Beckett's Cinderella

by Dixie Browning

  “Why don’t I just leave this packet with you and you can glance through it at your leisure.” He held out an oversize manila envelope.

  Liza jammed her fists deeper into the pockets of her apron. At her leisure? No way. He might not be a process server—she’d never heard of one of those who suggested anyone examine their papers at her leisure—but that didn’t make him any less of a threat. Lawsuits were a dime a dozen these days, and there were plenty of aggrieved parties who might think they had a case against her, just because she’d been married to James and had benefited from the money he’d swindled.

  Benefited in the short run, at least.

  Before she could get rid of him—politely or otherwise—a car pulled up and two couples and three kids piled out.

  “Mama, can I have—”

  “I’ve got to go to the bathroom, Aunt Ruth.”

  “My, would you look at them onions. Are they as sweet as Videlias, Miss?”

  Forcing a smile, Liza stepped behind the homemade counter, with its ancient manual cash register surrounded by the carefully arranged displays of whatever needed moving before it passed its prime.

  “Those are from the Lake Mattamuskeet area.” She gestured in the general direction of neighboring Hyde County. “They’re so sweet and mild you could almost eat them like apples.”

  She explained to the round-faced woman wearing blue jeans, faux diamond earrings and rubber flip-flops that there were no bathroom facilities, but there were rest rooms at the service station less than a mile down the road. Uncle Fred still referred to the five-lane highway as “the road.”

  While she was adding up purchases, two more customers stopped by. Uncle Fred engaged one of the men in a conversation about his favorite baseball team. Finding a fellow baseball fan always made his day.

  “Does that thing really work?” One of the women nodded to her cash register.

  “Works just fine, plus it helps keep my utility bills down.” It was her stock answer whenever anyone commented on her low-tech equipment. Although what they expected of a roadside stand, she couldn’t imagine. She weighed a sack of shelled butter beans on the hanging scales.

  “I saw something like that once on the Antiques Roadshow,” the woman marveled.

  From the corner of her eye, Liza watched the stranger leave. Actually caught herself admiring his lean backside as he sauntered toward his SUV. Curiosity nudged her, but only momentarily. Attractive men—even unattractive men—who knew her name or anything at all about her, she could well do without.

  He started the engine, but didn’t drive off. Through the tinted windshield, he appeared to be talking on a cell phone.

  Who was he? What did he want from her? Just leave me alone, damn you! I don’t have anything more to give!

  After James had been indicted, one distraught woman had actually tracked her down to show her a picture of the home she had lost when her husband had invested every cent they had saved in one of James’s real-estate scams. She’d been crying. Liza had ended up crying, too. She’d given the woman a diamond-and-sapphire bracelet, which certainly wouldn’t buy her a new home, but it was all she could do at the time.

  To her heartfelt relief, the dark green SUV pulled out and drove off. For a few blessed moments she and Uncle Fred were alone. The midday heat brought a bloom of moisture to her face despite the fact that she still felt cold and shaky inside. She opened two diet colas and handed one to her uncle. She was wondering idly if she should bring one of the electric fans from the house when she spotted the manila envelope.

  Well, shoot. She was tempted to leave it where it was, on the far corner of the counter, weighted down with a rutabaga.

  Uncle Fred hitched his chair deeper into the shade and resumed rocking. “Funny, that fellow wanting to give you something. What you reckon it was?”

  “Some kind of papers, he said.” She nodded to the envelope that was easily visible from where she sat, but not from the other side of the counter.

  “Maybe we won the lottery.” It was a standing joke. Every now and then her uncle would mention driving up into Virginia and buying lottery tickets. They never had. Uncle Fred had surrendered his driver’s license a decade ago after his pickup had died, and Liza didn’t want anything she hadn’t earned. If someone told her where a pot of gold was buried, she’d hand over a shovel and wish them luck.

