The Bequest

The Bequest
©2013 Mike Farris
All Rights Reserved

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade
or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without
the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than

Cover Design by Denise Lipiansky
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To Susan—thank you for always believing in me.

The thought kept floating through Leland Crowell’s mind as his older
model Buick Regal rounded a curve along the Big Sur coastline near
Ragged Point, just fifteen miles north of Randolph Hearst’s famous
mansion at San Simeon, California. To the east, forests darkened the
mountainside; to the west, sheer cliffs, hundreds of feet high, dropped to
the hellish maelstrom of waves crashing on rock below, creating a foam
swirl of white that gleamed in the moonlight. At the late hour, no other
vehicles traveled this dangerous track of the Pacific Coast Highway that
stretched between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

A flick of the wrist, a turn of the steering wheel, and it would all be
over. No one would be the wiser. Just another tragic accident.
But that wasn’t the plan. It was a carefully laid plan, one that
required attention to detail. Everything had to be done just right.
He pulled the Regal to a stop on the wrong side of the road, almost
touching the guardrail. The driver’s side window was down, and the roar
from below filled the interior of the car. After thirty seconds, the driver’s
door opened and Leland stepped out. Thin, in the way drug addicts often
appear, his long scraggly hair swirled around his face in the brisk wind. In
one hand, he held a sheaf of papers, bound by brass fasteners. He stood
between the car and the guardrail for a moment, the papers clutched
tightly.
Slowly, deliberately, he first put one leg over the guardrail, then
another. He stood for a moment on the precipice, scant inches from the
drop-off. He teetered for a moment as a particularly strong gust of wind
slammed against his frail frame. He peered down. All that was visible in
the darkness was the swirling foam hundreds of feet below.
He glanced at the bound pages in his hand. The words spoke to him
as they had when he had first written them. A tear trickled down one
cheek.
Without looking back, he tossed the pages into the car through the
driver’s side window. He held his arms at his side, almost as if standing at
attention. He had to carry out the plan.
He stepped out into the blackness.

Teri Squire sat
on the couch in her den, eyes glued to the
newspaper. A soft breeze, with the faint odor of creosote, wafted in from
the open sliding doors to her right that afforded a spectacular view of the
Santa Monica Mountains from her Beverly Hills home in the hills north of
Sunset Boulevard. Not a conventional beauty, Teri’s skin bore signs of
wear beyond her 36 years, as if she’d had some exposure to sun in her
early days. Auburn hair hung to her shoulders, pulled casually back to
emphasize piercing green eyes.
Dressed in faded jeans and a denim
workshirt, she had a fresh-scrubbed, girl-next-door aura about her. Based
upon her surroundings—a luxurious stucco home that sprawled across
nearly an acre of hillside, lavishly furnished with all the latest in home
décor,
topped
off by twin golden statues on
the mantle
above
the
fireplace—one might assume that all was right in the two-time Oscar
winner’s world.

But the expression on her face as she read the
Los Angeles Times
told a
different story. “Latest Flop for Squire” screamed the headline over an
article
that described, almost
with glee, that Teri now
had four
consecutive box office bombs to her credit. The latest, a period drama
about the first female FBI agent, had arrived with all kinds of promise. A
screenplay by a three-time Oscar-winning screenwriter based on a
New
York Times
bestselling book, a four-time nominee director, and produced
by last year’s winner for best picture—the project bore all the earmarks of
success. Top it off with the two-time Oscar winner Teri Squire playing the
lead, and how could it go wrong?

But it had. The critics had panned the advance screenings, though no
one put much stock in that. What did critics know? But the test audiences
hadn’t thought too much of it, either. A few scenes had been re-shot, a
few new ones added, a re-edit, then it was unveiled in over 3,000 theaters
over the past weekend—and the crowds stayed away in droves. Now the
trades were attributing the bomb to Teri, not the script, not the directing,
not the cast in general. “Box office poison” was what they called Teri.
After all, this made four in a row, with a total loss threatened that could
approach half a billion dollars when all was said and done. The producers
deserved more for the twenty million a picture they paid her, the trades
said. They certainly should rethink her price. Maybe she ought to pay to
be in the next film, one smartass suggested.

Teri slammed the paper down on the coffee table just as her phone
rang, the theme from
Magnum, P.I.
filling the air. She snatched it and
checked the printout to identify the caller, then answered.

“Hi, Baby,” Mary Tucker said. “I’m sorry I missed your call. Is
everything okay?”
Teri shifted sideways on the couch so as not to be mocked by the
headline. “Yeah, everything’s fine. It’s not always bad news when I call.”
“I know. It’s just that—”
“It seems like it?”
Mary laughed, a forced sound that seemed to catch in her throat.
“Sometimes I just need to hear a familiar voice,” Teri said.
“That’s what mothers are for.”
Teri felt tears well in her eyes, but she quickly blinked them away.
She made an effort to suppress the self-pity she knew would permeate her
tone if she allowed it, resulting in an ever more pronounced drawl.
“Where were you when I called?”
“Your daddy and I were down at the barn. Bingo’s having a tough
time. Chad’s out there now and—”
Teri’s pulse quickened at Bingo’s name. “Is she all right?”
“She’s just getting old, that’s all. Sooner or later we’ve got to start
thinking about—” Her mother’s voice halted, interrupted by a male voice
in the background. Teri couldn’t hear the words, but she knew her
father’s tone. The same tone he always used with her, at least during the
last few years when she had been at home. Whatever he was saying, it
wasn’t good.
Mary came back on the line. “Listen, Baby, I’ve got to go.”
“Was that Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“Tell him—”
The words choked off in her throat and the tears returned. This time
blinking failed, and a stray rolled down her cheek.
“Tell him what, Baby?”
That was a good question. Tell him what, indeed. I’m sorry? She’d
said that enough times already. But it didn’t matter. It never did. I miss
you? That wouldn’t work either. I love you? Just to give him a chance to
not say it in return? No, she’d pass on that, too.
“Nothing, Mama. You take care of Bingo, now, you hear?”
“I will. Bye-bye, Baby.”
Teri held the phone to her ear long after her mother hung up, as if
something still lingered in the wireless ether. Some little part of home that
now seemed so long ago and so very far away.

Mary Tucker hung up the phone and turned to her husband Tom washing
his hands in the kitchen sink. It was easy to see where Teri got her looks.
Even sun-washed and wearing no make-up, lined with sixty-three years of
age, Mary’s beauty shone through. It was not enough, though, to cover the
sadness that darkened her countenance.