Chapter 22 #2
“Right,” she muttered, “so that’s not really helpful. How about keys to the main house? Would Nancy have had keys to the place?”
“No, absolutely not. Ah, wait.” He groaned. “I think there was an issue with her, now that you mentioned keys. Mathew did get something re-keyed because of her.”
“Interesting,” she murmured.
“You might need to talk with her.”
“We definitely need to talk with her,” Mack interjected, “but we’ll need a way to find her.”
“Do you have an address for her?” Doreen asked the probate attorney. “Obviously we have to get to the bottom of this.”
“I’m not sure that I can legally give it to you.”
“Why not? Wasn’t she Mathew’s employee?”
“Yes.”
But he sounded pretty hesitant about it. She looked at the other men with an eyebrow raised, urging them to say something.
Nick suggested, “With Doreen as Mathew’s legal representative for his estate, I think, under these circumstances, it’s fine to release that info. We have to get to the bottom of two murders.”
“Oh gosh, that’s right. Okay, hang on a moment, while I look it up.” And very quickly he had an address for Nancy.
Doreen thanked him profusely and added, “Hopefully, we can get to the bottom of this before things get any uglier.”
“Two dead people is already ugly enough,” the probate attorney noted. “Two dead people on top of the fact that Mathew himself is dead, not to mention Robin, makes it worse.”
“I know,” she murmured, “and I’m pretty sure it’s all connected to the fortune he kept here in the house.”
“Yes, and I often told him that he should move it all. I presume you’ve found even more.”
“Yes, I think so,” she told him, “although I don’t know if we found all of it. I mean, the furniture alone is worth a fortune, plus the cars, the paintings, the rare books, the jewelry. There’s just so much of it.”
“And again that’s why I kept telling him to get it appraised.”
“If you have copies of appraisals or insurance riders, that would be most helpful,” she pointed out, “when it comes to dealing with the people who will sell it all.”
“I can send that to you as well,” he replied, “as we kept it as part of his asset documentation.”
“Good enough,” she said. “And what about the weapons? Do you know how many he had?”
“Five handguns for sure, but I don’t know if that was all of them.”
“Five?” she repeated, turning to look at Mack. “We found five. One in his office, one in the dresser in the master suite, and three in one of the safe deposit boxes.”
Nick interjected, “But I see paperwork for six, based on the licenses found with the first gun.”
“Oh, that’s not good,” the probate attorney replied.
She announced, “Hang on a minute, here’s Mack.” She handed the phone over to Mack and the conversation went to registrations and serial numbers on the weapons.
He explained to the probate attorney, “If they all haven’t been found, we do need to report the one as missing and possibly stolen. The fact that weapons could be out there somewhere and associated with this estate … is bad news.”
“That’s true,” Nick confirmed.
“Oh goodness, let’s get it sorted soon,” Doreen added, staring at Nick. “Especially after having a couple dead men found here, it will reflect on all of us.”
“Exactly,” Nick stated. Mack nodded in agreement.
The probate lawyer added, his voice rising in a mild panic, “Oh my, I had no idea when I took this on that it would be such a big job.”
“I presume you’re being well paid for it,” Doreen asked.
“Yes, it’s all laid out in the will itself.” He laughed. “It’s not that I didn’t trust Mathew, but I knew he was stingy. So, I refused to do it unless the actual amount was laid out. So don’t worry. I am getting paid.”
“Good enough,” she said.
“Of course, you could always top it up if you want to,” he added cheerfully. And, with that, he ended the call.
She frowned at Nick. “Is that a common thing for people to do with lawyers?”
He shook his head. “No, not necessarily. But, in this case, when you have this kind of money involved, I guess maybe it makes sense.”
She shrugged. “Maybe, I don’t know.” She looked at Mack and noted, “The missing weapon is an issue, isn’t it?”
Mack nodded. “Yep, sure is. Particularly when no break-ins have been reported to the local police, as per Daniel anyway. Yet further confirmation through Captain Hawkins differed, finding a couple neighborhood reports.”
Doreen snorted. “Just like Jefferson told us about the Smithsons.” She shook her head.
“So I’ll call Captain Hawkins and tell him about the missing gun, but I really don’t like this.”
“What about the security system on the house?” she asked. “Did anybody look at the security tapes?”
“Of course,” Mack snapped, “but, gee, what a surprise, it hasn’t been working since, oh, somewhere around the time that Mathew was killed.”
