Dead Rapunzel (8 page)

“Umm, that was good,” said Judith, finishing off a slice of apple pie. “Before I head back to the inn I wonder if you folks would like a little background on how Rudd and Philip met, especially since his children never warmed to her. That may help explain their attitude toward me, anyway.”

“I am very interested,” said Osborne, “since I think Philip was about twenty years older than Rudd, wasn't he?”

“Twenty-two to be exact,” said Judith. “He was sixty-nine when he died.”

“Why would that be important, Doc?” asked Lew. “I mean, you're eleven years older than me and I don't think your daughters are upset with that.”

“It's not the age difference, Lew, so much as they strike me as such different people—”

“Yes and no,” said Judith. “Philip and Rudd had something unusual in common. Both were cancer survivors and that's how they met—while getting chemo at the hospital over in Green Bay. That was five years ago. Their treatments were successful for a while and they had two terrific years together before Philip's cancer returned.

“On the other hand, they could not have had more different lives before they met. Rudd grew up in Eagle River. She was an only child who lost her parents early, so she rarely went back to visit her hometown. Even after her husband and their little girl were killed in the car accident, which is when we became friends, she stayed close to the university and her research.

“The irony of her life is that just when she got a major grant to write a book on the artist Georgia O'Keeffe and the Wisconsin influences on her art, Rudd was diagnosed with lymphoma. That was when she decided to come home. The woods and the water and the little cottage that she had inherited from her parents suddenly seemed the most comforting place to be. At that point, my friend's prognosis was not good, but she agreed to give chemotherapy a try. I have to hand it to her—Rudd was an optimist.

“Right about that same time, Philip was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was told he needed aggressive chemotherapy if he was going to survive. He wasn't sure if he wanted to go through all that. He hadn't had an easy life.”

“Come on, I find that hard to believe,” said Ray. “My father used to take me fishing up on Thunder Lake. He told me the Tomlinsons owned almost the entire lake. The great-grandfather was the ‘barbed wire baron' of the North—there wasn't a roll of fencing that didn't come from one of the Tomlinson factories.”

“You're right about that,” said Judith. “And Philip was the heir to that fortune. Like Rudd, he was an only child, and during his youth, his father diversified into paper mills and railroads, so when he died, Philip inherited over a hundred million dollars. But he had been a lonely child who grew up going to boarding school and summer camp. He rarely saw his parents.

“Sure, most people think he should have been happy, that he never had to work, but for Philip that extreme wealth was a curse. He told Rudd he hated never having the satisfaction of accomplishing something—just like he hated his wife. And two of his three children.”

“Whoa, let's stop right there,” said Lew, glancing over her shoulder to make sure she wasn't being too loud. “He hated his wife? But they had children. You don't have children with someone you hate.”

Even as she spoke, Lew knew she was wrong. She remembered her own fury at the man who had fathered her two children: the cute, reckless teenager who had morphed into a shiftless drunk. A drunk she shed the minute she could earn a modest living as a secretary at the local paper mill before, eventually, putting herself through school so she could enter law enforcement. So, yes, you can have children with someone you hate—it's just that you may not experience that hatred until too late.

“Philip was married young—I think he was only twenty-five. He met Caroline at a friend's wedding. He thought she was very pretty, which she was. She thought he was very rich, which he was,” said Judith with a wry laugh. “Surprise, surprise—guess who announced she was pregnant three months after they started dating.

“Philip told Rudd that Caroline's parents allegedly were scandalized and demanded that he marry her, but he always suspected her mother had encouraged her to trap him into the marriage. And back in the day that's what a responsible young man did. So they eloped. Seven months later, Sloane arrived.

“From what he told Rudd—and who knows what the real story is because we all know the definition of a dysfunctional family is ‘more than one person'—Caroline went on to have two more children over the next ten years and then she locked her bedroom door. Not figuratively, either. Whatever her reasons, now that she had three children, plenty of money, and a lovely home in Lake Forest—she felt she no longer needed to put up with Philip.

