Mariner's Compass (3 page)

Amanda sighed and dug into her salad. “I sure do miss my memaw.”

“So, what do I do?”

She forked a slice of turkey breast. “You go check out your new house and then call a realtor.”

“But I have no idea who this man is!” The thought of a stranger leaving me something as valuable as a house, not to mention all his worldly possessions, was intriguing, but also a little unsettling. I picked up the will again, trying to glean some answers from its neat black and white lines, but for all they told me, they could have been the phone book.

“Here’s the house keys.” Amanda pushed a set of keys across the table to me. They were attached to a small, hand-carved cowboy boot. I ran my finger over the intricately carved boot—tiny stars, roses, and horseshoes covered the shaft. Someone—Mr Chandler?—was a very talented wood-carver. I peered closer at the key ring and looked up at Amanda in surprise.

“My name is carved on this!”
Albenia
was cleverly hidden in fancy script among the elaborate decorations.

“Looks like Mr. Chandler knew
you,”
she said, grabbing one of my onion rings. “By the way, there’s one little stipulation to the will.”

“I knew there had to be a catch.”

“To inherit his estate, you must reside in the house for two consecutive weeks starting the day the will is read to you.”

“What?”

“Alone. No overnight guests.”

“What?”

She laughed. “You said that already.”

“You have to be kidding.”

“No, ma’am, it’s part of the will. If you don’t comply, the estate goes to the Federal Government to help lower the national debt.”

“What?” I squeaked.

“And before you ask, yes, it’s all legal and aboveboard. There’s nothing you can do except follow the will’s instructions or let the money go to our wonderfully screwed-up government.” She stole another onion ring and dipped it in the ketchup spreading across my plate.

I groaned. “Gabe is going to have a fit when he hears this. He was suspicious about it from the start.”

“This truly is the weirdest inheritance I’ve come across in my entire legal career. Are you sure you don’t know who this guy is?”

“Haven’t a clue.” I slipped the key ring in my purse and picked up my hamburger. “But you can be darn sure about one thing. I’m gonna find out.”

2

AFTER SPLITTING A peach cobbler and listening to Amanda complain at length about her lobster-footed defense attorney, I drove downtown to Blind Harry’s Bookstore and Coffeehouse owned by my best friend, Elvia Aragon. The window display was full of pastel figurines, books of poetry, and frilly cards extolling the virtues of motherhood, hoping to entice window-shoppers into remembering their mothers next Sunday with a gift from Blind Harry’s. It was unusually warm for the first day in May on the Central Coast. Cal Poly students crowded the streets dressed in tank tops and skimpy shorts, trying for an early start on tans they’d regret twenty years later. Finals were still a week or two away, and the mood was as festive as a Fourth of July block party.

“Where’s
la Patrona?”
I asked the young girl behind the front counter in Blind Harry’s. “Upstairs or down?”

Elvia’s elegant, soundproofed, French country-style office was upstairs, but my friend, having grown up in a household of seven children, was often found in the downstairs coffeehouse peacefully attending to her paperwork amidst the noise and confusion of her beloved customers.

“She and Emory are eating lunch in her office,” the clerk said, fingering the blue streak in her long black hair. “He said they didn’t want to be disturbed.”

“Great, thanks,” I said, heading up the stairs.

“Wait,” she called after me. “He really said they—”

“Oh, he doesn’t mean
me.”

Elvia and I had been best friends since second grade when we were fortuitously seated next to each other for the entire year, starting a relationship that to this day was the closest either of us had to a sister. The oldest child in a family of six brothers, she was tough, stubborn, beautiful, smart, bossy, loyal, and demanding. And I would do anything for her. She was also nosy as an old hen-turkey and would throttle me if she heard about my inheritance from anyone else. Worse, she’d make me pay up my charge account at her store.

I burst into her office, hoping to catch Elvia and my cousin Emory in flagrante delicto. Their heads were together all right, intently studying something on her computer screen. Two half-eaten Caesar salads sat on the corner of her executive desk.

“Sorry to break up such a romantic moment,” I said, grinning.

Elvia glared at me. It annoyed her to no end that I was right, and she actually did enjoy dating my cousin. “What do you want?”

