Authors: Diana Miller
Fatal Trust
FATAL TRUST
FATAL TRUST
Diana Miller
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2013 Diana Miller
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
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eISBN: 9781477868560
Cover design by Inkd Inc
MURIEL JOHNSON
—Max’s widowed (and childless) only sibling, she’s lived her entire life in Lakeview, Minnesota.
JEREMY WINDSOR
—the oldest son of Max’s late son Edgar. He works in finance in New York City.
SETH WINDSOR
—the youngest son of Max’s late son Edgar. He lives in California, where he videotapes weddings and other celebrations to support wife Joanna and two small children. He aspires to be a director.
CECILIA WINDSOR
—the daughter of Max’s late son Allen, she’s just finalized her third divorce.
DYLAN WINDSOR
—the son of Max’s late son Allen, he’s a computer genius with addiction issues.
BEN GALLAGHER
—the only child of Max’s late daughter, Rebecca. He’s an auto mechanic and the owner of Ben’s Auto Repair in Lakeview, Minnesota.
Rule Number 147: Never open a letter from a dead man.
Catherine Barrington clutched her black leather briefcase
with one hand and hugged her black Coach purse against her hip with the other
as she stepped into the work area of Ben’s Auto Repair. Four pickups occupied
the cement-block room, one with a shotgun strapped above the seat and another
with a set of antlers and a carton’s worth of cigarette butts scattered around
the bed. The scent of oil, as overpowering as the Chanel No. 5 at her mother’s
charity functions, fueled her already blazing heartburn. A radio blared some
country song about a cheating man, not one of her favorite subjects.
For so many reasons, this was the absolute last place she
wanted to be.
Catherine’s hand tightened around her briefcase handle, the
hard edges biting into her palm. She should never have opened that damn letter.
And once she had, she should have ignored it. Max Windsor was dead, for
heaven’s sake. What would he have done? Come back and haunted her?
Although if anyone could figure out a way to haunt her, it
would be Max.
Sweat trickled down Catherine’s neck and under the collar of
her turquoise silk shirt. The sooner she got this over with, the better. She
headed toward a pair of wounded Nikes and faded jeans protruding from beneath
the pickup with the antlers, taking care to avoid any oil spots that might
stain the soles of her turquoise-and-black Jimmy Choos. They were her
favorites, and not solely because she’d bought them as an admittedly juvenile
mini-rebellion against her mother.
About a foot from the Nikes, she stopped and cleared her
throat.
No response.
“Mr. Gallagher?” A plump woman in a flowered polyester
pantsuit had assured her that he was the only person back here.
Still no answer, although Catherine swore she’d spoken
louder than the radio. Maybe too many hours listening to strident steel guitars
and twangy vocals had damaged his hearing. “Mr. Gallagher?” she repeated,
nearly shouting this time.
The jeans and Nikes slid from under the pickup, followed by
a torso and head. “Mr. Gallagher is my father, and the world doesn’t need
another son of a bitch like him,” the man said, shutting off a radio on the
floor beside the pickup. “My name is Ben. You must be Grandfather’s
Philadelphia lawyer.” He wiped his hands on his jeans and gave her a slow
once-over.
Jerk.
Catherine responded reflexively
with a once-over identical to the one he’d given her. He was around her age and
attractive in a NASCAR kind of way, with thick, sun-streaked brown hair, killer
blue eyes in a ruggedly handsome face, a strong stubbled jaw softened by oil
splotches, and jeans and a black T-shirt tight enough to showcase a tall,
nicely muscled body. A lot of women would consider him hot, but then she’d
never been a NASCAR fan.
He flashed her a toothpaste-commercial grin. “Sorry if I
seemed rude, but feel free to look at me all you want.”
“I was searching for some resemblance to Max,” Catherine
lied. Her already warm face heated a few more degrees at the realization she’d
acted so unprofessionally. Her only excuse was she’d already had a hell of a
day, and it was just getting started.
“There isn’t any. I take after the son of a bitch.”
“You must have gotten my message.”
He nodded. “I didn’t read the letter Grandfather made me
promise to FedEx to you if he died of other than old age, but I assume it said
what mine did. That someone killed him for his money, and he wants the two of
us to figure out who.” He leaned against the hood of the pickup, crossing his
arms. “Mine also said he knew you’d come because as a responsible attorney,
you’d want to make sure his murderer didn’t get a cent of his money.”
Catherine’s lips twitched. “Knowing Max, I assume his actual
description of me was more like ‘my anal-retentive attorney who’s got a stick
up her ass.’ ”
“I was rephrasing for politeness,” Ben said, displaying that
ad-worthy grin again.
