“That’s hardly a difficult condition, although I wonder why she didn’t leave it directly to the foundation.”
“Obviously, Mrs. Fletcher, because she trusted you implicitly to do the right thing.”
“Which I certainly will do.”
“But there’s more.”
“Oh?”
“Are you aware of a gentleman named Wanamaker Jones?”
“Yes. I mean, I certainly didn’t know him. He was long dead before I first met Tillie. What about him?”
“Are you aware that Mr. Jones died under mysterious circumstances?”
I rewound my memory. “Yes,” I said. “Tillie told me that he’d been shot by an intruder right there in her home.”
“Exactly! And are you also aware that Mr. Wanamaker Jones’s killer has never been apprehended?”
Another pause for me to recollect what Tillie had told me. “I believe I did know that, Mr. Richardson. If I recall correctly, his murder was very big news in Savannah. It’s still an unsolved crime?”
“Very much so, Mrs. Fletcher, notwithstanding the professional efforts of the local constabulary. Very much so, which brings me to the condition of the bequest Miss Tillie has made to you. She is leaving you this money on the condition that you solve Mr. Jones’s murder.”
My laugh burst out of me. “That’s—that’s—that’s a most unusual condition, isn’t it?”
His laugh was gentle and wise. “Miss Tillie was an unusual woman, Mrs. Fletcher. There is a limit to the time you have to honor her request, however—exactly one month from the day you arrive here in Savannah and have the specifics of the will read to you by yours truly.”
I’d been standing during the call. Now I sat and tried to make sense of it all. Mr. Richardson continued.
“I should mention that the million dollars bequeathed to you, Mrs. Fletcher, is but a portion of the wealth Miss Tillie has left behind. Having no direct descendants, she has directed that sizable amounts of her estate go to various social and charitable organizations here in Savannah. But she seemed to take particular pleasure in incorporating you into her final wishes.”
“You must know I’m not a detective, Mr. Richardson.”
“Oh, Miss Tillie makes that plain in her will. She says—excuse me while I find that precise section—it’s the longest will I’ve ever seen, more than fifty pages—aha, here it is. I can read it to you word for word when you arrive in Savannah. For now, allow me to paraphrase. She says that while you are a writer of murder mysteries and not someone who sets out to solve murders, you have had the good fortune to have ended up doing precisely that. She goes on to say that her experience with law enforcement officials has left her skeptical as to their ability to solve particularly difficult crimes, especially murder. I must add, however, that I myself have always found them most efficient. Nevertheless, Miss Tillie was hard to convince otherwise once she’d taken to a notion. Therefore, you, Mrs. Fletcher, are the one in whom she is placing her trust.”
I shook my head, then realized he couldn’t see the gesture. “This is too bizarre for me to contemplate at the moment.”
“I can certainly understand that, Mrs. Fletcher. But let me reiterate that there is the question of time. You have one month once you’ve arrived here in Savannah. But you must also plan to be here within a month of my phone call to you. Miss Tillie was e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y specific about such things. It would be a tragedy if the million dollars were lost to your literacy foundation. Tragic indeed.”
“Who will receive the money if I decline to do this, Mr. Richardson?”
“That remains to be seen, I’m afraid. If you decline to come to Savannah, Mrs. Fletcher, or if you do come and fail to solve the crime, we are to open a sealed envelope that contains further instructions, including the disposition of the house and the million-dollar bequest. But until then, no one is privy to its contents—not I nor any of my colleagues. To my knowledge, everyone else is already provided for. Of course, there are Miss Tillie’s niece and nephew.” Mr. Richardson’s voice rose, and his speech became clipped. “They are expecting to inherit the property in town, which is worth more than a million dollars. In any case, they are—and this is entirely off the record—not in the least deserving of any additional money. But, of course, that is purely my personal judgment.”
“The house is historic, as I remember,” I said, thinking to divert him from giving negative opinions of people I had yet to meet. “And the garden is lovely.”
