“That’s very nice.”
Laura stuck the card of thumbtacks back in her pocket and got on the elevator with us. “I still can’t believe it. Millicent and Emily both.”
“Do you think there’s any chance it was a murder-suicide?” Haley reached over and punched the button for the sixth floor; the door closed with a slight clang.
“I don’t know,” Laura said. “It’s got me so upset, though, that I think tomorrow after the funeral we’re going to Houston to visit my sister. There’s nothing going on over at the new house that can’t wait.”
“Do you think Emily’s funeral will be here in Destin?” I asked.
The door opened at the sixth floor, and we stepped out.
“I have no idea.” Laura turned to go to her apartment and then turned back to say, “But I can tell you good and damn well mine won’t be!” She went in and shut her door.
“Lord! She really is upset!” I said.
“Beat up, too,” Haley said.
“What?” I fished the key from my pocket.
“You didn’t see anything, Mama? You didn’t see the bruises on the back of both her arms?”
I shook my head no.
“You could see them when she was tacking up the notice; her sleeves were pulled up. And then there’s one on her forehead, too.”
I unlocked the door. “She bruised herself over at the house. Hit her head on a kitchen cabinet.”
“The bruise on her head could have come from walking into a door or falling; the bruises on the back of her arms, though, are consistent with someone having grabbed her. Hard.”
“Damn,” I said, remembering my dream of someone being forced onto the elevator. Could it have been real, not a dream? Could it have been Laura? I was about to remind Haley of the dream when Frances called, “Why are y’all standing in the door?”
“Because I can’t walk and put two and two together at the same time,” I said.
“Well, long as you haven’t found another body. I’m fixing to scramble me an egg. You want one?”
“Sure,” Haley said. I declined and went out on the balcony. Haley followed me in a moment.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said what I did about Laura. You were already upset.”
“No, darling. It’s fine. I’m just wondering if this has been going on all the time, and your Aunt Sister and I have missed it. I’m assuming it’s Eddie.”
“Laura has bruises, Mama. We can’t assume anything from that. Even the ones on her arm could have an innocent explanation. Maybe someone grabbed her to keep her from falling.”
“I hope so.” I thought about little, skinny Laura with her sun-damaged skin and hair. What did we really know about her and her life? “Remember I told you I dreamed about someone being forced on the elevator? Maybe it wasn’t a dream.”
“But nobody else heard anything, Mama.”
“Your egg’s ready, Haley,” Frances called.
“Go get your breakfast, honey,” I said. “I’m okay.”
And I was. Just very sad.
In a few minutes she was back. “Here’s the protector of the turtles, the defender of the nests.”
Sophie Berliner giggled as she followed Haley onto the balcony. She was wearing her usual black robe which, the more we got to know the child, didn’t seem so strange.
“How did last night go?” I asked. “See any turtles?”
“Two. We marked two nests.” She and Haley sat down at the table, Haley with her eggs, Sophie with orange juice. “My dad thinks one of them is too close to the water so we may move it back farther in the dunes. We have to get someone from the Wildlife Service to help us, though. It has to be done just right.”
“But won’t the mama turtle get upset if it’s moved?”
Sophie gave me a look that I can only describe as dis
gusted. “She lays her eggs and leaves, Mrs. Hollowell. Turtles don’t sit around on their eggs like chickens do.”
“Sounds like the perfect setup,” Haley said. “Just lay the eggs and leave.”
“Well, they’re okay unless rattlesnakes or ghost crabs get them,” Sophie said.
Haley took a large bite of scrambled eggs. Had she no shame? “Ummm, good. You want some, Mama?”
I shook my head no. “Rattlesnakes? There are rattlesnakes on the beach?”
“Millicent said those woods over on the bay are full of them.”
“Do the turtles lay their eggs on the bay beaches, too?” Haley asked Sophie.
“A lot of them do. That’s one thing Millicent hated about them building those houses over there. She said the turtles have a hard enough time as it is.” Sophie propped her feet on her chair, the black robe tight around her knees. “Did you know they cry when they lay their eggs? Real tears.”
At this, Haley put her fork down and pushed her plate away. “Because they’re hurting?”
