by Tonya Kappes
“Oh no. As in letting Walter buy the house from him.” She took a hard swallow and dipped her chin when someone walked by. “Luke is having a hard time paying his property taxes. You know it’s that time of the year, and the city has already given him an extension.”
My phone chirped, and I pulled it out of my pocket.
“Gotta go.” I wagged the phone. “Tim is hurrying me up.”
“Bernadette.” Trudy stopped me before I headed out the door. “I hear you and Mac…” She gave me a theatrical wink. “There just might be something to celebrate.”
Yep… she added a little flair to that.
I gave a simple wave, knowing my not denying what she heard would only add fuel to her gossip, even though Mac and I had no plans to solidify the relationship. When I headed up the steps to Tim’s office, I noticed Walter was sitting on one of the benches on the bottom floor. He was too busy on his phone for him to recognize me, but I knew for sure he was waiting for Luke.
What Trudy told me was a hard pill to swallow and it might not be all true, but it sure did look like Walter was on edge about something. And if what she did tell me wasn’t gossip and Walter did buy the house from Luke, it would take months to finish out the paperwork. Poor Lee’s body probably wasn’t even cold yet.
“Bernie, come on in.” Tim noticed me at his office door and waved me in. “I’m sure you two know each other.” Tim gestured between us from his chair behind his desk.
“Oh yeah.” Luke stood up from one of the two chairs in front of Tim’s desk. He gave me a hug. “How is Buster?”
“He’s great. He’s fitting in just fine at the old farmhouse.” Among other people, I still felt a giddiness inside about Mac and Buster being new to Rowena and me.
“Well, let’s get started.” Tim looked at Luke. “Luke, if you don’t mind waiting outside, that’d be great.”
“What?” Luke gave a snorting laugh.
“I need to talk to Bernadette alone first.” Tim got up, walked around his desk, and then held the door open for Luke. “I’ll be with you shortly.”
“I don’t understand.” Luke was puzzled.
“You will,” Tim assured him and ushered him out the door. He shut it behind Luke. “Bernadette, you and I’ve been friends a long time. I’m sure what I’m about to tell you is going to floor you in some way.”
“What? You’re making me nervous.” I tried to swallow, but my mouth had become dry.
“According to Lee Macum’s last will and testament, he’s made you the beneficiary of his entire estate. That includes his stamp collection, his house, his dog, and everything inside.”
“Come again?” I asked in a shaky, soft, halting, disbelieving voice.
“I said—”
I raised my hand to cut Tim off.
“I heard what you said. What about…” I couldn’t for the life of me remember the name of the man who was just there. I haphazardly pointed to the door.
“He left him nothing. Well, he left him a penny.” Tim eased down on the desk right in front of me and sat on the edge. He folded his hands at his waist and looked at me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure why.” I blinked in bafflement.
“You were kind to him.” Tim reached back and grabbed an envelope from his desk.
When he handed it to me, I noticed my name was written on the front in Lee’s handwriting. I knew it well from delivering and taking his mail from him for ten years.
“I’m sure his note will explain it all.” Tim smiled. “Don’t worry about Luke. He’s going to take it hard, but it’s all yours.”
Tim stood up and grabbed a big manila envelope and handed it to me. Without looking, I could tell there were keys in it, probably to Lee’s house.
There were a few things to sign, and Tim told me all about the legal system and how it all worked. Lee’s assets were frozen. I needed a death certificate for any accounts, but all Tim’s words ran together as my mind still tried to process what was happening.
“If you have any questions, you know I’m a phone call away.” He walked my zombie-like body to the door.
Luke didn’t bother letting me out first. He ran in and took a seat.
“Now I’ve got to deal with him.” Tim winked and smiled before shutting the door in my face.
The sound crinkling of the manila envelope brought me back to earth as I gripped it. I looked down. One hand had the letter, and the other had Lee’s things. I’d not seen either coming.
