Evil Agreement (3 page)

Julia’s naked body collapsed to the ground.

“Nice shot, Sammy,” said the Game Warden.

4

It was Tuesday July
28, 1997 a humid overcast day in Boston.
Aaron Bailey had arrived early for his
one
thirty
appointment with the attorney. He had driven up from his
condominium in
Middleborough
,
Massachusetts, down near the Cape,
where the weather was a good deal more bearable. He still couldn’t believe his
maiden aunt, Laura, had passed away. He learned from her attorney that she had
died from breast cancer just about a month ago. She had been living on
Matinicus
Island
off the coast of Maine for the
past fifteen years. A neighbor had discovered her body when she had stopped by
to look in on her. She had died a couple of days before, according to the
sketchy details Aaron had been able to gleam from the attorney. The attorney,
sounding pompous and without emotion had informed him, in an all too brief
telephone conversation that he had been named in her will.

He held the small piece of paper in his right hand on which
he had written down the appointment details. Folding it up, he slipped it back
into his sport coat’s right side pocket. He stepped towards the brass-trimmed
revolving door and pushed it open to the lobby of

Aaron pushed the up button for the elevator and in a moment a
soft “ding” could be heard as the number six elevator’s doors swished open. The
elevator car was already occupied by three extraordinarily attractive women.
They were quietly talking to themselves. He stepped inside the elevator, moved
against the right side as the elevator doors glided to a close. The women stole
sideways glances at Aaron.

His eyes were mesmerized by the women’s short business skirts
and their all too obvious attractive legs. Their perfume blended into a new
aroma that drifted all about the confined space of the elevator car. The women
knew he was looking at them even though he was trying to be careful to not let
on that he was. The elevator bell rang twice more, which noted the arrival on
the requested floor. The doors opened and the women stepped off the elevator.
Aaron was about to follow when he noted from the control panel that the
elevator had stopped at the thirty-second floor. Aaron had forgotten to push
the button to select the sixteenth floor. One of the three women, a brunette,
was looking back at him and smiling. As the elevator doors closed he felt
himself blushing. He now selected the correct floor and the ride resumed. He
straightened his tie and for the first time since he had entered the building
he noticed how cool it was. His clamminess from the humid outside temperatures
had evaporated in the cool dry air of this office building.

An hour later he found himself signing some papers while
sitting at the longest mahogany desk he had ever seen. It seemed his maiden
Aunt Laura was quite wealthy having invested wisely over the years. The lawyer
explained something about a revocable trust and that her estate would not
require going through probate. There were a few details about taxes and some
charitable gifts his aunt had favored in her estate. The bottom line was that
she had left him as the principle benefactor of her assets. Her assets included
over two hundred forty thousand dollars in cash, another four hundred thousand
in stocks and bonds and several pieces of property located in Maine and
Vermont, which were valued at over $1.1 million dollars.
 

Aaron asked about her and about the funeral arrangements, but
the lawyer did not answer his questions with much detail. At the end of signing
the papers the lawyer pulled a large brown envelope out of a manila folder.

 
“Mr. Bailey, I’ve been
instructed to give this to you,” he said as he slowly slid the envelope across
the desk to Aaron.

“After you have read it through I have been instructed to
meet with you once again regarding a property in Vermont.”

“What is it?” asked Aaron.

“As you can see, it is sealed under the signature of your
deceased aunt. We were given explicit instructions to deliver it to you at this
time. We were also directed to advise you to not open it in our presence but to
do so in private.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Now, Mr. Bailey, we have completed all that we can today. I
will have my staff arrange to file the necessary papers to transfer your name
to all of the stocks, bonds and deeds with the one exception of that Vermont
property, which we will resolve at a later time. The transfers will take about
a month. As we noted earlier, we have prepared to transfer her cash assets to
your account at the Fleet Bank. We do recommend that you secure the services of
a qualified financial advisor to guide you in setting up appropriate accounts.
If you wish, we could recommend a couple of highly regarded firms who
specialize in such matters.”

Aaron nodded his agreement. With that, the lawyer slid a
sheet of paper across the desk.

“Very well, here they are. You’ll find their telephone
numbers and the names of key staff who would welcome a call from you.”

Aaron pulled the envelope and the sheet of paper off the
desk. The envelope seemed thick with papers and it felt like there was a key of
some sort inside.

Standing, the lawyer extended his hand to Aaron.

“My secretary will forward a transcript of our meeting to you
today. It should reach you in a few days. We like to provide this service so
our clients, who may be unduly stressed from their recent loss, can take their
time in reviewing some of the matters we covered in our reading of the will or
in executing the transfer of a trust.”

“That is a good idea!” said Aaron.

“Please feel free to contact my staff or me once you are
ready to meet on the matter of the Vermont
property.”

Aaron felt himself being rushed out the door although he
willingly went along. His head was swimming with the magnitude of information
that had just come his way.

He soon found himself standing alone in the elevator—the
envelope was stuffed into his left coat pocket and the numerous business cards
the lawyer insisted he take were stuffed into the right backside pockets of his
“Bugle Boy” jeans. His face was stretched tight from the smile he was now
wearing. When the elevator doors opened, he stepped into the lobby with a
spring in his gait and he headed straight outside.

