I leaned back in my chair, stunned, and tried to figure out what to do next. I’d never been mentioned in anyone’s will, let alone prominently mentioned. Truth is, I was kind of hoping it’d be a while.
Over the years that I’d lived upstairs from Mrs. Hawkins, I guess we’d gotten closer than I figured. Funny thing, though; she’d always seemed quite content to be alone, which is how she spent most of her time. Occasionally we’d cross paths as I was coming in from either a Saturday night at Marsha’s or from a stakeout or car pickup. She seemed to enjoy hearing about my work, what little I was able to share with her.
But I never got any sense that she considered me important or special. In a way, it made me even sadder that the old lady had had to die alone like that.
I sighed and rubbed my eyes. The last few days had taken it out of me. There was nothing to do around the office. Maybe I’d go home and take care of some laundry that had been building up for a while.
Just as I was about to blow off the whole day, the phone rang again.
“Denton Agency,” I said.
“Hi.” Her voice sounded tired as well.
“Hey, how are you?”
“Weary. This’s the first chance I’ve had to sit down all day.”
“Busy?”
“Yeah, work’s been piling up, so to speak, all weekend. Three homicides, a suicide, one OD, and the out-of-county work.”
“Including our famous writer buddy.”
“Yeah,” Marsha said.
“Why are you having to do all this work yourself?” I asked.
“Dr. Henry’s at the grand jury today.”
“Oh, yeah. Any word?”
“From Dr. Henry? No, nothing from him. My lawyer called this morning. Wants to meet with me at four. I’ll have to duck out early.”
“I had my long little talk with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Department this morning.”
“How’d it go?”
I leaned back and plopped my feet up on my desk. The chair creaked and squealed.
“They think I killed Reed.”
“What?” Her voice tightened to a sharp edge.
“Apparently so,” I said. “Got this hotheaded young buck assistant DA that tried to beat up on me.”
“Harry, what did they want? I mean, what did they say? What did they want from you?”
“They had me go over everything, then grilled me for a couple hours afterward.”
“My God, you mean you talked to them?”
“Yeah, what was I going to do?”
“Get a lawyer and keep your mouth shut!” she snapped. “How’s that for starters?”
“Look, I do that, I become number one on their top ten list. I know I didn’t do it and that they couldn’t possibly have anything on me, so I cooperated.”
She was angry now. “I thought you had more sense than that! Don’t you know how these small-town DAs are? They don’t care who they get as long as they get somebody! They didn’t put you in a holding cell with anybody, did they? They pull that jailhouse-snitch shit and you’re gone. That’s it. You’re history.”
“Look, they didn’t hold me. They don’t have anything.”
“That doesn’t mean shit, Harry. I’m really worried about this.”
“Don’t,” I said. “I answered their questions, reserved the right to call in a lawyer at any time—”
“Did they Mirandize you?”
“Yeah, I mean they kind of had—”
“Jesus Christ, Harry!” Her voice broke. “You’ve got to get an attorney and get one now!”
“Can’t afford one, babe. And besides, this isn’t going anywhere. Honest. Trust me on this one. They got nothing.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Besides,” I added, “you’ve got your own stuff to worry about. You’re the one who goes before the grand jury tomorrow.”
She groaned. “It’s really coming down on us, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said after a moment. “But it felt awfully good waking up next to you this morning. Not to mention the going-to-bed part last night.”
“Silver-tongued devil, you.”
“Look, I’m not trying to score points with you. All I’m saying is that there’s something between us that’s real powerful. And I don’t want to let it go. You’re going to have a baby we made.”
“It’s not necessary to remind me of that.”
“Sometimes I think it is.”
She sighed. I tried to read her silence, wondered what to say, how to say it.
“I wish it were all that easy,” she said finally.
“Hey, I never said it was easy.”
She laughed, just enough to convince me she was going to be okay for now.
“Can I see you tonight?”