  “I guess I’d better start stringing beans while things are quiet. I’ll freeze another batch tonight.” She froze whatever didn’t sell before it passed its prime. Her uncle called it laying by for the winter. It had a solid, comfortable sound.

  “Aren’t you going to see what’s in the envelope?”

  “Ta-dah! The envelope, please.” She tried to turn it into a joke, but she had that sick feeling again—the same feeling that had started the day James’s so-called investment business had begun to unravel. At first she’d thought—actually hoped—that the feeling of nausea meant she was pregnant.

  Thank God it hadn’t.

  “Here comes another car.” She handed her uncle the envelope and moved behind the counter. “Help yourself if you’re curious.”

  There wasn’t much choice when it came to a place to stay. He could’ve driven on to the beach, but common sense told Beckett that on a Saturday in late August, his chances of finding a vacancy weren’t great. Besides, he wasn’t finished with Queen Eliza. By now she would have looked over the papers and realized he was on the level, even if she didn’t yet understand what it was all about. The name Chandler was easy enough to read, even in century-old faded ink. Add to that the letter from his grandfather, Elias Beckett—funny, the coincidence of the names. Elias Chandler and Elias Beckett. Two different generations, though, if the genealogist had the straight goods.

  At any rate, he would go back after she’d closed up shop for the day to answer any questions she might have and hand over the money. Meanwhile, he could arrange to see a couple of potential clients at Newport News Shipyard. Things had clamped down so tight after September 11 that it practically took an act of Congress to get through security.

  Fortunately, he had clearance there. He’d make a few calls and, with any luck, be on his way back to Charleston by tomorrow afternoon. He would spend a few days with his parents before heading back to Dublin to wind up negotiations with the tanker firm.

  The important thing was to set PawPaw’s mind at ease. If, as he’d been given to understand, the Becketts owed the Chandlers money, he would willingly pay it back. In exchange, however, he wanted a signed receipt and the understanding that any future heirs would be notified that the debt had been settled. A gentleman’s agreement might have served in PawPaw’s day—not that it had served the original Chandler very well. But in today’s litigious society, he preferred something more tangible.

  After that, he didn’t care what she did with the money. She could buy herself a decent cooler and a cash register that didn’t date back to the thirties or get herself a grind organ and a monkey for all he cared. He’d been given a mission, and he’d come too far not to carry it out. But he could hardly ask for a signed receipt for ten thousand dollars while she was busy weighing out sixty-nine cents’ worth of butter beans.

  “Over to you, lady,” he said softly, setting up his laptop on the fake mahogany table in his motel room. He placed his cell phone beside it, tossed his briefcase on the bed, set the air-conditioning for Arctic blast and peeled off his sweat-damp shirt. He’d stayed in far better places; he’d stayed in far worse. At least the room was clean and there was a decent-size shower and reasonably comfortable bed. Slipping off his shoes, he waited for the phone call to go through.

  “Car? Beckett. Yeah, I found her right where your friend said she’d be. Tell him I owe him a steak dinner, will you?” He went on to describe the place, including the old man she was apparently living with. “Great-uncle on her mother’s side, according to the genealogist’s chart. Looks like he could use a few bucks. The house is listing about five degrees to the northeas
t.”

  Carson congratulated him. “When you headed back this way?”

  “Tomorrow, probably. I’d like to handle some business in the Norfolk area as long as I’m this close. Maybe stop off in Morehead City on the way and be back in Charleston by tomorrow night.”

  “Want me to call Aunt Becky and let her know?”

  “Wait until I know for sure when I’ll be heading back again. I ran into a small snag.”

  “Don’t tell me she’s the wrong Chandler.”

  “She’s the right Chandler, I’m pretty sure of that. Trouble is, she doesn’t want to accept the papers.”

  “Doesn’t want to accept ten grand?”

  “We never got that far. I gave her the papers, but she needs to look ’em over before I hand over the money. Or at least as much as she can decipher.”

  “Didn’t you explain what it was about?”

