An Embarrassment of Itches Read online

  “What grounds?” I sputtered. “If you’re implying that I somehow conspired with Ms. Driver—who I met tonight for the first time—to persuade Amanda to make me her sole heir, you’re nuts.”

  “And why would I be a party to something like that? What could possibly be in it for me?” Laney put her palms flat on the table and leaned forward to burn holes in Brad with her eyes.

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars for one. And a probably a commission on every painting you sold for her.” The sneer he aimed in my direction left no doubt who he was referring to.

  “This is ridiculous.” Laney stood up and collected her purse. “I don’t have to sit around and be insulted like this.”

  “Ladies, gentlemen.” From the look Mr. Carter cast at the men, I assumed he used the term “gentlemen” loosely. “I assure you, this will is legal and binding. Ms. Taylor was of sound mind when she outlined her requests, and neither Mr. Taylor nor Mr. Ellis have grounds to dispute it.”

  Brad flushed so deeply, I wondered if he had hypertension, but it was Derek who spoke first. “What happens if we can prove the will was made with whatchacall’em, under duress or something? Won’t that invalidate the will? That would mean Sam died intestate, so everything would come to me, right?” He fixed the kind of sly smile on me that one associated with small boys possessed by the devil in a horror film. “Even the cat.”

  If blood could freeze in one’s veins, mine momentarily did. When my heart started beating again, it was in triple time.

  “First, there is a no-contest clause in the will, which automatically disinherits challengers.” Mr. Carter wrapped his authority around him like a mantle and took charge of the room. “Second, you have no grounds to contest the will, and any lawyer worth his salt will tell you that up front. But they will be happy to take your money, I’m sure. So, by all means, challenge the will. You have three months in which to file your motion or produce a will that was written after this one.”

  Derek wasn’t done, however. He indicated me with a lift of his chin. “What happens if she dies? That voids the will, right?”

  Oh, lovely.

  Mr. Carter’s patience seemed to be wearing thin. “No, Mr. Ellis, it does not. Should Dr. Reese die at this very moment, you would have to take up the matter with her heirs.”

  “Given that I’m not in the will in the first place, I have no problems challenging the no-contest clause or the whole damn document.” Brad tugged viciously at his tie to loosen it and stood. “I’ll see you both in court.”

  He was headed for the door when I stopped him. “What about the three thousand dollars you owe me? You made me pay for horses that were already mine, that weren’t yours to sell.”

  Brad pulled up as though I had shot him. He took several deep breaths, his spine rigid with anger, before he turned to respond. His eyes narrowed in a glittering fury until his expression smoothed into one of preternatural calm. “I’ll return the money for those nags if you renounce the estate.”

  “Never mind. If you contest the will, I’ll bring it up in my countersuit.” I pretended to examine my nails. “I imagine the courts might find it interesting that the CEO of Taylor Industries is so hard up for cash he’d sell his sister’s horses to a slaughterhouse on the same day as her death.” Looking up, I met his gaze. “Maybe the Securities and Exchange Commission would be interested to hear that, too, while we’re at it.”

  It was literally a shot in the dark. A pushback for his appalling behavior. But damn if something in his expression didn’t smack of an arrow winging its way straight into the bull’s-eye.

  Chapter Eight

  The gathering broke up shortly after that.

  Brad left without another word, in a fugue of fury so hot you could almost see steam rolling off him. Derek seemed to have accepted there was nothing he could do at the moment about the terms of the will, but the glower he gave me on leaving clearly said he didn’t consider the matter closed, not by a long shot.

  I remained behind to speak with Mr. Carter. He assured me the executors of Amanda’s will would begin the probate process as soon as they received a death certificate, but that even with no one contesting the will, it could take six months or more to probate an estate the size of Amanda’s. If they challenged the will, I could be looking at a lengthy process—even years in the making. We discussed what defending the will might look like in court, and the possibility of a long battle draining the estate of all its worth.

  He also advised me to make a will if I hadn’t already done so. Thanks to my mother wishing to plan my funeral a few years ago, I already had a will in place, but it would need updating now.