“They have no interest in history, that pair. There is some talk already that they plan to sell the house—should it become theirs, of course. Would be a shame to sell it out of the family, but young people have no respect for tradition. The house is quite old. The historical society might be interested in acquiring it if they could raise the funds. And it is reputed to be haunted. Haunted houses in Savannah sell quite well.”
His comment was intriguing, of course, but I declined to follow up on it. I was still thinking about Tillie. Could she really have intended to disinherit the literacy program if I chose not to go to Savannah? I wish I knew what was in that sealed envelope. Or had she deliberately made that provision in her will as an added inducement to me, knowing that I was an easy mark where literacy programs are concerned?
“Mrs. Fletcher?”
“What? Oh, yes, sorry. My mind wandered.”
“There is a fairly new hotel next door. However, Miss Tillie directed that you were to stay in the main house. No point in wasting money where it isn’t necessary. A room has been freshly made up and awaits you. The housekeeper, Mrs. Goodall, is still on staff and will tend to your every need. There are others living in the guesthouse on the property. Temporarily, of course, but—”
“Others? Family? Her niece and nephew?”
“No, I’m afraid not. As Miss Tillie advanced in age, she developed a greater need to have people around her. She began taking in guests at the house—against my best advice, I assure you.”
I’d stayed in the guesthouse the last time I’d visited her, which was quite a number of years ago. It had been recently renovated at the time and was lovely, spacious and beautifully decorated, dripping with Southern charm. The main house was a bit of a mausoleum, with heavy, dark drapery and stiff, uncomfortable chairs. I remember wondering when I’d visited which decor best reflected its owner, the guesthouse she’d had refurbished or the family home that she occupied. I knew which one I favored, but Tillie chose to live in the main house. I’d never asked her if she’d left its furnishings as they were out of a sense of maintaining tradition or if she truly enjoyed surrounding herself with the possessions and interior style inherited from her ancestors.
Mr. Richardson interrupted my thoughts. “You should know that the reading of Miss Tillie’s will takes place on Wednesday next. If you decide to come, that would be a propitious time to meet people.”
Wednesday was five days away. I glanced down at my desk calendar. I was relatively free for the next three weeks. I’d finished a book just a week ago and had proudly sent it off to my publisher, Vaughan Buckley. I then did what I always do upon finishing a novel: attacked the piles of paper that I hadn’t gotten around to filing, started to catch up on correspondence, including answering dozens of e-mails that had accumulated, and spent a day entering new phone numbers and addresses into my address book from small slips of paper on which I’d hastily noted them. My schedule called for me to begin the research for my next book in two months. The timing for a trip to Savannah was good. Not only that, but I found myself enamored of the possibility of visiting that lovely Southern city again, although I had to admit that the circumstances for such a trip were off-putting.
Wanamaker Jones had been murdered forty years ago. Certainly, many of the people who might have something to offer to an investigation into his death would be gone now, either deceased or having relocated. But it also occurred to me that Tillie’s death, and the impending reading of her will, might draw a few of them back to the scene of the crime, especially if they knew Jones’s murder file was about to be reopened. Word was bound to get around.
“Mr. Richardson,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Give me a day to think about this.”
“Of course. I’m aware all this must come as quite a shock. But I urge you to consider her request favorably. It would be such a shame to see that million dollars go—shall we say—‘astray,’ rather their being used to advance the cause of literacy.”
He gave me his phone number, and we ended the call.
“What kind of lawyer lets a client put conditions like that on her bequests? Didn’t he realize she was not in her right mind? Probably suffering from dementia. Absolutely preposterous.”
My dear friend Seth Hazlitt, Cabot Cove’s favorite physician, was in high dudgeon. He picked up the black knight and moved it forward on the chessboard. “You should tell them what they can do with their million dollars,” he said, setting the piece down with a sharp rap.
“You know I can’t disappoint the literacy program.”
“I don’t know, Mrs. F. I don’t think I’d go if I were you,” Sheriff Mort Metzger offered as he moved behind Seth to get a better look at the chessboard. He had dropped in to keep us company while his wife was at her cooking class.
