getting us nowhere. We’ve been through enough of this. Let’s just see what Guy does. We might not have a problem. We don’t know at this point. Tasha said she’d contact him if he doesn’t get in touch with her first. I might drop him a note myself and we’ll take it from there.”
Bennet sat up straight. “Wait a minute. Who put you in charge? Why can’t we discuss this? It concerns all of us.”
“You want to discuss this? Fine. Go ahead,” Donovan said. “We all know your opinion. You think Guy’s a slime ball. You’re completely antagonistic and with that attitude, you’ll be pushing him right to the wall.”
“You don’t know any more about him than I do,” Bennet said.
“I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about you. What makes you so sure he wants the money?�
��
“Because he hated us. That’s why he left in the first place, isn’t it? He’d do anything to get back at us and what better way than this?”
“You don’t know that,” Donovan said. “You don’t know what went on back then. He may not harbor any ill will toward us at all. You go in there punching and he’s going to go on the offensive.”
“I never did anything to Guy. Why would he hate me?” Jack said blithely. He seemed amused at the fireworks between his two brothers anti I wondered if he didn’t habitually goad them.
Bennet snorted again and he and Jack locked eyes. Something flashed between them but I wasn’t sure what.
Donovan intervened again with a warning look at both. “Could we stick to the subject? Anybody have something new to contribute?”
“Donovan runs the family. He’s the king,” Bennet said. He looked at me with the slightly liquid eyes of someone who’s had too much to drink. I’d seen him suck down two martinis in less than fifteen minutes and who knew what he’d consumed before he entered the room? “The man thinks I’m a dick. He may pretend to be supportive, but he doesn’t mean a word of it. He and my father never actually gave me enough money to succeed at anything. And then when I failed ��� when a business went under ��� they were quick to point out how I’d mismanaged it. Dad always undercut me and the notion that Guy can come along now and insist on his share is just more of the same as far as I’m concerned. Who’s looking out for our interests? It ain’t him,” he said, jerking a thumb at Donovan.
“Wait a minute. Hold it! Where’s that coming from?”
“I’ve never really stood up and asked for what’s mine,” Bennet said. “I should have insisted a long time ago, but I bought into the program, the story you and Dad cooked up. ‘Here, Bennet, you can have this pittance. Do the best you can with this pathetic sum of money. Make something of yourself and there’ll be more where that came from. You can’t expect us to underwrite the whole venture.’ Blab blah blab. That’s all I ever heard.”
Donovan squinted at him, shaking his head. “I don’t believe this. Dad gave you hundreds of thousands of dollars and you pissed it all away. How many chances do you think you get? There isn’t a bank in this town that would have given you the first dime ���”
“Bullshit! That’s bullshit. I’ve worked like a dog and you know it. Hell, Dad had a lot of business failures and so have you. Now suddenly I have to sit here and fuckin’ justify every move I make ��� just to get a little seed money.”
Donovan looked at him with disbelief. “Where’s all the money your partners put in? You blew that, too. You’re so busy playing big shot, you’re not tending to business. Half of what you do is outright fraudulent and you know it. Or if you don’t, mores the pity because you’ll end up in jail.”
Bennet pointed a finger, poking the air repeatedly as if it were an elevator button. “Hey, I’m the one taking risks. I’m the one with my ass on the line. You never put yourself out there on the filing line. You played it safe. You were Daddy’s little boy, the little piggy who stayed home and did exactly what Daddy said. And now you want credit for being such an all-fired success. Well, fuck that. To hell with you.”
“Watch the f word. Ladies present,” Jack said in a singsong tone.
“Shut up, you little piss. No one’s talking to you!”
Christie cast a look in my direction and then raised a hand, saying, “Hey, fellas. Couldn’t we postpone this until later? Kinsey doesn’t want to sit here and listen to this. We asked her to have a drink, not a ringside seat.”
I took my cue from her and used the opportunity to get to my feet. “I think I should leave you alone to discuss this, but I really don’t think you need to worry about Guy. He seems like a nice man. That’s the bottom line from my perspective. I hope everything works out.”
A paragraph of awkward verbiage ensued: apologies for the outburst, hasty explanations of the strain everyone was under in the wake of Bader’s death. Personally, I thought they were a bunch of ill-mannered louts and if my bill had been paid I might have told them as much. As it was, they assured me no offense was intended and I assured them, in turn, that none had been taken. I can fib with the best of them when there’s money at stake. We shook hands all around. I was thanked for my time. I thanked them for the drink and took my leave of them.
“I’ll walk out with you,” Christie said.
There was a moment of quiet as we left the living room. I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until the door closed behind us and I could suck in some fresh air.
“Let me grab a jacket,” Christie said as we crossed the foyer. She made a detour to the closet, pulling on a dark wool car coat as we passed into the night air.
