Buch lesen: «Father Fever»

Prologue

February

“I feel like someone in a crowd of suspects,” Alexis Ames said to her sister Athena, “in the last scene of a murder mystery where the detective gathers everyone into a room and says, ‘I’ve called you all here…”’

Athena smiled at Alexis’s gravelly voiced imitation of a fictional detective. But as she looked around at the austere surroundings in the small law firm’s conference room, she couldn’t make the same connection.

They sat at a long, glass-topped table in a pearl-gray room whose color seemed to bring the gunmetal Oregon winter sky right indoors. Or maybe it was Aunt Sadie’s death that made the world a dull, monochromatic place.

Athena shook her head. “Those things usually take place aboard a glamorous yacht, or in a warm library with a fireplace and antique furniture.” Here there weren’t even draperies on the windows, only chic vertical blinds in the same cold shade.

“And there are only three of us,” Augusta, the third sister, argued in a hushed tone. “Hardly a crowd.”

Alexis sighed. “I know, I know. And there hasn’t even been a murder. Just a…death. Remember how Aunt Sadie always used to say she wanted to die in bed?”

Athena couldn’t hold back a smile at the memory. “Yes,” she replied. “And then she’d add, ‘Mel Gibson’s bed.”’

They laughed together for a moment, the first time they’d laughed since meeting at the airport hotel yesterday afternoon.

“I know it’s small comfort,” Alexis said, “but she died doing what she loved. Hawaii was her favorite place in the world. She loved relaxing in Lahaina and taking a plane to Oahu to go shopping for us.”

“Yeah.” Athena was unable to find comfort in anything. A woman in the prime of her maturity at just over sixty should not be entombed in the wreck of a tiny commuter plane at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Sadie Richmond, long retired from a career as a Broadway dancer, had always provided the love, compassion and understanding that her sister—their mother—was incapable of giving. Athena and her sisters had spent spring breaks and summer vacations at her place on the beach where she encouraged them to explore their feelings, their talents and their hopes for the future.

“I can’t believe we’ll never see her again,” Augusta whispered. She was the sensitive one who taught third grade and was in tune with her students. She wore an ankle-length flowered dress and strappy sandals. Her long red hair was piled into a loose bundle, tendrils spilling from her temples and the nape of her neck.

Alexis patted Augusta’s knee. “I’ll paint her portrait for you,” she promised, then smiled ruefully, “if I ever recover my skills.” Alexis was an artist and, if she was to be believed at the moment, an artist who could no longer paint. But she looked the part in a silky white blouse with billowing sleeves, and black pants and boots. Her hair, the dark-flame shade of red they all shared, fell to the middle of her back in ripples and waves. She wore no bangs and a frown now marred her forehead.

“It’s just a slump and you’ll get over it. No one can be brilliant all the time.” Athena spoke with the same conviction she used in the courtroom. She was the practical one, the one who tried to have the answers.

Alexis gave her a look that said as clearly as words, A lot you know. You don’t have an artistic bone in your body. Her eyes swept over Athena’s blue suit and simple white blouse, over her hair caught in a thick knot at the back of her neck and added silently, Just look at the way you dress.

Athena didn’t bother to argue. Her professional mode of dress helped her hold her own in negotiations and litigations dominated by men. It was an unfortunate truth that women who dressed with any style in the courtroom were often accused of doing so to distract or confuse.

She hadn’t expected the severe suits to invade her private life as well, but now that she’d opened her own office, she had very little time for one anyway. And what private time she did have was spent in the company of other lawyers. However unconsciously, the sexless suit seemed to have become who she was.

As she studied her sisters, beautiful and curvaceous and alight with the gentle qualities of womanhood, she compared their attributes and appearance with her own steely determination to succeed. She felt as though they had acquired the womanliness she’d always admired in Sadie.

She’d wanted to be a lawyer even as a child, but she hadn’t imagined that work would be the only thing in her life.

“Whoa!” Alexis whispered as a balding, mustachioed man pushed open the door. “Heads up! It’s Poirot!”

The man’s mustache was more of a simple brush than Poirot’s elaborate handlebar affair, but he was dark and small and close enough in appearance to the fictional detective for them to appreciate the whimsy. Athena was grateful for the light moment considering their sad purpose in being here.

The man walked into the room with a sheaf of papers and stood across the table from the sisters as he introduced himself.

