FORGET ME NOT (Mark Kane Mysteries Book One) (11 page)

“From what you told me yesterday about her
volunteering for a DNA test it appears likely that she is
Susan.”

“I wouldn’t recommend jumping the gun at this
stage. When I saw her yesterday she was just as evasive as the
first time I met her.”

The front door bell rang. Pauline and Sandra
arrived together in a dark green Mazda MX5. The roof was down. As
usual at Greg’s the sun was sparkling overhead and only small
fluffy clouds could be seen sweeping westwards on a light breeze.
The ladies came in and introduced themselves to me. They were a
good deal younger than Greg. A good deal younger than Gloria would
have been.

“I don’t think we’ve met before,” Pauline
said to Greg, “but we often used to see you and Gloria together in
the club, didn’t we Sandra?”

“We used to call the pair of you the love
birds.” Sandra giggled.

“Gloria loved birds,” Pauline said. “If she
saw a bird she would always know its name. We didn’t see her much
on her own, but occasionally she’d join us for a drink when we were
in a group. We were terribly sad when we heard she’d passed
away.”

“Yes, we’re so sorry Greg. It must be hard
for you,” Sandra said.

“Well, life moves on,” Greg said
stoically.

Greg thanked them both for coming and showed
them through to the living room. They sat next to each other on the
chesterfield and I sat in Greg’s usual armchair. Greg said he’d
make us some coffee and give me time to talk to them.

“It’s about Gloria’s will,” I said, “as I’m
sure you know.”

“Yes, Bill told us,” Pauline said. “He said
there was some question about Gloria’s mental condition at the time
she asked us to witness her signature at the club. We had no idea
she was ill, it came as a shock to both of us didn’t it
Sandra?”

“There was a gradual decline in her health.
She developed Alzheimer’s disease,” I said.

Greg came in with the coffee and laid
everything out on the small glass-topped table in front of us.

“We had no idea at the time, but we heard
about it afterwards. I hope we haven’t done anything wrong,” Sandra
said.

“No, not at all. But I thought it might be
helpful to see if you can recall how Gloria was at the time. I
don’t suppose it’s every day that you get asked to witness a
signature.”

The two ladies looked at each other. Then
Sandra said:

“I don’t remember anything unusual about
her.” She thought for a while before adding, “Except she seemed a
bit distracted; as if she had something on her mind.”

“She wasn’t her usual jolly self that day,
was she Sandra?” Pauline said.

I couldn’t imagine Greg being married to a
jolly person. Perhaps he was jolly himself before Gloria’s death, I
thought.

“But she seemed perfectly normal. Sandra and
I talked about it together after Bill called us. She was behaving
perfectly rationally as far as I can remember.”

“Did you know that the document you were
asked to sign was a will?”

“No,” Pauline said. “She had the paper
folded. She told us that it was a legal document and she just
needed us to confirm that it was signed in our presence; that we
were confirming that the signature was hers. I remember because I
said to Sandra ‘I hope we’re not signing our lives away’, and we
both laughed didn’t we Sandra?”

“We didn’t ask her what it was,” said Sandra.
“I assumed it was something private.”

“Do you recall if Mr. Philips was in the club
at that time?”

“If he’d been there they would have been
together,” Pauline said. “I never saw Greg at the club without her,
but Gloria would occasionally come by herself.”

We’d finished our coffee and there seemed to
be nothing more I could usefully enquire about.

“Well, I won’t keep you ladies here any
longer. You’ve been very helpful.”

We left together, Pauline, Sandra and me.

“What a lovely antique,” Sandra said, as I
climbed into the Chevy; “the cars they make these days don’t have
the same character, do they?”

I stopped on the way home for a snack, trying
unsuccessfully to think how I could worm my way out of doing the
yard work Lucy had threatened me with. She’d decided that we should
tidy up my back yard, about a hundred feet of rough grass. She’d
fixed us some iced lime sodas.

“You’re supposed to be picking up the
stones,” she said, “and putting them in the bucket”.