“On the other hand, she refused to divorce him and he didn't push it. His father had kept a mistress for years, and since both Philip's parents were still alive, Philip didn't want the Tomlinson history of marital misery selling Chicago papers. Maybe he was too private for his own good.

“But with the estrangement from Caroline, he had no reason to stay in Lake Forest. He could manage the family fortune from anywhere, so he moved up north. At first he lived in the old lodge built by his grandfather, but when Caroline decided that she and the children should spend the summers there, too, Philip bought himself an old Airstream house trailer and put it down twenty feet from the lake and far away from the family.”

“A house trailer? That seems odd. He could certainly afford to build another house, couldn't he?” asked Lew.

“Yes, but he loved being right on the water, and I think he took great satisfaction in the fact that his trailer appalled Caroline. She was
not
going to take visitors down to a trailer home, so he knew he was safe. And it was cozy. Philip was a good cook and he had outfitted the little kitchen just the way he wanted. His fishing boat and canoe were right there—”

“You'll have to see my place,” Ray interrupted. “I know just how the guy felt. Sounds just like my trailer.”

“Except yours has a monster fish painted on it,” said Lew. “Yours is a house trailer designed to frighten small children.”

“Really?” Judith sounded intrigued. “Hmm. Well, let me finish because I know it's getting late. Are we the last ones here?” She looked around.

“There are people in the bar,” said Osborne. “They don't close until midnight.”

“But you folks have had a long day,” said Judith. “I'll talk fast. By the time Rudd met Philip, he had been living in the house trailer for years. He was a widower. Caroline had stumbled one day, fallen down the basement stairs in the old lodge, and died of a skull fracture. By that time, the children were grown. Sloane was on her second marriage, and Tim was alleged to be an artist living summers in Quebec and spending winters painting and scuba diving in Bonaire.

“Tim, for the record, was his mother's favorite. That woman saved every drawing, every painting he did since he was a toddler. When Rudd and Philip decided to have the lodge torn down for structural reasons, not to mention bad memories, it took an entire day to empty the two rooms where Caroline had stored every piece of art that her son had produced. But it was the kind of stuff that only a mother would love. Philip offered to have it boxed up and shipped to Tim's home in Quebec. When Tim didn't answer his dad's phone calls and emails—off it went to the dump.

“That may explain why Tim had the hardest time adjusting to Rudd. I mean, Rudd and I know fine art—as scholars and as professors schooled in the studio-art experience. We know when someone has a good eye, a command of craft, a genuine talent. Tim has never taken a formal class in any of the arts—not even drawing. His mother told him he was brilliant and he believed her.

“In my humble opinion,” added Judith, looking around the table, “he does have one outstanding talent—he's ‘Mister Answer Man.' He knows it all and doesn't hesitate to let you know how pathetic you are.”

“You love the guy, right?” said Ray with a chuckle. “But I know exactly what you mean. This brings back a memory from when I was eight years old. My dad, who was a surgeon, knew Philip Tomlinson from when he set a broken finger for the guy.

“So this one day, Dad made me go fishing with him and the Tomlinsons, Philip and Tim. Tim was older and bigger than me and he kept pushing me around in the boat. We went swimming later and he thought it was hilarious to hold my head underwater until I just about drowned. Guy was a bully and a jerk.”

“Still is,” said Judith. “Rudd could barely stand to deal with him.

“Then there is Kenzie, the youngest and the nicest of the three, but I think that's because she's bipolar or, maybe, borderline schizophrenic. Who knows? She's always on some drug that keeps her pretty spacey. She is married to a really sweet guy from Loon Lake whom her mother hated. Kenzie was the only one of the three children to whom Philip was close.”

“A lot of hate in the family,” said Ray, pouring himself more coffee.

“I don't understand,” said Lew. “Why did Philip not care for his children? That seems a bit extreme.”

“I thought the same, but Rudd said that he told her that Caroline was so overprotective of the children that he was rarely allowed much time with them. If you think about how he grew up—as an only child whose parents assigned his care to maids, nannies, camp counselors, and boarding schools—I'm sure part of the problem was Philip's. He didn't know how to be close to his children.