  Before I left, Mr. Carter handed me a sealed envelope. “Ms. Taylor left this with me to give to you. Perhaps it will answer some of your questions.”

  I took the envelope with some misgivings and stuffed it into my oversized bag. What on earth had Amanda been thinking? Hopefully, the letter would explain.

  For all practical purposes, nothing had really changed. The horses might as well stay with Joe for the time being. Ming was already in my care. If they did not give me access to the property after the coroner released his report, I’d move the ferals to Joe’s place as well, and hope they’d hang around for him to feed them.

  Which reminded me, I needed to get back to Greenbrier to feed them tonight.

  To my surprise, Laney was waiting for me on the porch when the assistant escorted me to the door.

  “You want to grab a drink?” She thumbed over her shoulder in the general direction of Main Street. The exterior light of the law office cast a pool around her like a stage spotlight.

  “Maybe tomorrow?” I hesitated, then explained about the cats.

  Laney shook her head. “I’m planning to head home tomorrow. Sorry, not a fan of small towns.”

  “No apology necessary.” My stomach growled, and Laney pressed her fingers to her mouth to hide a grin. “On the other hand, I was planning to grab some food before I headed back. Tell you what. I’ll call the sheriff’s office and see when they could send someone out to Amanda’s. If the timing works, I’ll get something to eat with you.”

  The dispatcher seemed a bit disapproving when I told her I’d been held up and wouldn’t be able to go to Amanda’s place for a couple of hours. After grumbling about the inconvenience, the dispatcher told me to call when I had returned to Greenbrier and they would send someone to meet me, provided there wasn’t a conflicting call for the deputy on duty.

  “We’re set,” I told Laney as I pocketed the phone. “There’s a bar and grill on 5th Street, if that works for you.”

  We arranged to meet there, and I let Remy out to pee before stuffing him back in the car again. Poor dog. He really deserved more of a life than he had with me.

  There was a church lot that was open to public parking in the evenings a few blocks from the bar, so we parked there and walked the short distance.

  “Where is home for you?” I asked Laney as I opened the door into the bar. The noise of happy customers, along with the odor of BBQ and fried onion rings, blasted us as we stepped inside. At the far end of the room, a few patrons were playing pool. The area near the bar was crowded, but I led the way to a side room where half a dozen tables were set up. We grabbed a table and took our seats.

  A server quickly handed out a pair of menus and asked what we’d have to drink. As much as I wanted a beer, as little as I’d had to eat all day, I knew that would be a mistake, so I settled for water. Laney chose an IPA and waited until the server promised she’d be right back with our drinks before answering my question.

  “You asked where I’m from? I’m based in Atlanta.” She smiled as I helped myself to the dish of peanuts in the center of the table.

  “Sorry. I’m starving.”

  “So, I noticed. I guess your job keeps you on the run until all hours?” She opened a menu and frowned as she glanced down at the options.

  “Given the nature of a house-call practice, which means I’
m not equipped to deal with anything that needs hospitalization or surgery, I’m pretty busy most days, but the evenings are usually my own.” I didn’t need to look at the menu. I knew what I wanted to order. “To field phone calls, triage emergencies, catch up on paperwork, inventory, and the minutia of running my own business, that is. If I’m not too tired by the end of the day, I might watch a little television or read a book. If you want a glamorous life, look no farther than veterinary medicine.”

  The startled look on her face was akin to someone expecting a Dalmatian puppy and getting Cruella de Vil instead. “But being a vet is extremely rewarding, right? And fun. All those puppies and kittens.”

  If only it were all puppies and kittens. I looked into her eyes and saw yet another person who’d dreamed of becoming a vet when she was a child. I decided not to disillusion her more than I already had.

  “Oh, yes. Very rewarding. But it can be—” I struggled for the right words, “—emotionally challenging, too. When you have to deliver bad news, that sort of thing.”

  Her frown lightened, and she nodded. “Of course, yes. I can see that.”

