Chương 2
A dark sedan stopped beyond the garden wall forty-three minutes after the call.
Penelope entered through the gate with her paralegal, Nora Singh, and a square metal case used for transporting original documents. Penelope was seventy-one, narrow-shouldered, silver-haired, and dressed in navy despite the heat. She looked at the broken planter before she looked at Paige.
“Were you threatened?”
“Not exactly.”
“Were the shears in your hand?”
“Yes.”
“Did you raise them?”
“No.”
“Did you say anything that could be described as a threat?”
Paige thought about the sentence she had delivered. You just confessed before anyone read the will.
“No.”
Penelope glanced toward the small security camera mounted beneath the library eave. “Does that record audio?”
“Dad disabled the microphone after a contractor complained.”
“Of course he did.”
It was the closest Penelope came to swearing.
Nora photographed the scene with a timestamped evidence application. She wore blue nitrile gloves before lifting the plastic sleeve from the mulch. Water had entered one corner, but the inner envelope remained intact.
Penelope had Paige sign a page stating where and when the item had been found. Nora signed as witness. Only then did Penelope cut open the outer sleeve.
The envelope inside was heavy cream stock from Thomas’s desk. Across the flap, he had written a date four months earlier.
January 12.
Penelope did not open it.
“Not here,” she said.
“It has my name on it.”
“I know.”
“My father buried a letter under a rose bush, Tabitha kicked it out of the ground, and you’re telling me I can’t read it?”
“I’m telling you we should read it somewhere with a clean table, a working scanner, and no garden gate.”
Paige stared at her.
Penelope held the stare without softening. “You called me because you wanted me to behave like your attorney. Let me.”
“You were his attorney.”
“I was. Now I represent the successor trustee.”
“Who is?”
Penelope’s mouth tightened.
“You,” she said.
The answer should have made Paige feel chosen. Instead, something cold moved through her.
“My father told me Calvin would handle the estate.”
“He told Calvin the same thing.”
“Why?”
“That is one of several questions I intend to ask him when I’m furious enough to believe in ghosts.”
Nora lowered her eyes, pretending to review a photograph.
Penelope placed the envelope inside the metal case and locked it. “Bring your phone. Bring the clothes you were wearing when Tabitha arrived. Do not wash them. We need to assume she will claim a different version of what happened.”
“She kicked a planter.”
“And you held pruning shears.”
“She threw boxes at me.”
“And she is wearing a red dress and pearls eleven days after her father-in-law’s death. People will decide what that means based on what they already want to believe.”
Paige removed the apron carefully and folded it with the dirt inside. “You make people sound awful.”
“No. I make them sound busy.”
Inside the mansion, Penelope stopped in the kitchen long enough to look at the refrigerator.
“Do you have food?”
“I have food.”
“Food that requires no cooking?”
“I have cereal.”
“At four in the afternoon?”
“It doesn’t stop being cereal.”
Nora opened the refrigerator and found half a rotisserie chicken, two yogurts, mustard, and the pair of reading glasses Paige had put back there without knowing why.
She held them up.
Paige looked away.
Penelope said nothing. She took the glasses, folded them, and placed them on the counter.
They drove separately to Penelope’s office in town. Paige took her father’s old station wagon because her own car had a dead battery. Thomas had refused to replace the wagon after the passenger window began opening by itself on rough roads. Halfway down Everett Lane, the glass dropped three inches.
Paige pressed the switch. Nothing happened.
She drove the rest of the way with warm air blowing across her face and soil drying on her knees.
Hart and Wren occupied the second floor above a pharmacy and a bakery that had changed owners four times while keeping the same striped awning. Penelope’s partner had retired six years earlier, but his name remained on the door because changing the sign seemed like work no one wanted to prioritize.
Nora scanned the unopened envelope, photographed the seals, and recorded the opening on a fixed office camera.
The letter consisted of two handwritten pages.
Paige read the first sentence twice.
Paige, if Calvin gives Penelope a paper that says the white roses must be removed within thirty days, do not let him withdraw it.
Her father’s handwriting slanted unevenly across the page.
That sentence is mine, but the decision is not. I placed it in a draft that was never meant to be signed. Penelope objected. She usually does when I am being clever, and she is usually right afterward. I needed to know whether Calvin or anyone helping him would take the bait. No valid amendment of mine removes the roses or gives him the house outright. Let them produce the whole document. Do not warn Kyle. He may be frightened enough to tell the truth before someone teaches him a better lie.
Paige stopped reading.
Nora shifted in her chair. Penelope remained standing beside the window.
“Did you help him do this?”
“Yes.”
“You made a fake will.”
“No. We made a draft amendment to his living trust. It was not executed, witnessed, notarized, or delivered. Every page was marked as a draft.”
“And he left it where Calvin could find it?”
“He placed one printed copy in the locked drawer of his study.”
“Calvin knew the code.”
“Calvin knew several codes. Thomas refused to change them.”
Paige looked at the letter again.
May you like
The second page was shorter.
I am sorry to leave you a fight. I was afraid that if I confronted Calvin, he would disappear until I died and call that dignity. I was afraid Kyle would agree with whoever frightened him last. I was afraid you would leave again if I told you how bad things had become. Fear has made me practical in ways that may look cruel when I am gone. Trust Penelope about the papers. Do not trust her to tell you what to feel about me.
