Merry, Merry Ghost

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The sidewalks were crowded outside Wade Farrell’s office building on the corner of Calhoun and Main. Not all shoppers were at the strip shopping centers anchored by Wal-Mart and Target. Downtown boasted several dress shops, a bookstore, drugstore, and hardware store. I heard the bells of a Salvation Army kettle. The sun was slipping westward, streaking the cloudy sky with rose and gold. The shadows from the buildings deepened and darkened. A skipping wind skittered late-fallen leaves.

I landed in the entry hall. Postman Crandall was emphatic that he had delivered Susan’s letter this morning. Kim Weaver had already sorted and opened mail before the heirs arrived. The will should have been deposited in Wade Farrell’s in-box. If he received the will, he had chosen to secrete or destroy it. What might have prompted such an action would have to be discovered later. If he had not received the will, he had in good faith presented the earlier instrument as valid.

A woman shrugging into a car coat while talking on a cell phone hurried toward the door. I waited until the hallway was empty, then reappeared in the golden mink coat. This time I chose a cashmere sweater and wool slacks. It was time for Susan Flynn’s old friend to make inquiries.

Kim Weaver looked up from her desk as I stepped inside. There was a flicker of envy in her dark eyes as they widened in appreciation of the mink. She noted as well my white sweater, blue costume pearls, and navy slacks.

“May I help you?” Her voice was almost deferential. Not quite. Implicit in her expression was the unstated suggestion that supplicants would do well to remember that the office was hers to rule.

I nodded regally. “I’m here on behalf of Susan Flynn.” My manner was somber but confident. “Her death has made it imperative that I speak with Mr. Farrell about Susan’s new will.” I watched her face with the attention a cat accords a mouse.

For an instant, Kim’s face was devoid of response. Then she raised a sculpted eyebrow. “A new will? I’m afraid there’s some confusion.” She was polite but firm. “Mrs. Flynn’s will has been in existence for several years.”

A resonant bong tolled the half hour. An elegant early twentieth-century grandfather clock with an ornate bronze face read four-thirty.

She glanced at the clock. “I’ll check with Mr. Farrell, but I believe he is on his way out. Possibly I can make an appointment for you for tomorrow afternoon.”

I was imperious. “Susan drafted a new will Saturday night. I must speak with him now.”

She gave me a bright smile. “I’ll see what I can do. You are?”

“Jerrie Emiliani.” I hoped St. Jerome Emiliani, that great benefactor of orphans, didn’t mind my continued use of his name. I was trying to do my best for one particular orphan.

She pushed the intercom. “Mr. Farrell, a Ms. Jerrie—” She hesitated.

“Emiliani,” I said distinctly.

“—would like to speak with you about Mrs. Flynn’s estate.”

There was no response.

“Mr. Farrell?”

Silence.

She flicked off the intercom. “Mr. Farrell has left the office.” She turned to her computer. “Tomorrow morning is blocked out for Mrs. Flynn’s funeral. I can offer you an appointment at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

I paused to listen in the entrance hall of Wade Farrell’s house. The tile floor matched the vivid blue rim of a terra-cotta vase decorated with a charging buffalo. An eight-sided Art Deco beveled-glass mirror reflected red and white pom-pom chrysanthemums in a cut-glass vase on a pine side table. To my left a living room with comfortable sofas and chairs, not too big and not too small, looked welcoming. There was an air of come-sit-down-and-let’s-share-good-times warmth. To my right in the dining room, a table looked festive with holiday decorations, a snowman centerpiece and red candles, and fine china and crystal. The stairway at the end of the hall was decorated with candy canes.

A woman’s voice was cheerful but firm. “You’ll ruin your dinner.”

Wade’s words were indistinct. “I need a pick-me-up. Mmmm. Lots of butter.”

I wafted to the kitchen. Spacious and homey with savory scents rising from several pans on the range, the kitchen was obviously geared for a dinner party.

A willowy brunette in a frilly gingham apron inscribed Cindy’s Kitchen folded dough into Parker House rolls. Her fond expression slipped into a frown. “I heard Susan may have taken an overdose of something.”

Wade put down a golden brown cranberry bar. His frown was dark and angry. “Who’s saying that?”

Cindy looked uncertain. “You know how rumors are. Someone heard it from somebody else and pretty soon the buzz is all over town. Liz Latham said she’d heard from her hairdresser who had it straight from somebody in the mayor’s office.”