“What I can’t understand is how the stones
got there in the first place. I mean there are no nearby glaciers
that could have dumped them, no rivers overflowing their banks and
depositing debris. The whole thing’s a mystery to me.”

“Life’s a mystery,” said Lucy.

“Maybe the previous owner was pissed because
they didn’t get enough for the place,” I said. “Maybe they hired
someone to bring a truckload of stones and scatter them over the
yard as an act of revenge.”

Lucy looked over at me pityingly. “The
exercise will do you good,” she said.

We gradually worked our way down to the
bottom of the yard. I don’t think I’d ever been to the bottom of
the yard before and Lucy discovered a pet’s grave. There was a
wooden plaque attached to a short stake bearing the legend:
‘Skipper 1994-2005’, and underneath, ‘Our beloved Pooch’. Lucy
insisted that we should make a feature of it and found some round
flat stones with which she formed a circle around the plaque. She
straightened the stake too. I didn’t argue because it’s pointless
to argue with Lucy about things like that.

“Right now it’s really too close to call” I
said.

“I haven’t found any reports of the alleged
plane crash. That’s suspicious in itself isn’t it?” Lucy said.

“Suspicious, but hardly conclusive. Perhaps
she remembered the date wrong. Or perhaps it simply wasn’t
reported. Let’s just hope that Jill manages to scrape together some
DNA, then I can wrap this up and move on.”

“What happens if it’s decided that Gloria
wasn’t mentally fit when she made the will?”

“I guess that’ll only be looked into if
somebody contests its validity. I don’t know what Greg’s sons think
about the matter. I haven’t discussed that aspect with him and I
haven’t had any contact with them myself. Fortunately it’s not part
of my job.”

We’d finished tidying the yard which, apart
from the lack of stones, looked no different than it did before we
started; except that Skipper’s grave was now a focal point that I
was still coming to terms with.

“Perhaps you can think of a way to get us
invited back to the country club again. Greg’s a member isn’t he?
Couldn’t you say you needed to see the witnesses again at the
locus quo
?

“And what would be my excuse for inviting you
along?”

“I’d think of something; the need for a
woman’s intuition perhaps.”

“The will’s jake as far as the formalities
are concerned.”

“Sam Spade never had the benefit of things
like DNA, nor did Perry Mason,” Lucy said, by way of a complete non
sequitur. Lucy was a master of the non sequitur; or a mistress.

“Nor cell phones, internet, video games or
the ubiquitous Facebook either,” I said. Happier times in my
opinion.”

“That’s because you’re an old fuddy
duddy.”

“Skipper, kill,” I said.

Still smarting from Susan’s criticism of my
apparent lack of care of the Chevy I had dropped it off at the shop
for a service and detailing on the way home, so I was effectively
stuck there now. The Chevy had been a gift from my brother way back
when he’d given up on his boyhood dream to see the USA in a
Chevrolet. It was already old then. I hadn’t seen Duncan in a long
while and made a mental note to get in touch. He ran a school for
survivalists in Vermont. Without the car I was at a loose end. Lucy
had the answer to this, as always; I should have a hobby, and
drinking didn’t count. Reading and listening to music weren’t real
hobbies either, she had explained. Now we’d discovered Skipper’s
final resting place she thought that a pet of some kind might do
the trick. I let her ramble on.

Her earlier remarks had got me thinking about
the two sons, though. Greg had mentioned nothing at all about his
sons’ reaction to Susan’s bequest, except how upset they were at
the fact of her existence.