“Don’t bother. Max never did.” Especially about her need to
loosen up.
Memory tightened Catherine’s chest, and she blinked suddenly
moist eyes. “I’m very sorry about your grandfather’s death.”
Ben’s grin faded. “So am I. Although he had eighty-seven
mostly good years. And he’s probably smiling from the hereafter that he died in
his Ferrari. He loved that car.”
“I’m sure he’d have preferred to have died from natural
causes,” Catherine said. “Max was right that his murderer isn’t entitled to a
share of his trust. What do the police think about his death?”
Ben snorted. “Our police actually
thinking
? Not happening. The sheriff’s even worse. If
something could be an accident, it was an accident. End of story. Why waste
time investigating when you could be out fishing?”
“How do you know it wasn’t an accident?” Catherine extracted
a crumpled Kleenex from the front pocket of her purse and dabbed at her
forehead, soaking up several drops of sweat before they could drip into her
eyes.
“I don’t,” Ben said. “I feel obligated to check it out,
though, considering Grandfather’s letter. And that he changed his trust.”
Catherine raised her hand, the damp Kleenex under her thumb.
“I swear that new provision wasn’t my fault. I tried to talk him out of it.” A
couple of months ago, Max had called to request a trust amendment stating that
instead of a funeral, he wanted his entire family to spend two weeks together
at his estate, Nevermore, after his death. As an added incentive, anyone who
didn’t sleep at the estate every single night—or who challenged the amendment
in court—forfeited his or her share of the trust.
“I don’t blame you,” Ben said. “I learned long ago that no
one could ever talk Grandfather out of anything.”
“I know,” Catherine said. “He said he hoped being forced to
stay together would make his family members learn to appreciate each other and
get along, although I had trouble believing that was his true motivation.” From
what she’d heard of his family dynamics, Catherine had actually assumed the
enforced togetherness was Max’s way of making them earn their inheritance.
“Since he made the change after the attempts on his life, I
figure he did it to give us time to find his murderer, if necessary.”
“Max’s letter mentioned a poisoning and a shooting, but
didn’t give specifics,” Catherine said. “Do you know about them?”
“Yeah.” Ben waved at a younger man, also wearing jeans,
T-shirt, and oil splotches, who’d walked into the repair area. “Shawn’s back
from break. Let’s go to my office so we can discuss this in private.”
Catherine followed Ben across the cement, still stepping
carefully. “I thought it would be cooler here.” Although Lakeview, Minnesota,
was located on the shore of Lake Superior and less than thirty miles south of
the Canadian border, the bank thermometer put the temperature at 93, and it
felt humid enough to soak a sponge.
“We get an occasional heat wave, and today’s a near record
high,” Ben said. “But don’t worry. It’ll probably snow in the next couple of
days.”
“Snow in June?”
“It usually does. That’s why we enjoy the heat.” He opened a
door, releasing a blast of blessedly frigid air. “I turned on the AC since I
figured you’d miss your climate-controlled office.”
“I appreciate it.” Catherine stepped into a small office,
inhaling cold air that smelled of chocolate and coffee, courtesy of a
scrunched-up Snickers wrapper and a partially filled NAPA Auto Parts mug on the
gray metal desk. The green blotter was barely visible under an ocean of papers
and a half dozen capless Bic pens.
Ben opened a mini-fridge. “Can I get you something to
drink?”
“I’d love some water,” Catherine said, sitting down on the
folding chair nearest the window air conditioner. Add a possible June snowstorm
to the list of reasons why she did not want to be here. She had way too much
work she should be doing for demanding clients who were still alive, for one
thing. Small towns also made her antsy and claustrophobic, and with just over
three thousand people, Lakeview was definitely small. Most important, she
wasn’t qualified to investigate a murder. Being an avid mystery reader didn’t
make her Sherlock Holmes or even Nancy Drew, for God’s sake.
Not that she necessarily believed Max had been murdered.
After taking a long, cooling drink from the bottled water Ben handed her,
Catherine pulled a legal pad out of her briefcase. She flipped through the
pages until she reached her list of questions. “Did Max ever mention that
someone was trying to kill him?”
Ben sat down on the other folding chair, propped his feet on
the desk, and popped open a can of Coke. “Not to me.”
His words supported Catherine’s best-case scenario, that Max
had amended his trust to torment his beneficiaries and sent her the letter to
force her into his family reunion fiasco until she figured out that the murder
accusation was a hoax. “If Max had truly believed it, wouldn’t he have done
something?” she asked, logically she thought. “Hired a P.I., assuming he shared
your opinion of local law enforcement? Or a bodyguard?”
