A Truth for a Truth (30 page)

The parakeets were screeching at full volume when I walked into the lobby. My War opponent was just going out with a young woman and small child, and all of them were smiling. I wasn’t sure if they were just glad to be together, or if they were breaking out my card-playing buddy for good.

Today a woman in a blue lab coat sat at an unobtrusive reception desk by the door, and when I asked for Flo, she lumbered off to find her.

I didn’t have to wait long. Flo arrived before the other woman returned and greeted me with a smile. My stock had risen since removing Zoey from Craig’s clutches. Even if I never solved Ellen’s murder, at least I’d done that.

Flo looked better this morning, more rested. She had taken time for a new haircut and some reddish highlights, both of which suited her.

She invited me on a tour, and we walked through the first floor looking at the communal living area with a big-screen television and tables for games. A group was gathered around an upright piano singing Beatles songs, and in another room without carpeting, about two dozen residents were doing a complicated line dance to a country tune. The smells from the dining room were a forecast of things to come. Spaghetti, I thought. Or maybe lasagna.

“The new wings contain apartments with microwaves and refrigerators,” Flo said. “Not large, but large enough for residents to keep some of their own furniture when they move in. The two floors above us are for people who need a more structured environment and skilled nursing care, and the addition at the back is our Alzheimer’s unit.”

How many people can tour a facility like this one and not wonder if a similar ending is waiting in their own future? I appreciated the cleanliness, the number of staff, the recreational opportunities in a facility run on a shoe-string, but I was glad at the end of the visit that I could turn around and head back to the parsonage.

“I went through a lot of Reverend Dorchester’s sermons last night,” I told her, when we were sitting in the staff lounge drinking coffee. “He really liked coming here and talking to the residents. He mentioned one in particular. A woman named Daisy Dreyfus. I assume she’s no longer alive?”

“No, bless her. Daisy passed on a long time ago, about two months after I arrived. She was memorable, though. No one here will ever forget her.”

“Why not?”

“Every comfortable little touch you see? The cheerful decor in the lobby, the piano, that fabulous television? And a lot of things you won’t see, like our recreational therapist, and the beautician who cuts and styles hair three afternoons a week? Courtesy of Daisy.”

I felt a tiny electric charge. So somehow, Daisy had managed to accumulate enough money to leave some to Russell House when she died. Quite a bit, if my calculations were on the right track.

“She left that much money?”

“It was quite a surprise. Most of the staff knew Daisy paid her own way, not, I hope, that it made any difference in the way she was treated. Most of our residents get Medicaid assistance, but Daisy didn’t need it. Of course, most people able to afford their own care choose another sort of facility, one with more to offer. Daisy was just different. She had friends from her neighborhood living here, so this is where she wanted to finish her life.”

“Reverend Dorchester painted the picture of a woman who had a difficult road to follow and very little money,” I said, as tactfully as I could. “I’m just trying to figure out how that translated into large bequests in her will.”

Flo smiled. “You won’t believe it. Her father hardly worked a day in his life, not a regular job anyway. I gather the family was practically homeless a time or two, but apparently when he was sober, he was brilliant. He invented some kind of special valve for heavy machinery. He died before he reaped any reward, but the idea was picked up by some manufacturer, and Daisy was his only heir. She took a lump sum as payment and invested wisely, so she could put her foster kids through college or vocational school. She kept quiet about the money—she didn’t want to change the way she lived. But she still had quite a nest egg when she came here.”

“What a story.”

“You’re no more surprised than we were. All of us. We had no idea there was a real bequest. She used to talk about leaving us money, but we all thought it was just talk, or maybe just enough for a new Ping-Pong table. Daisy loved her Ping-Pong.”

“What did Ellen say about this?”

“Daisy died about six months after Ellen left town. I wrote her, and she was as surprised as everyone else.”

Surprised and not on site to get details. Details like whether Daisy had also left money to our church, as she’d intended.

But maybe once Win left town, too, Daisy had lost interest in us. Maybe we had been in her will, then she removed us when her contact with the congregation ceased, or at the very least decreased.

And maybe not . . .

I didn’t voice my suspicions. “Any news on when Cinda will return? I’d love to find out what she and Reverend Dorchester talked about.”

“You could ask the administrative assistant. She’s covering social services while Cinda’s away.”

“Social services?”

“Cinda’s our social worker.”

Which meant Cinda would probably be the person most likely to have information about Daisy’s final plans, including her will.

I stood. “I’ll see if I can get her contact information in Jamaica. You’ve been a big help.”

“This can’t possibly have anything to do with Ellen’s death, can it?” Flo asked.

I couldn’t imagine how myself, but at the rate I was uncovering new information, anything seemed possible.

Our county courthouse is plain and functional, not exactly the finest moment in local architecture. After asking a few questions of bored clerical staff, I ended up in the applications department, at a counter tended by a bald man wearing wire-rimmed glasses. He stared at me as I explained that I wanted to see Daisy’s will, and for a moment, I was sure he was going to deny me a look on general principles. But after a not-so-discreet sigh, he looked up Daisy’s name on his computer, jotted down the case number, and came back after a few minutes with a reel of microfilm.

“Reader’s over there.” He motioned with a jerk of his head.

“I’m technically challenged,” I said. “You don’t want me threading microfilm through a reader by myself.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.” I dimpled appropriately. “Graduate school was a nightmare.”

He softened at the dimples, only he tried not to show it. “I’ll set it up for you. Do you need somebody to read it to you, too?” He smiled a little to offset the sarcasm.

