Chapter 4 Enter the Greedy Heirs
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In Black Walnut Cove, news traveled considerably faster than broadband internet, federal subpoenas, or the speed of sound.
By nine o’clock Wednesday morning, less than twenty-four hours after Julian Croft had been found reposing permanently beneath a five-pound brass counterweight in the carriage house, the rumors had already evolved through four distinct theological and forensic iterations.
According to Dottie Perkins down at the Blue Ridge Beauty Nook, Julian had been assassinated by an international cartel of illicit teacup smugglers.
According to the volunteer fire department, he had fallen victim to an angry ghost with a grudge against modern neckwear.
And according to the heavy spray of gravel currently rattling against the limestone steps of Blackwood Manor, the next of kin had arrived to claim the spoils before the corpse had even reached ambient room temperature.
Birdie and I were standing in the cavernous front foyer, surrounded by three towering stacks of bubble-wrapped Staffordshire spaniels, when the grand double doors blew inward with the force of a tropical storm.
"My hair," wailed a voice that sounded like a blender full of broken glass and gin.
"Look at what this godforsaken fog has done to my blowout.
I look like a frightened cocker spaniel.
Gregory, did you bring my vanity case or did you leave it in the trunk of that pathetic rental sedan with the rest of our dignity? "
Through the threshold swept Vanessa Vance, trailing an olfactory cloud of Virginia Slims, expensive tuberoses, and pure, concentrated indignation.
She was somewhere in her late fifties, possessed a tan the color of an over-steeped pecan shell, and was swaddled in an electric-turquoise silk caftan that fluttered around her like the plumage of an aggressive tropical parrot.
Layers of chunky faux-gold chain link necklaces clanked against her collarbone like an agitated suit of medieval armor, accompanied by four oversized cocktail rings that looked capable of shattering plate glass.
Hard on her heels came Gregory Vance, and if Vanessa was a tropical storm, Gregory was a localized humidity emergency.
He was forty-eight, rail-thin, and poured into a slim-cut Italian charcoal suit that had clearly been purchased for an air-conditioned board room in downtown Raleigh rather than an unheated mountain foyer smelling of damp horsehair and ancient cedar.
His forehead glistened under the chandelier with a heavy, alarming sheen of perspiration, his silk tie was yanked three inches south of his collar button, and the armpits of his pale blue Egyptian cotton shirt had darkened to the shade of navy surplus canvas.
"I have the bags, Vanessa," Gregory wheezed, lugging two matching monogrammed leather suitcases and a briefcase that he clutched against his ribs as though it contained his last remaining lung. He dropped the bags onto Eleanor Vance’s hand-knotted Persian runner, paid no attention to the five-thousand-dollar antique beneath his Italian loafers, and spun around with wide, darting eyes that twitched like two caffeinated minnows.
"Where are the deputies?" Gregory demanded, his voice cracking on the final syllable.
He wiped his dripping jaw with a monogrammed linen handkerchief that had already surrendered to dampness.
"Is Lawson here? Did they finish sweeping the outbuildings?
What did they take out of the carriage house?
Did they touch the files? The desk drawers?
Any... any loose financial ledgers or family records? "
"Good morning to you, too, Mr. Vance," I said, stepping forward from behind a cherrywood pie safe.
I kept my voice pitched at that specific frequency of Appalachian calm designed to de-escalate cornered raccoons.
"I’m Maggie Callahan. We spoke by phone on Monday.
This is my partner, Bernadette Jenkins."
Gregory blinked at me through fogged wire-rim glasses, his chest heaving under his saturated vest. He didn't seem to hear a single syllable.
"The records, Mrs. Callahan. Eleanor’s papers.
The police... did they bag any documents from the scene?
Did Croft have anything on him? A notebook?
An account ledger bound in brown pigskin with a brass clasp? "
"Well, bless your sweet, panicked little heart," Birdie said, stepping up beside me with her aluminum clipboard tucked under one arm like a field marshal surveying a disorganized infantry retreat.
"A man who worked for your family gets his skull introduced to a balance scale less than twenty yards from your front porch, and your primary concern is office supplies.
Southern hospitality really is thriving in the Triangle. "
Gregory flinched as if Birdie had popped a paper bag behind his ear.
"I... that’s not what I meant. Of course Julian’s death is a...
a terrible inconvenience. Tragic. Utterly tragic.