“Good afternoon,” he said in slightly accented English that only served to heighten the Poirot effect. “Welcome to Portland. I’m…”

Then he seemed to forget who he was as his eyes went from Alexis to Athena, back to Alexis, on to Augusta, widening with every pass. “I’m, ah…”

“Bernard Pineau,” Athena said, taking charge. She’d been born nineteen minutes before Alexis, and thirty-seven minutes before Augusta. She’d always thought of herself as the eldest. “You’re Bernard Pineau. Didn’t Aunt Sadie tell you we’re identical triplets?”

“She did, yes,” he replied with a self-conscious laugh. “But knowing that and seeing it for oneself are two very different things. Please, pardon me for staring.”

Athena nodded. As children, she and her sisters had grown accustomed to the gasps and stares their identical appearances created. But now with careers on opposite coasts and Alexis on another continent, that seldom happened. There were moments when she missed it.

Athena introduced herself, then Lex and Gusty.

Pineau shook hands across the table and took his chair.

“You must be the lawyer from Washington, D.C.,” Pineau guessed, focusing on Athena. She wouldn’t have cared that he’d guessed, except that she knew he’d done it after a glance at her suit jacket—all that was visible above the table. It made her feel morose.

“Sadie was very proud of you,” he added sincerely.

Resentment fell away and she experienced a moment’s comfort. “Thank you.”

He studied the other two women, then smiled at Alexis. “You have the studio in Rome?”

Alexis nodded. “I do.”

“I have your Madonna 4 in my study at home,” he said. “Sadie gave it to me for my birthday. My wife and I treasure it.”

Alexis was surprised. “I’m glad. Aunt Sadie was my self-appointed PR person and one-man sales force.”

“She was.” He turned to Augusta.

“I’m the teacher,” she said. “In Pansy Junction, California. Third grade. I love it.”

He smiled indulgently at her. Augusta always inspired smiles.

Then he folded his hands atop the documents he’d brought with him and asked solicitously, “Would you like coffee before we begin?”

Three heads shook.

“We’ve just had lunch,” Athena explained.

He nodded. “Then, before we begin, let me offer my condolences on the loss of your aunt. I met her just a year ago when we first worked on this will, and I found her to be a most charming and enlightened woman.”

Athena opened her mouth to speak and discovered she had no voice.

“Thank you,” Alexis said. “We did, too.”

Pineau squared the pages on the table and began to read the formal legalese. “I, Sadie Richmond, being of sound mind…”

He read on and Athena and her sisters exchanged grim glances. There was no avarice here, no eagerness to know what Sadie had left to whom. Just a still profound disbelief that she was gone and a willingness to carry out her wishes.

“To Athena,” the lawyer said, turning over a page, “I leave my Tiffany watch with the diamond fleur-de-lis in the hope that looking at it will brighten her tight schedule. I also leave her my aquamarine-and-diamond bar brooch to dress up her serious suits.”

Athena closed her eyes and saw images of her aunt wearing the brooch on the shoulder of a smart black dress, on the lapel of her burgundy wool suit, on the blue blazer she’d worn to the Dancer’s Beach Regatta every summer.

Tears welled in Athena’s throat but she swallowed them.

“To Alexis,” Pineau continued, “I leave my entire collection of berets because she always complimented me on them and has the flair to wear them, herself. And I want her to have the Degas in the upstairs hall because she might have posed for it.”

Athena remembered the gilt-framed painting of a ballerina executing a grand jeté and thought the gift appropriate. Alexis always moved as though in ballet slippers.

A tear fell down Alexis’s cheek and Augusta covered her hand with her own.

“To Augusta, I leave my doll collection and the Steiff bear she cuddled with when her sisters were too much for her.”

Gusty nodded, her lips trembling dangerously. Alexis patted her back.

“I wish the girls to share whatever they would like of my clothes and my jewelry, then donate the rest to a women’s shelter. I apologize to them for the paltry contents of my savings account, but they know how I’ve loved my travels. I wish it and my few stocks to be divided equally among them.”

Pineau paused to take a breath.

Alexis and Augusta leaned back in thought and Athena let her mind drift to her favorite memory of Sadie. She was striding ahead of them up the beach at Cliffside, wearing pedal pushers and a T-shirt, her graying blond hair tied up in a scarf as she led them in the collection of shells and other ocean treasures.