“By the time I get home from the lawyer’s, I’ll be exhausted, Harry. And I have to get up so early tomorrow, and—”
“Hey, no need to give reasons. You need some time. Take it.”
“How about you?”
“I’m doing laundry tonight. I’m going to a funeral tomorrow.”
“Oh, babe, I forgot. I’m sorry. Sorry I can’t be there with you.”
“Sorry I can’t be there for you with the grand jury.”
“Me, too. Call my office tomorrow, okay? Let me know how to find you.”
I was relieved she still wanted to find me. “Sure,” I said. “You be careful, okay? Get some rest.”
We hung up and I gathered up a pile of mail and a couple of folders. I had some bookkeeping I could do at home while my laundry was running. Mrs. Hawkins had let me use the washing machine in her laundry room; I assumed it’d be okay for me to keep using it, at least until the Reverend Brian Hawkins told me to stop.
I threw my coat on, tucked the files and papers under my arm, and opened the door to my office with my free hand. I stepped into the hallway and locked the door. Just as I pulled the key out, the phone in my office started ringing again.
“Damn it,” I growled. I pressed my ear against the door. If it was Marsha or Lonnie, I’d grab it. If it was anybody else, to hell with them.
The outgoing message finished, followed by the beep. A voice started in. I recognized it: Randy Tucker, the afternoon-newspaper guy.
Yeah, to hell with him, I thought. I turned and headed down the dimly lit, dingy hallway to the narrow stairs that would take me outside and then home.
Mrs. Hawkins picked a good day to be buried. I walked out of the church in Goodlettesville and into a warm brilliant blue spring day behind a group of maybe a dozen people. A preacher who didn’t know her had eulogized her with as few words as possible. She’d borne one son in her life and a stillborn daughter. She’d married a man who worked at a tobacco-distributing company for forty-five years and died from lung cancer only six months after retiring. She’d been a faithful member of the church. No one ever thought ill of her.
Six men who’d never known her but had been furnished by the undertaker served as pallbearers. They loaded her bronze casket into a black hearse. Her son, the preacher, and his wife followed in their silver Lincoln Town Car. I thought the least they could have done was have the funeral at her church in East Nashville.
But then again they didn’t ask me.
The funeral procession was only five cars long counting the hearse. We drove north a few miles, out of the town, down a side road away from the main highway and into a cemetery behind a small white-frame church with a soaring steeple. As I got out of my car, I heard one of the women say it was the church where she and her husband had married back in ’38 as the Great Depression was about to end and just before the war changed everything forever.
A green canvas tent had been set up in case of rain. The hole was already dug and the green carpet thrown over the pile of dirt to hide it. They buried her beside her husband, who’d died a decade before. I stood at the back of the tent with my head down and my hands folded in front of me, the wind blowing my hair forward and down over my forehead, as the preacher said one last prayer, then went down the line shaking hands with the family. Not once did I see Brian Hawkins or his icy wife shed a tear. They were somber, stiff, their faces frozen in masks. The only other person I knew or recognized was Crazy Gladys, who kept turning around and staring at me as the service progressed.
It was nearly three-thirty by the time they started shoveling the dirt in on top of her. The few mourners were backing away from the tent, chattering low among themselves, as two men in overalls pulled the carpet back over the soil. Their shovels made a scritch sound as their blades sliced the brown dirt. The dry clods hit the casket with a dull thump.
I’d not said anything to anyone at the church, just walked in and sat down far enough in the back so that no one would notice me. At the grave I felt as though I really had to try at least to say something to Mrs. Hawkins’s son and his wife.
They were both dressed in black. She wore a high starched lace collar atop a white blouse. His wide polyester blue-and-red regimental tie lay dead center down his paunch, held in place with a silver monogrammed tie clip. The two stood next to Crazy Gladys, who wore a tight blue skirt and jacket that looked very Forties and a black hat with a veil pulled down. As I approached them, Gladys looked at me, then turned quickly and walked away like somebody’d jerked her leash.