“That woman’s a menace.”

“Liz?”

“Neva Lumpkin. How’d she ever get elected? You’d think a tarantula could beat her.” He broke off another piece of the cranberry bar.

“Most tarantulas don’t have husbands with enough leases in the Barnett Shale to bring in forty thousand dollars a month. Who’s got the money to run against her? Anyway, you didn’t come home out of sorts because of Neva Lumpkin. What’s wrong, Wade?” She pushed the baking sheet with the rolls to the back of the counter. At the sink, she turned on the water, began to rinse utensils.

He pulled off his suit coat, hung it from the back of a kitchen chair, loosed his tie. “You know that trip you’ve been wanting to make to Tahiti? I looked at my calendar. I can get away the last two weeks of February.”

She turned off the water. Her eyebrows rose. “You said we couldn’t afford it.”

I scarcely breathed.

His lips curved in a lopsided grin. “If I look at the books like an accountant, we can’t. Right now, I don’t give a hoot. Book the tickets. If there’s something we want to do, something that matters to us, we need to do it now. Susan Flynn thought she had one more day. I spent Saturday at the office. I missed Billy’s birthday party, but I got her new will drafted. One more day, that’s all Susan needed. The will would have been signed and her grandson would have inherited her estate. Instead, she died Saturday night. I can tell you for sure she never committed suicide. Die and leave that little boy penniless? Not on your life. But maybe that’s what cost Susan her life.”

“Could she have accidentally taken too much medicine?” Cindy placed spoons in a draining rack.

“She would have had to be drunk or blind to have dumped that much digitalis in her hot chocolate. Sam Cobb asked me what I thought. Off the record.” Wade’s eyes narrowed. “I told him I think one of the heirs murdered her before she could sign the new will. Not Peg Flynn. Peg Flynn’s all right. I hope our kids would be as honorable. She wants the grandson to have her share. None of the others volunteered a penny. After Peg made her announcement and walked out, the rest of them hemmed and hawed and hung around, each one waiting for the others to leave. Finally, I asked if each one would like to speak with me privately. Will it surprise you”—his tone was sarcastic—“to learn each one wanted money? Jake Flynn wants to modernize the kitchen, said Susan kept putting it off, but Jake knew that fixing everything up would be exactly what Susan would have wanted. Tucker wants to buy the Nickerson spread. That will squeeze the McKinley ranch between the Nickerson ranch and Burnt Creek. Susan was good friends with the McKinleys and knew they would be worried about access roads if Tucker bought out the Nickersons. Tucker Satterlee eats, sleeps, and breathes Burnt Creek. He wants the biggest spread in the county. Gina Satterlee’s maxed out on five credit cards and she lost her job about three weeks ago and one creditor got a judgment against her. Harrison Hammond looked like a man reprieved from the gallows. He’s in big trouble with the housing crisis. He hasn’t been able to sell most of the homes in his new development and he’s up to his ears in debt to the suppliers. Now they’re all on easy street. Except Peg.” His tone was admiring. “If Susan had lived one more day, they would each have had to settle for two hundred thousand.”

Cindy stacked the rinsed cooking ware and utensils in a plastic dish rack. “Won’t the judge make some provision for Susan’s grandson?”

“She didn’t sign the will.” Wade looked morose.

I crossed Wade Farrell off my list. His sorrowful expression told me where I needed to go.

“So”—he came around the table and drew his wife into his arms—“make those reservations. Maybe all we’ve got is today, but if we make it to February, you and I are going to enjoy sea, sand, and sun. Merry Christmas, Cindy.”

“Oh, Wade, that will be wonderful.” Her laughter was a sweet cascade. “If you look at the books again and change your mind, that’s all right, too. I’m glad you want to go, whether we can or not.” She smiled and lifted her lips to his.

Christmas lights blinked on a small frosted tree. The apartment was clean and tidy, but the cheap furniture looked as if it had been there for years. Travel posters on the bland beige walls of the small living room offered brightness and a sense of dreams not bound by the confines of a rented furnished apartment. The Parthenon in its weathered glory, the Cathedral at Chartres, and Castle Hill in Nice spoke of a hunger for faraway places.

