Her Deadly Inheritance

by Beth Ann Ziarnik

  “But it does!” Did her aunt really think otherwise?

  Lenore’s gaze pinned her as if she were some deluded fool. “Even if you’re right, I will concern myself with that when I’m too old for anything else.”

  “Mother was your age when she died.”

  “I don’t plan to kill myself,” Lenore said through clenched teeth. She snatched the napkin from her lap and dropped it on the table. “In the meantime, you will forgive me if I have better things to do than chat with you.”

  As her aunt walked away, Jill sagged back in her chair. She could give to charity what she had planned, but at what cost? Both Lenore and Carver despised her more than ever, and her uncle wrestled with greater family conflict. As for Tia, Jill wasn’t sure what the girl’s newest maneuver was all about, but it didn’t feel right.

  “Ready to get back to work?”

  Jill looked up to find Clay in the large doorway to the library.

  She sprang from her chair. They had little time left to get ready for the auctioneer.

  Ed Drummond arrived a bit earlier than Jill had expected. Fortunately, her aunt never made an appearance as the man’s crew prepared the tagged items for transport to his auction barn in Munising. By mid-afternoon, they had loaded his truck. He offered to return in the morning for the rest.

  With Clay by her side at the attic windows, she viewed the truck pulling away. Was she doing the right thing? Or only causing more trouble?

  “Mew! Mew!” The distressed cry came from behind a trunk of old photos.

  Clay reached into the narrow space. “I can’t quite grab him.” He pulled the trunk away, and the kitten shot out as a board in the wall dislodged and clattered against the trunk.

  He removed the board. “Look here, Jill.”

  With Button in her arms, she peered over his shoulder. Stacked between the wall’s studs were many little books. Putting the kitten down, she reached for the volume Clay held out to her. She opened its pages and gasped. Her mother’s journals! She would never have found them if not for this charity project, if not for Button and Clay.

  He grabbed an empty box and pulled book after book from the hiding place. “There sure are a lot of them.”

  “My father gave Mother the first one. As far as I know, she kept up the habit until the day she died.” Turning the tiny book over in her hands, she quivered with excitement. Now, at last, she had what she had been looking for. Now she might find the answers to her questions, and all it had cost was giving away things of sentimental value that she no longer needed. Her charitable impulse had been right on.

  She added the volume in her hands to the others in the cardboard box. Button stretched up and hooked his paws on the edge of the box to peer inside. She picked him up and kissed the top of his head. “You have no idea what a great help you’ve been.”

  Standing beside Clay, she reached out to touch his forearm. “Thank you.”

  He stepped away, and she snatched her hand back. That’s right. He’d made himself clear last night. They were friends and nothing more.

  Clay picked up the box of books. “Should we quit for the day? I have other work to do.”

  She led the way to her room where he deposited the carton of books next to the trunk before he left. Sitting on the floor beside the box, she gazed at the open doorway.

  Lord, will I ever get it right? First, she had fallen in love with Brian, who didn’t love God. Now, she loved Clay, who had somehow lost his way.

  Please, Lord, show Clay the way back to you even if he and I have no future.

  She picked up one of her mother’s journals. Hopefully, these small volumes would help her discover her mother’s state of mind before her death. Maybe even the name of her mysterious father, the man her mother had quietly loved all those years.

  Unfortunately, checking that out would have to wait until later tonight. She stacked them in her mother’s trunk and locked it for safekeeping while she and Tia were away at church.

  “Mother was right,” Tia remarked as they mounted New Hope’s concrete steps. “This building is nothing to brag about.” She pulled a piece of cracked paint from the wood siding near the door and dropped it. “What a wreck.”

  Jill led her cousin inside to the third pew from the front and introduced her to Amelia.

  “How nice to meet you, Tia.”

  “We’re not sitting so close, are we?” the girl whispered.

  “Don’t you worry about me,” Amelia said, smiling at Jill. “I’ll be fine.”

  Another teen about Tia’s age waved as Jill followed her cousin to the back of the church.

  “Someone you know?”

  “A girl from school.”

  “Would you rather sit with her?”

  “No! She’s nice and all …” Her gaze strayed to the girl. “But all she can talk about is getting right with God and how much fun her church youth group is. Spare me!”

  Tia dropped into the pew closest to the door. “Good grief, do you see that?” she said, as Jill sat down beside her. “It’s the most broken-down organ I’ve ever seen.”

  The words barely left her mouth when a muscular, red-haired boy approached the old organ and seated himself on its stool. He ran his fingertips lightly across the strings of his guitar.

  Tia sat tall and strained forward. “Hey! Who’s that?” she whispered. “The pastor’s nephew, Leo McGee.” Jill unzipped her Bible cover to prepare for class.

  “He’s cute! What’s he doing here?”

  “Visiting for the summer.”

  Tia’s attention remained riveted on Leo during the opening worship song.

  Jill smiled to herself. God had found an interesting way to snag her cousin’s reluctant attention. She paged to the section of her Bible Pastor McGee referenced as he started the class.