“Reverend Hawkins,” I said, extending my hand. “I just wanted to tell you again how sorry I am about your mother. I was very fond of her and she was very good to me.”
“Yes,” he said dismissively, taking my hand and giving it a quick dead-fish handshake. “Thank you.”
The wife turned, made a face, looked directly into her husband’s eyes. “Tell him,” she ordered.
Hawkins cleared his throat, a rumble of phlegm rolling around sloppily in his chest. “Yes,” he began. “Of course.”
Then he turned to me. “As soon as the will is probated, we’ll be selling the house. Did you and my mother have a lease arrangement?”
I shrugged. “Not really. I signed a lease for the first couple of years, then we just never got around to doing it again. She pretty well trusted me and I trusted her.”
“Well, then,” he said, as next to him what almost resembled a smile spread across his wife’s pancaked face. “We’ll need you to vacate the premises as soon as possible.”
My heart felt like it was somewhere below my belt line, although I can’t say any of this was surprising. I wondered how I’d like crashing in the back of Lonnie’s trailer. Now that Shadow was gone, maybe I could be his guard dog.
I sighed, shrugged again. “When would you like me out?”
“How much time will you need?” she asked.
“Well, if you could give me thirty days, I’d appreciate it. Plus you’d have somebody there to watch the place. Empty houses are a target for vandals.”
The wife gritted her teeth, shifted her gaze to her husband for a moment.
“Yes, thirty days will be fine. We’ll expect you out by the fifteenth of next month.”
“We have to run,” he said. “We’re due at the lawyer’s office in forty-five minutes.”
Then I remembered. I was due in the lawyer’s office in forty-five minutes as well. Maybe, I thought, it would be best not to mention that right now.
I was in no hurry to get to the lawyer’s office or anywhere else. Maybe Marsha was right, that I had been on a one-way spiral down to the fringes. I’d lost a job and a career, then just as another had started to look promising, I’d gotten myself in a big enough mess to set myself back for months.
And now this. Now I was, technically speaking, facing homelessness. God, I hate technicalities.
“That’s it, guy,” I said to myself as I threaded my way through the thick four-o’clock traffic on Two Mile Parkway. I’d intended to cut over to Gallatin Road and head back into town against the rush-hour traffic, but on the radio I heard that a flatbed semi overloaded with dirty PortaLets had overturned on the I-65 median just south of Millersville, scattering maroon water closets loaded with dirty blue juice all over hell and back. At last count, sixteen cars had been involved in the pileup. Both the north- and southbound lanes were closed until they could get the toxic-waste team in for cleanup.
And I was trapped, stuck in traffic hell, with the water-temp needle on the Mustang dancing in and out of the red zone.
“Yeah, this is bullshit,” I continued, wondering if talking to oneself was a further sign of downward progress on the socio-economic ladder. “Go ahead, borrow the money from Pop for an apartment deposit and some new threads, brush up that résumé, cut that hair, get back into corporate life.”
It was my only out.
It took almost half an hour to make it the mile or so to Gallatin Road, but once I got into the southbound lane, the traffic at least moved fast enough to keep the car cool. I made it through Madison and pulled into the lawyer’s parking lot only twenty minutes late.
David Merrone’s office was a simple, almost shabby brick house in East Nashville, up the road from the old Earl Scheib body shop, and not very far from Mrs. Lee’s. I crossed the gravel, hopped up the stairs, and went through the front door. What had once been someone’s living room had been converted into a waiting room, complete with middle-aged receptionist sporting a bouffant of dyed red hair.
“I’m Harry Denton,” I said, almost breathless. “Sorry I’m so late. I got caught in the traffic jam up in Rivergate.”
She stood up. “I heard on the radio. Can you imagine? Spilled PortaLets on the interstate!”
She crossed in front of me and led me to a closed door on the other side of the entrance foyer.