Athena was lost in the moment, unaware that Pineau hadn’t covered everything until he said, a little quickly, she thought, “And to David Hartford, I leave Cliffside and all its furnishings.”

Athena’s eyes flew open. She turned to her sisters and saw the same shocked surprise she felt mirrored in their faces. There was a moment of stunned silence, then a loud and simultaneous “Who?”

“David Hartford,” Pineau repeated, tapping the document with the tips of his fingers. “A friend, apparently.”

The women stared at one another again. Athena, caught completely off balance, struggled to think.

But Alexis didn’t stop to think. “I’ve never heard of him,” she said, leaning forward across the table. “A friend from where? Dancer’s Beach?”

Pineau shook his head. “She didn’t say where she met him.”

“She never mentioned him to us.” Augusta looked from one sister to the other. Heads shook confirmingly. “You have to contact him about the will, Mr. Pineau,” Athena pointed out, an unidentified but unsettling suspicion forming in the pit of her stomach where her grief for Sadie ached. “You must know where he lives. And why isn’t he here?”

“I have contacted him. He lives in Chicago, but he wasn’t able to come to the reading. So, I’ve faxed him everything he has to know, and transferred the house into his name.”

Augusta and Alexis gasped simultaneously.

“When did Aunt Sadie change the will?” Athena asked. “We know that two years ago when we were all together at Christmas, she intended to leave Cliffside to the three of us. Not that we care about possession, but…it was a family home. Who is this guy?”

“This will…” Pineau began.

“What do we know about him?” Augusta interrupted. “I mean, she loved telling us stories about her life in Dancer’s Beach. She lived very quietly, except for hosting some local events because Cliffside was so big. I can’t believe she’d have become that close to someone without telling us. And if we’ve never heard of him…”

Pineau shook his head apologetically. “My job isn’t to investigate the beneficiaries of a will, just to see that the deceased’s wishes are carried out.”

“When did she change it?” Alexis asked again.

“As I said before,” Pineau replied patiently, “we drew up this will a year ago.”

Athena stood in agitation. Alexis got to her feet and began to pace.

“I don’t understand,” Augusta said from her chair. “Where would she have met this Hartford guy?”

“Maybe on one of her trips,” Alexis suggested, stopping in the middle of the carpet. “He’s probably one of those gigolos who preys on older women and gets them to sign over their life savings. Or their house.”

“Ladies, I know you’re disappointed about Cliffside,” Pineau said quietly, “but your aunt was very calm and clearheaded when she made the change. I think she truly wanted Mr. Hartford to have it. And I personally think she was too clever a woman to be fooled by a charlatan.”

Athena frowned at him. “But we don’t know for certain, do we, because you haven’t conducted an investigation of any kind.”

Alexis gasped and snapped her fingers. “Maybe he wants Cliffside for the smugglers’ stairs!” she said to Athena. “I mean, apart from the fact that it’s a wonderful property.”

“That’s right!” Augusta cried.

Pineau looked puzzled. “What stairs?”

“When we were children,” Athena explained, “we discovered a door in the basement at Cliffside that led to a stairway through the cliff down to the beach. Sadie padlocked it, telling us that during Prohibition in Grandpa Richmond’s day, booze had been smuggled in that way. Maybe Hartford is planning to put the house to a similar use. Drugs, maybe?”

“Ladies—” Pineau pleaded.

“I know, I know.” Athena cut him off. “It’s not your job to check him out, but maybe it’s ours. Think about what’s happened here! Our aunt dies in the crash of a light plane shortly after she wills the family home to a total stranger?”

“It’s been a year since she changed the will,” Pineau pointed out again, reasonably. “We have no reason to believe the plane crash wasn’t a simple accident. And Hartford wasn’t a stranger to her.”

She ignored his attempt at reason and turned to her sisters. “Until the authorities can bring up the plane and prove to me that the crash was an accident, I think this Hartford bears looking into. What do you say?”

Augusta nodded. “Let’s do it. I took a couple of weeks’ leave.”

Athena turned to Alexis. “What about you, Lex?”

Alexis shouldered a large soft leather pouch. “My time’s my own. I’m in. Where do we start?”

“What’s Hartford’s address?” Athena asked Pineau

Pineau tapped the document on the table. “As of the moment I notified him, his address is Cliffside, Dancer’s Beach, Oregon.