“By the time they were teenagers, the marriage was a shambles and he considered the kids to be—and these are the words he used—‘rude, entitled little brats, just like their mother.'”

“Philip didn't hold back, did he?” said Ray as he passed the thermal coffee pot around the table. “Doc, want a refill?”

“Nope, one more cup and I'll never get to sleep,” said Osborne.

“I'll have a touch,” said Lew. “I have paperwork to take care of before I can sleep. Thank you, Judith, this is quite the happy family you've just outlined for us.”

“One last little item you should be aware of before you meet the crew. And, by the way, I know I'm prejudiced and I am well aware your impressions of the family may be—and maybe should be—very different from mine, but if I seem too critical, I loved Rudd—”

“We know that,” said Lew. “You're saving us time in understanding the dynamics of the family.”

“See . . . ” Judith paused, “where I am really going is that I don't think that family meeting tomorrow has anything to do with planning a memorial for their stepmother—they just want to know where the money is. And they are in for an unpleasant surprise.

“This goes back to when Caroline was still alive. In the event that he died first, Philip didn't trust her not to leave everything to the kids, which he told Rudd was the last thing he wanted. So he sold all the family assets and established a generous income for Caroline, but only after she agreed to write a will of her own that restricted the children to receiving just half a million each.

“He placed the rest of his money in a separate trust and, on marrying Rudd, he named her as the sole beneficiary of his estate. It overruled any will that may have been left—by him or Caroline. Philip's entire estate then was included in that trust and it all went to Rudd.

“That infuriated his children. So Tim hired a lawyer last year to contest the trust beneficiary.” Judith paused. “Rudd told me yesterday that Tim learned just two weeks ago that he had no hope of changing anything—it is a rock-solid legal document.”

“But what happens now that Rudd is dead?” asked Lew.

“That's what I have to tell the family tomorrow. Rudd set up a trust to be administered by me, and my job is to see that the museum is built, the art purchased, and the endowment managed so the museum is always open to the public. That news,” said Judith with a grimace, “will be hard for Philip's kids to hear, especially Tim. I have no doubt they think they are about to inherit a windfall.”

“You have mentioned a museum a couple times now,” said Osborne. “Is this something local? Or an institution in Minneapolis? What is it exactly?”

“It's an art museum to be built on the Tomlinson property, with paintings and drawings by two artists who Rudd and Philip both loved: Georgia O'Keeffe and Helen Frankenthaler. Paintings by both are very expensive, so Rudd anticipated having just one or two by each—but a significant collection of drawings and studies. I know this sounds a bit much.”

“If this was about pictures by Gary Larson, like
The Far Side
, I'd know what you're talking about,” said Ray. “Or even a museum for antique snowmobiles, but you just lost me.” Osborne and Lew nodded in agreement.

“Trust me, there was a method to their madness in planning this,” said Judith. “Once they got past their health issues, Rudd and Philip discovered they had a lot in common. They loved the outdoors and fly-fishing, but they also loved art, which they discovered by accident.

“One day when they were sitting near one another while getting chemo, they both reached for a copy of
ARTnews
magazine, which someone had left behind, and started to chat. That sparked their interest in each other. Over the next three months, they continued to chat during their treatments and it was always about art or movies or fly-fishing. They were a dear pair, really.”

“Then, during the two years they had together during which they both had quite good health, they decided to invest Philip's money in a new museum to be built on Philip's property and focus on O'Keeffe and Frankenthaler. Rudd already owned a print by Frankenthaler, and Philip had a Georgia O'Keeffe painting that he had inherited. They were going to call it The Tomlinson Museum.

“Philip was really excited. He told me he felt for the first time in his life that he could do something important. Rudd, of course, loved the idea. She said that growing up in Eagle River the only art she ever saw was what she called ‘cottage porn'—paintings of ducks, deer, or cottages bathed in moonlight.