Love Among the Walnuts (18 page)

The firefighters gave the residents of Walnut Manor a ride to Eclipse in their fire trucks. This cheered Boom-Boom up quite a bit and frightened Virgil and Lyle, until it was over and then they felt extremely proud of themselves—especially when Mr. Moreland, Captain Lester, and Horatio, all of whom had done so many exciting and important things in their lives, told them that this was the first time
they
had ever ridden in a fire engine, too.

Naturally Bentley and Flossie were surprised to see them all, in their nightclothes, in the middle of the night, but as soon as they learned what had happened, they made sandwiches and coffee and beds. As it turned out, no one ever actually got to bed again that night. By the time they had calmed down enough to sleep, it was broad daylight, and Horatio's lawyers had to be called to come to Eclipse instead of to Walnut Manor, as did Dr. Malcolm and Dr. Trinidad. The insurance adjusters had to be notified about the fire, and so did the board of directors, the cause of so many problems.

The doctors and lawyers arrived first, luckily, and by the time the insurance adjusters showed up, the necessary legal papers had been sighed and the most important arrangements for the future had been made.

Dr. Malcolm and Dr. Trinidad had examined Horatio and Mousey and Flossie. Though they would have to wait for the test results, from what the doctors could tell, none of the three had suffered any ill effects at all. They seemed as fresh and as rested as if they had just returned from a long vacation

When the insurance adjusters arrived, everyone went back to Walnut Manor with them to look at the destruction and see what could be salvaged.

Poor Walnut Manor was a mess. The actual fire damage was restricted to the roof and the attics, but the water from the fire hoses had flooded down through the entire house and almost everything inside was soaked and ruined. The beautiful parquetry floors that Opal had kept so highly polished with her skate mops had peeled and buckled, the wallpaper hung in soggy shreds, the carpets squished and squelched when trod upon, Sunnie's books and all the books in the library were sopping and had already begun to mildew. Virgil and Lyle sadly stroked the short-circuited television set that would never again broadcast
Bowling for Dollars.

The only thing that had survived without damage was the locked metal file cabinet in the library, full of documents that revealed, without meaning to, how the board of directors had been embezzling Walnut Manor's money for so many years.

"Graham," Mr. Moreland said, "I think it would be a good idea for you to take that file cabinet out to the Daimler. We'd better keep it at Eclipse until this is all settled."

Old Dr. Waldemar was quite overcome to see the place he had loved too much to leave—even when he could barely keep it going—in such a sorry state. He had to go out onto the front porch and sit on the top step with his head between his knees to keep from getting sick. Graham wheeled Eddy out onto the porch to keep Dr. Waldemar company, and slowly the rest of them assembled around him, as sick at heart, if not at stomach, as he. He had done his best—even when his powers had begun to fail him—to take care of those for whom he was responsible. He had loved his work and his charges, and had been ingenious in caring for them in the face of dwindling resources, increasing age and isolation, and an unscrupulous board of directors. Such dedication, love, and loyalty were not common qualities anymore, especially in the business world.

Now Dr. Waldemar's vocation, avocation, and home were all gone at once. He had every right to feel sad and sick. And none of his friends could see him suffer without suffering themselves. Especially when they had their own reasons to be sad.

"'If you suffer, thank God!—it is a sure sign that you are alive.'" Everett finally said. "Elbert Hubbard." He stood up and walked down the steps to the Daimler.

"He's right," Sunnie said, who had had surprisingly little to say about all the events of the past twenty-four hours. "We should think about how lucky we are to have one another, and how lucky it is that none of us was injured in the fire. We should think about how happy we are that Mousey and Flossie and Horatio and Attila are awake and fine, and that we have Eclipse right next door. We should think about the satisfaction we'll feel when Bart and Bernie are locked up for good. And now we should go back to Eclipse because the police will be arriving soon, and after them, the board of directors. And
that
revenge is going to be absolutely delicious, isn't it?"