Kim Weaver sat in a maple chair with dingy green cushions. Her feathered haircut had been teased into a tousled look, as if she stood on a ship deck and the wind rushed against her. Her face was interesting, high forehead, high-bridged nose, high cheekbones. Her cold brown eyes were too calculating for beauty. The firmness of her jaw suggested a woman with a strong will.

With a dreamy smile, she leafed through an issue of Elle, pausing to look at fashions by Balenciaga and Prada. Her purple scoop-neck cashmere tunic fell in graceful folds onto narrow black wool trousers. Twice she glanced at her jeweled watch.

She was a woman waiting for something to happen. If she had Susan’s handwritten will, as I felt sure she did, she might have interesting plans for her evening. I glanced at a black leather tote on a small table by the front door. Unfortunately, her chair faced the door. I could not explore the contents of the purse as long as she remained there.

I checked out the single bedroom. Prints by Degas and Chagall and Pollock made even these dingy walls attractive. Quickly I searched the room and closet. I lifted the mattress, ran my hand beneath it. The bathroom afforded no hiding places.

Dimly I heard the ring of a cell phone.

I returned to the living room.

Kim looked at caller ID, shrugged. “Hi, Erin…Thanks, but I’ve seen it…Tonight? Nothing special.” Her smile was secretive, amused, pleased. “Let’s catch dinner tomorrow night…See you then.”

Several times I was tempted to leave. I was always a restless spirit. Yet I felt almost certain I wasn’t imagining the aura of leashed excitement that emanated from Kim. She fixed an omelet, ate slowly, still reading the fashion magazine, but the purse was in view. After washing her dishes and straightening the kitchen, she walked to her desk and settled behind the computer. She clicked from site to site for travel to the French Riviera. The purse was now to one side, but within her peripheral vision. Besides, even if I found the will, I could scarcely float the envelope through the air. Surely at some point I would have an opportunity to explore the contents of that oh-so-tempting black leather handbag.

Time passed, but Kim made no move to prepare for bed. Every so often, she looked at her watch and frowned.

Was she waiting for someone to come? Was she waiting for the right moment to call one of the heirs?

I forced myself to be patient. Patience is a virtue. Deadly boring, perhaps, but virtuous. Wiggins would be proud of me. I wished I had a pad of paper, but I would organize in my mind. As the minutes passed, I reviewed what I knew to be true:

Susan Flynn announced after dinner Saturday evening that she would make a new will.

Susan died that night from an overdose of digitalis.

Traces of digitalis were found in the pot of cocoa and in her cup.

Susan’s medicines were kept on her bedside table.

Each guest was absent from the living room at some period before Susan Flynn retired.

From these facts, I could make these suppositions:

If Susan’s murder was a direct result of her announcement Saturday evening, the digitalis must have been taken from her bedroom after dinner and before she said good night to her guests.

If so, someone left the living room, hurried upstairs, filched a handful of digitalis tablets, returned downstairs. Either then or on another excursion from the living room, the murderer slipped into the kitchen and dropped the tablets into the pot which would hold Susan’s cocoa.

Unless the murderer had been observed entering or leaving Susan’s bedroom or dropping the tablets into the pot, there could never be proof of that person’s guilt. Jake’s and Gina’s fingerprints would be on the pot as well as Susan’s. I didn’t doubt that Chief Cobb had the results of the fingerprinting of the pot and no unexpected prints had been found.

I was daunted by the enormity of the task faced by Chief Cobb. Since he’d not been privy to Wiggins’s declarative announcement of Susan’s murder, the chief had to deal with the possibility of suicide or accident as well. No matter how strongly he felt that Susan’s death was a result of murder, he could not prove that claim.

I had to find proof for him.

Was I wasting time here in Kim Weaver’s apartment? I felt certain she had opened this morning’s mail, found Susan’s new will, and immediately decided to suppress the will.

However, Kim was not at Pritchard House during the critical time period when the digitalis was taken. She had no access to Susan’s pot of chocolate. Kim, in fact, very likely was unaware that Susan had been murdered. So far as I knew, there had been no public announcement of a murder investigation. Chief Cobb had no duty to announce an investigation, and truth to tell, he would merely bring about increased pressure from Mayor Lumpkin if he did so. Therefore, the general public was unaware that the cause of Susan’s death was in question. Apparently, rumors were swirling that she’d taken too much medicine, but so far as I knew there had been no hint of murder. Her death had come as no surprise to those who knew her. She had been gravely ill for several years.