“Millicent says they’re not. She says she thinks they’re marking the nests with their tears.” The child stopped for a moment. “Said. Millicent said.” She loosened her robe and stood up abruptly. “Anyway, my mom’s coming in today, and she’ll take me tonight. But if you’d like to go, I’ll call you.”
“That would be wonderful, Sophie,” Haley said.
“You have to be absolutely quiet and you can’t have a light.”
“Okay.”
“Once they dig their nests and start laying their eggs, you
can shine a flashlight on them. It’s like they don’t even see the light then.”
“Can I go, too?” I asked.
“You’ll have to be quiet.”
“I can do that.”
Frances came out onto the balcony with her eggs and toast. “You want some more juice, Sophie?” she asked. “Or a Coke?”
“No, thanks. I have to go.” The child gave a wave and disappeared into the living room. In a second, though, she stuck her head back through the door. “I have my nipples and my navel pierced,” she announced. And with that, she left.
“Good Lord!” Haley exclaimed. “Do you think she really does? Surely we’d have noticed in that bikini.”
Frances and I, old veterans of this war, just grinned at each other.
“P
apa’s coming to protect us,” Haley said when I told Frances about Fred’s plans.
“Don’t knock it,” Frances pushed her empty plate back and sighed. “You know, I haven’t smoked in—how long has it been, Patricia Anne?—God knows, and I’d give an eye-tooth for a cigarette right this minute.”
“Take a deep breath and you can get a whiff of Fairchild’s cigar,” I said. “He’s over there on the balcony smoking up a storm.”
“At least he’s not inside.” Haley took the last sip of coffee and sighed contentedly. “That was delicious, Frances. Thanks.”
Frances nodded. “He’ll be smoking in the living room by afternoon.”
“You think so?” Haley asked. “Millicent hated those cigars.”
Frances nodded again. “I’m telling you. In the living room. When my Aunt Isabel died, they laid her out at home—you know how they used to do—and damned if my Uncle Douglas didn’t go in there right over the casket and light up a cigar and blow smoke on her. And Aunt Isabel just lying there and smiling, decked out in her wedding dress that wouldn’t button anymore but you couldn’t tell it since the buttons were in the back. Made my mama so mad she said, ‘Douglas, this is a sin and a disgrace doing my sainted sister this way. God’ll punish you, sure as anything.’”
“Did he?” I asked.
“What? God punish him? Not that I know of. He’s still living up in Lanett, working on his third wife.” Frances licked her finger and stabbed toast crumbs from her plate. “Which reminds me. Have y’all ever been to The Little White House at Warm Springs? It’s not far from Lanett.”
We admitted that we hadn’t.
“A dump,” Frances declared. “We’d go over there every time we went to see Aunt Isabel. She and Mama both thought Roosevelt was handed down, and they’d look at that pitiful little kitchen and say things like, ‘Here’s where the cook was fixing meatloaf the day he died.’ One time we were walking through the dinky, tiny bathroom, not even a shower, and Aunt Isabel looked at the toilet and grabbed her chest and said, ‘My God! He peed here. Right here in this toilet.’”
Haley and I both laughed, and Frances smiled. “Lord! How did I get off on that subject?”
“I always thought the place would be elegant,” I said. “Not big and pretentious, but elegant.”
“Don’t kid yourself. It’s worth a trip, though. He drove his own car around Warm Springs with all these hand con
trols, and they had the gate to the driveway fixed so that if he bumped it, it would open. Stuff like that’s interesting.”
We thought about that for a moment.
“And it was a pretty steep grade down to the house,” Frances added.
“We need to make the trip, Mama,” Haley said, grinning. She got up, collected the dishes, and started through the door. “Frances, can I borrow the car for a while this morning? I need to go into Fort Walton.”
“Sure,” Frances said, her mind obviously still on The Little White House. “Looks like Mrs. Roosevelt or even his girlfriend Lucy whatshername would have hung some curtains, doesn’t it? Or bought a refrigerator? They had an ice-box. And this was in the forties. They had electricity, so there wasn’t any excuse.”
When Frances ran out of things to say about The Little White House, I told her about Fairchild’s morning swim and Laura’s bruises.
“You don’t think it happened like she said?” she asked.
“I suppose it’s possible; I hope so.”
“How long have Eddie and Laura been married?”
“Forty-something years. Would a spouse start beating on the other after all that time?”