Bentley and Sandy took turns ferrying them all back to Eclipse in time to talk with the police again. This interview wasn't much more organized than the one conducted in the middle of the night in the driveway in front of Walnut Manor, but eventually a somewhat coherent story emerged, and multiple charges of attempted murder were made against Bart and Bernie.

Then, to everyone's dismay, both Horatio's lawyers and the police said they were doubtful that the charges could be made to stick. There was simply no evidence. No poisoned birthday cake, no traces of poison gas in the Pensa-Cola canister, no identified cohort in the phone company or the utility company to prove the power had been deliberately shut off, no identified person who had delivered the suspicious Pensa-Cola canister, only circumstantial evidence of arson.

"But if you let them go, they'll keep trying until they do us all in," Boom-Boom cried. "They may start going after us one or two at a time, instead of all at once. We'll be run over or kidnapped or electrocuted in the bathtub or
something,
but they'll get us. They may be stupid, but they're persistent."

"I'm sorry," the police lieutenant said. "We can't continue to hold them without evidence. It violates their constitutional rights."

"What about our constitutional rights?" Captain Lester demanded.

"'Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,'" Everett said. "The preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America."

"Especially the
life
part," Virgil said softly.

"The lieutenant's right," one of the lawyers said.

And they all sat in the living room at Eclipse, shaking their heads and feeling furious and helpless and frightened.

Suddenly Bentley jumped to his feet and rushed from the room.

When he returned he was carrying a brown paper sack that looked as if it contained something heavy. He thrust the sack into the police lieutenant's hands. "Here," he said. "Here's your evidence."

The lieutenant opened the sack and looked inside. "It looks like a bottle of wine," she said.

"Not just wine," Bentley told her. "It's port." He shuddered slightly. "And not just port, but a particularly inferior vintage from a particularly bad year."

"I don't get it," the lieutenant said.

"I'm willing to bet," Bentley said, "that you'll find poison in that bottle, probably of some kind that simulates heart attacks or something of the sort. Furthermore, I think you'll find Bart's and Bernie's fingerprints all over that bottle. Not just on the outside, which would be perfectly logical since they're the ones who brought that bottle to Eclipse, but also underneath the lead covering on the cork, and probably even on the cork itself. Which would prove, wouldn't it, that they had tampered with the cork and the port and then gone to a lot of trouble to make it look as if the bottle were just an ordinary bottle of wine. So ordinary that an unsuspecting person might just drink a glass of it. Which would probably be the last glass of anything he ever drank in his life."

"Yeah?" the lieutenant said, getting interested. "Well, we'd better have this port analyzed. If what you think turns out to be true, your case would be a lot stronger. We'd have something to hang the rest of the circumstantial evidence on. Right?" she said, turning to the Senior Partner of all the lawyers.

"Right," the Senior Partner said. "And you can trust us to work as hard as we can to pin this on Bart and Bernie. We have no doubt they've done everything you say and, probably, more, After all, we've dealt with them for years. We know what they're capable of."

Bentley rode with the police lieutenant to the front gate to open it for the police to leave. The lawyers were staying on for the next event. Before he could close the gate behind the police cruisers, the cars bearing the board of directors began to arrive.

Bentley jogged back to the house. He didn't want to miss anything about this meeting of the board of directors with the lawyers and with the relatives they weren't expecting to see.

When Bentley reached Eclipse's front door, a line of shiny new cars had already parked along the curb and a group of well-dressed people was entering the house. Bentley followed them into the living room.

The Senior Partner, the rest of the lawyers, the insurance people, the residents of Walnut Manor, Dr. Waldemar, Opal, Sunnie, Sandy, Flossie, Horatio, and Mousey were already seated and waiting. Louie and Attila, oblivious to the tension in the air, wrestled joyfully in the middle of the floor, happy to be back to their old games.

