The Secret Keeper (30 page)

“Well, I’d hope they might not be mutually exclusive.”

“I guess you’re right,” I admitted, “but I’m really a little frustrated not to have figured this out yet.”

“You will.”

I appreciated the confidence with which he said it. I just hoped he was right.

A knock at the door announced the arrival of the locksmith. I took that as my cue to leave, and did so, with Mel saying he’d call me the next day.

*

Now, that, I thought as I drove back to my office, was an interesting meeting, to say the least. As I’d suspected, the new will had provided at least Alan, Stuart, and George Bement with a solid motive for murder if they’d known about its contents beforehand. But I suddenly realized the only thing they could have known before Prescott died was that there was a new will, not what was in it.

That bothered me. And according to Mel, they had all apparently been truly shocked. Still, it wasn’t impossible that at least one of them had been acting. 

I was pretty sure Clarence’s having named Mel as executor of the will didn’t sit well with Richard or his sons.

As to Alan, Stuart, and George getting only five percent each of Clarence’s fortune and assets, it would still probably be far more than I could make in several lifetimes.

I was glad that Anna had been included. In a way, it was too bad Esmirelda had to lose her job, but I could understand Mel’s reasons for letting her go. She simply couldn’t be trusted not to let Richard and his boys wander in and take whatever they wanted from the things not specifically mentioned in the will.

The offer to help Mel with his executive duties had caught me totally off-guard, but I knew it would largely involve “grunt work”—making arrangements, running what would be the equivalent of errands, organizing, etc. Not all that different from what I’d often done for Glen O’Banyon and the other attorneys for whom I occasionally worked.

What did bother me was that I still didn’t know who had killed Clarence Bement and Eli Prescott. I planned to call Detectives Angell and Garland to let them know about the will and the fact that whoever had killed Eli Prescott and stolen his signed copies of the new will had to have known what was in it.

And there it was again, that glimmer of—something—in the corner of my mind. God, but I hated that, and I seem to do it constantly. What in the hell was it?

I wanted to see the will—the whole will and everything I could find involved with it. Why? What was I looking for, and how would I know if I found it? The will was technically none of my business. I knew the attorney, Weaver, wouldn’t let me near it without permission, so I would have to ask Mel. But I didn’t want him to think I was letting this helping-with-the-executing job go to my head, or being nosy.

But I
was
being nosy, and the only way to have access was to get him to agree to it. Still, all he could do would be to rescind his offer for me to help.

Okay, Hardesty,
my mind-voice in charge of reason—too seldom heard from—said as I started to reach for the phone.
Sit down and think. What is it you’re looking for?

I took its advice and sat at my desk, not going over my notes for the umpteenth time but just trying to relax and see what happened. Nothing did, except for that damned glimmering playing hide-and-seek among the shadows.

I finally gave up and picked up the phone to leave Mel a message.

*

Joshua and I were finishing up the dinner dishes and Jonathan had just gotten off the phone with Cory when Mel called.

“I’ve got a key to the house for you. And I’m meeting an estate appraiser at the house at nine-thirty tomorrow. Can you be there? I’d like you to meet him, since you’ll probably be dealing with him while I’m on my rotation. And I can give you the key then.”

“Sure,” I said. “And I have a rather odd favor to ask.”

“Shoot.”

“Would you be willing for me to look over the will and all the paperwork that accompanied it?”

“You mean the financial reports? What would you want that for?”

“No specific reason. Maybe some financial transaction your grandfather had with someone, some unrepaid loans he’d made—other than to Richard’s boys. I don’t know, but I feel I should check out everything. I just want to see if I can find anything anywhere that might have led to your grandfather’s and Mr. Prescott’s murder.”

There was a slight pause, then, “Yeah. Sure. I don’t see what harm it would do.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it. I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

*

Rather than go into the office first on Tuesday morning, I drove directly to Clarence Bement’s house. The appraiser had not yet arrived, but Mel was there, and we sat in the large living room and talked about nothing in particular until we heard a knock at the door.

Several years before, long before I became a P.I., I’d dealt with an estate buyer when I sold my parents’ house after they died. It wasn’t easy, letting go of so much of my past, but I couldn’t use everything.

After setting aside what it was practical for me to take and giving a lot to relatives and my folks’ friends, I contacted two estate buyers to come in and bid on everything from the dishes in the cupboards to the refrigerator to the laundry baskets. They both had antique and secondhand stores, and I’m sure, since my folks weren’t wealthy, most of it ended up in the secondhand stores.

I’m also sure I didn’t get more than twenty percent of what it was worth, but it was easier than doing a series of yard sales.

The gentleman Mel welcomed into the house bore absolutely no resemblance, in looks, attitude, or bearing, to the casual, average-Joe types with whom I had dealt. This guy was dressed and acted like a bank manager. Because he didn’t have any direct personal financial interest in the contents of the house, he could be far more objective than someone who makes an offer with their own profit in mind.

After introductions, Mel led us on a tour of the house, except for Esmirelda’s quarters. The appraiser, rather aptly named Dwayne Grand, said little but took everything in, commenting favorably on several pieces of furniture and art.

When the tour was finished, he said that one of his estimating teams was just finishing a project and could start work on a detailed inventory on Thursday, if that would be satisfactory. Mel said it was, and I agreed to be there to let them in.

From what I could gather, once the inventory had been made—which Grand said would probably take at least two full days and include photographs of almost everything of value—a listing would be prepared. Mel then would have the option of distributing the list to a number of selected antique dealers or selling everything in bulk to an estate buyer. 