Emory came around the desk to hug me. “Sweetcakes, I’ve been meaning to call you.”

“Sure, sure,” I said, kissing his smooth cheek, then sitting down in one of her rose-colored visitor chairs. “You always do this whenever you get a new girlfriend—ignore your favorite cousin.”

Elvia glared at me again. She hated being referred to as his girlfriend, but I figured the more I said it, the more it would seem inevitable to her. My goal was for them to get married. As was Emory’s. The only fly in the ointment was one stubbornly single Latina woman.

“What’s cookin’?” he asked, sitting down next to me. He was dressed in his everyday work wear of expensive wool slacks, tailor-made dress shirt, and Hugo Boss sports coat. He’d landed a job at the
San Celina Tribune
in November after moving here lock, stock, and Razorback loyalties from his home state of Arkansas in the belief that close proximity rather than absence makes a woman’s heart grow fonder. In that short time he had managed to talk the newspaper into giving him his own column and one of the best offices in the building. The fact that he had an independent income thanks to his father’s successful smoked chicken business gave him the sort of easy going confidence that always seemed to procure good employment.

“You’ll never guess in a billion years,” I said.

“Lord have mercy on us all, your application has finally been accepted at the sheriff’s academy.”

I mimed slapping him upside the head. My reputation for stumbling into dangerous situations, some of which included dead bodies, was a source of gleeful entertainment for Emory, who kept threatening to send my resume and clippings to the San Celina Sheriff’s Department so I could start getting paid for my criminal investigations.

“No, I’ve inherited the house and all the worldly possessions of a total stranger, and I wanted you two to be the first to know.” I left out the will’s weird stipulation until I could break it gently to Gabe.

The word inheritance caused Elvia to turn from her computer screen. “Any cash involved? I know a great investment . . .” Her Chanel-red lips treated me to her most winning smile.

Elvia had been slowly buying Blind Harry’s from its absentee owner, a Scottish man who lived in Reno. She’d been bugging me to invest in the store with my spring cattle money, which I’d resisted because I needed to buy that new truck. Emory, of course, would have gladly bought any or all of Blind Harry’s stock, but she wouldn’t even consider his offer.

I held up my hand. “Whoa there, Nellie. I haven’t even seen the house yet. It’s in Morro Bay, and I’m going out there in just a few minutes. I just wanted to tell you both the real story before it hopped a ride on the San Celina gossip train.”

“As soon as you find out how much, we’ll talk,” Elvia said confidently, turning back to her screen. “Now get out of here, both of you. I’ve got work to do.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“But we haven’t finished our lunch,” Emory protested.

I grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the office, shutting the door behind us. “When are you going to learn that the way to Elvia’s heart is to ignore her, not sit at her feet like a pathetic little Chihuahua?”

“Don’t tell
me
how to woo a woman,” he said, following me down the stairs. “We’ve had exactly seven and a half dates. I’m wearing her down. I can feel it. We’ll be married by the end of the year.”

“Right. You haven’t even kissed, and already you’re naming the babies.”

He grinned and ran a palm across the side of his thick blond hair.

I pinched his forearm. “Quit looking so smug. When?”

“Last night,” he whispered. “But she said if I ever told anyone, especially you, she’d boil me in Tabasco sauce and feed me to that spoiled cat of hers, so you’d better keep your big mouth shut.”

I held up my hand. “Cattlewoman’s honor.”

He walked me to my truck three blocks away and lingered for a moment while I buckled my seat belt.

“So, what’s the story behind this inheritance?” he asked casually.

“Get that nosy journalistic sparkle out of your eye. I’ve been in the news enough in the last year. There’s no story.”

“I disagree. I’m sensing a real human interest saga here, little cousin. Let me come with you.” The gleam in his green eyes grew deeper.

“No,” I said, starting the truck. “I want to see it myself first. If, and that’s a big
if
, there’s anything remotely interesting about him, I’ll consider ... hear me now, cousin...
consider
talking to you about it for the paper.” He was going to kill me when he eventually heard the stipulation of the will. It was exactly the type of story he’d love to write—and I’d let him . . . maybe. But before I decided anything, I wanted to see the house, get some sort of handle on this man’s identity and motives.