Very likely, then, Kim’s theft of the will had no direct connection to Susan’s murder.

However, I was almost certain that Kim took the will. The only rational reason for Kim to suppress the will was in the belief that doing so would profit her.

I felt tantalizingly close to understanding what had unfolded that morning in the law office: Kim opened the mail, saw the new will, understood at once that the current heirs would receive a nice amount of money but nothing to compare with the several millions resulting from a division of the estate. Further, as an heiress, Peg Flynn might be even more attractive to Dave Lewis, and he was present at Pritchard House Saturday night.

Obviously, it was to the advantage of those who might benefit from the old will to be certain the new will never surfaced. It could be to Kim’s advantage to have that will and keep it hidden for a share in the riches. This argued that she knew someone who benefited well enough to assume that such an offer would be welcome.

In the course of her job, she had contacted the heirs to invite them to Wade Farrell’s office this afternoon. In that conversation, she could have acquainted one of them with the existence of the holographic will and offered to keep it secret in exchange for…something. Would it have occurred to her to make the offer to Dave Lewis? Quite possibly Kim was well aware of his connection to Peg and his interest in money from Susan.

In any event, I was seeking both the murderer and the will. I might discover one or both through Kim.

She clicked off the computer, rose, and walked restlessly around the room.

I glanced at the clock. Almost ten-thirty.

Her cell phone rang. She walked swiftly to the table, picked it up, flipped it open. “Hello.” She listened, wariness replaced by pleasure. Her smile of triumph was chilling. “I was beginning to wonder if you got my message…Of course I called from a pay phone. You’d better be at a pay phone right now…We can get some of those throwaway phone cards…I intend for us to keep in close touch.” Her tone was silky. “Very close touch. Now”—her face was set and hard—“I know what you want. You know what I want. I’m not going to budge.” A taunting smile flickered for an instant. “Oh, I think the idea will grow on you.” Her eyes narrowed. “I want your word in writing. We can make an exchange.” A frown tugged at her face. “Why so late?…Sure, I understand…The old brick plant? Isn’t it all locked up?…Wait a minute, let me get some paper.” Kim pulled a small notepad and pen from her purse.

I looked over her shoulder as she wrote: East entrance—half mile around pit—water tower.

She listened a moment more, drawing a series of bells and an airplane. “I’ll be there at eleven sharp.” She clicked off the cell. Her face drawn in thought, she rose and walked to a worn walnut desk, opened a bottom drawer. She lifted out a twenty-two pistol, held it for a moment, gave a decisive nod.

As she walked toward the small table near the door and her purse, my view of her changed. She became more formidable. Though some Adelaidians never hunt, a good many do. From the ease with which she handled the gun, I thought it likely she was from a hunting family. That a single woman familiar with guns possessed one wasn’t surprising. That she felt the need to take the gun tonight to the abandoned brick plant told me she was uneasy about the person she was meeting.

I thought of the possible suspects: Jake Flynn, Gina Satterlee, Tucker Satterlee, Harrison Hammond, Charlotte Hammond, and, possibly, Dave Lewis. Kim knew one of them well enough to feel confident in suggesting a conspiracy to suppress the new will. She also knew that person well enough to feel it would be wise to be armed when meeting late at night in an isolated setting.

As she opened her purse to slip the small gun inside, I saw the unmistakable creamy envelope that held Susan’s will.

The night shift was at work in the police department. I passed the dispatcher’s office, heard laconic exchanges with patrol cars. In Chief Cobb’s office on the second floor, the table was covered with open folders and stacks of paper. He absently munched on M&M’s and made occasional notations on a legal pad, his heavy face molded into a frown of dissatisfaction.

The clock read thirty-six minutes after ten. I had to make up my mind quickly. Kim would likely leave her apartment in about fifteen minutes. It was approximately a five-minute drive to the abandoned brick plant on the southeast side of Adelaide near the railroad tracks. For more than a half century, red and white clay had been mined from open pits and made into bricks there, but the plant closed down not long before Bobby Mac and I set out on our last voyage on the Serendipity. The complex at one time included the plant, ten downdraft kilns, several smokestacks, two open pits, a boiler plant, a water tower, a filter house and pump house plant, a spur rail line, and more. I’d created many leaflets for the mayor’s office celebrating highlights of Adelaide, including the brick plant, the annual August rodeo, the cement plant, and Goddard College.