The temperature had dropped and a dampness seemed to rise up from the cobblestones. The exterior lights were now on, but the illumination was poor. I could see the dim shape of my car, parked on the far side of the courtyard, and we headed in that direction. The lighted front windows threw truncated panels of yellow on the driveway in front of us. In the living room, the three Malek brothers were more than likely engaged in fisticuffs by now.
“Thanks for getting me out of there.”
“I’m sorry you had to see that. What a zoo,” she said. She shoved her hands in her pockets. “That goes on all the time and it drives me insane. It’s like living in the middle of a giant preschool free-for-all. They’re all three years old. They’re still slugging it out over the same toy truck. The tension in this house is unreal half the time.”
“Bennet’s drinking doesn’t help.”
“It’s not just that. I came into the marriage thinking I was going to be part of a loving family. I never had any brothers and I thought the idea was keen. They seemed close at first. I mean, they sure fooled me. I guess I should have figured out that three grown men still living together under Daddy’s roof didn’t exactly speak of mental health, but what did I know? My family’s so screwed up, I wouldn’t know a healthy one if it leapt up and bit me. I wanted kids. Looks like I got ‘em,” she remarked in a wry aside. “I hate sitting around watching these ‘boys’ bicker and connive. You ought to see them operate. They fight over absolutely everything. Anything that comes up, they all instantly take the most disparate positions possible. Then they all take sides and form these temporary coalitions. It’ll be Donovan and Jack against Bennet one day. The next day, Bennet and Jack forma team against Donovan. The allegiances vary according to the subject matter, but there’s never accord. There’s never any sense of all for one and one for all. Everybody wants to be right ��� morally superior ��� and at the same time, everybody feels completely misunderstood.”
“Makes me glad to be an orphan.”
“I’m with you on that one.” She paused with a smile. “Or maybe I’m just annoyed because none of them are ever on my side. I live with a perpetual stomachache.”
“You don’t have any kids?”
“Not yet. I keep trying, but of course I can’t seem to get pregnant in this atmosphere. I’m coming up on forty so if something doesn’t happen soon, it’s going to be too late.”
“I thought women were having babies into their fifties these days.”
“Not me. Forget it. Life’s hard enough as it is. I mean, what kid would volunteer to come into a house like this? It’s disgusting.”
“Why do you stay?”
“Who says I’ll stay? I told Donovan last fall, I said, ‘One more round, buddy, and I’m outta here.’ So what happens next? Bader up and dies. I don’t feel I can walk out when things are such a mess. Also, I suppose I still harbor the dim hope that things’ll work out somehow.”
“I’m sure my finding Guy couldn’t be a help,” I said.
“I don’t know about that. At least now maybe the three of them will gang up against him. In the end, that might be the only issue they agree on.”
I glanced toward the lighted windows of the living room. “You call that ‘agreement’?”
“Oh, they’ll get around to it. There’s nothing like the common enemy to unify the troops. The truth is, Guy’s the one I feel sorry for. They’ll take him to the cleaners if they have half a chance and from what you say, he’s the best of the lot.”
“Donovan seems okay,” I said.
“Ha. That’s what I thought, too. He puts up a good front, but that’s all that is. He’s learned how to function in the business world so he’s got a little more polish. I’m sure nobody said so, but I know they were impressed with the job you did.”
“Well, I appreciate that, but at this point, these people don’t need a PI ���”
“They need a referee,” she laughed. “Tasha didn’t do you any favors when she got you involved in this. I’m sorry you had to see ‘em at their worst. Then again, at least you can appreciate what I have to live with.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s finished business,” I said.
We said our good-nights and I slid in behind the wheel, taking a few minutes to get my car warmed up. The residual tension had left me feeling icy cold and I drove home with the VW heater level’ pulled to maximum effect. This consisted of a thin tongue of warm air licking at the bottoms of my shoes. The rest of me was freezing, a cotton turtleneck and wool blazer providing little in the way of insulation. As I turned onto my street, I gave brief consideration to having dinner up at Rosie’s. I hadn’t managed to eat so much as an unpitted olive at the Maleks’ during the cocktail hour. I’d pictured sumptuous canap��s that I could chow down instead of dinner, but the uproar had made even the Cheez Whiz seem less than appetizing. At the back of my mind, I knew I was avoiding the idea of going home to an empty apartment. Better now than later. It was only going to get worse.
I parked my car close to the corner and hoofed my way back to Henry’s driveway. A dense fog had begun to blow in from the beach and I was heartened by the fact that I’d left a light on in my living room. At least letting myself in wouldn’t feel so much like breaking and entering. I passed through the squeaky gate with my house key at the ready, unlocked my, door, and tossed my handbag on the kitchen counter. I heard the downstairs’ toilet flush and a thrill of fear washed over me. Then the bathroom door opened and Robert Dietz walked out, looking as startled as I was. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he said. “I forgot to give back your key.”