“You women,” he said, heaving an exaggerated sigh. “You’ll be the death of me.”

“Pipe down. You’re beginning to sound like Aunt Garnet. Gabe and I are going out to the ranch this evening. Anything you need to tell Dove?”

“No, I’ll be calling her myself tonight about that column she wants written on the city’s plans to sell the historical museum. It’s going to run in tomorrow’s paper.”

“I think what the city’s doing is crappy.”

The historical museum, located in the old brick and stone Carnegie library, was the pride and joy of my gramma Dove and her cronies in the San Celina County Historical Society. Acquiring the lease five years ago had been the result of constant haranguing and calling in of every marker these influential seniors had from their countless years of community service. But recently the city council, led by our new mayor, had been making rumblings about how the museum wasn’t a moneymaker and how much they needed the space for something that could generate tax revenue for our growing city. It was rumored that the old library might be sold to a hotel chain that planned on turning it into a theme restaurant.

I blew a soft raspberry at the county buildings. “Your article better wake up people into seeing what’s happening to our town.”

“That’s the whole plan. It’s going to be a tough fight against ‘Boxstore Billy,’ though. He’s determined to, as he says, ‘usher San Celina into a bright and prosperous new millennium.’ ”

Our newly elected mayor, William Davenport, was a dark horse candidate who no one had expected to win at the special election held in December because our old mayor resigned due to health reasons. Mayor Davenport proved to be slightly less “Committed to Retaining San Celina’s Old-fashioned Values” than he professed in his enthusiastic campaigning.

“What he’s doing is taking everything unique about this town and making us look just like every other town in the United States,” I said.

“You know I’ll muckrake as best my little Southern heart can.” He slapped the side of the truck. “Now, canter off to claim your inheritance, my calamitous little cowgirl, and remember, I get the scoop.”

“There is no story,” I repeated to his disbelieving face.

After he left, I opened the envelope containing the will and glanced down at the address: 993 Pelican Street. I had no idea where that was in Morro Bay, so I felt under the seat and found a street map for San Celina County. Pelican was one of the small streets overlooking the Embarcadero. The Embarcadero, with its incredible view of Morro Rock, paralleled the bay and was the first place tourists headed when they hit town. The shell boutiques, fish-and-chips restaurants, art galleries, saltwater taffy parlors, and nautical knickknack shops drew visitors like kids to cotton candy.

Morro Bay wasn’t a big town—tiny, in fact, compared to San Celina. The population was just over 9,500—one quarter the size of San Celina. It was known mostly for its great fish restaurants, perfect summer weather, and mysterious Morro Rock jutting out of the cool green ocean, the last of a chain of volcanic peaks that marched through San Celina County down to the sea. The greatest number of tourists arrived sometime around June, and Morro Bay’s surfing, sportfishing, bird-watching, and camping businesses thrived until the visitors disappeared as quickly as they came after Labor Day. It was a town that held special memories for me and Gabe. Since it was only twelve miles from San Celina, we did much of our dating there, wandering through the funky antique stores and art galleries, gradually getting to know each other away from curious eyes in San Celina. We’d usually end up at one of the seafood restaurants perched over the bay or at the house of Aaron Davidson, Gabe’s first partner and best friend. Rachel, Aaron’s wife, would serve us sun tea and homemade oatmeal cookies while Aaron and Gabe would reminisce about their old LAPD days. Rachel and Aaron lived there for eleven years, but after Aaron’s death last September from liver cancer, Rachel sold their house and moved back east to live with her daughter. Gabe and I hadn’t been back to Morro Bay since.

The twenty-minute drive to Morro Bay on State Highway 1 gave me time to contemplate this new twist in my life. Who was Jacob Chandler? Why would he leave me all his possessions? Had I met him somewhere and not remembered? Perhaps helped him with his packages, opened a door for him, said hello, performed some small kindness that compelled him to name me as his heir? You heard about things like this in tabloid newspapers or in movies, but never in real life. Nobody left an entire estate to a perfect stranger just because she picked up some spilled apples.