Chapter 8
The property was still quiet when Emma carried a paper cup of coffee down the winding path to her bungalow. The pools were smooth and empty, and the gardeners hadn’t started work yet. Somewhere behind the main house, a laundry cart hummed along before the sound faded.
She’d been awake since before six, which was closer to her normal Chicago schedule. She was also wearing the linen shirt from yesterday because she hadn’t packed for a week in Key West. None of that mattered. Emma finally felt as though she had a plan.
She pulled a chair onto the patio, set her coffee on the little metal table and opened her legal pad to a clean page.
Below it, she wrote the same facts she’d gone over with Maeve, followed by the questions she still needed answered. Then she started a new section and wrote a list of what she wanted Rachel to accomplish.
Stop the sale.
Recover the property to the estate.
Recover as much rent from Arthur as possible.
Refer Arthur to the state attorney’s office.
Protect the tenant.
Emma stopped writing and looked at the last line.
She hadn’t planned to put Jake on the list, but there he was. Maybe protecting him was simply part of protecting the cottage and building a case against Arthur. Jake had the letter, three years of canceled rent checks and firsthand knowledge of what Arthur had told him.
That was the practical explanation but Emma knew it wasn’t the only one.
Jake had trusted her before he had much reason to, and she’d spent most of yesterday thinking about how important it was not to lose that trust. Somewhere along the way, he had also become the person in Key West she trusted most.
She left the words where they were and reached for her coffee.
Morning had begun to settle over the property. A cardinal called from somewhere beyond the palms, and Emma could smell coffee drifting from the main house. In another hour, people would be moving between the bungalows and heading toward the pools. For now, she had the patio to herself.
She thought about her father. Emma had been so young when he died that most of what she remembered came in pieces.
She had four memories she believed were really hers, although she couldn’t be certain how much the photographs had filled in over the years.
There was also the small wooden model of a house he’d built by hand.
It had sat on her mother’s dresser throughout Emma’s childhood and was now packed away in her storage unit in Chicago.
She’d never really known what her father had been like as a man.
She knew Gloria had been his mother, though, and she knew he’d grown up in the cottage on Hibiscus Lane.
Her grandmother shared stories about her son that Emma could only imagine.
She wondered how much of his personality and mannerisms she’d inherited.
Emma looked down at her notes.
She had spent summers in the same house where her father had once been a boy. She’d eaten breakfast at the kitchen table where he must have eaten breakfast. She’d walked through the same screen door and slept beneath the same roof.
She had never thought about the cottage that way before.
For the last few days, she’d told herself she was fighting for it because Gloria had left it to her. Arthur had lied, and he had no right to take something their grandmother had wanted Emma to have. Samantha Larson had given her the chance to stop him, and Emma intended to do exactly that.
All of it was true, but sitting there in the quiet, she understood there was more to it.
The cottage was one of the few places left where her father had once lived and where Emma could still imagine him. Arthur had almost sold it without her ever knowing it belonged to her and without knowing how much the connection to her past mattered.
She looked toward the palms beyond the patio.
“All right, Dad,” she said softly.
She wasn’t sure why she said it, but the words brought tears to her eyes before she had time to stop them.
Emma lowered her head and let them come. She hadn’t cried over her father since she was a child, and she wasn’t sure she was crying only for him now. Maybe some of it was for Gloria, or for the years that had passed without Emma understanding what the cottage meant to her.
Whatever the reason, she didn’t fight it.
A few minutes later, she wiped her face and reached for her coffee. It had gone cold, but she drank it anyway. Then she picked up her legal pad and went inside to get ready for the call.
Rachel Alden answered on the second ring at exactly nine.
“Good morning, Ms. Alden. It’s Emma Kendrick.”
“Good morning, Emma.”
“Thank you for making time for me.”
“Maeve called me yesterday afternoon, so I’ve been expecting you. Are you ready to work?”
Emma smiled for the first time that morning. “I am.”
“Good. Start at the beginning and tell me everything you know up to this point.”
Emma had spent enough years preparing for important calls to know the value of being organized.
She walked Rachel through Gloria’s later will, the earlier will Arthur had taken through probate and the sale of the cottage.
Then she explained Samantha Larson’s call, Jake’s letter and everything Maeve had told her the day before.