  “I was going to, but she got tied up with customers before I had a chance to do any explaining. I didn’t feel like hanging around all day. I’ll go back later on, after the place closes down and explain what it’s all about. Listen, did it ever occur to you that if she starts figuring out the rate of inflation over the past hundred or so years, we might have a problem on our hands?”

  “Nope, never occurred to me. Sorry you mentioned it, but look—we don’t really know how much money was involved originally, do we?”

  Beckett idly scratched a mosquito bite. “Good point. I’m going to ask for a receipt, though. You think that’s going too far?”

  “Hey, you’re the guy who deals with government regulations and red tape. Me, I’m just a lowly cop.”

  He was a bit more than that, but Beckett knew what he meant. He didn’t want the next generation of Becketts to trip on any legal loopholes. Before he handed over the money, he would definitely get her signature on a release.

  “You know, Bucket,” Carson mused, “it occurs to me that the way we’re doing this, we could end up in trouble if old man Chandler scattered too many seeds. Just because we were only able to locate two heirs, that doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t any more.”

  “Don’t remind me. That’s one of the reasons I want things sewed up with lawyer-proof thread. You can handle the next contender however you want to. If any more turn up after that, we’ll flash our receipt and send them to Ms. Edwards and what’s-her-name—the other one. They can share the spoils…or not.”

  After answering a few questions about various family members, Beckett stripped down and headed for the shower. He started out with a hot deluge and let it run cold. The hot water eased the ache caused by too many hours strapped into a bucket seat, while the cool water helped clear his mind. As he slathered soap from the postage-stamp-size bar onto his flat midriff and let the suds trickle down his torso, the image of Eliza Chandler Edwards arose in his mind.

  Lancelot Beckett had known his share of beautiful women—maybe more than his share; although, ever since he’d been left at the altar at the impressionable age of twenty-two, he’d made it a policy never to invite a repetition. At this point in his life he figured it was too late, anyhow. Any man who wasn’t married by his midthirties probably wasn’t a viable candidate.

  All the same, it had been a long time since he’d met a more intriguing woman than Ms. Edwards. Skilled at reading people, he hadn’t missed the flash of interest that had flickered in those golden-brown eyes just before wariness had shut it off. Pit that against the physical barriers she’d erected and, yeah…intriguing wasn’t too strong a word. Her hair was not quite brown, not quite red. Thick and wavy, with a scattering of golden strands that had a tendency to curl, she wore it twisted up on her head and anchored down with some kind of a tortoiseshell gadget. Her clothes were the kind deliberately designed to conceal rather than reveal. He wondered if she realized that on the right woman, concealment was a hell of a lot more exciting than full exposure.

  Oh, yeah, she was something all right. Everything about her shouted, “Look but don’t touch.”

  In fact, don’t even bother to look. Which had the reverse effect. Did she know that? Was it deliberate?

  Somehow he didn’t think so.

  He adjusted the water temperature again, trying for ice-cold, but only getting tepid. Not for the first time he told himself he should have waited and let Carson do the honors. Car was two years younger and didn’t have quite as much rough mileage on him as Beckett did.

  But he’d promised. As his mother had stated flatly, time was running out, and it was time to lay this business to rest once and for all. “PawPaw’s worried sick, and Coley doesn’t need that kind of aggravation.”

  Ever since Beckett’s father had been diagnosed with emphysema, his mother’s main purpose in life had been to spare him anything more stressful than choosing which pair of socks to wear with his madras Bermudas when he got up in the morning.

  She’d been waiting at the airport when Beckett had flown in more than a week ago. She’d hugged him fiercely, then stepped back to give him her patented Inspector Mother’s once-over. Nodding in approval, she said, “You do this one thing for me, honey, then you come back here and tell PawPaw it’s finished. Just find somebody named Chandler and hand over that mess of old papers and whatever else you think the Becketts owe them, then you can go back to chasing your pirates. Honestly, of all things for a grown man to be doing.” She’d tsk-tsked him and slid in under the wheel.