I wanted to accompany Kim as she drove to the brick plant. I had no intention of permitting her to give Susan’s will to anyone other than Wade Farrell. Somehow I’d intercept that exchange. But I couldn’t gamble with Kim’s life. If the person she had contacted turned out to be Susan’s murderer, Kim could be in grave danger when she reached the water tower even though she was armed. The abandoned brick plant was a sensible place for two persons to meet who wished to do so without observation, but the remote area was also shadowy and private. Violence could flare in an instant.

The clock hand ticked as it moved. I had one minute less to decide.

There was no time for subtlety. Officer M. Loy couldn’t handle this assignment on her own. Yet the Precept was unequivocal: Work behind the scenes without making your presence known. I hoped Wiggins would understand.

I picked up a piece of chalk, began to write.

Chief Cobb’s hand with another half dozen M&M’s stopped halfway to his mouth. His eyes, wide and shocked, watched as the words took shape:

S. Flynn wrote new will Sat night. Stolen from A.M. mail by W. Farrell’s sec.

Weaver taking will to brick plant now.

I underlined now.

Set up immed. surveillance there. W. to enter E. gate 11 P.M., meet unknown person at water tower.

I hesitated, then added:

Trust me. Officer M. Loy

I added a quick P.S.

Leon Butler witnessed will.

Chief Cobb took a deep breath. Lines grooved on either side of his broad mouth.

He had the air of a man in a cemetery alone on a dark night who hears stealthy footsteps and rustling in the bushes and the unsettling hoo of an owl.

I understood his mental vertigo as he teetered on the edge of the unknown. I gripped the chalk:

I’ll be with her. Officer Loy

Eyes fixed on the blackboard, he absently tossed the M&M’s in his mouth.

I grabbed the eraser and in three sweeping movements swiped away the message, all of it, leaving only the white smudges to indicate the board had been used. I placed the eraser and chalk in the tray.

Chief Cobb pushed up from the table, rushed to his desk, punched the intercom. “Get Price…”

I reached Kim’s apartment as she shrugged into a brown corduroy car coat and picked up her purse. She whistled cheerfully as she shut the apartment door. She hurried downstairs and out to her car.

I rode in the passenger seat. We left behind the lights of town and followed a rutted dirt road empty of cars. I bent forward, touched Kim’s purse, dropped carelessly on the car floor. To be so near yet so far was frustrating. However, if all went well, the will should be in Chief Cobb’s possession soon. I hoped that in the meager time at his disposal, Chief Cobb had successfully deployed his officers. I hoped they were well hidden, watching the east entrance and the water tower.

Kim’s Chrysler PT Cruiser hummed as she pressed on the accelerator. The road curved and twisted as we approached the dark plant. I held to the hand grip above the door. Kim braced with an elbow. Her seat belt dangled unused. Was she simply careless or did she resent any constraint imposed by authority? She slowed as she neared the east entrance. A ramshackle gate was pulled wide.

I wondered who had opened the gate and how. As we passed into the grounds, I glimpsed a broken chain dangling from a bar.

All was dark and silent. On one side of the pockmarked road, boarded-up buildings were scarcely visible in the pale moonlight. On the other side, moonlight disappeared into the blackness of an open pit bordered by a ramshackle wire fence. Some posts sagged, pulling the wire over the lip of the excavation. An occasional red warning light gleamed on rickety wooden poles near the pit. I supposed some local ordinance required illumination of a hazard.

The Cruiser’s headlights flashed over warning signs:

DANGER

OPEN PIT

NO TRESPASSING

The Cruiser neared one of the brief swaths of reddish light from a warning lamp. I felt more and more uneasy. I hoped that if the need arose, that I could move to protect her if danger threatened. Reddish light fell across the car.

A gunshot and jolt came at almost the same instant.

Despite the closed windows, the crack of a high-powered rifle was sharp and unmistakable. The Cruiser slewed to the left. Kim fought the wheel, jamming on the brakes. In the horrifying slow motion of impending disaster, it seemed forever as the car careened toward the pit, unstoppable, out of control, doomed.

The car crashed through the fence and Kim screamed. She slammed hard against the windshield. Her terrified cry ended abruptly. I reached out, tried to catch Kim’s arm. The car went end over end. I whipped through the windshield and out into space.