Yelling came from the other side of Tim’s door. I knew I had better get out of there before I become the next victim after this bizarre death of Lee Macum.
FIFTEEN
“You knew, didn’t you?” I gave Millie a hard look when I delivered her mail.
The front porch ladies weren’t on their porches by Carla’s strike orders. She had told them the judges only wanted to judge houses, and they didn’t make the front porches pretty. Yes. They took offense, and I was sure there were some ugly words between them, but ultimately, Carla won.
I had to deliver their mail to their front doors with very little chit-chat except when I got to Millie’s.
“You even mentioned something the other day, and you were talking about Lee leaving it all to me.” I recalled that Millie had acted a little aloof when I questioned her the other night over supper.
“I swore to Lee I wouldn’t say a word, but now that you know…” She grabbed me and tugged me to come into the house. “I do think Luke killed him and not Carla.”
“Since you ladies haven’t been on the porch, you’ve not heard.” I had stepped inside and followed her to the kitchen. The paper we’d written on was still there. “Carla is out of jail because it came back that Lee was killed with rat poison.”
“Walter.” Her eyes lowered. She walked over to the paper and picked up the Sharpie marker. She popped off the top and ran a line through Carla’s name. “He’s been dying to get his hands on all of these houses on this block, even the ones Mac has down there.”
“Is that right?” I asked.
“Speaking of Mac.” A big smile crossed her thin lips. “I did hear he didn’t come home last night.”
“Harriette Pearl has a big mouth,” I said, blushing. “And she’s right.”
“Good for you.” Millie went back to the paper and circled Walter’s name. “Lee didn’t like him. He said he was a bad seed, and if he got his hands on a house here, he’d turn it all into some sort of retail.”
“Is that why Lee gave me the house?” I asked.
“Did you read the letter?” She knew about it too.
“Not yet. I thought I’d wait until after I was safe in my own home tonight,” I told her. “But I am going to go down there and let myself in so I can get a good look around. There’s the one thing that has bothered me about Lee’s death.”
“There are many things…” Millie’s voice trailed off as she looked at something on the horizon.
It was the space on the bottom of the pile of boxes where something had gone that really bothered me.
“When you feel up to it, I’d like for you to come down there and see if you could remember what was in that empty spot I told you about.” I didn’t want to rush her, but something really nagged at me. “What about Lee’s stamp collection? Do you know where that is?”
“Oh honey. It’s like a needle in a haystack in there. It’ll take you months to go through that house.” She and I walked to the door just in time to see Carla’s car zooming past on her way down the street towards Lee’s house.
“I better get going before she sends out the troops to figure out why I abandoned my cart.” I walked out of Millie’s house.
“Have you seen any of the judges?” Millie asked.
“Nope. Not a one.” I shrugged and made my way off her porch and out of her gate.
Carla was standing in front of Lee’s house, her hands on her hips and her toes tapping. The wheels on my cart squeaked, and her head jerked up.
�
�Just the woman I wanted to see.” She bolted toward me with her hand still stuck on her hips. “I heard something. I heard you were the owner of this here house now.”
“Yes, ma’am I sure am.” I no longer had any reason to deny it. I was sure the word had spread quickly after Luke found out.
“Then I need you to stop delivering that mail.” She tried to jerk the handle of the cart away from me.
“Carla, stop it.” I gripped the handle tighter. “This is property of the government, and you cannot handle such a piece of equipment.”
“A cart? I certainly can.” She tried to grab it again, and when she didn’t succeed, she tried to get in it.
“Carla! Stop it!” I shooed her away. “This is ridiculous. I have a job to do.”
“And I have a job to do.” She moved herself between the gate and me. “I want you to clean up that porch right now before the judges get here.”
A very slow-moving car stopped in front of the house, and we both looked at it. Two people sat in the front seat, and two people sat in the back. They held up clipboards and eyed Lee’s house, making notes on their paper.