“For once I agree with the sheriff,” Seth said. “There’s a chance they’ll be disappointed anyway if you can’t solve the murder—not that I don’t have complete confidence that you can—but they would certainly understand if you declined such a ridiculous assignment. You’re a writer, Jessica, not a private detective.”
“Crackpots like that lady are a dime a dozen in New York City,” Mort said. “Did I ever tell you about the guy who left a fortune to his cat? Park Avenue apartment, limo, the whole works.”
“Is ‘crackpot’ a technical term they use in New York?” Seth asked. “And stand somewhere else, please. You’re blocking my light.”
Mort moved to the side.
“She was a little eccentric, I’ll admit,” I said, contemplating the chessmen. “ ‘Pixilated’ is the word Charmelle used.”
“Who’s Charmelle, Mrs. F?” Mort asked.
“Charmelle O’Neill, an old friend of Tillie’s. They knew each other as girls. She worked with us when we set up the literacy program. Her family is nearly as venerable as Tillie’s. The O’Neills were in Savannah before the Civil War. The Mortelaines, I believe, arrived even earlier than that, sometime in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century.”
“A lot of oddballs in those old families,” Mort said. “When I was on the force in New York, some of the craziest crazies came from society families. I remember a guy, filthy rich, who used to walk around in a cape singing opera on the street corners. Wasn’t looking for a handout, just attention.”
“Comes from too much money and not enough responsibility,” Seth said flatly.
“Maureen bought me a book about people and their crazy wills,” Mort said. “There was this guy who drank a lot. His wife was always on his back about it, so when he died, his will said she’d only get his money if she had a drink every night at the local saloon with his buddies.”
“Idiot!” Seth snarled.
“And there was this crazy rich old German lady who left something like eighty million bucks to her dog. Oh, and there’s that Leona Helmsley down in New York, who left
her
dog twelve mil. People do weird things with their money when they die.”
“I prefer the term ‘insane’ rather than ‘weird,’ ” Seth pronounced.
“Charmelle told me that Tillie was always ‘a bit off ’—her words—even before she started drinking,” I said. “Tillie was a young woman when Prohibition was repealed, and afterward her odd behavior was attributed to overindulgence with a bottle. But I have to say that in the time we worked together I never saw her inebriated. At least as far as I knew. Check!”
“With some people you can’t tell that they’re drunk without looking in their—Wait a minute! Did you say ‘check’?”
“Ha! She got you good, Doc.”
“See your king?” I said. “I have him boxed in.”
“How did you do that?”
“I did very little. You moved your knight into a vulnerable position. I just took advantage.”
“Well, I must have been distracted by your tales of a peculiar old lady and the outlandish provisions of her will,” Seth said, frowning down at the board. “And, Sheriff, your peering over my shoulder did not help my concentration.”
Mort raised his hands in surrender. “I’m just an innocent bystander.”
“I find the provisions of Tillie’s will just as distracting,” I said, marking my win on a pad we used to keep track of our games. “But I didn’t let that divert my attention from the board.”
Seth harrumphed. “What does that make it?” he asked, reaching for a homemade butter cookie.
“Two games to one, my favor.” I held up the cookie plate for Mort to take one.
“You owe me another game, then,” Seth said. “Have to let me catch up.”
“I’ll be delighted to accommodate you, but not tonight. This lady has to pack in the morning.” I gathered up the chess pieces and started putting them away.
“I’d better get home,” Mort said, looking at his watch. “Maureen will be back soon from her class.”
Maureen, a big-hearted redhead, was an enthusiastic cook who embraced each food trend as it came along. Fortunately for her future guests, she was dedicated to improving her skills. She’d come into Mort’s life at a particularly low period for him, after his first wife, Adele, decided the bright lights of the big city were preferable to country life and took off. Maureen adored her husband, and took on community activities in Cabot Cove with the same energy that she devoted to her culinary endeavors.
“Let me give you some cookies for her,” I said.
“Don’t bother, Mrs. F. She’s on another diet. Has me on it, too. Not that I don’t cheat every now and then.” He held up half a cookie. “These are delicious.”