  I let it go. For her, my job would still be primarily taking care of puppies and kittens. She’d never know the cost of not knowing what is wrong with someone’s beloved pet and being unable to fix it. Or worse, knowing how to fix it, but also knowing they wouldn’t be able to afford the treatment. At least with a house-call practice, I didn’t have the added pressure of making life and death decisions every ten minutes because some corporation deemed the speed at which I saw clients was more important than the care I delivered.

  I still had nightmares about my first couple of years in practice.

  On the other hand, I loved being able to walk my clients through the pros and cons of decision-making with their pets. One of the best things about being my own boss was the freedom to take all the time I needed to explain a medical condition or the best course of action to a client.

  Puppy and kitten visits were pretty awesome, too.

  To my relief, Laney dropped the subject when the server returned with our drinks and took our order. I got the BBQ pork with sweet sauce, hush puppies, and coleslaw. After much wrinkling of her nose and flipping the single page of the menu back and forth, Laney ordered a tuna salad.

  When the server left, I snagged another handful of peanuts. “I hope you know that salad you ordered is going to consist largely of iceberg lettuce.”

  Laney shrugged and took a pull from her bottle of beer. “I suspected as much. At least the breakfast at the B&B where I’m staying has been decent.”

  I squeezed the slice of lemon provided into my water. “You’re at Mossy Creek? Isn’t Brad Taylor staying there too?”

  She made a face. “Unfortunately, yes. Though I didn’t realize who he was until today.”

  “Word around town says Brad is generally unpleasant to be around, even when he isn’t actively fighting to inherit his sister’s estate.”

  “I don’t know him well enough to say, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Though he was nice enough when he met me.” Laney shot me a wry smile over the lip of her bottle. “Of course, he still thought he was the primary heir at the time.”

  Made sense to me. If he’d found out Laney was Amanda’s agent... “Did he approach you about Amanda’s work? Her legacy?”

  “Legacy is a good way of putting it. She was that talented.” Laney’s brown eyes went cold for a moment. “Neither one of us knew who the other was at first. Not until news of Amanda’s death came out. When I realized he was Amanda’s brother, I introduced myself to offer condolences. It took him less than a minute to switch from bereaved brother to wanting an estimate of Amanda’s worth.”

  It was funny how we both kept calling her Amanda, but then again, that’s the name we knew her by.

  “Sounds like a real charmer, all right.” Curiosity made me ask. “Do you know how long he’s been at the B&B?”

  Laney set her beer down and leaned back in her chair. “Not really. I got in late on the 12th. He was at breakfast the following morning when I came down, but I don’t know when he checked in. It could have been earlier that day or that week. Why?”

  I’d discovered Amanda’s body the morning of the 13th.

  “Just that something’s been bugging me. Before the reading tonight, I saw Brad at a restaurant in Greenbrier. He was showing a sophisticated-looking woman a portfolio. It occurs to me he might have jumped the gun on Amanda’s drawings and was trying to sell them. Granted, at the time, he probably thought he’d inherit, but—”

  “Wait. What did this woman look like? A blonde Morticia dressed in Prada?”

  “That’s scarily accurate. Remind me never to ask you to describe me to anyone. Do you know her?”

  “It sounds like Liv Markham. She runs an art gallery in Manhattan and has a reputation for being a bit of a ghoul. Always the first to show up at a funeral.” Laney called Brad a highly uncomplimentary name, the sort of thing my mother would have punished with a lecture and a bar of soap. Somehow, I liked her even more for it. “I wouldn’t put it past her to read the obituaries and contact heirs the moment the news dropped.”

  Given that any sale of Amanda’s art that didn’t go through her agent would effectively take a commission out of Laney’s pocket, I could understand the harsh language.

  “But Brad’s plans to sell anything would be nipped in the bud, right? It sounds like Amanda kept tight control over her inventory.”

  We paused our conversation when the server showed up with our order, shouldering a huge tray that contained half a dozen meals. With a deft hand, she swung the tray down to an empty table, and began doling out the dinners to the surrounding patrons. Laney and I got our food last. As predicted, Laney’s tuna salad rested on a bed of limp lettuce. My BBQ sat nestled in a plastic basket lined with red-and-white checked paper. Crispy hush puppies lay tucked alongside the sandwich. The harried-looking server left a selection of brown and red sauces in plastic dispensing bottles and hurried off to fill the next order.