The Senior Partner indicated chairs for the board of directors, who looked surprised to find so many people waiting for them. As soon as they were seated, the Senior Partner began to speak. "What's been going on at Walnut Manor in the past few months is too complicated to get into right now," she said, "though, if you were a proper board of directors, doing what a board of directors should be doing instead of merely using Walnut Manor as a source of unreported income, you would already know."

There were several outraged gasps and some indignant exclamations from the board, but the Senior Partner held up her hand for silence and continued. "It's too late for outrage and indignation. We have all the proof we need right here," and she patted the file cabinet affectionately. "Now, before we move ahead with criminal charges against all of you for the financial crimes you've committed, we have a proposition to offer you. I've said nothing about the moral crimes you've all committed—not only of abandoning your relatives at Walnut Manor, when all most of them needed were extra doses of love and understanding, but of then depriving them of the means to assure their comfort in order to give yourselves gain. I'd prefer not to say what I think of people who would do such a thing, since I tend to lose my temper.

"To recapitulate: We are aware of your crimes, both moral and criminal. We have proof of both kinds. We can go ahead and bring charges, thereby ruining you. Or you can accept the offer I'm about to make to you, in which case you will escape with some shreds of your reputations intact and my clients will get everything they want, which I think they are unquestionably entitled to, considering the way you've treated them over the years."

A man stood up and, red faced, sputtered, "We have no idea what you're talking about. I'm going to call my lawyer."

The Senior Partner, who had been holding a sheaf of papers, came up to the man and shoved the papers under his nose. "Look at these figures, here and here and here," she said, poking with her finger and shuffling the papers around. "I've had six accountants look at these figures, and they all say the same thing: embezzlement. Go ahead and call your lawyer."

The man sat down.

Across the room, Graham waved to him. "Hi, Dad," he said.

"What?" the man said. "Who are you?"

"It's Graham," Graham said. He stood up and held out his arms. "See?"

The man looked at his tall, muscular son. "You can't be. You don't look the slightest bit like Graham. What's going on here? Is this some kind of a cult or something? Are we being brainwashed?"

"I assure you this is no cult," the Senior Partner said, "though I'm sure all of your brains could stand a good washing. And I assure you that that young man is your son Graham. He's one example of what love and care can accomplish. Now, here's our offer: We want you all to resign from the, board of directors, and we want you to give back all the money you've embezzled over the years, with interest. We can work out a plan so you don't have to pay it back all at once, but you do have to pay it back. We want the deed of Walnut Manor transferred into the name of the Walnut Foundation, and we want you to pay for any repairs to Walnut Manor that the insurance company doesn't cover."

There was a stunned silence as the board contemplated just how much money they
had
embezzled over the years and what paying it back would mean to the ways they liked to live. Then they thought about how they would be living if they didn't pay the money back, and, suddenly, genteel poverty sounded pretty good—better than barred windows and black-and-white striped suits, anyway.

"We need to talk about this," Graham's father said.

The Senior Partner showed the board into the dining room and closed the doors. The instant she did, there was an explosion of voices from behind the doors, though none of the words were intelligible. It was probably just as well.

Sunnie, who was sitting next to Graham, patted his shoulder and said, "You must have felt terrible when your own father didn't recognize you."

"No," Graham said. "I didn't feel terrible at all. It was wonderful to know I've changed so much. I don't ever want him to recognize me again."

"I don't think any of our relatives recognized us," Captain Lester said. "It's as if we don't even exist for them anymore. And not one of them asked what would happen to us when Walnut Manor passed from their control."

"Who do you suppose they think we are?" Lyle asked.

Captain Lester shrugged. "Lawyers. Insurance people. Members of Horatio and Mousey's family. Who cares? We're not members of our old families anymore, that's for sure."

"Well, you
are
members of our family now," Mousey said in her new voice. "We're all members of the Walnut Foundation family."

"Wait'll they hear what we have in mind for the Walnut Foundation," Boom-Boom said gleefully. "They're going to freak!"

The doors to the dining room sprang open, and the board trooped silently back to their seats, their faces a compendium of resignation, displeasure, and fear.