Previously Loved Treasures (Serendipity #2)(32)

“Of course,” he said, “it means I’ll be raising the rent.”

“Raising the rent?” Laricka shrieked. “I can barely afford what I’m paying now!”

“Then you’ll have to move,” Max answered.

Harriet echoed Laricka’s thought. “I can’t afford to pay more. We don’t need a housekeeper and cook.”

“And what?” Max said. “We’ll continue eating this kind of slop?” He gestured at the swirl of watery macaroni on his plate.

Up until that point Wilbur had held his tongue, figuring Max’s words were nothing but pompous pondering and not worth arguing over, but the macaroni comment pushed him into action. He glared across the table and in a loud commanding voice said, “Hold on there!”

Ignoring the bristle in Wilbur’s voice, Max continued, “My intent is to make this house a high-class residence, a place we can be proud to call home.”

In a frail thin voice Caroline said, “I’m already proud to call it home.”

“Me too,” Laricka echoed.

By then Wilbur was on his feet and leaning across the table with his nose nearly touching Max’s. “You ought to get your facts right before you go spouting off about what you’ll do or not do. It so happens Ida left the house to Caroline.”

“Impossible,” Max stuttered. “She’s not a real Sweetwater!”

“Caroline is Sweetwater enough for Ida to believe in her!”

A bright red flush started on Max’s neck and crawled up his face. “Bullshit! She’s a phony, an imposter, a bastard child!”

“Enough!” Wilbur yelled back. “One more comment like that, and I’m coming across this table!”

Although he was up in years, Wilbur was taller and wider than Max and the bristle of anger made him seem menacing.

“Caroline and I had a talk today,” he said, “and she’s decided things will remain exactly as they are.”

Several of the residents applauded, and Harriet said, “Good!”

Max’s face grew even redder that it was. “Caroline can’t decide crap. I own this house, she doesn’t!”

Wilbur looked square into Max’s face. “Yes, she does. Ida had a will that left everything to Caroline.”

“Bullshit!” Max repeated. “Ida was a Sweetwater; she’d never cut out her own kin.” He hesitated a moment then said, “How come I ain’t seen no copy of this so-called will?”

Wilbur turned to Caroline. “Do you know where Ida kept her important papers?”

“No, I don’t,” she answered. “We never talked about things like that.”

Wilbur lowered himself into his chair, his shoulders now a bit slumped. At that point he had to admit he’d never actually seen the will, but he’d heard about it from Ida. “It was about two weeks ago,” he said. “Ida told me she’d had a lawyer draw up a will leaving everything to Caroline.”

“A lawyer?” Max echoed dubiously. “No name, just a lawyer?”

“She might have mentioned a name, but offhand I don’t recall it.”

“Ha,” Max sneered. “Another bullshit story.”

Wilbur glared at Max. “I’ve got no reason to lie. I’m just repeating what Ida told me.”

“So you say,” Max snapped back. “But I think you’re in it with her.” Max shook a thumb toward Caroline. “This one’s figuring to sell the place and walk off with a nice fat profit!”

“I’m not looking to sell anything,” Caroline said defensively. “This is my grandma’s house, and I’d like to keep it the way she wanted.”

Max angrily turned to Caroline. “Grandma, my ass! You don’t have a shred of evidence proving James was your daddy!”

“Grandma said I’ve got eyes just like Daddy.”

Harriet, who’d been drowning her sorrow in the bottle of bourbon kept in her nightstand, said nothing, but her eyes bounced back and forth as the argument raged on.

“Brown eyes? That’s your evidence?” Max gave a resentful grunt. “I’m Big Jim’s blood brother, born of the same mama! If anybody’s got a right to this house, it’s me!”

Doctor Payne stood and rapped the handle of his knife against the table. “Listen up!” he shouted. When everyone else stopped talking he lowered his tone. “This is easily enough settled. Tomorrow we’ll call Jack Muller and ask him.”

“Call who?” several voices echoed in unison.

“Jack Muller,” Doctor Payne repeated. “He’s the only lawyer in Rose Hill. Everybody uses Jack.”

As he listened to the argument circling the table, Wilbur thought about his conversation with Ida. Jack Muller did not sound like a familiar name, but maybe he was wrong. Rather than continue what was rapidly escalating into a territorial war, he’d try and see if he couldn’t remember the name of Ida’s lawyer. He started with A and one by one went through the letters of the alphabet, hoping to trigger a memory and call up a name.

Why was it, Wilbur wondered, that when you really needed a piece of information, it got stuck in the back of your mind? In cases like this, the only thing he could do was wait and hope it would reappear.