Mel, in turn, gave him a copy of the section of the will that bequeathed specific items to specific people. Grand’s people would collect them and set them aside for disposition according to the will’s directives.

*

Mel and I left shortly after Grand, and I walked him to his car.

“Oh,” he said, “and can you do me a favor and take in the mail? There’s a whole stack of it on the desk in the den. If you have time, maybe you could open it up and set the bills aside so I can take care of them as soon as I get home?”

“No problem,” I said. 

We reached his car, and he went around back to open the trunk and extract a large envelope, which he handed me.

“The will and the financials,” he said. “I hope you can find something in there.”

So did I.

“I’ll make a copy of everything and get these back to you either later this afternoon or tomorrow before you leave for the airport,” I said.

He shook his head. “No need. There’s a Copy-Quik between my place and here, so I just ran in and had them run off a set. I’ve got a meeting at the bank in half an hour to deal with the safe deposit box, and I’ll need to show them a copy of the will. I’ll call you as soon as I get back in town. If you absolutely have to reach me, you can call the airline. Otherwise, if there are any minor decisions to be made with the inventory, just make them. I trust your judgment.”

He took out his keys and detached one from the ring. “And here’s the key to the house for Thursday. It’ll fit all the locks except the ones to Esmirelda’s apartment. We can change them after she’s gone.”

I took it and attached it to my own key ring, after which we shook hands and I turned toward my car.

“Oh, one more thing,” he called, and I turned around. “As far as I know, no one knows you’re helping me out with all this. I haven’t told my parents, and certainly not Uncle Richard or his boys. I don’t want to complicate your life fending off calls from anyone.”

“I appreciate that,” I said. “Talk to you soon.”

*

I stopped at the diner in the lobby of my building to order a B.L.T. and cottage cheese with two cartons of milk to go, which I carried up to my office. I didn’t want to waste a minute getting started reading the materials Mel had given me.

I spent the rest of the day going over everything in the envelope. The will was straightforward and pretty much exactly as he had said. There were a few individual specific bequests—paintings and artwork, a few family heirlooms. I made note of them, curious to see if they showed up on the inventory. If they didn’t, that meant someone had taken them between the time the new will was made out and the reading. And felony theft could mean prison time.

The financial report was at least ten pages long, including detailed assets and liabilities, all stocks and bonds, brokerage houses dealt with, various investment funds, etc. For someone who has trouble figuring out the answer to the classic question of how many apples Johnny has left if he started out with four apples and gave Billy three, I wasn’t able to make too much sense out of it.

There was a sizable list of Bement’s charities, with addresses and annual amounts given. A couple of them I recognized, most of them I didn’t. Most were, not surprisingly, based in third-world countries. They added up to one hell of a lot of money, and I had no doubt the fact that Gregory Fowler had encouraged Clarence to increase his charitable donations was reason enough for Richard and the boys to hate him.

I wondered how much the original will had set aside for charity. Since it had been written in—1946?—it would have undoubtedly been a much smaller piece of the estate’s pie. And even though the fifteen percent the new will set aside to be divided among all the charities might reduce the amount any individual charity would receive, fifteen percent of the entire estate was a pretty big chunk of money. It could well have provided the motive for murder to keep the new will from going into effect. 

Noticing that it was coming up on three forty-five, I put in a call to Mel and was a little surprised to find him in.

“I just walked in the door. What can I do for you, Dick?”

“Do you by any chance have a copy of the original will?”

“Yeah, I do. Right here somewhere. What do you want with it?”

“Actually, I just want to know what provisions it had for charities.”

“Hmmm. I don’t recall offhand. Let me check. Hold on for a second?”

There was about a minute of silence, and then, “Got it here. Let me see…uh…a flat bequest of twenty-five thousand each to…uh…six charities. What do the charities have to do with it?”

While I didn’t know the total worth of the estate, I was pretty sure fifteen percent of Clarence Bement’s fortune was still quite a bit more than the total of one hundred fifty thousand earmarked in the original will.

“It occurred to me the boys could have guessed that a new will, even if they hadn’t seen a copy of it, would leave a lot more to charity if only because your grandfather had been contributing to a lot more of them—which would mean a lot less for them.

“And if they’d stolen the new will and knew it was cutting them off at the knees, I’d imagine they’d do everything they could to keep it from being recorded. I’m still not quite sure how they found out about the new will, but I’d put my money on Esmirelda. 

“The only way to keep a new will from going into effect—or to keep anyone from knowing it had been signed—was to get rid of both Mr. Prescott and your grandfather.

“As for the witnesses to the will, if nobody knew it had been signed, there wouldn’t be any reason to look for them. The chances the two guys who did witness it even thinking to say anything about it were extremely remote—all it meant to them was a quick twenty bucks.

“Until recently, I’d thought whoever it was who took a shot at Jonathan did it because he thought Jonathan had witnessed the signing. Then I’d realized that, if it was the same person who stole the will, he
knew
it wasn’t Jonathan. He probably assumed your grandfather had told Jonathan something that might implicate him in some way but then came to the conclusion that he hadn’t and—wrongly, as it turned out—that he didn’t know anything.”

“So, what now? I wish I didn’t have to leave town first thing in the morning!”

“I think the next thing to do is for me to call the detectives looking into the case and tell them everything we know. Maybe they can take it from there.”

“Good luck. I’ll try to call you at some point while I’m gone. I’m dying to find out what happens next.”

We hung up shortly after, and before even returning the receiver to the cradle, I called City Annex. As I’d expected, neither Garland nor Angell was in, so I left a message for them to call me.