The Baxter Trust

46

“Did your mother ever talk about your father?”

“What?”

Steve Winslow and Sheila Benton were sitting face-to-face in the attorney-client conference room off the court. Court had recessed for lunch right after Steve’s cross-examination of Mrs. Rosenthal. Steve was choosing to skip his lunch and was making Sheila skip hers.

The reason, of course, was that he was obsessed with his new theory-the theory that Greely was really Sheila’s father. Not that, if Greely were, Steve really suspected Sheila might have killed him. On reflection, he had realized that that idea had just been a flash of paranoia. Even if Greely were Sheila’s father, and even if he had been in a position to upset the trust, that would have posed no threat to Sheila, and she would have had no reason to want him out of the way.

But Uncle Max would have. That was the theory Steve was working on now. Sheila’s living father could have been a real threat to Uncle Max. He could have upset the trust and contested the will and raised bloody hell with Uncle Max’s little empire. And suppose Uncle Max had sent those letters, and then lured Greely up to Sheila’s apartment on the pretext of meeting his long-lost daughter and then killed him? It would have been a perfect frame-up. There would be nothing to connect Uncle Max to the murder at all. And Sheila would take the rap.

Steve had no idea why Max would want to frame his niece, but it wasn’t inconceivable. Max was her trustee. Her trust was worth millions. Max supposedly had millions of his own, but what if they were tied up in speculative investments of all types? What if Max sometimes had need for ready cash? He wouldn’t be the first trustee who’d dipped into a trust for his own purposes. And then with Greely on the scene, contesting the trust, contesting the will and demanding an audit, Max could have found himself in quite a spot. A spot where killing Greely and framing Sheila would actually have been killing two birds with one stone.

So Steve was desperate for information.

“Did your mother ever talk about your father?” he repeated.

“Why? What are you getting at?”

“I don’t know. Did she?”

“Not that I know of. I was very young when she died, you know.”

“I know. I want you to remember back. I want you to tell me everything you can remember before your mother died.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to understand. You just have to tell me.”

Sheila’s jaw set. “Oh no you don’t, mister. That’s the way my uncle treats me. That’s why I wouldn’t let him hire a lawyer for me. Now if you want something out of me you tell me why, and none of this you-wouldn’t-understand-little-girl shit.”

“Sorry,” Steve said. “I’m a little pushed for time, and I’m getting edgy. The thing is, I don’t understand either. And I need to understand. So I need some facts. And if they don’t seem to make much sense, that’s because I’m groping in the dark, and I don’t know what does make sense. But I’m trying to sort it out, you see?

“So here’s the thing-if you didn’t kill Greely, then someone else did. And they killed him in your apartment with your knife. And there’s gotta be a reason. And the only way that makes sense at all is if you tie it in with a twenty-million-dollar trust fund.”

Sheila threw up her arms. “But how? Tie it in how?”

He shook his head. “I know. That’s the problem. I’ve thoroughly gone over the provisions of the trust, and aside from that stupid licentious-behavior clause that’s causing all the trouble, there’s nothing in it that could possible affect any of the parties mentioned in it. I mean, it isn’t even as if you were convicted of this crime, Phillip would come into forty million dollars instead of twenty. If you lose your trust, no one gains except a bunch of unnamed charities.”

Sheila’s eyes widened. “Wait a minute! How do you know they’re unnamed?”

Steve looked at her. “I read the trust. They’re not named.”

“They’re not named in the trust,” she said excitedly. “But what if, somehow, someone knew that a particular charity stood to benefit?”

He waved it away. “You’re grasping at straws. That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” she said indignantly. “Why? Because I thought of it? Because you didn’t? What’s ridiculous about it?”

“What difference would it make if a charity benefits?”

“You don’t think there are people who have siphoned money out of charities?”

“And how the hell would they know?”

“Through Uncle Max, of course.” Sheila was becoming more and more animated as she built on the idea. “Can’t you see it? You’ve met him. Can’t you see him at some ritzy social club joking over a brandy with old cronies about how if I’m not a good girl, some of their organizations stand to make a few million?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Damn it, I’m serious. It’s my neck here. The least you could do is consider it.”

