AllFreeNovel
Share Us
FIFTY-NINE
Stone read the will aloud. It was very similar to what he had dictated for Annetta’s will, mentioning some small bequests, except for the last paragraph:
“I do give and bequeath to my wife, Annetta, the remainder of my estate, which, in the event of her death, shall pass in its entirety to my stepniece, Joan Robertson. Should she become deceased after my wife’s death, the entire bulk of my estate, including that she inherited from Annetta, shall pass to my son, Edwin Charles Jr., and his descendants.”
Stone turned to Joan. “Do you see what that makes you?”
“Lucky?”
“No, a target.”
Joan thought about that for a moment. “Oh, shit,” she said finally.
“Of course, that’s if this will stands up to a great deal of scrutiny. Geoffrey, do you recognize this handwriting?”
“Yes,” Geoffrey replied. “It’s Mr. Edwin Sr.’s. Not a doubt.”
“You know,” Joan said to Stone, “before I came to work for you, I worked for a few months as Eddie Sr.’s secretary, while he was looking for someone permanent. I saw his handwriting every day, and that’s it.”
“It’s the Palmer Method,” Stone said. “My mother used it, too. She tried to teach it to me, but I didn’t have the fine-motor skills to execute it, nor the patience to stick with it.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Joan said, wagging a finger.
“What does Eddie Jr.’s handwriting look like?”
“I don’t recall ever having seen anything he wrote,” Joan said. “He wouldn’t even send Annetta a postcard from summer camp.”
“All right,” Stone said. “Thank you, Geoffrey. You two may resume whatever you were doing. We may need your testimony at some later time.”
Geoffrey began to leave, taking the maid with him.
“Oh, Geoffrey.” Stone called him back in.
“Yes, sir?”
“Do you recognize the handwriting of the three witnesses to the will?”
“No, sir. Two are before my time and are now dead. The other got fired for drinking on the job, and nobody knows where she went.” He left the room.
“Now, Joan,” Stone said. “You have two very important jobs: one, you have to find some very good samples of EddieJr.’s handwriting, the more recent, the better; two, you have to find some other samples of Eddie Sr.’s handwriting, several of them.”
Joan opened a file drawer in the desk and removed a file markedcorrespondence. “There you go on number two,” Joan said. She continued rifling through all the other drawers while Stone read the file she had given him.
“Nothing here,” she said. “Let me check in the secretary’s office.” She got up and went into a small room behind her.
Stone compared the handwriting in Eddie Sr.’s letters to that in the will. He found nothing to make him question the will.
Joan came back with another file. “Bingo! Eddie Sr. kept half a dozen letters that Eddie Jr. wrote him over a period of years, from about age fourteen to twenty-one, all of them begging for money.”
Stone read through the file. Eddie Jr., it seemed, had also been schooled in the Palmer Method, though his execution of it was uneven in quality. It did improve, though, as he matured.
Stone called Dino.
“Bacchetti.”
“It’s Stone.”
“No kidding?”
