AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Good morning,” he said with far too much enthusiasm. “Hope you slept well. I already walked and fed Queenie. What a gorgeous day. It can’t be more than sixty degrees outside, not a cloud in the sky and no humidity.” He paused and added sheepishly, “Guess I sound like a damn weatherman.”
She looked at him quizzically. “Couldn’t you sleep?”
He shot her a sidelong glance as he ladled fried eggs on her plate. “I slept fine. I... I just felt like getting up early, I guess.”
They were eating, mostly in silence, their gazes averted from one another, when the phone rang. Jack answered it, listened, and then said, “Okay, we’ll see you there.”
He hung up and looked at DuBose. “That was Christine Hanover. She’s invited us to her home for the reading of her parents’ will.”
* * *
The guard at the gate to Faulkner’s Woods had their names on an approved visitor’s list. He opened the wrought iron portal so the Fiat could pass through.
Jack asked, “Is this gate manned around the clock?”
The guard, a broad-shouldered, soldierly looking man in his thirties, nodded. “Yes, sir. Very secure here. Needs to be. Lot of money behind these gates.”
Jack flashed his bar card. “We’re investigating what happened to the Randolphs. We understand that Mr. and Mrs. Hanover got back here late that night from Washington?”
“They sure did.”
“You sound positive,” said DuBose.
“I was the one who opened the gate. Worked the graveyard shift that night.”
“So you saw them?”
“Oh yeah. Big Rolls-Royce. Only one like that around. He was dressed in one of them monkey suits.”
“A tuxedo?” said Jack.
“Yeah. And she had on a fancy dress with a pearl necklace. He looked like death and Mrs. Hanover was sobbing so hard the poor woman couldn’t catch her breath.”
“You happen to know the time?”
“I sure do. We don’t keep a record of owners coming and going, but it was so late and seeing them at that hour was so surprising that I checked my watch. It was two in the morning. I remember thinking there were two of them in the car and it was two in the morning. How my mind organizes stuff.”
“Thanks,” said Jack and they drove on.
“Mercy,” said DuBose as she looked at the brick and stone mansions they were passing, with their expansive lovely green lawns and professional landscaping touches, including stone fountains of varying states of grandeur. “You weren’t kidding about this being the nicest area in town.”
“Apparently, nice means you need a gate to keep everybody else out.”
They pulled into the cobblestone driveway of a massive Tudorstyle home draped with ivy and bracketed by towering crepe myrtles, fat hydrangea bushes, and lovely dogwood trees.
They parked next to a large Chrysler four-door. One of the three garage bays was open, revealing a red British Triumph convertible. After they got out Jack peeked inside the garage.
“Okay, no blue convertible lurking therein,” he reported. “Just the silver Rolls-Royce and a burgundy Jaguar.”
“The Hanovers were in Washington at the time,” she reminded him.
“Someone else could have taken one of their cars while they were gone.”
“That’s true,” she conceded.
They were admitted into the house by a Black uniformed maid who escorted them down a long, plush hall to a rounded maple door with brass fittings. She knocked, received an affirmative response, and ushered them into what turned out to be a booklined study.
Curtis Gates was seated behind an opulent walnut desk with a dark green leather inlay, while Sam Randolph and Christine and Gordon Hanover were arrayed in chairs in front of him. Next to Gates stood a tall, slim man in his late thirties and dressed in a navy blue jacket, light gray slacks, and a white dress shirt.