“Yeah, it’s a real mess up there.”
She turned, grinned. “They’re waiting for you. Go on in.”
She held the door open into what I guess had once been the parlor but was now your typical attorney’s office: leather furniture, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, desk bigger than the president’s.
And in two wood and leather visitor’s chairs in front of Merrone’s awesome desk—Reverend Hawkins and his wife. Merrone was a large man, old and bulky, with bloodshot yellowed eyes that seemed younger and more energetic than the rest of him. He stood up and moved slowly as the two swiveled in their chairs, a look of horror on their faces.
“Mr. Denton, please come in.”
“Sorry I’m late,” I said.
The Ice Queen’s jaw dropped. On her left, the Reverend Hawkins’s jowls bounced back and forth as he sputtered and shook.
“What is he doing here?” She spat the words out like she’d just stepped in something unsavory.
“Mr. Denton is the other party mentioned in Mrs. Hawkins’s will.”
“That’s impossible!” the reverend squawked.
“Yes,” the Ice Queen agreed. “It’s outrageous!”
Merrone motioned with his head toward a third visitor’s chair, then stepped out from behind his desk and pulled the chair over to the side. I felt awkward, wishing this would all go away.
“Please sit down,” he said.
I moved to the chair, settled into it.
“Sit down nothing,” she ordered. “Get him out of here this instant.”
Merrone’s face never changed, the creases in his face just this side of shar-pei and his thin gray hair held straight back across his dome with a sheen of Vitalis.
“Mrs. Hawkins,” Merrone said as he eased back into his own chair, “Mr. Denton is legally entitled to be here. As the executor of Esther Hawkins’s estate, I am required to have him here before the will can be read.”
I glanced over at the two of them. Almost on cue, the two harrumphed in unison and turned away, refusing to look at me.
“Now,” Merrone continued, “shall we get on with it?”
No one said anything for a few moments. I looked down at the worn Oriental carpet and wished I could crawl under his desk.
“Very well then.” He pulled open a drawer in the desk and extracted two manila folders.
“I’ve furnished you each with a certified copy of the legal last will and testament of Esther Hawkins. The original will be filed with the probate court. Barring any unforeseen problems, the probate will be handled by the special master and won’t even have to go before a judge. As you can imagine, Mrs. Hawkins’s estate is modest and the disposition relatively simple. By modest, I mean that its aggregate value is under the IRS exemption for estates. So there will be no tax liability.
“I won’t bother to read the entire will word-for-word. I’ll spare you the legalese and the whys and wherefores. If you like, you can go through that on your own. The estate consists of a portfolio of stocks and bonds that Mrs. Hawkins and her husband accumulated over the years and which, by the way, Mrs. Hawkins shepherded quite well. There is the house and its contents, of course. And there is her checking account, savings account, and some short-term CDs with the bank as well.”
Merrone reached across and handed me one of the sealed manila envelopes. He handed the other toward the Reverend Hawkins, but the Ice Queen snatched it out of his hand.
I held the envelope loosely in my hand, not wanting to open it, still uncomfortable with being left anything, and sure as hell not wanting to be around these people any longer than I had to.
“To summarize the contents of the will, the estate is divided in two parts, with the bulk, of course, going to Reverend Hawkins. That part consists of the investment portfolio and the contents of the house. In your envelope, Reverend Hawkins, is the necessary paperwork for transferring all the accounts at the brokerage to your name. If there are any problems, call me. But I don’t expect any. As to the contents of the house and Mrs. Hawkins’s personal property, you can make arrangements for retrieving that with Mr. Denton at your convenience.”
Something in me went numb. I looked up. “What? Why my convenience?”
Merrone stared at me, studying my face for a beat or two. “Yes, that’s the other part of the disposition of the will. It was Mrs. Hawkins’s wish that Mr. Denton inherit the house and whatever monies were accumulated in the bank accounts and CDs.”
