The Baxter Trust

letters, and then lured Greely up to Sheila’s apartment on the pretext of meeting his long-lost daughter and then killed him? It would have been a perfect frame-up. There would be nothing to connect Uncle Max to the murder at all. And Sheila would take the rap.
    Steve had no idea why Max would want to frame his niece, but it wasn’t inconceivable. Max was her trustee. Her trust was worth millions. Max supposedly had millions of his own, but what if they were tied up in speculative investments of all types? What if Max sometimes had need for ready cash? He wouldn’t be the first trustee who’d dipped into a trust for his own purposes. And then with Greely on the scene, contesting the trust, contesting the will and demanding an audit, Max could have found himself in quite a spot. A spot where killing Greely and framing Sheila would actually have been killing two birds with one stone.
    So Steve was desperate for information.
    “Did your mother ever talk about your father?” he repeated.
    “Why? What are you getting at?”
    “I don’t know. Did she?”
    “Not that I know of. I was very young when she died, you know.”
    “I know. I want you to remember back. I want you to tell me everything you can remember before your mother died.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “You don’t have to understand. You just have to tell me.”
    Sheila’s jaw set. “Oh no you don’t, mister. That’s the way my uncle treats me. That’s why I wouldn’t let him hire a lawyer for me. Now if you want something out of me you tell me why, and none of this you-wouldn’t-understand-little-girl shit.”
    “Sorry,” Steve said. “I’m a little pushed for time, and I’m getting edgy. The thing is, I don’t understand either. And I need to understand. So I need some facts. And if they don’t seem to make much sense, that’s because I’m groping in the dark, and I don’t know what does make sense. But I’m trying to sort it out, you see?
    “So here’s the thing—if you didn’t kill Greely, then someone else did. And they killed him in your apartment with your knife. And there’s gotta be a reason. And the only way that makes sense at all is if you tie it in with a twenty-million-dollar trust fund.”
    Sheila threw up her arms. “But how? Tie it in how?”
    He shook his head. “I know. That’s the problem. I’ve thoroughly gone over the provisions of the trust, and aside from that stupid licentious-behavior clause that’s causing all the trouble, there’s nothing in it that could possible affect any of the parties mentioned in it. I mean, it isn’t even as if you were convicted of this crime, Phillip would come into forty million dollars instead of twenty. If you lose your trust, no one gains except a bunch of unnamed charities.”
    Sheila’s eyes widened. “Wait a minute! How do you know they’re unnamed?”
    Steve looked at her. “I read the trust. They’re not named.”
    “They’re not named in the trust,” she said excitedly. “But what if, somehow, someone knew that a particular charity stood to benefit?”
    He waved it away. “You’re grasping at straws. That’s ridiculous.”
    “Is it?” she said indignantly. “Why? Because I thought of it? Because you didn’t? What’s ridiculous about it?”
    “What difference would it make if a charity benefits?”
    “You don’t think there are people who have siphoned money out of charities?”
    “And how the hell would they know?”
    “Through Uncle Max, of course.” Sheila was becoming more and more animated as she built on the idea. “Can’t you see it? You’ve met him. Can’t you see him at some ritzy social club joking over a brandy with old cronies about how if I’m not a good girl, some of their organizations stand to make a few million?”
    “No, I can’t.”
    “Damn it, I’m serious. It’s my neck here. The least you could do is consider it.”
    “Fine,” Steve said, his voice rising. “Noted. I hereby promise to investigate the possibility that the United Way, acting on inside information that they stood to benefit from the trust, conspired to have a blackmailer killed in your apartment. All right? You satisfied?”
    Sheila recoiled from the intensity of his outburst. “Jesus Christ!”
    He grimaced, rubbed his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just don’t have time to go off on a tangent right now. I don’t think you’re stupid, and I will look into this, okay? But right now I need you to answer some questions.