  Beckett had tried several times to explain to his mother that piracy on the high seas was as prevalent now as it had been in the days when Blackbeard had plied his trade off the Carolina coast. No matter. To her, it was still a kid’s game. She’d wanted him to go into politics like his state senator father, Coley Jefferson Beckett. Or into investment banking like his grandfather, Elias Lancelot Beckett, and his great-grandfather, L. Frederick Beckett—the man who had started this whole bloody mess.

  A few years ago he had fallen hard for a sexy marine biologist named Carolyn. Fallen hard but, as usual, not quite hard enough. After about six months he’d been the one to call it quits. He’d done it as graciously as he knew how, but Carolyn had been hurt. Beckett had readily accepted his guilt. Fortunately—or perhaps not—his work made it easy to run from commitment.

  The payback had come a year later when he’d run into a glowing and very pregnant Carolyn and her professor husband at a jazz festival. He’d had a few bad moments as a result, wondering if he might have made a mistake. Family had always been important to him. Even seeing that old man today, rocking away the last years of his life at a roadside produce stand, had reminded him a little too much of his own mortality.

  True, the Beckett men were generally long-lived, but what would it be like to grow old completely alone, with no wife to warm his bed—no kids to drive him nuts? No grandkids to crawl up on his arthritic knees?

  His only legacy was a healthy portfolio and a small, modestly successful firm he’d built from practically nothing—one that included a two-room office in Delaware, a partner and a part-time secretary. His will left whatever worldly goods he possessed at the time of his death to his parents. Who else was there? Carson? A few distant cousins he’d never even met?

  Cripes, now he really was getting depressed. Maybe it was all this humidity—he was coming down with a bad case of mildew of the brain, he told himself, only half joking as he crossed the bedroom buck stark naked to dig out a change of clothes.

  On the other hand, it could be due to the fact that he hadn’t eaten anything since the lousy chili dog he’d bought at the airport. One cup of free ice water didn’t do the job.

  Liza washed her hair and towel dried it before fixing supper. Then she did something she hadn’t done in a long, long time. She stood in front of the fogged and age-speckled mirror on her dresser and studied her naked body. James had called her classy. Any man in his right mind would call her clinically emaciated. Her hipbones poked out, her ribs were clearly visible, and as for her breasts…

  Tentatively she covered th
e slight swells with her hands. Her nipples, still sensitive from the rough toweling, nudged her palms, and she cursed under her breath and turned away.

  That part of her life was over. Fortunately, sex had never played that large a role. After the first year or so, she had done her wifely duty once a week, sometimes twice, and then even that had ended. They’d gone out almost every night, entertaining or being entertained, and by the time they got home, they’d both been ready to fall into bed. To sleep, not to play. After a few drinks James hadn’t been up to it, and she’d felt more relief than anything else.

  Dressing hastily, she hurried into the kitchen. There was a Braves game tonight; they were playing the Mets. Next to the Yankees, the Mets were her uncle’s favorite team to hate. Once the dishes were washed she could retire to her room and look through those blasted papers. It wouldn’t hurt. The envelope wasn’t sealed, just fastened with a metal clasp. If it had anything to do with James, she would simply toss it, because that part of her life was over and done with. She had repaid as much as she was able, although she hadn’t been obligated to do even that much. She’d been cleared of all responsibility after James had made it quite clear before he’d died that she’d never even known what was going on, much less been involved.

  His last act had been one of surprising generosity, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been brought in for questioning. Nor did the fact that she hadn’t known what was going on mean she’d escaped feeling guilty once she’d found out. She’d lived high on the hog, as Uncle Fred would say, for almost eleven years on the proceeds of James’s financial shell games. The beautiful house in North Dallas, the trips to all those island resorts that James always claimed were for networking. Like a blind fool, she’d gone along whenever he’d asked her to; although, for the most part, she hadn’t particularly liked the people he’d met there.