  I removed the top bun from my sandwich and drowned the pork with red sauce before replacing the bread. Not caring how messy it was, I took an enormous bite, barely refraining from letting out a moan of pleasure.

  “Yes and no,” Laney said, answering my question from before as she poked at her salad without enthusiasm. “As a rule, Amanda was very good about cataloging her work. She was far more organized than the average artist I work with. But she didn’t update her files daily. More like once a month. So, anything she was working on recently might not be on the official list.”

  I nodded, chewed, and swallowed. “That makes it more likely what I saw was Brad showing drawings from Amanda’s sketch pad. How much would one of her sketches go for, anyway?”

  “Hard to say.” Laney continued to move her tuna salad around without eating any. “All of her art would be worth a pretty penny now because of her death. Some subjects would fetch a higher price than others.”

  I stuffed a hush puppy in my mouth and nearly wept at the sublime combination of flavors. The deep-fried cornmeal was utterly perfect. Of course, in my ravenous state, I would probably have said the same of shoe leather. “What about a drawing of a dog? Off the top of your head, what would that bring?”

  Laney took a small bite of her salad and laid her fork beside her plate. “Her animal drawings definitely are worth more than, say, her flowers or trees, though perhaps not as much as her landscapes. A cute dog done in charcoal? Probably around five.”

  “Huh. I guess she’d have to do a lot of drawings to make any money at five dollars a pop.” It was good to know that framing the image of Remy would cost more than the drawing was worth. Somehow that made me feel better since it was lying around my house somewhere. I tried to recall if I’d ever seen Amanda at the local craft fair, where artisans would gather for a weekend of food, live music, and to show off their wares.

  Laney lifted her eyebrows at me with a gentle smile. “Not five dol
lars. Five hundred. Five hundred dollars.”

  A crumb of hush puppy went down the wrong pipe and I coughed and wheeze, only to stop when I took a big slug of water. “I own a drawing worth five hundred dollars?”

  The couple at the next table turned to look at me in curiosity, their eyes wide and eyebrows raised.

  “That’s just the charcoal sketches. A limited run print might go for two or three thousand a piece. Her oils and landscapes are worth far more. Twice a year she went to Hilton Head or the Keys. Her seascapes are extremely popular, though she thought them crass, commercial images. Don’t get me started on her Ireland series. People snapped them up like candy. She was planning to go to Wales this summer, and she would have made a killing on those paintings. Then there’s the merchandizing, too.” Laney tipped the neck of her beer bottle in my direction before taking a sip. “My dear, you own it all.”

  “Well, but most of it’s sold already, right?”

  Laney nodded. “The commissioned work and the limited-edition prints, yes. But you own the rights to anything unsold, the prints, and anything currently hanging in a gallery or museum. Don’t discount the plushies, coloring books, and mugs, either. A twenty dollars purchase may not sound like much, but sales at her site are consistently in the thousands each month. You could live on that alone if none of the other assets were yours.”

  Appetite effectively quashed, I pushed the basket away from me. “About that. Amanda and I were friendly, but never in my wildest dreams could I imagine being her beneficiary.” I thought about the sealed envelope in my bag that I had yet to read. Would it provide any answers? “You’ve known Amanda longer than I have. Why on earth would she leave everything to someone like me? If she didn’t have any close friends, why not the library, or a charity?”

  “I’m glad you said something. I wondered myself. You had no idea? You looked shocked at the reading.”

  “I am shocked.” That was an understatement. “Don’t get me wrong. I liked her. We had some interesting conversations about art and books when I went to her place. We both liked animals, and she was glad to have someone who knew something about horses look after the ones she’d rescued. I usually wound up staying longer than I should while we chatted, and she showed me what she’d been working on. But we were hardly BFFs. Why make me her heir? And why now?”