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Puzzled, I shook my head. “I’m sorry but I don’t know a Bill Cordy.”
The attorney nodded, as if he’d anticipated my reaction. “I thought as much. Apparently, he was a regular here for a long time. His will mentioned that you and the others called him “Grandpa.”
Holy shit, now I knew who he was talking about! Grandpa. And Grandpa was gone. Now I felt badly for not knowing his real name, but the truth was, he would spend hours sipping on the same beer, staring at the ass of any female behind the bar. And that female was usually me.
To be honest, I thought he was a creepy perv who, by the way, never tipped. Not that I wanted to think ill of the dead.
“Wow. Okay, I know exactly who you are talking about. How’d he die?”
And more importantly, why did a lawyer come to tell me this?
But first things first.
He flipped through some papers and looked back up at me. “Looks like he died in his sleep. Old age, that sort of thing.” He shrugged. “Guess that’s how we’d all like to go.”
I didn’t spend much time thinking about how I wanted to go. I was only twenty-five years old. But I still wasn’t sure how any of this concerned me.
“Thanks for letting me know. I’ll be sure to share it with the rest of the staff as well as some of the other regulars.” I glanced at the wall clock as the happy hour crowd started to trickle in. Heaven forbid they miss out on their dollar beers. I started to get up from the booth.
“Garnet, that’s not all I came to talk about,” he said with his hand up in the wait a minute position.
I lowered myself back into the booth. I wish he’d get on with whatever he needed. I was sorry Grandpa was gone, but I didn’t really even know the guy.
“Bill Cordy, the man you called Grandpa, left you his estate.”
Now that made me laugh. Loudly
“I guess that comes as a surprise to you?” the lawyer asked.
Um, yeah.
“Grandpa—I mean Bill Cordy—had an estate? And he left it to me? Don’t tell me. I get to get to take his cats or something?” Good grief, not only did the guy never tip me, now I have to take care of his damn cats? Just what I needed.
He laughed. “Sounds like you don’t like cats. And lucky for you, he didn’t have any. But what he did leave you, Garnet, was an estate worth five million dollars.”
I’d been looking over his shoulder at my co-bartender who was hustling drinks for the happy hour cheapies and giving me dirty looks from across the room.
“Be right there!” I called to him.
Wait. What?
“Did you just say something about five million dollars?”
“He had an estate worth five million dollars, and it’s been left to you. All of it.” He looked like he delivered news like this all the time. Maybe he did. But not to people like me.
I placed my hands on the scruffy booth table. I didn’t usually like to touch them, coated as they were with years of carvings, burn marks, and water stains, but I needed to keep my balance.
I opened my mouth to speak. “Wha…how…why…?” The blood had rushed to my head even though I was seated. I didn’t know that could even happen.
“Um, are you okay Garnet?” the lawyer asked.
He clearly didn’t often see a reaction like mine. And I didn’t know if I was okay.
“Excuse me for a moment. I’ll be right back,” I said and ran for the ladies’ room, where I got sick in the toilet. When I felt better, I put a cool paper towel on the back of my neck and returned to the booth where the lawyer waited. Just another day at the office.
I slipped into the booth. “I’m a bit speechless. In case you couldn’t tell.”
He nodded kindly. “I understand. But I can also see you’re needing to get to work, so I want to make this fast. There is one stipulation to your receiving the estate.” His eyebrows rose like he was waiting for me to hang on his every word.