“Fine,” Steve said, his voice rising. “Noted. I hereby promise to investigate the possibility that the United Way, acting on inside information that they stood to benefit from the trust, conspired to have a blackmailer killed in your apartment. All right? You satisfied?”

Sheila recoiled from the intensity of his outburst. “Jesus Christ!”

He grimaced, rubbed his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just don’t have time to go off on a tangent right now. I don’t think you’re stupid, and I will look into this, okay? But right now I need you to answer some questions. All right?”

She looked at him for a moment. “You still haven’t told me why.”

“I was trying to, when-” he broke off. “Never mind. All right. Look. If no one named in the trust stands to benefit from the crime, we have to look for someone not named in the trust. As far as I can see, the only one who answers that description is your father.”

“My father. But my father’s dead.”

“How do you know?”

Sheila stared at him. “Are you telling me my father isn’t dead?”

“No, I’m not.” He had no intention of burdening her with any of the details of Mark Taylor’s investigation. “I’m doing what you’re doing. I’m grasping at straws. I’m saying ‘what if?’ I’m considering any possibility, however remote, that anyone could benefit from your trust. So I asked about your father.”

She frowned. “I see.”

“And you told me you knew nothing.”

“That’s right.”

“Your mother never spoke of him?”

“I was four when she died.”

“Yeah. All right. What about your grandfather? Can you remember him at all?”

“Why?”

“I told you. I’m grasping at straws. Please?”

Sheila thought a moment. “I can’t remember much. I just remember him as a kindly old man. Funny, isn’t it? How a child’s take on things is so limited.”

“What do you mean?”

“Seeing Gramps as kindly. But as a child, that was the only side of him I ever saw.”

“And he wasn’t?”

She looked at him. “You read the trust.”

“Yes, yes, having to wait till thirty-five and that clause and all that. But you said that was the only side of him you ever saw. What was the other side? I mean back then, when you were a kid.”

“All I meant was the impressions you get when you’re young. Seeing him as kindly, and then later realizing what a tyrant he really was.”

“How? Give me an example. Tell me how you got this wrong impression.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It was just, he always treated my mother and me so kindly that I never really noticed how he treated Uncle Max and Uncle Teddy. Until later, I mean.”

“And how did he treat them?”

“With an iron hand. He surrounded them, stifled them. At the time I thought it was kindness. Now I realize it was domination.”

“Give me an example.”

She thought a moment. “All right. Grandpa had a summer house in Vermont.” She chuckled. “A summer house. Hell, it was a mansion-a huge building with a circular drive on this beautiful hillside in Vermont. It was gorgeous. My mother and I used to live there with him. I think I told you that, right?

“Well, anyway, when Uncle Teddy married, Gramps bought him a house on the property adjoining ours. See? At the time I thought that was nice. I say at the time. Actually it happened before I was born. Phillip’s a year older than I am, you know.”

“Yes, yes. Go on.”

“All right. I was just trying to say, when I said ‘at the time’ I just meant when I was young. Right? When I thought about it. Back then. And I figured Gramps was just being nice. Now I realize he was just making sure Teddy would be right there where he could keep an eye on him.”

“Yeah. I see. Teddy was wild in those days, wasn’t he?”

“I suppose so. I never realized it at the time. At least not until he went to jail. But I think Uncle Teddy and his wife had to get married. I think that was one of the reasons Gramps was so down on him.”

“What was Teddy’s wife like?”

“I don’t know. She died when Phillip was born.”

“So Uncle Teddy brought up Phillip alone?”

“Yes. Gramps wouldn’t even hire a nurse or governess to help out. Teddy had to cart Phillip around with him everywhere he went. It was a nuisance, but that’s what Gramps wanted. I think he felt the responsibility of raising Phillip would force Uncle Teddy to settle down.”

“Apparently it didn’t work.”

“Apparently not. Uncle Teddy went to jail. My mother died. Gramps died a year later. That left Uncle Max to bring up me and Phillip.”

“What was he like?”

Sheila looked at him. “What do you think?”