Okay, so there was this good chance I was going to die within the next half hour or so, the timing depending on traffic on the Tamiami Trail and the Skyway this time of night.
And, damned if I didn’t respond to the great looming void by thinking like an attorney.
Staring down Jennifer’s gun, I happened to remember I had never quite gotten around to making a will. As I had neither spouse nor child, my estate would pass by state law to my parents.
That was the rub. I didn’t want my parents to have my 180 acres of apple trees and good pine forest in north Georgia because they would evict Farmer Dave, who was still hiding out from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and then they’d sell the pine trees to the first logger that came along. No, I wanted Delvon, my mad-hatter brother and best friend, to have the apple orchard. I wanted Dan, my sweet, shallow-thinking delivery-man brother, to have my Florida house and half of my other assets. I quickly calculated that with half of my more liquid assets Delvon could pay off the mortgage on the orchard, especially because he makes far more than he likes to discuss, plus his profit is tax free. My insurance would pay off the mortgage on my house for Dan, and he and the wife and kids could have a winter place in Sarasota, or a prime rental property. Dead, I was in good shape financially. This was an oddly comforting thought.
While Jennifer stood four feet in front of me, contemplating casting me off the Sunshine Skyway as a possible suicide, I realized I needed to write a quick will.
Very quickly, from the look on Jennifer’s face.
“Ah, Jenn,” I started, pausing to frame just the right words, “could I, uh, make a last will and testament? You see, I have this apple orchard in north Georgia, and I want my brother to have it, and if I don’t make a will my mean, crazy mother will get it.” Forsaking entirely my vague father, who had no use of an apple orchard, as he had his fishing dock, but knowing he wouldn’t stand up to her when she booted Farmer Dave off and sold the place.
“A will?”
“Yeah—it won’t take me long. Just a couple of minutes to write it. Please?”
The inscrutable face on the evil Jennifer flustered me a bit.
“I mean we ...are friends. Just this last request. Please?” Were friends, the past tense being more technically accurate, as it’s hard to feel warm, fuzzy feelings toward someone planning to force you over the side of a monstrously high bridge. But claiming to still be her friend might warm her hard heart more than the harsh-sounding past tense.
“Don’t try anything,” she said.
“Ah, yeah, like I’d shoot my felt-tip pen at you?”
Mierda, I thought, easing over to the desk as a wary Jennifer and a tail-wagging Bearess followed. What I was talking about was a holographic will—a will in the dead person’s handwriting and signed but not witnessed. I had no idea if Georgia would probate a holographic will; Florida will not. I needed a witness—two, probably, but at least one.
“Okay, don’t get antsy. I’m just getting out a note-pad and a felt-tip, all right?”
Quicker than a high school typing exam, I wrote out: “I, Lillian Rose Cleary, being of sound body and mind, do hereby leave my 180 acres of apple orchard and woods in north Georgia, in the county of Habersham, to my beloved brother Delvon Williams Cleary. To my other beloved brother, Daniel Taylor Cleary, I leave my house in Sarasota, Florida. The remainder of my estate should be divided equally between Delvon and Daniel.”
This probably wouldn’t win me an A in any estate-planning class, and I wasn’t even sure it would work in the probate courts of Georgia and Florida, but I had to try, as the thought of my mother evicting Farmer Dave and selling off my timber rankled me.
Now the tricky part. “Ah, Jenn, I need a witness. Could you sign below my signature and date it?”
“You got to be kidding.”
“Uh, no. It doesn’t count without a witness.”
Jennifer stood over my shoulder, glanced at what I had written, and said, snidely, I might add, “Why don’t I just sign a confession?”
“No—oh, no, everybody knows we are friends. This will make it look like, you know, we are friends, not like you’re the one who, ah, killed me. I mean, really, who witnesses somebody’s will and then kills them?” I paused, stunned by the pictures my mind was throwing at me. “If you make me jump off the bridge, then this looks like a suicide note. Sort of.”
Actually, I was pretty certain I needed two witnesses, now that I thought about it. As Jennifer hesitated, I pushed the needle.
“Jenn, ah, maybe we could, ah, stop at a gas station on the way to the Sunshine Skyway or something and get two signatures from the clerks or something. I mean, if you aren’t cool with this.”
“Hell, no. Are you totally nuts?”
Probably. A little, anyway. Might be genetic. Delvon and my parents definitely were around the bend. But a full contemplation of the madness that might run in my gene pool was not something I had the luxury of pursuing at that precise moment in time. I needed to get a credible will signed.
“All right, if you’d just sign it. Be my witness.”
“Like I’m really Jennifer,” she said. But she reached over and signed and dated my hasty will.
“You any good at forgery?”
“Stop stalling,” she snapped.
“Just one more signature. I don’t care, some woman’s name. Anybody’s.”
Jennifer leaned over me again while I sniffed her perfume—White Shoulders, I thought—and again contemplated grabbing the gun from her. She scribbled some nearly undecipherable signature that maybe was Della Street. Wasn’t that Perry Mason’s secretary? Did Jennifer have a sense of humor, or had I just misread the forged signature? Did it matter in the overall scheme of things?
“Great. Thank you.” As if we were in an office and this was a normal will.
“Sure.” As if it were nothing. As if she weren’t planning to kill me.
“One more thing... ah, two, actually.”
Jennifer waved the gun at me and said, “No more stalling. Get up.”
“The ferret. You know, Newly’s ferret, Johnny Winter. Let me put down some more food and water in his cage. I mean, no telling how long it will be before somebody thinks to look in the guest room and feed him.” Stall, stall, stall, my desperate brain commanded, and I obeyed. “You don’t want that poor animal to starve, do you?”
Jennifer squinted her eyes, but she apparently had a soft spot for animals, as she finally nodded.
“Bearess, stay,” she ordered, and the dog sat.
Then with her as a shadow I moved into the second bedroom, where I checked on Johnny’s still full water tube. I poured the whole box of food in there with him. Johnny Winter blinked his little pink weasel eyes at me and chittered, almost friendly-sounding. I briefly wondered if Angela would accept Johnny Winter lovingly into her and Newly’s apartment now that Crosby, peacefully doped on doggy Valium and in the loving arms of his mistress, was on his last road trip to his final resting spot under the pecan trees.
I left the door unlatched on Johnny Winter’s cage and left the guest room door open. What possible difference could it make now if he had a misadventure on the furniture?
That done, there was only the very last thing: Pray.
“Do you mind if I take a moment to kneel and pray?”
“Make it quick.”
Jennifer was being entirely too indulgent. Apparently, killing someone with whom she had shared Stairmaster tips and drunk spiked coffee was harder than poisoning doctors she blamed for the death of her husband.
I had hope yet. Sam would be driving into the driveway at any moment. In the meantime, I planned to kneel and pray—really pray—and then if Sam had not jumped in to rescue me by then, I would leap up headfirst into Jennifer’s torso and butt the gun out of her hand.
First, I knelt and prayed. “Dear God, please get me out of this mess. I promise to try to be a good person if you save me.”
So spank me—in my near-death moment of religious fervor, I wasn’t original.