  Tia squirmed in the wooden pew and then fussed with her nails. “Boy, how do you stand this stuff?” she whispered. “I’d be outta here in a minute if it weren’t for that good-looking guy. Can you introduce me?”

  “I don’t really know him, Tia.”

  Scowling, the girl slouched in the pew.

  “Being good doesn’t get a person into heaven,” Pastor McGee said.

  Tia leaned over and grinned. “That leaves you out with the rest of us sinners, Jill.”

  She let her cousin’s jibe pass, praying the girl would catch enough of the lesson to make a difference in her young life.

  “Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. So you see, heaven cannot be earned. It’s a gift from the Father through his Son, Jesus, if we are willing to receive it.”

  Jill glanced at Tia. The girl stopped fidgeting and appeared to be listening. Please, God, reach Tia’s troubled heart. She even dared to hope her cousin would ask questions, but Tia jumped up the minute the class ended.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  They reached the sidewalk before anyone else, and on the way home, Tia fell quiet. Jill let her cousin be. Maybe silence was what God needed to work in the girl’s heart.

  Yet when they reached Windtop, Jill’s curiosity took over. “What did you think?” she blurted.

  “About what?”

  “Church tonight.” As if Tia needed reminding.

  “Boring. Hey, I only went to irritate Mother.”

  Jill wilted. So that was what Tia’s interest in going to her church had been about. Again, she had unwittingly let a Bradwell use her. Yet Tia couldn’t weasel out of one thing. “You were listening,” Jill insisted.

  “Okay, a little. But really, heaven a free gift? Nothing’s free. Anyway, I’m sure Mother’s plenty upset by now, and that’s all that matters. Thanks for the help.” She ran up the porch steps and into the house.

  In her room, Jill slipped into her soft blue pajamas, unable to shake her concern for Tia and Lenore. How sad they were missing out on the special love a daughter and her
mother should know. They needed one another yet were playing games and throwing away these last years before Tia would make her own life.

  Just as I wasted those last years of my mother’s life on a fruitless search for my father, Lord. Years she would never get back. Now, all she had left were memories, a restored house, and the few things in this trunk.

  Sitting on the floor before her mother’s collection of precious memorabilia, Jill unlocked the trunk and raised its cover. She could touch the satiny baby shoes and hold the folds of her mother’s wedding dress, but she would never again know the warmth of her mother’s hand. She would never again enjoy the comfort of her mother’s loving arms around her. Worse, she faced a lifetime of not knowing if they would one day see one another in heaven.

  Button pounced playfully around Jill’s feet while she pulled her mother’s journals from the depths of the trunk and organized them by the years in which they were written. She picked up the first. Her fingers tingled as she opened it. New Year’s Day. My baby and I begin this new year safe with Mom and Dad. I can hardly believe they have forgiven me for the pain I caused them and made us so welcome in their home. We never speak of you, my Dear One, but I miss you more every day. My one comfort is our sweet daughter. My greatest pain is that we will never raise her together.

  My Dear One. If only her mother had mentioned her father’s name.

  Well, this wasn’t the journal her mother kept the year she met Jill’s father. Neither was it the one written the year when Jill was born. She skimmed each of the volumes she did have, working far into the night. Lord, why is there no mention of Mother’s spiritual life or my father’s name?

  With a heavy heart, she returned them to the trunk.

  Another fruitless search like the one in Chicago where every candidate had been a long shot and her quest narrowed to a final possibility. Waiting in the lawyer’s office for his return, she noticed a picture on his desk that told her the man and his daughters were much too old. Her last slim hope of finding her father vanished, and she fled the man’s office to avoid embarrassing them both.

  Now, she faced another dead end. Without her mother’s first two journals, she would never know her father’s name. Without the most recent, she could never be sure about her mother’s state of mind near the time of her death. She needed the three most important journals. Still missing, they had to be hidden somewhere in this house.

  She reached for the chain around her neck and the smaller of the two keys her uncle had given her. Would the smaller one open her mother’s journal box?

  If she could find that box, would it hold the answers to her questions?

  Likely, her mother had hidden the box in the master bedroom. She could ask her aunt for permission to look in there, but that might only make it easier for those journals to disappear forever.

  No, she would have to grab the first opportunity to search the room without getting caught.

  Chapter Seventeen

  As Ed Drummond’s men loaded the last piece of her mother’s furniture into the truck, Jill held back a sigh. Saying goodbye to that part of her life left her a bit shell-shocked. Yet the prospect of their sale doing so much good gave her a deep satisfaction.

  The auctioneer shook his head, frown lines deepening in his bronzed forehead. He held out the inventory pages she had given to him. “We couldn’t find some of the smaller items you listed here.”

  Jill skimmed the starred items before passing the papers to Clay. “Do you remember where we put these? In a bureau drawer? Or a box they might have overlooked?”

  She inhaled his woodsy scent as he drew near to skim the list. He shook his head. “We worked so fast yesterday, I’m not sure, but they were definitely in the attic when we finished. Those pictures you took should prove that.”

  Yes, they would. Yet, was it strange that these items were missing? Lenore might have taken them out of spite—an ugly thought, but she knew her aunt would not be above petty vengeance.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Drummond. I don’t know what to tell you, but I will look into it.” She would definitely do that.