But the estate—the assets have to be protected!
There are legal covenants. Deadlines. Hard deadlines!
" He shoved two trembling fingers inside his sodden collar, tugging at it until the seam groaned.
"I have obligations in Raleigh by Friday.
Creditors... that is to say, partners. Investment partners.
If the probate court freezes this property because of a criminal proceeding—"
"Oh, shut up, Gregory," Vanessa snapped, waving a dismissive French-manicured hand that set her faux-gold bangles clattering like castanets.
"Nobody cares about your pathetic little margins.
Eleanor lived to be eighty-nine out of sheer, unadulterated spite, and the very least she could do is leave us an unencumbered liquidation. "
She turned her kohl-rimmed gaze upon Birdie and me, squinting through the dim foyer light with the sharp, appraising eye of a hawk circling a roadkill armadillo.
"Now, which one of you is the shopkeeper?
" Vanessa demanded, pulling a tortoiseshell cigarette case from a quilted handbag, clicking it open, and then clicking it shut when she remembered the county-mandated fire extinguishers mounted near the hall tree.
"You. Jenkins. Tell me the truth. Where is the jewelry?
Eleanor had a suite of Edwardian sapphires and three trays of platinum art deco cocktail rings that belonged to Grandmother Vance.
If that pompous little Atlanta gigolo Julian Croft had his sticky fingers in the safe before someone cracked his head open, I will sue this entire county until every deputy is driving a mule. "
Birdie smiled, and it was a masterpiece of lethal, sugar-coated hostility.
"Mrs. Delacroix—or is it still Vance? One does lose track of the surnames after the third divorce, doesn't one?
" Birdie purred, tapping her ballpoint pen against her clipboard with rhythmic precision.
"All fine jewelry, per the bonded contract signed by your brother and the clerk of superior court, was transferred to the vault at First Mountain Bank in town at four o'clock on Monday afternoon.
Under armed escort, I might add. Every single clasp, carat, and scratch has been photographed, cataloged, and insured.
You couldn't misplace a faux-pearl earring in this house without my signature on a triplicate custody manifest."
Vanessa’s penciled eyebrows shot toward her stiff, heavily hairsprayed bangs. "I see. And the silver?"
"Sealed in the butler's pantry under tamper-evident tape," Birdie replied smoothly. "Along with your aunt’s collection of nineteenth-century pewter tankards, which, despite your late appraiser’s opinion, are genuine touchmarked London wares and not tin reproduction pie plates."
Vanessa let out a sharp, theatrical snort that sounded suspiciously like a dry cough.
"Julian Croft was a fraud in a silk scarf.
I knew it the moment Gregory brought him into the loop.
Pretentious little tick. He spent twenty minutes on the phone with me Monday night bragging about how he was going to 'correct our financial expectations' and renegotiate his appraisal commission up to fifteen percent because of some miraculous discovery he intended to verify yesterday morning. Fifteen percent! The nerve of the man."
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight. I stepped forward, resting one hand gently on the banister of the grand walnut staircase.
"He called you on Monday night?" I asked, keeping my tone as light and conversational as a chat over church punch. "Did he mention what this discovery was, Ms. Vance?"
Vanessa flicked an invisible speck of lint from her turquoise lapel.
"Some old piece of wood. A cabinet, a chest, who knows?
Julian loved the sound of his own voice far too much to bother with specifics.
He just kept babbling about 'unassailable leverage' and how the Vance family was going to pay him whatever he asked if we wanted the estate dispersal to go through smoothly.
I told him he was an arrogant blackmailer and hung up on him. "
"Did you?" Birdie murmured, scribbling something furious and microscopic in the corner of her clipboard. "How terribly definitive."
Beside her, Gregory’s face had drained from flushed crimson to the sickly, translucent gray of skim milk. "Vanessa, shut your mouth! You don’t know what you're talking about. You don’t know anything about the arrangements!"
"I know you owe seven hundred thousand dollars to a loan syndicate in Charlotte, brother dear," Vanessa said with cold, venomous delight.
"And I know that if Eleanor’s estate doesn't cash out by the fifteenth of the month, those lovely men in the dark sedans are going to come visit that sterile townhouse of yours and start repossessing your golf clubs and your kneecaps. "