Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

you.”
    Homer backed out the door. I sent Dashiell to close it and heard the lock click as the door slammed shut.
    “Terrific trick,” Homer shouted from the other side as I picked up the drawing Dashiell’s big feet had pulled off the door. What was it? A man, or a woman wearing pants, drawn from the rear, with what appeared to be spoons stuck into the person’s hair.
    I wondered if it was supposed to be an alien, if the kids watched Star Trek or The X Files.
    I looked at it again. There was a snaky ground line, someone trying like hell to add a sense of place to his art, someone who might not feel that comfort, that kind of connection in his own life.
    I taped it back where it had been, shouting back to Homer, “I’ll just give this one more try, then I’ll join you in the kitchen.”
    I listened at the door as his footsteps receded.
    Quickly picking up the pages of the will, I stapled them exactly as they’d been before and replaced them in the file at the very back of the bottom drawer. Then, just in case Homer had taken off his shoes, come back in his stocking feet, and was listening outside the door, I dialed my house and, a moment later, hung up and headed for the kitchen to see if I might learn something useful, something I ought to know before things got any worse than they already were.

Chapter 15
    Star-Crossed Lovers, He Said

    My first three faxes were lying on the desk. I picked them up, tapped them into a neat pile, and turned them over. The first was from Marty. It was handwritten and very short.
    “No news.” And he’d signed his name.
    Sometimes, like two dogs with one bone, the boys in blue don’t like to share.
    I sat down on the daybed and read the wills, saving the good stuff, I figured, for last. In the older will, Harry’s next-to-last will and testament, written when Harry’s wife, Marilyn, was alive, monies were in trust so that she would have no trouble living in the style to which she’d become accustomed, for all I knew, since birth, and substantial sums were allotted for her sister Arlene and Arlene’s offspring, Bailey Poole and Janice Poole Richardson. Most of the money— about two-thirds of it, all invested in what I assumed was a well-diversified portfolio—was left in trust for Harbor View,
    and it seemed to me to be enough that at no time in the foreseeable future would the institution be short of cash. The trust was to be managed by Harry’s partner, Eli Kagan, whose sons, Nathan and Samuel, were each left what appeared to be a very modest stock package, something that might have been more a gesture to Eli than actual affection for his sons. No surprises at all in this will, everything glatt kosher, as my grandmother Sonya would have said.
    On the second will, the signatures would barely have been dry if this had been the original, but of course it wasn’t. Harry’s lawyer had that. This will was full of surprises, some of which I didn’t think would go down well at all with most of the people named as heirs. The will still named Marilyn’s relatives, Arlene, Bailey, and Janice, who was now Janice Poole—divorced, I assumed, sometime between the last two wills. But this time they were given small amounts of stock and some tokens of their departed relative’s affection for them. Actually, when I looked over the “tokens,” it occurred to me that the purpose of those gifts might be to make sure it didn’t appear these relatives had been overlooked. In other words, the gifts were so trivial compared to those in the earlier will that their presence there might have been to prevent a lawsuit.
    Fat chance, I thought, turning the page.
    The Kagan boys fared no better and no worse in this will. They had apparently neither fallen from favor nor gained any ground. The surprise was yet to come.
    The bulk of the money was left in trust for Harbor View. So far, so good. But the trustee was no longer Eli Kagan. The trustee and manager, the person now named to take over Harry’s role, was none other than Venus White, who had every reason to think that as of Friday, which I was sure was the day the heirs would be made aware of the provisions of the new will, her life would be in danger.
    Although, if those bugs were still functional, she might already be in danger.
    This was no ordinary will—the sort where the lawyer could simply mail copies to each heir. There would be questions, shouting, tears, accusations. Friday was going to be one hell of a day.
    I looked