Amanda tipped the reading glasses down to the end of her nose and squinted at the wall clock: 9:15 in the morning. Too early. But then, she was under an enormous strain, and she hadn’t taken a sedative since the night before. She opened the cabinet and took a decanter of Old Grand-Dad from behind a stack of women’s magazines.
It was a short walk from Wesley Rountree’s office in a wing of the courthouse to the Main Street office of Bryce and Simmons. He took his time, because his appointment was set for 9:30, and he didn’t want to be early. Doris had come in about eight-thirty while he was still reviewing the day’s schedule with Hill-Bear, and he had ended up having coffee with them and telling them about the Chandler case.
Rountree frowned at a candy wrapper on the sidewalk. Clay always picked them up; said he couldn’t abide litter, and Rountree would ask if he’d stop chasing a bank robber to pick up a beer can. Still, it was a civic-minded thing to do. Rountree sighed. No bank robbers in sight. Self-consciously, he bent down and picked up the wrapper, stuffing it in his pocket until he could get to a trash can.
“Morning, Wesley! I see you’re on the job!”
Rountree straightened up. Marshall Pavlock, editor of The Chandler Grove Scout, had that eager look of one who has just discovered his lead story in time for paste-up. “You got a minute, Wes?” he asked politely.
Rountree sighed. It was bound to get out sooner or later, he reasoned, and Marshall might as well have it. He was usually pretty responsible; he had to be; all his potential newsmakers were also his neighbors. When Vance Wainwright was arrested for drunk and disorderly, Marshall could be trusted to leave out the details, like the pathetic notes he’d scrawl on the windows of his ex-wife’s trailer. Most people in Chandler Grove already knew those kinds of details long before the paper came out anyway, and they agreed that such goings-on didn’t belong in print. Marshall Pavlock saved his urge for detail for the place where it was appreciated: the society page. He not only told his readers what the bride and bridesmaids wore, but who made the dress, and who baked the wedding cake, not to mention who cut it, and who was there to eat it. He had been reserving half a page to do such a report on the Chandler-Satisky wedding, but now Eileen would be featured on another page.
“What can I do for you, Marsh?” Rountree grinned.
Marshall grinned back. “You should’a been a poker player, Sheriff. You know very well what you can do. Tell me about the Chandler girl!”
Rountree had long since given up trying to trace the origin of county news. It was enough to make a person believe in telepathy. In this case, though, he discarded ESP in favor of more obvious suspects: Doris, Jewel Murphy, and Mildred Webb. “You heard about that, huh?”
Marshall fished a notepad out of the pocket of his jacket. “I heard that ya’ll took the body to the medical examiner yesterday, and that there’s some question about cause of death. You wanna fill me in?”
Rountree glanced at his watch. “Well, I have an appointment in just a few minutes, so we’ll have to make this fast.”
“She didn’t commit suicide, did she?”
“No, Marshall, I can promise you that. According to Mitchell Cambridge, death occurred sometime yesterday morning as a result of the bite of a poisonous snake-”
“Accident! Why, that poor-”
“-which she got when somebody hit her over the head and threw her on top of the snake,” finished Rountree, noting with satisfaction that Marshall Pavlock was staring at him openmouthed. “In the obituary, you just put died ‘suddenly,’ like you always do. For the news story, I’ll get back to you later. Just say the usuaclass="underline" Sheriff Wesley Rountree and his men are still investigating, blah, blah, blah.”
“But-”
“I gotta go now, Marshall. ’Bye!”
Tommy Simmons did not usually work on Saturdays. It was one of the reasons he had become a lawyer, so that he could keep eating at dinner parties while his doctor friends were called away for emergency appendectomies. This Saturday was an exception; just as it was exceptional for one of his clients to be involved in a violent crime, even as the victim. Meetings with Rountree were fairly routine, but usually on lesser matters. Simmons heard the front door open and close.
“Open up in the name of the law!” called Rountree from the reception room.
Simmons swung open his office door with a grin. “You got a warrant, mister?”
The sheriff waved a packet of saccharin. “Nope! Just a prayer for coffee!”
“Well, get you some and come on in!”
When Rountree was settled in the captain’s chair across from Simmons’s desk, he opened the file in front of him and studied its contents.
“This is a sad business, Wes,” the lawyer said in a sincere voice that might get him elected to something one day. “You know, I was only talking to her day before yesterday.”
“That’s what I heard,” said Rountree. “What was that all about?”
Simmons looked wary. “I don’t know how much I ought to reveal about a client’s affairs-”
“Tom, I know that when I told you the girl was dead, you assumed accident-or suicide maybe,” he amended, reading Simmons’s expression. “But now I can tell you that we’re contending with a murder here.”
“Oh,” said Simmons faintly.
Rountree explained the circumstances of Eileen’s death. “Now, I understand there’s a will mixed up in this.”
“Well, Wesley, there was,” Simmons said, “but she doesn’t get the money, because she didn’t go through with the wedding.” He explained the terms of Augusta’s will.
Rountree considered this. “I guess somebody could have killed her for a shot at the inheritance money.”
“It’s about two hundred thousand dollars or so, before taxes,” offered Simmons.
“So you were out there to discuss the inheritance with her?”
“Yes. But while I was there, she gave me a will of her own.”
“We’ll come to that in a minute. Who was the executor of this first will, the one leaving all that money?”
“That would be Captain William Chandler, the brother of the legator. The money is, of course, invested, and he-”
“Okay. Now if Eileen Chandler is no longer eligible to receive that money, who’s got the next shot at it?”
Simmons blinked. “Well, nobody in particular. I mean-”
“You? Me?”
He smiled. “All right, Wes. I see what you mean. The possible legatees are: Alban Cobb, Charles Chandler, Geoffrey Chandler, Elizabeth MacPherson, and William D. MacPherson. The first of them to marry inherits.”
Rountree ticked them off on his fingers. “Well, now we got five suspects.”
“Four,” Simmons corrected him. “I don’t believe William MacPherson came down for the wedding.”
“Four, then. How about the boyfriend? You said Eileen Chandler made a will. What if she specified that the money was to go to him?”
Simmons hesitated a moment before pulling out a handwritten document on stationery. “Well, it wouldn’t matter, Wes. She couldn’t leave that money to him unless it was legally hers first. I mean, I could leave you the Brooklyn Bridge, but unless I owned it…”