“I can do that part.”

In a few minutes I was staring at a copy of Daisy Dreyfus’s will. Wills are so much legal gobbledygook, and I scanned until I got to the good stuff. I’d been prepared, so I wasn’t surprised at the amount Daisy had left Russell House, although I gave a low whistle. This was an honest-to-goodness lasting legacy, and I was just sorry I’d never met her. There are so many people like Daisy we never hear about, people who make huge contributions to the welfare of others and are never recognized for them.

As Flo had said, there were many smaller bequests, and I guessed these names were the foster children she had raised. The amounts were not tiny, nor were they large enough for a fabulous week in Las Vegas with the high rollers. I hoped her kids were using the money wisely.

The only other bequest was several thousand dollars to the SPCA, in the name of three dogs Daisy had likely owned and cherished.

The church was not mentioned at all.

So dead-end number . . . I had lost count. I’d known all along that this avenue of investigation was a long shot, but at least I’d only wasted a morning.

I got up and stretched. My stomach was rumbling, and I realized it was lunchtime. My bald buddy came over to check on me. He had warmed up nicely.

“Find what you needed?”

“I guess, but not what I wanted.”

“You know, you’re not the first person to check that particular will lately. A guy was in a couple weeks ago looking for it. I had to help him, too, that’s why I remember. That and the name. Daisy Dreyfus. Nobody’s named Daisy these days. “

What were the chances someone else had just happened to come in to check Daisy’s will? I forgot my craving for a panini with my best seven-grain bread, our Swiss cheese, a slice of fresh tomato.

Well, I almost forgot.

“Do you remember who it was?” I asked, hoping this kind of information wasn’t confidential.

“Did I ask
you
for a name?”

He hadn’t. I guess anybody off the street can come in and play with the microfilm.

“Can you describe him?” I countered.

“It’s been a couple of weeks or more.”

I dimpled and cocked my head. Nose wrinkling next, if I needed it. Like I haven’t told my daughter, it’s a powerful weapon.

He relented. “Tall guy. Older, in his late sixties maybe? Could have been older. A little frail I think, like maybe he’d been sick and was recovering. Oh, yeah, he had this booming voice. I remember, because he sure didn’t sound sick.”

Win. Reverend Godwin Dorchester. Right here in this room. Looking at Daisy’s will.

“You wouldn’t have that exact date, would you?”

He shook his head. “But it was a week, no, more like two weeks before Easter, because I went away on vacation right after he came in. I just got back.”

Win had died about ten days before the holiday. The timing was right.

“Do you remember if he said anything, asked anything?”

“Uh-huh. There haven’t been a lot of people asking me questions ’cause I’ve been away. In fact it’s pretty quiet in here all the time. He asked about life insurance.”

“What about it?”

“Why it wasn’t in the will.”

I hadn’t thought about life insurance. After all, Daisy had been well off, with enough to leave her foster children without keeping an insurance payoff.

“I just guessed if it wasn’t there, she didn’t have any,” I said. “She had lots of assets. No need.”

“You’d be guessing wrong. A lot of old people bought whole life policies when they were young. You know, the kind you start paying a little on every month? Unless the estate itself is the beneficiary, the insurance goes directly to the person named in the policy. Say she leaves it to her Aunt Matilda. The company sends it to Matilda directly. It doesn’t show up in the will at all.”

“So Daisy could have had a policy, and we’d never know?”

“Right, but you can find out. You know the name of the company, it’s pretty easy. Or you can ask the state to search for a lost policy, if you don’t. There’s a form you can fill out. It takes a while, but it’s usually fruitful. The company will contact you if they have information, as long as you have some good reason to be asking. That’s what I told him. The other guy.”

I thanked him for all his help, then I left him to wrestle with the microfilm, which was mysteriously tangled, even though I had cranked it with extreme care, just the way he had showed me.

My brain was overflowing. Even with the lure of my new panini grill, I didn’t want to go home, where I would find a million distractions to keep me from piecing together what I had learned. I knew I was going to have to glue this together with a lot of “what ifs.” I left my van in the parking lot and crossed the street on foot to the worst coffee shop in town, where I ordered egg salad on toast and hot tea. Not surprisingly, I had the place to myself.

While I waited for the owner to burn the bread and mysteriously transform the eggs into rubber, I sipped my lukewarm tea and scribbled notes.

By the time I had managed to consume half my sandwich without gagging, I had a scenario.

It went like this.

Win preaches his anniversary-year sermon. Ellen hears about it in advance, and because she’s been planning to visit Emerald Springs anyway, she schedules her visit to coincide. She attends the service, and afterwards, she speaks to Win at the reception.

Had Ellen actually told me they had talked? I couldn’t remember, but Zoey had mentioned it. I remembered that much and believed it, too. After all, Ellen had come up to me for a chat after Win’s memorial service, and I was a stranger.

Okay, they had almost certainly talked. And here’s how it went, at least according to my inner detective.

First Win: “How’s Zoey doing, yada, yada, yada.” Then Ellen: “I’m sure you heard Daisy Dreyfus left Russell House quite a large sum in her will. Remember all the times she said that’s what she planned?”

Win, shocked: “I hadn’t heard. A lot?”

“Yes, an amazing amount, really. Did she leave the church anything? She always said she was going to.”

Win, recovering: “If she did, I never heard about it.”

Ellen: “Didn’t she say she was making the church the beneficiary for her life insurance?”