“Well, not usually. But anything could have happened, clinical depression, a slight stroke.”
Haley stuck her head out the door and asked for the car keys.
“In my purse,” Frances told her. “What’s she going into Fort Walton for?” she asked me as we heard the door shut. But I had no idea.
“Maybe she’s getting something to wear to Millicent’s funeral,” Frances said. “I’m sure she just brought beach stuff.”
“Which reminds me.” I pushed my chair back. “I need
to call Fred and tell him to bring a suit, and me a dress and heels.”
Frances got up, too, stretching. “I’m going to put on my bathing suit and mosey on down to the beach. Do you think it’ll be all right with Haley for me to move in with her, let you and Fred have the middle room?”
“Sure, thanks. Fred mentioned the Holiday Inn, but I’d rather stay here. Long as he and Sister aren’t at each other’s throats.” Which probably meant we would spend that night at the Holiday Inn.
Haley and Mary Alice came in together about noon. Both were excited, Mary Alice because her wheelchair repo man story had been selected to be read at the writers’ conference that night, and Haley because she had gotten the information on the setup of Blue Bay Ranch.
“You go first, Aunt Sister,” Haley said graciously. “I’ve got some photocopied stuff to show you, some stuff I found at the courthouse.”
Mary Alice was beaming. “Well, they chose a couple of stories and mine was one of them. I came on home because if I’m to read it in front of the whole crowd, I’ve got to go buy something to wear. I think something black so I can wear it to the funeral tomorrow, too. Eight o’clock and everybody is invited.”
We all assured her that we would be there.
“And I’m going to call Berry. He’ll want to know.”
“Major Bissell’s reading, too.” Haley said.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. He’s the other reader. I just knew it was going to be that impotent man, but he didn’t make it.”
“That’s great. We’ll come cheer you both on.” Haley spread the papers on the coffee table. “Now, look at what I found.”
“What are these? Legal papers?” I asked.
“I’ve been to the courthouse looking up these records.” She rearranged some of the documents. “Okay, here’s the history of Blue Bay Ranch.”
We looked at the legal documents and waited while Haley paused dramatically.
“Tod Abernathy bought the land from a man named Sellers Magee in 1971. Paid him ten dollars an acre for 942 acres of land on Choctawhatchee Bay that nobody figured was worth a dime. When Tod died in 1982, the land still wasn’t worth much. But Millicent hung onto it. I don’t know if she knew how much it would be worth one day or not. She probably just didn’t think much about it.
“Anyway, developers gradually began to build around the bay. They built Sandestin and Indian Bayou. And here Millicent was, sitting on almost a thousand acres of prime land. But she had also seen what some of the developers were doing to it and didn’t want that to happen to her land.” Haley held up a couple of xeroxed papers. “You ought to see the stipulations she put in here.”
“When did Jason Marley enter the picture?” Sister asked.
“Three years ago. He’s a real estate developer from Montgomery. Made millions building shopping centers. He went along with all of Millicent’s plans for the property, apparently, and they formed the Blue Bay Ranch Corporation. And here’s where it gets interesting.” She held up another sheet of paper. “Voila! The shareholders of Blue Bay Ranch.”
Mary Alice, Frances, and I looked at the paper blankly; none of us had on our reading glasses.
“Well?” Haley asked.
“Well what? We can’t see the damned thing,” Sister admitted.
Haley poked her finger at the piece of paper. “Laura and
Eddie Stamps are stockholders! And Emily Peacock. With Millicent and Emily gone, Eddie and Laura and Jacob Marley own the whole kit and kaboodle of Blue Bay Ranch.”
“Jason,” I corrected.
“But I don’t understand,” Frances said. “What about Fairchild? Berry mentioned it last night, but how come he doesn’t get Millicent’s part?”
“I looked that up, too,” Haley said. She sat on the sofa with the photocopied papers before her on the coffee table, and motioned us to gather around like a teacher does a reading group. We gathered.
“It’s a common business practice,” she explained. “Millicent had the land and Jason Marley had the money to develop it. He wasn’t about to risk his money in a deal she could back out on, and she wasn’t about to risk her land. So they formed Blue Bay Ranch Corporation, a joint tenancy from which both of them were planning on making a bundle of money. In this type of corporation, in case of the death of either partner, what they put into the corporation originally stays there, doesn’t go to their heirs.” She paused. “Are you with me?”
