“You broke into the guy’s house? Bad idea. C. D. is certifiable. He’s paranoid, and he’s got a gun. There’s no telling what he’d do if he caught you prowling around his house.”
“We didn’t actually break in. Lizzie found the key. And we weren’t prowling. We were conducting a welfare check. Anything could have happened to him.”
“And did you find anything interesting?”
“No. Just copies of some old newspaper clippings and things of that nature.”
Gabe frowned. “C. D. has a record, Brooke. Mostly petty stuff—public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and a misdemeanor assault. My point is, until we have the results of that DNA test back, I’m not assuming he actually is Josephine’s heir.”
“But what about the stuff we found out in Savannah? The photos of Josephine with him at the orphanage? The truck she gave him? He still has it, you know. And if he wasn’t her child, why was she so benevolent toward the orphanage and the boy’s home?”
“The Bettendorfs believed in philanthropy. Josephine’s father built hospital wings, paid for local ball fields and libraries. He endowed university chairs, underwrote all kinds of things. Going through her tax records, I can see that up until her husband died, she gave away hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. That truck could be meaningless in the larger scheme of things.”
“Or it could be proof that Josephine felt deeply guilty about abandoning her child,” Brooke said stubbornly.
“We’ll see,” Gabe said. “So Lizzie is still living at Shellhaven?”
“Is there a problem with that?”
“Those cousins don’t like the idea of anybody who isn’t family living there,” Gabe said. “They’ve called me twice to complain that she’s trespassing. I thought Lizzie understood that. Magazine article or no, she has no business digging through Josephine’s effects. I hate to be the bad guy here, but she really can’t stay there any longer.”
“But that’s so silly,” Brooke protested. “She’s not hurting anything.”
“Lizzie has no standing in this estate,” he said firmly. “Please let her know she needs to go. Or I will.”
59
On Monday, Brooke attended a child custody hearing, took a deposition on behalf of a client who’d shattered an ankle after slipping on a newly waxed floor at a fast-food joint near the interstate, and on Tuesday, after a day’s worth of negotiating, managed to get all the charges against Brittni Miles dropped. Her feeling of triumph was short-lived.
Farrah called shortly after nine. Brooke could tell from her voice that there was an issue.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Don’t hate me, but I need to miss work tomorrow,” Farrah said. “My granny’s back in the hospital in Jacksonville, and Mom says I need to go with her to visit.”
“I’m sorry.” Farrah’s grandmother’s declining health was a source of continued concern for the tight-knit Miles family. “You’ll be back to work on Thursday, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good, because I need to take a run over to Talisa, and I’m going to need you for Henry in the afternoon.”
“I’ll be there.”
*
Henry squealed with happiness as soon as she pulled into the parking lot at the library. He loved Wednesday morning story hour.
“Hey, stranger!” Janice, the head librarian, a chunky brunette with a fondness for gaudy jewelry and big hair, approached and gave Brooke a hug. “We haven’t seen you in a while. Where’s Farrah this morning?”
“Family issues,” Brooke said. She watched as Henry ran off toward the cozy book-lined children’s room, eagerly taking his place among the chattering semicircle of preschoolers seated around Miss Myra, their beloved octogenarian storyteller.
“Life treating you all right?” Janice asked as Brooke plucked the Atlanta newspaper from the periodical rack.
“I’m good,” Brooke said. Seeing the newspaper reminded her of something that had been bothering her. “Janice, have you had an older guy in here a lot lately?”
“Tons,” Janice said. “The retirees come in to research their stock picks and read their hometown newspapers online, the unemployed want help writing résumés, and the homeless ones like the air-conditioning and use our bathrooms. Which old guy are you looking for?”
“He’s short and wiry, has a gray ponytail, always wears a baseball cap?”
“And smokes those stinky cigarillos? Don’t tell me he’s a friend of yours.”
“No. He’s an, um, acquaintance.”
“He’s a pain in the butt is what he is. He’s been researching back issues of the Savannah and Atlanta newspapers, doing all kinds of online searches. He seems to think I’m his personal computer instructor.”
“Any idea what he’s looking for?” Brooke asked.
“He’s very interested in local history. Especially the Bettendorf family. Do you know about them? They owned Talisa Island, and the last remaining member of the family died recently.”
“I know them,” Brooke said.
“I showed him how to search the local genealogical society databases here and in the next county over. And then we had to order him some books through interlibrary loan. One was an old out-of-print book about Josephine Bettendorf Warrick that she apparently commissioned back in the 1970s. He was incensed that we charged him three dollars for ordering those materials and having them shipped here. Gave me the whole line about being a Vietnam vet and how his tax dollars paid our salaries.”
“What kind of books?”
Janice lowered her voice. “I don’t mind telling you, because you’re a longtime patron, but that man, Mr. Anthony, was obsessed with privacy. To the point of being paranoid. He wanted to make sure we weren’t keeping any records of what he was looking at.”
“Which was?”
“Hmm. Well, he looked at the county property tax records. I know, because I helped him with that. He printed out some records concerning Talisa. And then he also researched legal records from Glynn and Chatham counties.”
“Did he say why he was interested in those counties?”
“I tried not to get too close to him, to tell you the truth,” Janice said. “His personal hygiene isn’t the best, if you know what I mean. But I think I printed out some tax records for him. And he was looking at civil and criminal dockets for those counties too. I remember because he raised holy you-know-what because we charge ten cents apiece for printouts!”
“Weird,” Brooke said.
Janice looked around to make sure she couldn’t be overheard. “Pretty sure he was also trying to look for online pornography sites too. We have blocks to keep people from doing that, but a couple of times, when he left before signing off the computer, I saw the record of his Google searches. Yeesh!”
“Anything else you can think of?”
“He was very interested in wills and trusts and that sort of thing. Funny, because he didn’t strike me as the kind of person who would stand to inherit anything from anybody.”
“Fascinating,” Brooke said. “Has he been in here lately? Like in the past week or so?”
“I didn’t see him myself, because I was at lunch, but Myra mentioned that he was here last week. She finally had to ask him to quit standing outside the doors smoking those cigars of his, because the other patrons were complaining. Excuse me,” Janice said, hurrying off to quiet a table of giggling teenage girls.
60
“Brooke?” Lizzie’s voice was crackling with excitement when she called early Thursday morning. “I found something. You need to get over here right away and take a look.”
“I was planning on coming this morning. Are you at Shellhaven now?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Can you ask Shug to come pick me up? I can be at the marina by nine o’clock.”
“He just pulled up with Louette,” Lizzie said. “I’ll ask him now.”
*
Lizzie met Brooke at the Shellhaven dock, and it struck Brooke that although she’d been on the island only a short time, the change since she’d arrived from California was remarkable. She wore shorts, a white tank top, beat-up sneakers with no shoelaces, and a baseball cap. She held Dweezil in the crook of her elbow.
“My chariot awaits,” she announced grandly, pointing at a battered blue VW station wagon.