The Baxter Trust

14

Sheila and Steve Winslow stood in front of Saks Fifth Avenue.

“This is one of the windows you looked in?” Steve asked her.

“Yes.”

“How long were you looking in this window?”

“Four or five minutes.”

“What were you looking at?”

Sheila looked in the window. “I was particularly interested in a blue dress with silver trim on the sleeves and hem.”

“Your memory is excellent,” Steve said, dryly. “Now then, it would have taken you about ten minutes to walk here from your uncle’s apartment. The cab ride home would be about fifteen minutes. That leaves an hour and twenty minutes you must have been window-shopping.”

‘That’s right.”

“So, I want you to retrace your path to all the stores you visited this afternoon and try to remember how long you stayed at each of them.”

“I understand,” Sheila said.

“Good. First you can walk me to Uncle Max’s. You should start from there, anyway.”

“Okay.”

They walked off down the street.

Realizing they were on the way to Uncle Max’s made Sheila uneasy. She stole a glance at Winslow. She’d been relating to him as a person, because she was caught up in her own problems. So she’d forgotten what he looked like, what her first impression of him had been. God. This man was going to call on Uncle Max. This man was going to ask him for money.

“Do you want me to go in with you to talk to Uncle Max?” Sheila said. She tried to make the question sound casual.

“No, you don’t have to,” Steve said. “I can introduce myself. You just start from outside the building and retrace your path to all the stores.”

“Okay,” she said.

He grinned. “You sound relieved.”

She flushed. Damn. She couldn’t hide anything from him. “Well, I have to warn you,” she said. “Uncle Max is going to be difficult.”

“You mean about the money?”

“More than that. He’ll probably insist on hiring his own lawyer to represent me.”

“Well, why don’t you let him?”

Sheila’s eyes flicked for a moment as she thought of the real reason-the cocaine.

Steve noticed. He said nothing, but as with the window-shopping bit, he made a mental note that for some reason the girl was holding out on him.

She recovered quickly. “Because I don’t want him running my life. I want my own lawyer who’s working for me, not some stooge of Uncle Max’s who’s taking his orders and reporting back to him.”

“Lawyers don’t do that,” Steve told her.

“You don’t know Uncle Max. He’s stinking rich, and he uses his money to control people. He controls my money, and tries to use it to control me. He thinks just because he’s my trustee he can run my life.”

“And you won’t let him?”

She looked at him and laughed. “Why do you think I live in that stinking apartment? My trust fund pays me two hundred a week. Uncle Max would give me more if I did what he wanted. I don’t, so he doesn’t.”

“Tell me about the trust,” Steve said. “Who set it up, your father?”

“My father died before I was born. My mother was killed in a car accident when I was four.” Sheila sighed. “It was in Vermont. One of those twisting mountain roads. The brakes failed, and the car went off a curve. Suddenly I was an orphan.

“After that, I lived with my grandfather at his house in Vermont. Actually, we’d been living with him before, my mother and I. Before she died, I mean. I’m not telling this well. What I mean is, I was already living there.

“Anyway, my grandfather died a year later. He left a third of his money to Uncle Max, a third to my cousin Phillip, and a third to me. He designated Uncle Max sole trustee for the two of us.”

“Wait a minute. I thought you said your cousin’s father was still alive. You saw him yesterday with Phillip at Uncle Max’s.”

“That’s right. Uncle Teddy was completely disinherited.”

“Why?”

“Uncle Teddy was pretty wild when he was young. Of course, I was too young at the time to understand what was going on. But I do know when grandfather died, Uncle Teddy was in jail.”

“Uh huh. So Uncle Max owns the whole shooting works.”

“That’s right And you’re going to have to hustle to get your retainer.”

Steve smiled. “You have no objection to taking money from Uncle Max, I see.”

“None at all. I just don’t want him telling me what to do. But as long as I can hire my own lawyer, I’m perfectly willing to let Uncle Max pay him.”

Steve nodded. “I’m perfectly willing to let Uncle Max pay him too.”