“Oh my stars!” Carla waved them to roll down their window. “Are you the judges?”
One of them confirmed with a quiet yes along with a nod.
“He just died, and we are here to clean up!” She turned back to me, unlatched the gate with one hand, and shoved me into the yard. “Can you come back and check?” She continued to push me up the sidewalk.
“You’ve lost your mind,” I said through my gritted teeth and planted smile.
It was apparent she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Shush up and get me in this house.” She grabbed a few things from the front porch while I got the key out of the manila envelope. “Oh my gawd,” Carla growled.
Both of us stood there stiff as boards, huddled up. Truly, there were boxes everywhere in the entrance. Carla didn’t have even a half inch to put down whatever it was she’d brought in from the porch.
“I’ll… umm…” She shoved it into my arms and simply turned around to go grab something else from outside. “Go find a place for it,” she barked at me, and I did.
When I came in here the other morning and found Lee, I guess I was on such a mission to find him that I didn’t even begin to look around at just how bad it really was in here. It was like a corn maze, only with boxes. They were stacked in columns from the bottom of the floor to the ceiling. When I got to the split in the path, I decided to go right, since I remembered going left into the family room where I’d found him.
The path to the right led to a kitchen. It wasn’t nearly as bad as rest of the house. It wasn’t a dirty house, just a very cluttered one. In fact, the kitchen was very clean, and only a few boxes sat on top of the kitchen table. There weren’t any dishes in the sink. When I opened the kitchen cabinets, the dishes were stacked up nice and neatly. Even Buster’s bowls had nice dog mats under them, and they were shiny clean. It was nice to see that Lee had somewhat taken care of Buster’s eating needs.
“Why did you have so many boxes?” I asked Lee as if he were in the room and could hear me. I set the item Carla had given me from the front porch, which looked to be a broken flower vase, down on the table and decided it was a good time to see if there was any rat poison to be found in the kitchen. Obviously the sheriff’s department had already scoured the place for anything before they cleared it, but it was always possible for them to have overlooked something.
I looked in all the cabinets, including underneath the kitchen sink, but only the usual was under there—dish soap along with a dish rack and some scrub brush items as well as some garbage bags.
“I honestly can’t believe he lived like this.” Carla had found me in the kitchen looking under the sink. “Give me one of them garbage bags.”
She zeroed in on those.
“If I were you, I’d get that boy toy of yours over here with a bulldozer and give it a few good swipes.” She gave a hard nod and disappeared back into the maze of boxes.
When I heard her go out the front door, which I guess she did to collect the trash, I plucked a garbage bag from the box and decided to walk into the room where I’d found Lee. The room was nothing like I had remembered it. It was much more open with just the stack of boxes along one side of the wall.
I couldn’t help myself. I opened a few of the boxes to see the contents inside. Some had what looked like knickknacks he might’ve picked up from his trash-collecting days, while others were empty, and still others had what looked like trash.
“No stamps?” I questioned, remembering all the stamps I’d given him over the last ten years. I couldn’t believe the dozen or so boxes I’d quickly looked through. “At least one of the boxes should have a stamp,” I said, feeling my forehead wrinkle.
I saw a small couch and a recliner facing a television with a coffee table. Lee must have been sitting in the recliner because it was closest to where I’d found him. If I did recall correctly, it had appeared as if he’d tried to stand and then fell to the floor.
My eyes shifted to the boxes, specifically the spot where something was clearly missing. I took my phone out of my back pocket and took a photo of the missing box. I figured, if anything, I could show Millie and see if she remembered something being there.
“What is that?” I noticed something in the far back of the empty space. Careful not to touch the surrounding boxes in fear I’d hit one and create an avalanche I might not survive, I reached in slowly.
“What are you doing down there?” Carla’s voice boomed.