When reading through the will I’d noticed
that Gloria had worded the bequest carefully: ‘To my natural
daughter, Susan Granger, born….’ Suppose that Susan wasn’t who she
said she was, but suppose the real natural daughter was somewhere
out there, still alive? I wondered how the lawyers would deal with
that possibility. I guessed that it would be a matter of gazetting
the matter for a period of time to give the beneficiary the chance
to claim her bequest. The birth certificate was in the name of
Susan Granger, so presumably Susan was the name that Gloria had
chosen for her daughter. Although none of this was strictly
relevant to my assignment I didn’t like loose ends. Perhaps whilst
waiting for the DNA result I could ask if I could go through
Gloria’s papers. Perhaps there was something on her computer. Susan
had told me that her parents knew about Gloria, including her
married name and where she lived which suggested, if it was true,
that Gloria may have had details of the adoptive parents too. If
she had, it was unlikely that she would have discarded them. The
more I thought about it the more I was convinced that when Susan
had first made contact with Gloria she would have checked the
records against what Susan had told her. Although I knew little
about Gloria herself it was obvious from the furnishing and
decoration of the house that she was meticulous by nature. She
surely must have a kept a copy of the adoption agency and the
adoption records. It was something I ought to raise with Greg next
time I saw him. If she had such records they may have been lodged
with her attorney. Then again, if Gloria was familiar with
computers she may have scanned copies of documents onto the
computer’s hard drive.

Then there were the emails that Susan had
mentioned. Perhaps they held a clue about the bequest. Susan had
said that it was never discussed, but I was doubtful about that.
Gloria had known that her condition was getting worse and was
clearly aware that there would come a time when she would no longer
be able to discuss these matters. I doubted whether it had occurred
to Susan that her emails might be retrieved now. I wasn’t even sure
that they could. Perhaps Gloria had taken the secret of her email
password to the grave with her; or the arboretum. My own email
account automatically kept emails for years without any need to
delete them to free up space on the server. Gloria’s emails might
make very interesting reading. I wondered if Greg would be
agreeable to letting me have access to her email account if he knew
what the password was, or access to the computer itself where the
password may have been saved. I guessed he would if he considered
it relevant to my investigation. I had little to go on at the
moment, and those emails might be illuminating. I would ask Greg
over the weekend; it would give me something to occupy myself with
while I was awaiting the DNA results.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Lucy said. We
were back indoors.

“Some of the things Susan said have a ring of
truth about them, but I just can’t accept that she’s unable to
provide any details about her background. She knows it’s important.
She probably thinks she’s got me on a hiding to nothing. It’s like
a criminal trial in a way. It’s for the prosecutor to prove the
defendant’s guilt, not the other way around. Prima facie she has
all she needs. Gloria refers to her by name and place and date of
birth. She has the birth certificate and other identity documents.
It’s not sufficient to raise a doubt about her identity; unless she
can be proved to be an imposter she’s likely to succeed.”

“How about trying to buy her off? Pretend
that you’re onto her and that it’s only a matter of time before the
game is up. Maybe she’d settle for a smaller slice of the
cake.”

“No, that’s not the way Greg wants things
run. It’s all or nothing I’m afraid.”

I found myself staring out of the front
window. The people across the street were moving out. I doubted it
was because of anything I’d said or done. I felt like a drink. I
wasn’t sure whether this was because I wanted a drink or because I
needed one. I hoped it wasn’t the latter. I’d read somewhere that a
moderate amount of alcohol was actually good for you; it lowered
the risk of heart failure quite significantly. It was better for
you than not drinking at all. They knew this because someone had
been paid to research it. On the other hand drinking excessively
was dangerously bad for you, worse than drinking moderately or not
drinking at all. I thought that whoever was responsible for these
rules must have had a wicked sense of humor. I needed exercise
though. I’d hardly been running at all since I’d left my apartment.
I used to run a lot in the park when I was living downtown. But I
preferred the anonymity of exercising in a public park rather than
in front of the prying eyes of neighbors. If I wanted to run now
I’d have to go past Lucy’s house which would be a good thing in a
way because she’d approve, but bad in another way because she’d
probably buy a matching outfit so that she could go with me. It
occurred to me that I’d seen more of Lucy in the past few months
than I had in the previous few years. I had a sudden and vivid
picture of us both about forty years on sitting next to each other
in bath chairs on the lawn of a nursing home in Florida. I
shuddered slightly and tried to get rid of this picture but I
couldn’t dispel it entirely so I filed it away in the back of my
mind where I hoped it would be difficult to retrieve.

“I’m off for cocktails and girlie talk,” Lucy
announced.

“See you around kiddo,” I said, and went into
the kitchen to cook some dinner.