Everyone was very quiet for a few moments. Then the Ice Queen stood halfway out of her chair, shrieked, and fell back, apparently in a dead faint.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “But I don’t under—”
The Reverend Hawkins stood up, his eyes afire, his face red, as he boomed out in his best revival voice: “What kind of ee-vuhl hold did you have on my dear, blessed mother?!”
I turned to him. “What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t know anything about this!”
Hawkins jumped in place. “It’s Satan!” he cried. “Satan at work in my mother’s very own home! It’s evil and it’s the devil!”
He pointed a fat shaky finger at me. “The devil is at work in you.”
Next to him, the Ice Queen stirred, shaking her head, moaning and groaning.
I looked at Merrone. His face was absolutely expressionless. “How much?” I asked. “How much is there?”
He sat silent for a moment before answering. His eyes flicked over to the rev and his wife.
“In the checking and savings accounts, just under twenty-five thousand. And there are five ten-thousand-dollar CDs that mature at varying times over the next six months.”
My jaw went slack. “She left me the house and seventy-five thousand dollars?”
The Ice Queen stood halfway up, shrieked again, this time even more dramatically, and fell away in a real faint. I could tell because her head went limp, dropped to her shoulder, and she immediately started drooling.
Merrone nodded his head. “The necessary paperwork for transferring the bank accounts into your name, as well as the deed and its transference instrument are in your package. I’ve set up an administrative account, which I’ll keep open for six months. It consists of monies taken equally out of her bank account and the money-market account at the brokerage. That money must remain available for six months in case there are any claims against the estate. But I don’t expect any.”
“I’ll sue!” Hawkins screamed, spit flying out of his mouth as his face reddened to a deep crimson. “I’ll take it to court! You defrauded my mother! She was senile! I’ll have you thrown in jail! You—you—you—usurper, you!”
I looked at Merrone, who rolled his eyes upward just enough for me to notice.
“You are, of course, perfectly entitled to bring suit if you so choose, Mr. Hawkins. Your mother told me you probably would. That is why she instructed me to take special care that everything in her will was precise, legal, and to the spirit and letter of the law. In short, you can file a formal will contest if you want. The result will be that you will lose, much of the estate will be eaten up by attorney’s fees and court costs, and your portion of the estate as well as Mr. Denton’s will be tied up in court for at least a year. Perhaps several.”
He paused and folded his hands together on his desk blotter. “Is that what you really want?”
“But—but—” Hawkins sputtered. “This isn’t fair! It isn’t right! It’s the devil’s work!”
Merrone shook his head from side to side slowly.
“It’s perfectly fair, Mr. Hawkins. Tell me, how many times did you see your mother in the past year?”
Hawkins’s jowls shook as his head vibrated. “Why, what’s that got to do—”
“How often did you call her?” Merrone interrupted. “Mrs. Hawkins told me that for the past four years of her life, Mr. Denton has been a good and trusted friend. He may have even saved her life once, when a house …”
He looked at me. “I believe it was across the street?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Yes, the house across the street caught fire and Mrs. Hawkins couldn’t hear the fireman calling because she’d taken her hearing aids out.”
I smiled, thinking of how I’d caught her in bed with someone, too, that night. Wonder how the rev would react to that?
“So you see, Mr. Hawkins,” Merrone said, “your mother’s wishes were clear and legal and distinct, and you should respect that.”
The Ice Queen started coming to, moaning and groaning and fumbling in her chair.
“This is your fault!” Hawkins yelled, pointing at me again. “You’re responsible for this sacrilege! It’s the devil’s work and I am the Lord’s hand! What do you say to that?”
I thought for a moment, staring at him, trying to figure out what the hell had just transpired. Then it hit me. I stood up, faced the fat reverend and his convulsing wife.
“I say you’ve got thirty days to get your shit out of my house.”
Then I nodded to Merrone and walked out of his office.