I nodded. “That’s why Millicent had Blue Bay buy her a million-dollar insurance policy for Fairchild.”
“Right. And I’m sure Jason Marley has one, too, made out to his heirs.”
“But Eddie and Laura?” Mary Alice asked. “How do they fit in?”
“Well, Millicent and Jason could have done it fifty-fifty, but if they hadn’t agreed about something, the whole company would have come to a standstill.”
“I don’t understand,” Frances said.
“You know, like the vice president not voting unless there’s a deadlock. With two people owning equal shares in
a business, deadlock could happen easily, something as simple as Jason wanting to cut down some trees that Millicent didn’t want cut, and neither giving in. Just all sorts of things. So it’s a common business practice to have someone else own a small share of the stock, enough to make a voting difference.”
Haley’s knowledge of “common” business practices was on par with mine, but what she was saying sounded reasonable. “So Eddie and Laura Stamps are the tie breakers,” I said.
“Two of them. Emily was the other.” Haley looked at the paper. “It broke down this way. Millicent owned forty-seven percent, Jason owned forty-five, the Stampses had four, two each, and Emily had four. The Stampses and Emily paid $2,500 for each of their shares. Like a present, considering what they were investing in.”
“Eight shares doesn’t sound like enough to shake a stick at, let alone make a difference,” Mary Alice said.
“Sure it would, Aunt Sister. Neither Millicent nor Jason could do anything without the consent of at least one of the others. Jason had to have both of the others. Millicent was real smart in that deal.”
“Plus, the other three were her close friends,” I said.
Frances looked puzzled. “I thought they were all friends. I’m getting all these people confused,” she added.
“They were Millicent’s friends first,” Sister explained.
Frances nodded as if that had cleared things up.
“Anyway,” Haley said, “with Millicent and Emily dead, fifty-one percent of the shares revert to the corporation, which now consists of only Jason, Eddie, and Laura.”
We were all quiet for a moment, absorbing this information. Then Frances spoke up. “Does this mean that Eddie
and Laura get four percent of the fifty-one? How much would that be?”
“Go figure,” Sister said.
“That sounds reasonable, but that’s not how it worked. The way it was set up, if Millicent died, Jason would receive six of her shares, which would make him the majority stockholder. The rest would go to the Stampses and Emily Peacock, half and half.”
“Isn’t that a strange way to do it?” Sister asked.
“Common business practice.” My daughter was proving the adage about a little knowledge.
“Now I
am
confused,” Frances said. “Who owns what?”
“Eddie and Laura Stamps own a piss pot of real estate, Frances, that they paid ten thousand dollars for,” Sister said.
“That about sums it up,” Haley agreed. There was a knock on the door, and she put the papers on the coffee table and got up. “I expect that’s Major Bissell. He was at the courthouse looking up the same thing. That’s when he told me he was reading tonight. We’re going to lunch.”
“Well, do,” I murmured to Sister.
Major Bissell came in with a grin on his round, babyish face. “Hey, ladies. Mrs. Crane, I heard you and I are going to be the readers tonight.”
“How about that? I wondered where you were this morning.”
“Had to do some work.” He nodded toward the papers on the coffee table. “Some interesting stuff there, isn’t it?”
“About like a spider web,” Sister agreed.
“Best story plots in the world are at the courthouse. No way you could spend much time there and have writer’s block.” He turned to Haley. “The Crab Trap suit you?”
“Fine.”
“Would the rest of you like to join us?” He actually
looked as if he meant it, that he would be pleased to have the three of us traipse along with them to lunch.
We didn’t, of course, but we spent at least fifteen minutes after they left talking about what a nice young man he was.
“Dr. Philip Nachman just might have something to worry about here,” I said.
“Hmmm.” Which might have been an agreement from Sister. She was studying the photocopies Haley had left on the table. Now she put them down and looked at Frances and me. “You know what? Eddie and Laura killed Millicent. It’s as clear as the nose on your face.”
“They had a motive,” I admitted.
“I thought y’all had decided Emily killed Millicent and then committed suicide,” Frances said.
“I’m ruling that out,” Sister said. “That doesn’t make sense. It was the Stampses.”