A warm blast of humid air slapped at him. The too bright
afternoon sunshine caught him by surprise. He raised his hands to shield his
eyes. In a moment he removed his tie and tossed it into a curbside trash
basket. He strode off at a brisk pace to retrieve his car, a 1990 Volvo sedan,
from the parking garage located three blocks south of North Station. He wanted
to quickly exit the city and head back home. He was dying with curiosity to
read what his aunt had wanted him to read in private. Within thirty minutes he
was back onto the southeast expressway heading back home to the Town of
Middleborough
.

The ride back home passed quickly, notwithstanding the usual
heavy flow of traffic. Driving into and out of Boston
was complicated and arduous enough. The recent added construction caused by the
“Big Dig,” a massive construction project designed to put the interstate
highway underground that up to now had divided the City, caused commuting to
become daily torture for the thousands that had to travel into, around or
through Boston. Aaron was grateful
that he lived and worked on the “Cape” which is how the
locals refer to Cape Cod.

He was a bachelor and a science teacher at the Town of Plymouth’s
John F.
Kennedy Middle School.
Aaron liked to take long walks—his favorite authors were Tom Clancy and Ian
Fleming. His love life was uneventful. He had dated several women but was
unattached at the moment. The one thing he was passionate about was playing
bass guitar in a blues band made up of teachers from schools in the area. His
band was called, what else, “Detention Time Blues Band.”

He checked his watch, and decided that instead of heading
straight back to his condo he would have dinner at the most upscale restaurant
he could think of. He exited the highway and headed directly for the coastal
route. Moments later he pulled his Volvo into the parking lot of “The Royals,” Plymouth’s
most elegant ocean side restaurant.

It was just barely
five
o’clock
, yet the restaurant’s lobby already held a small crowd
waiting to be seated. Even though he didn’t have a reservation, he decided to
try that age-old trick of slipping the host a twenty. He was surprised to find
that it worked as he was seated immediately.

After he was seated at a small table next to the one of the
floor to ceiling windows, he pulled out a small vial of eye drops and applied a
couple of rewetting drops to each eye. He had taken to wearing soft contacts
just three months ago. The woman he was dating at that time, Karen, the school
nurse, had told him he looked sexy without his customary glasses. That did it.
No more glasses for him. He later found that he enjoyed wearing contacts and
wished he had tried them long ago. As he applied the drops a beautiful young
waitress stood patiently next to his table. After blinking his eyes a couple of
times he turned to his left and was startled to see her standing there. He
immediately noticed her captivating smile, long slender fingers and finely
sculptured nails.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I startled you,” she said.

Her voice was soft, almost a whisper.

“That’s okay, really. I was just in a hurry to put in the eye
drops.”

She glanced down at him and favored him with a pleasant
smile. She reached across his table and picked up his water glass and poured it
full with ice cold water.

“May I get you something from the bar?”

“Yes, I, uh, would like a martini, with a twist. Shaken—not
stirred, you know, like James Bond.”

He felt foolish for trying so obviously hard to be dashing
and debonair. He was sure that his faint effort to play off the famous James
Bond line was so badly bungled that this woman would think he was, at best clumsy,
or at worst a clown.

“I think we can arrange that, Mr. Bond. I will be back in a
moment with your martini.”

Just then he took notice of her nametag. Her name was
Korie
. He watched
Korie
turn and
walk through the maze of tables in search of his requested martini. He found
her very attractive and part of him wanted to ask her for a date. The other
part of him said,
Slow down Aaron
.

He pulled the envelope out of his left coat pocket and opened
it up. He removed a hand written document that he immediately recognized had
been written by his late Aunt Laura.

At the bottom of the envelope was a smaller envelope. He
opened this smaller envelope and found it contained a long slender key, stamped
with the number 4497.

His waitress,
Korie
, arrived with
his martini just as he was about to begin to read the documents.

“Would you like to order dinner now, or would you like more
time?”

“No, that’s okay. I’m ready to order,” he said as he handed
her back the menu without having so much as glanced at it.

“Very well then, what shall it be?” she said with a slight
smile.

“Let’s see, I want your soup of the day for an appetizer. I
also want a large spinach salad—hold the onions and the dressing. I want a
baked potato with sour cream, summer squash and the large cut of prime rib
cooked medium well. Oh, and I would like a bottle of your most exclusive red
wine.”

“Very good, Mr. Bond,” she said continuing the small game
that they had begun earlier. “And is there a particular wine that you wish,
vintage Beaujolais perhaps?”

“I will leave that to you, surprise me! I like surprises.”

“I was under the impression that nothing ever surprised 007,”
she said with a twinkle in her eyes. Before he could offer a witty come back,
she had turned and moved away.

He noticed that she didn’t write anything down.

This ought to be interesting,
he thought.

He took a sip from his martini. It was glorious, simply the
finest martini he had ever had, even though it was also the first one he had
ever had. He decided to put aside the papers from his aunt and to settle in to
enjoy his dinner. He would read them after dinner. He had plenty of time on his
hands and he had money to spend. He sort of liked the money part, after all,
for the past nine years he had lived off his teacher’s salary which, though
adequate, would never allow him much in the way of extravagance.

He took another sip and let his attention turn to the silent
and expansive gray blue waters that filled his window side view. He could see
several sea gulls holding fast in the sky as they caught thermal winds blowing
towards the ocean. In the far distance, at the horizon, a sailboat’s profile
was barely noticeable. Down below, the harbor was still. Not one boat was
coming or going. Dozens however, gently rose and declined at their moorings
with each gentle ocean swell.