“I’m picking up trash.” I grabbed an empty coffee cup from The Roasted Bean, a little disappointed that it wasn’t some major clue because Lee did love going to talk to Matilda Garrison, the young owner of the downtown coffee shop.
“Give me that.” Carla grabbed it from me and shoved it in her bag of trash, which she knotted it at the top. “I’ve done the best I can to get up all the trash. Now, you need to call Amy Logsdon right now to get in here and put around some potted plants. There’s not much we can do to get the place painted out there or I would, so we are going to have to make do with what we got.” She gave me a stern look. “Bernadette, are you listening to me?”
“Yes, Carla.” I wanted to ask her. Even though she didn’t kill Lee—or like him—did she not feel one once of sadness from his passing?
“Well? What are you waiting for?” She nudged me.
I pretended to scroll through my phone and hit the call key, acting as if I were going to call Amy, which I wasn’t. I actually called Mac.
“Hey, it’s Bernie. I wanted to let you know Lee Macum had made me beneficiary of his will, leaving everything to me.” I could hear him gasping and trying to say something, but I kept talking. “Carla and I are here trying to make the outside of the house a little more presentable, and she wanted me to call you, Amy Logsdon, to see if you can send some colorful potted plants over to sit around outside to brighten up the place.”
“Give me the phone.” Carla tried to grab my cell from me, and I smacked her hand away.
“Lee left you his house? That mess?” Mac had caught on to what I was doing. “Carla is nuts. I can’t wait to hear about how this whole thing came about, but more importantly, I’m dying to see you. What if I meet you at the post office after work and we head on over to the diner for the ceremony together?”
“Perfect.” My heart beat so fast in my chest. I couldn’t believe I was feeling this way. Even though my entire marriage to Richard was a lie, it felt good to have these feelings when I thought I’d never have them again.
My phone beeped in another call.
“I have to go. I’m getting a call from the funeral home. They probably need me to pick up a package.” Mac and I said a quick goodbye, and then I clicked over. “Hey, Jigs. I’ll be over soon. Do you need me to come in the office?”
“Actually, Bernie, I’m calling because Lee’s body is ready to be released by the sheriff.”
Jigs caught me off guard.
“Body? Huh?” I gulped when I hit me that I was the beneficiary of everything, including Lee and what was to come next. “Oh.”
“There were arrangements made by Luke Macum, but seeing how he doesn’t have the authority to do that, I’m kinda in a pickle here.” Jigs sounded baffled.
“What were the plans?” I asked, moving slightly away from Carla when she stuck her head up to mine, trying to listen.
“Luke was having a viewing ceremony tomorrow at ten a.m., then a repass at his house after. He stopped by after the reading of the will and mentioned he’d still like to keep the arrangements if you wanted to.”
“He did?” I asked, thinking it would be fine with me.
“Mm-hmm, now he’d not be responsible for paying for it, you understand.” It was Jigs’s way of letting me know the bill was on my shoulders.
“Of course.” I sucked in a deep breath. “I’ll call Luke and make sure, so if you don’t hear from me, we can just plan on the viewing being tomorrow. What about Lee’s clothes?” I wondered if I needed to get some clothes from Lee’s closet for his viewing.
“Luke already took care of all that,” Jigs said, taking me a little off guard.
Luke had seemed to have it all taken care of and in such a little amount of time.
“Okay. I’ll talk to him. Thanks for letting me know.” I hung up the phone.
“What was that about?” Carla’s eyes lowered.
“If you do me a favor, I’ll make sure the front of the house is amazing.” I was willing to make a deal.
“What’s the catch? The favor?” she asked in a slow uneasy tone.
“Tonight at the award ceremony and your retirement ceremony, I want you to make the announcement about Lee Macum’s funeral arrangements and repass tomorrow.” Being nice would be a hard pill for her to swallow, since she’d been accused of killing him.
“Deal.” She stuck her hand out for me to shake. “But didn’t you already call Amy?”
What Carla didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
SIXTEEN