From Ben’s laugh, he didn’t appreciate her logic.
“Grandfather ask for help? He’s only doing it now since he’s dead and can’t
handle this himself.” He shifted his Nikes from the desk to the gray linoleum.
“In case you’re wondering why he picked me to investigate with you, it’s
because I’m the only one in the family who doesn’t give a damn about his money.
And because he knew he could trust me.”
“You lived with Max when you were a kid, right?”
“For just over five years. Moved in when I was thirteen,
after my mom died. My dad and I don’t get along.”
“Yet despite your close relationship, Max never mentioned
the attempts on his life while he was still alive,” Catherine said. “Isn’t it
likely no one was trying to kill him? That this is one last work of fiction by
the master?”
“I wondered about that myself, although Grandfather was more
into horror than mystery,” Ben said, tapping his Coke can against his thigh.
“But the previous attempts on his life really happened, even though I didn’t
know that’s what they were at the time. I knew Grandfather’s living room window
had been shot out when he was there because it was reported in a couple of
tabloids, which pissed the hell out of him. He didn’t tell me then, but in my
letter he said he’d invented the group the articles said had threatened him, so
of course they couldn’t have been the ones who’d shot through the window. And
the shots hadn’t missed by a mile, the way the articles said, but had nearly
hit him.”
“What about the poisoning?” Catherine asked.
“Grandfather got so sick at Easter dinner that we had to
take him to the ER,” Ben said. “He told us later that it had been his
gallbladder acting up, but after he died, Dr. Watson confirmed to me that he’d
been poisoned. Grandfather told Dr. Watson that he’d taken the poison himself
to see what it was like so he’d write about it accurately.”
“And his doctor believed him?”
Ben shrugged. “Grandfather said he made sure it was a
nonfatal dose and did it at Easter dinner when the whole family would be around
to call 911, which we did. Dr. Watson thought taking poison to make sure he
wrote about it right was a little extreme, but since Grandfather didn’t seem at
all senile, he dropped it.” Ben rolled his eyes. “As if Grandfather would ever
use anything as clichéd as arsenic poisoning in one of his books. But don’t
mention that’s the poison he got. We might be able to use that to trip up the
murderer.”
Catherine nodded, then moved on to the next question. “Was
it possible to tell whether the Ferrari had been tampered with?”
“No one’s checked,” Ben said. “Like I said, the cops are
convinced it was an accident. I didn’t want to inspect what’s left of the car
myself and be accused of faking evidence since I’m a beneficiary. We can do it
together, though I doubt I’ll be able to tell anything.”
“Even if the car’s mechanically fine, someone could have
forced Max off the road,” Catherine said. “We should still look at it. Do I
have time to check into the Lakeview Inn first? I’d like to change.”
“We can’t see the car until tonight, so you’ve got plenty of
time,” Ben said. “In my letter, Grandfather suggested you stay at Nevermore.
That will give you more chances to get to know the family and figure out who’s
guilty.”
Catherine gave him a wry look. “He mentioned that in mine,
too. I doubt the guilty party will let anything slip around your grandfather’s
lawyer.”
“True. But you’ll learn a lot more staying at Nevermore than
at the inn, as long as no one knows who you are.” He tapped his soda against
his thigh again. “In my letter, Grandfather said you should pretend to be my
girlfriend.”
Catherine’s jaw dropped. “Your girlfriend?”
He smiled faintly. “To be honest, that was my first
reaction, too. No offense, but I’m not real fond of lawyers. The more I thought
about it, the more I realized he’s right. It gives you an excuse to stay at
Nevermore and spend time with me. Considering how close I was to Grandfather,
it makes sense I’d have my girlfriend come out to comfort me.”
“A girlfriend no one’s ever heard of?”
“I’ve had quite a few girlfriends, and not just from around
here. We’ll pretend I met you last month at a wedding in Kentucky. Lexington,
specifically.” He took a long drink of Coke.
“A place I’ve never even driven past.”
“I’m pretty sure none of my relatives has either,” he said.
“All you need to know is it’s got the University of Kentucky, a lot of bars,
and even more horses.”
“I don’t know how to ride. Or have a hint of a Southern
accent.”
Ben waved his Coke. “So you grew up someplace else. You
can’t be a lawyer, though, or anything like that. Everyone knows I’ve sworn off
career women. They’re too damn much trouble.” He grimaced. “My ex-wife’s one of
those smart, ambitious, successful corporate types.”