She groaned. “Of course, and that would have been his own right-hand man’s doings, right before he murdered Mathew.”
“Probably so.” Mack asked her, “Do you want to speak with any of Mathew’s past employees?”
“Nope. None of them had any respect for me because Mathew treated me like the furniture, so that’s how they treated me too.”
He groaned. “In that case we won’t worry about them expecting anything from you either.”
“No, surely not.”
They sat down and ate their dinners. When she felt better now that her stomach was full, she said, “The thing that I don’t understand is the threat on that note. Give it to me. That could be nearly anything.”
Mack nodded. “Exactly.”
Doreen continued. “And that’s my problem. It’s not as if Mathew would ever give someone anything, whatever it is. He would refuse, and, if it was his—legally owned—then no way. Unless somebody took it forcefully. Of course somebody could do that still. … I’m getting a little scared here.”
“Easy now. We’ll sort this out,” Mack said.
She shook her head. “We know it’s somebody connected to this place.
We know it must somebody who knew about a lot of the goings-on here, and, chances are, it’s a disgruntled person, perhaps somebody involved in Mathew’s business, even some part-time employee, like this Nancy woman.
” She looked at the guys and suggested, “Maybe we should go for a ride and find her.”
“Maybe so.” Mack immediately looked down at the animals.
“They’re coming too,” Doreen declared.
He just nodded, as if knowing it would be useless to argue. He looked at his brother, who held up his hands and said, “You guys go ahead. She keeps making more work for me, so now I’ve got to sort out a missing gun, among other stuff.”
“Yes, please do that,” she said. “And while you are at it, contact Detective Clark too and tell him there could be a weapon missing, and that we’re still trying to sort our way through it.”
“If the missing weapon from this house was used to kill our dead guy number two, and we don’t have it, then whoever took it is most likely to be the killer.
However, the real question here is, how did they get in?
How did they get the keys? I do know that Mathew had every exterior door set with a different lock than all the others.
So he had different keys for several doors to enter the main house, like that double French door leading from the back of the house to the greenhouse.
Plus, if people worked for Mathew and had a house key, he would rekey the lock to that particular house key.
Just like Mathew’s probate attorney told us about this Nancy woman.
So, we need to find her and to sort out some things. ”
She added, “We also have two dead men and one missing convict, all who have been recently released from prison, and all who apparently knew one another. However, we don’t have any contact information for Sam, if that’s his real name.”
“I’ll contact the parole board too,” Nick offered. “Come to think of it, we should have done that already.”
“I thought you did,” Mack clarified, “and they just hadn’t got back to you yet.”
His brother looked at him and sighed. “I think you’re right. Let me do a follow-up. You guys go off and do whatever you’re handling,” Nick urged them. “I need a desk and a few hours to deal with this stuff.”
“Go for it,” she said, with a smile in his direction. “Use Mathew’s office.”
He grumbled about all the work she was giving him.
She chuckled. “Considering you’ll be my brother-in-law, I’ll get the family rate now too, won’t I?” When he stared at her in horror, she burst into uproarious laughter. “I have no problem paying your bill. You’ve been as helpful as Scott has been.”
Nick smiled. “I do like being appreciated—and paid.”
“Right now we need to find whoever has decided to help themselves to part of Mathew’s estate—claiming whatever to be theirs alone and not sharing it with their friends, who they killed to avoid sharing the goodies.”
“You think it’s one or two?” Nick asked.
“I think it was at least three partners to begin with—Pete, Butch, and Sam. Unfortunately two different people killed Pete and Butch, since Butch’s gun killed Pete, even if Butch didn’t pull the trigger himself. Nobody found the gun that killed Butch to date, right?”
Mack nodded, grimacing. “Sure hope it’s not Mathew’s missing gun.”
Doreen grimaced, then continued. “So now we have Sam unaccounted for, plus Nancy. We have Jefferson’s report of the Smithsons seeing a man and woman trespassing on this property.
Could have been Sam with Nancy. However, who knows who else these people told about Mathew’s house filled with treasures.
That’s what triggered the first murder.”
Mack noted, “Yet these prisoners seem to tell all, once in a cell. So we have no idea how many criminals are truly involved. So keep an open mind, Doreen.”
She sighed.
Nick stared at her and asked, “Do you just pull that stuff out of your head?”
“Yep, basically I do.”
He grimaced. “But you do know what Mack will say.”
Since Mack was standing right there, she groaned and nodded. “Yeah, he’ll say facts and evidence first, suppositions and guesswork later.”