Father Fever. Muriel Jensen
smiled indulgently at her. Augusta always inspired smiles.
Then he folded his hands atop the documents he’d brought with him and asked solicitously, “Would you like coffee before we begin?”
Three heads shook.
“We’ve just had lunch,” Athena explained.
He nodded. “Then, before we begin, let me offer my condolences on the loss of your aunt. I met her just a year ago when we first worked on this will, and I found her to be a most charming and enlightened woman.”
Athena opened her mouth to speak and discovered she had no voice.
“Thank you,” Alexis said. “We did, too.”
Pineau squared the pages on the table and began to read the formal legalese. “I, Sadie Richmond, being of sound mind…”
He read on and Athena and her sisters exchanged grim glances. There was no avarice here, no eagerness to know what Sadie had left to whom. Just a still profound disbelief that she was gone and a willingness to carry out her wishes.
“To Athena,” the lawyer said, turning over a page, “I leave my Tiffany watch with the diamond fleur-de-lis in the hope that looking at it will brighten her tight schedule. I also leave her my aquamarine-and-diamond bar brooch to dress up her serious suits.”
Athena closed her eyes and saw images of her aunt wearing the brooch on the shoulder of a smart black dress, on the lapel of her burgundy wool suit, on the blue blazer she’d worn to the Dancer’s Beach Regatta every summer.
Tears welled in Athena’s throat but she swallowed them.
“To Alexis,” Pineau continued, “I leave my entire collection of berets because she always complimented me on them and has the flair to wear them, herself. And I want her to have the Degas in the upstairs hall because she might have posed for it.”
Athena remembered the gilt-framed painting of a ballerina executing a grand jeté and thought the gift appropriate. Alexis always moved as though in ballet slippers.
A tear fell down Alexis’s cheek and Augusta covered her hand with her own.
“To Augusta, I leave my doll collection and the Steiff bear she cuddled with when her sisters were too much for her.”
Gusty nodded, her lips trembling dangerously. Alexis patted her back.
“I wish the girls to share whatever they would like of my clothes and my jewelry, then donate the rest to a women’s shelter. I apologize to them for the paltry contents of my savings account, but they know how I’ve loved my travels. I wish it and my few stocks to be divided equally among them.”
Pineau paused to take a breath.
Alexis and Augusta leaned back in thought and Athena let her mind drift to her favorite memory of Sadie. She was striding ahead of them up the beach at Cliffside, wearing pedal pushers and a T-shirt, her graying blond hair tied up in a scarf as she led them in the collection of shells and other ocean treasures.
Athena was lost in the moment, unaware that Pineau hadn’t covered everything until he said, a little quickly, she thought, “And to David Hartford, I leave Cliffside and all its furnishings.”
Athena’s eyes flew open. She turned to her sisters and saw the same shocked surprise she felt mirrored in their faces. There was a moment of stunned silence, then a loud and simultaneous “Who?”
“David Hartford,” Pineau repeated, tapping the document with the tips of his fingers. “A friend, apparently.”
The women stared at one another again. Athena, caught completely off balance, struggled to think.
But Alexis didn’t stop to think. “I’ve never heard of him,” she said, leaning forward across the table. “A friend from where? Dancer’s Beach?”
Pineau shook his head. “She didn’t say where she met him.”
“She never mentioned him to us.” Augusta looked from one sister to the other. Heads shook confirmingly. “You have to contact him about the will, Mr. Pineau,” Athena pointed out, an unidentified but unsettling suspicion forming in the pit of her stomach where her grief for Sadie ached. “You must know where he lives. And why isn’t he here?”
“I have contacted him. He lives in Chicago, but he wasn’t able to come to the reading. So, I’ve faxed him everything he has to know, and transferred the house into his name.”
Augusta and Alexis gasped simultaneously.
“When did Aunt Sadie change the will?” Athena asked. “We know that two years ago when we were all together at Christmas, she intended to leave Cliffside to the three of us. Not that we care about possession, but…it was a family home. Who is this guy?”
“This will…” Pineau began.
“What do we know about him?” Augusta interrupted. “I mean, she loved telling us stories about her life in Dancer’s Beach. She lived very quietly, except for hosting some local events because Cliffside was so big. I can’t believe she’d have become that close to someone without telling us. And if we’ve never heard of him…”
Pineau shook his head apologetically. “My job isn’t to investigate the beneficiaries of a will, just to see that the deceased’s wishes are carried out.”
“When did she change it?” Alexis asked again.
“As I said before,” Pineau replied patiently, “we drew up this will a year ago.”
Athena stood in agitation. Alexis got to her feet and began to pace.
“I don’t understand,” Augusta said from her chair. “Where would she have met this Hartford guy?”
“Maybe on one of her trips,” Alexis suggested, stopping in the middle of the carpet. “He’s probably one of those gigolos who preys on older women and gets them to sign over their life savings. Or their house.”
“Ladies, I know you’re disappointed about Cliffside,” Pineau said quietly, “but your aunt was very calm and clearheaded when she made the change. I think she truly wanted Mr. Hartford to have it. And I personally think she was too clever a woman to be fooled by a charlatan.”
Athena frowned at him. “But we don’t know for certain, do we, because you haven’t conducted an investigation of any kind.”
Alexis gasped and snapped her fingers. “Maybe he wants Cliffside for the smugglers’ stairs!” she said to Athena. “I mean, apart from the fact that it’s a wonderful property.”
“That’s right!” Augusta cried.
Pineau looked puzzled. “What stairs?”
“When we were children,” Athena explained, “we discovered a door in the basement at Cliffside that led to a stairway through the cliff down to the beach. Sadie padlocked it, telling us that during Prohibition in Grandpa Richmond’s day, booze had been smuggled in that way. Maybe Hartford is planning to put the house to a similar use. Drugs, maybe?”
“Ladies—” Pineau pleaded.
“I know, I know.” Athena cut him off. “It’s not your job to check him out, but maybe it’s ours. Think about what’s happened here! Our aunt dies in the crash of a light plane shortly after she wills the family home to a total stranger?”
“It’s been a year since she changed the will,” Pineau pointed out again, reasonably. “We have no reason to believe the plane crash wasn’t a simple accident. And Hartford wasn’t a stranger to her.”
She ignored his attempt at reason and turned to her sisters. “Until the authorities can bring up the plane and prove to me that the crash was an accident, I think this Hartford bears looking into. What do you say?”
Augusta nodded. “Let’s do it. I took a couple of weeks’