  The man adjusted his sports cap with the company logo. “I hope you find them, Miss Shepherd. They’re valuable.”

  He had to be kidding. She thought they were nothing more than interesting trinkets. Yet he didn’t act as if he were kidding.

  “If you do find them, you might want to keep them. We have enough inventory here to prepare for the auction. It’ll be hard enough to do justice to all this on such short notice, so I’m personally contacting several buyers who should be quite interested. I’ll email them the digital photos you took, and we’ll do our best to give you a better profit.” He climbed into the truck and shut the door.

  Jill approached the driver’s side window. “You will deliver the organ to the church today, won’t you?”

  “Sure thing.”

  As the truck lumbered down the driveway, Jill remembered something else. “You know, Clay, I don’t think those are the only things of value that have turned up as missing from Windtop.”

  He scowled. “What do you mean?”

  “Last night, I skimmed through the journals we found. During the last few years, Mother now and then mentioned missing trinkets. I’m going to take a closer look.”

  “Do you need help?”

  “Thanks, but I think I can handle it myself. Besides, you must be anxious to get back to your work.”

  “You’ll let me know what you find?”

  “If I find anything.” She hurried into the house.

  A thief may have been operating at Windtop all along. If so, that thief might still be among them and have enough motivation for murder.

  She shivered as the ugly conclusion fully registered.

  Seated on the floor of her bedroom, Jill paged through the journals her mother had written during the two years before her death and noted the several times when small but valuable items had mysteriously disappeared. A queasy uneasiness enveloped her.

  “Well, I hope you’re satisfied! You’ve given away a fortune.”

  She looked up to find her aunt standing in the doorway.

  Lenore stepped inside the room. Her sharp eyes spied the trunk. “What mischief are you up to now?”

  “Attempting to solve a puzzle.” Jill held up her inventory sheets. “We seem to be missing two decorative scent bottles, an egg-shaped glass paperweight, and a tortoiseshell playing card case.”

  Her aunt’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Are you accusing me?”

  “No.” Not yet, anyway. Not without proof.

  “Good, because I know nothing about them.”

  Her aunt had too good an eye for valuable antiques for that to be true. “You must have seen them around the house.”

  “But I did not take them.”

  Not sure why, Jill believed her. This time.

  “What are those?” The woman indicated the pile of small volumes on the floor.

  “Clay and I found Mother’s journals behind a loose board in the attic.” Lenore smirked. “So that’s where she hid them, and you’ve been reading them.” It was an accusation. “I wonder what she would think of your invading her privacy.”

  Warmth rose in Jill’s face. She hadn’t considered her search through them in that way.

  A vindictive smile settled on her aunt’s lips. “You run away to find your father against your mother’s wishes. When you don’t succeed, you return to Windtop and search through Susannah’s private journals. Isn’t it time that you left the past alone and your mother to rest in peace?”

  Jill set her jaw. She didn’t have to explain herself to this woman, and the less Lenore knew while Jill straightened out the crooked places of their past, the better.

  “Stubborn as always, I see. Some things never change.” In a swish of long skirts, her aunt left.

  Lenore was right though. Some things never did change, and her aunt’s arrival in her room by chance wasn’t likely. She had been surprised to find Jill. What had
she been after?

  Only one thing could interest her if she knew about it.

  Jill scrambled to the wardrobe. Standing on tiptoe, she reached into the darkness at the back of the top shelf. Her hand swept through empty air.

  A sudden weakness washed over her. The puzzle was missing.

  “Miss Shepherd, is something the matter?”

  Jill spun around and sagged with relief. “Mrs. Fenton!” For all of her size, the woman moved like a cat.

  “I put a puzzle on this shelf. It’s missing. Did you see it?”

  The housekeeper nodded. “When I aired your clothes after the fire.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “It’s not there?” She peered at the empty shelf. “Acht! Well, it’s only a child’s toy. It’ll show up. You’ll see.”

  Jill rubbed her temples. The woman had no idea how much trouble that puzzle could cause.

  “You missed lunch,” Mrs. Fenton said as she left the room. “I thought you should know that dinner is ready.”

  Who needed dinner? Jill had to find that puzzle. A box didn’t just walk off by itself.

  She locked her mother’s journals safely in the trunk and went downstairs.

  Jill froze in place as Tia pointed at the center of the dining room table. The puzzle lay upside down, Maggie’s accusations exposed for all to see.

  “Is this true, Mother?”

  Lenore stared at the puzzle. “Where did you get that?”

  Tia’s brown eyes glistened with tears. Her chin quivered. “Is it true? When you fell down those stairs, were you trying to kill me?”

  Jill’s stomach roiled. She should have destroyed the puzzle. She should never have let it come to this.

  Lenore lifted her chin. “I’d had a very traumatic day and didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “This says you deliberately threw yourself down those stairs.”

  Lenore’s face reddened. “I had just found out that your grandparents had given this house to Susannah and Jill when it rightfully belonged to us. I was angry because your father had agreed to that wretched plan without first discussing it with me. I wanted to hurt him and wasn’t thinking straight.”