Rachel listened without interrupting.
When Emma finished, there was a brief silence.
“Emma, I’ve practiced law in Monroe County for twenty-two years, and I don’t like much of what you’ve just told me.”
Emma picked up her pen. “Neither do I.”
“Do you have a copy of the later will?”
“No. I haven’t actually seen it. Samantha found it in the Monroe County property records and told me what it says.”
“All right. I’ll get a copy from the county this morning. I want to see the document myself before I file anything based on it.”
Emma wrote WILL on her legal pad and then crossed it out. For the first time in three days, there was something on her list that belonged to someone else.
“Thank you.”
“That’s what you hired me for. Now, the first thing we need to do is stop the sale.”
Emma sat straighter. “Can you?”
“I can file what we need this morning and get it in front of the court. I’ll take the papers over myself before noon.”
Emma wrote STOP SALE across the top of the page and underlined it.
For three days, she’d been collecting information without knowing whether any of it would be enough. This was the first time someone had told her there was something they could actually do.
“What happens after that?”
“Then we deal with the will, your uncle and the money. In that order. I’ll also want the title company’s entire file, including anything connected to the letter your tenant received.”
“Jake.”
“Yes. Jake Kelleher.”
Emma glanced at the list she’d made on the patio.
Protect the tenant.
Rachel continued. “I’ll send you an engagement letter this morning. My retainer is five thousand dollars, billed against my hourly rate. Once I know more about what remains in the estate and what your uncle has done, we can talk about the rest.”
“That’s fine.”
“I’ll also need you in my office tomorrow morning. We’ll go through the history with your uncle and prepare an affidavit. Can you be here at nine?”
“I can.”
“Bring everything you have from him. Emails, texts, letters and notes from any calls. I also want whatever you wrote down when Samantha Larson contacted you.”
“I have all of it.”
“Good. And I need a copy of Jake’s letter.”
“I made two copies yesterday. Maeve has one, and I have the other. I can bring it to you when we meet.”
“Perfect.”
Emma made another note.
“What else haven’t you told me?”
Emma leaned back in the chair. “There may be someone who knew my grandmother well in the last few years of her life. A man she was seeing.”
“You know his name?”
“No. Connie at Margarita Max’s remembers him coming into the bar with her. She said he used to read to my grandmother.”
“Find him.”
“I intend to.”
“If he knew your grandmother well during the period when she signed that later will, I want to know what he remembers.”
Emma wrote his name on her list even though she didn’t have one yet. Gloria’s gentleman friend would have to do for now.
“There’s something else,” she said. “Jake has lived in the cottage for three years. He signed his lease with Arthur and paid him rent every month. Until I showed up, he had no reason to think there was a problem.”
“And he gave you the letter?”
“Yes.”
“Do you trust him?”
Emma didn’t answer immediately.
Three days ago, Jake Kelleher had been nothing more than a stranger living in her grandmother’s cottage. Since then, he’d given her the letter without knowing exactly why she wanted it and had accepted her promise that she would tell him the truth when she could. He had trusted her first.
Rachel’s question wasn’t difficult after all.
“I do.”
“Then don’t lose that. He may become an important witness, especially if the letter was meant to keep him quiet until the sale closed.”
Emma looked again at the words she’d written that morning.
Protect the tenant.
“I understand.”
“One more thing,” Rachel said. “Your uncle is going to find out very soon that you have a lawyer. My office will notify him once I’m formally involved. After that, don’t speak to him without me. If he calls, texts or emails you, send it to me.”
Emma thought about Arthur’s last call and how easily he had tried to explain everything away.
“That won’t be a problem.”
“Good.”
Emma looked over the notes covering the page. There was one question she wanted to ask before they hung up.
“Rachel?”
“Yes?”
“Why did you agree to talk to me when you’ve never met me?”
Rachel laughed softly.
“Because Maeve Corwin called me at four yesterday afternoon and spent the first several minutes talking about everything except what she wanted.”
Emma smiled.
“That sounds like her.”
“By the time she finally asked if I could help you, I’d already figured out she cared about the answer. Maeve doesn’t call me unless she thinks something matters.”
“She told me she wasn’t getting involved.”
“I’m sure she did.”
“More than once.”
“That sounds like her too.”
Emma laughed.