dark gray suit he wore at the funeral to an expensive-looking blue-and-white seersucker suit. In all the years I’d known him, I’d never seen Mason in anything but a suit. His shirts were handmade and had discreet monograms on the pockets and all his ties were silk, ordered from London.
“I came as soon as I found out.” He was carrying a zippered butter-soft black leather folder. Also monogrammed. “What are you doing there, Lucie love? Let me help you. You’re going to drop something.” He came over and extracted the glass. “You all right?”
“We just told Mia,” I said. “She and Eli are out on the veranda. She took it pretty hard.”
Mason held the door for me as we went outside. Eli had moved to the love seat. Next to him Mia sat with her elbows on her knees, holding her head in her hands.
“Look who’s here,” I said.
Mia looked up. “Hi, Uncle Mason.” Her voice trembled. Eli handed her the glass of water after I poured it.
Mason sat in an oversized matching wicker chair after first checking out the condition of the seat cushion. He put his leather folder between the cushion and the arm of the chair.
“I’m so sorry, children,” he said. “I don’t know what to say. This is horrible…horrible.”
“Who told you?” Eli asked.
“I was over at the inn when Elvis Harmon came by,” he said. “I was supposed to have dinner with him and a couple of the boys.” He shook his head. “We put it off for another time.”
“Dominique knows, then,” I said. “She’s probably devastated.”
He smiled sadly. “Aw, honey, you know your cousin. She just soldiers on, no matter what. I stayed with her in the kitchen while she cried, poor thing. Then she pulled herself together like she always does. She was terribly distraught though, on account of the way things stood between Fitz and her before…” He faltered. “Well, before.”
“You knew they were having problems?” Eli said.
“You know how word gets around, son.”
“How about a drink, Mason?” Eli asked. He gestured to Mason’s leather folder. “This isn’t strictly a social visit, is it?”
Mason’s smile didn’t make it all the way to his eyes. “As it happens, I do have some business to discuss. I didn’t expect to find all three of you here, but since everyone’s present perhaps we ought to take advantage of the situation, difficult as it is. And I’ll take bourbon and water, if you’ve got it.”
He was an old-school Southern lawyer, silver-tongued and silver-haired, with highly polished manners and old-fashioned gallantry but the killer courtroom instincts of a barracuda. Even though I really wanted to crawl into bed and forget this day, there was something in his voice that implied it was more than a polite invitation. If Mason had something to say, you didn’t turn him down. As a kid I’d called him “Uncle Mason” like Mia still did, but that didn’t change the fact that he handled all our affairs, personal and professional, as though counters behind his eyes were calculating billable and nonbillable hours. The billable hours bought him a lavish horse farm, where the President and the First Lady occasionally came to ride, and a gorgeous wife who frequently graced the society pages of the
“Is this about the will? Is there some kind of problem?” Eli suddenly sounded tense.
“Don’t you worry,” Mason said. “Everything’s fine. Let’s all have a little drink and then we can chat about it.”
“I’ll get the bourbon,” I said. “It’s on the sideboard.”
“Stay here. I’ll get everything,” Eli banged into the glass-topped coffee table in front of the love seat as he stood up. Mason’s remark had obviously unbalanced him. He was worried about something. “What are you girls drinking?”
“White wine please,” I said. “Whatever’s open.”
“Nothing for me,” Mia said.
While he was inside I lit the citronella torches in the border garden and set an oil lamp on the coffee table. Eli returned with a tray and the drinks—and Leland’s best Scotch for himself.
He drank Scotch when he was upset.
Mason raised his glass. “To Lee and Fitz.”
After we drank Eli said, “So what’s this about, Mason?”
Mason set down his glass and picked up the leather folder. He pulled out a few papers and reached into his inside jacket pocket for a pair of half-glasses. I could tell Eli was squirming and that Mason was going to take his sweet time about this. “Well, Fitz’s death changes things, children.”
“What do you mean?” One of Eli’s nervous tics was a habit of bouncing one foot up and down like his toes were attached to a spring. Right now his right leg was twitching like an electric current was running through it.
Mason looked at him over the top of his glasses. “Leland left the vineyard to the three of you, just like he always planned.” He’d switched to his courtroom voice. “But he wasn’t sure if y’all would always agree on things, so he named Fitz the director of the corporation that owns it. That would have given him day-to-day control of the business.”
“Who runs it now that he’s gone?” I asked.
“It reverts to the three of you. You each have one vote, except for the person who owns Highland House. This house. That person gets two votes.”
“Who owns the house?” Eli asked.
“Lee couldn’t decide,” Mason said.
“What do you mean, he couldn’t decide?”
“Just that. So he figured rather than play favorites, he would leave it up to the two of you, Lucie and Eli. He wants you to roll dice for it. High score wins Highland House. The other one gets the house in France.” He turned to Mia. “As for you, darlin’, there’s a trust from your momma’s family that passes to you. You can’t have control of the money until your thirtieth birthday, but you will have an allowance. As custodian I can also authorize payment of certain essential expenses like your college tuition, for example.”
“How much…is there?” Mia seemed startled. “I never knew anything about this.”
Mason consulted his notes. “It’s just shy of half a million. You’re well taken care of, child.”
“This is ridiculous,” Eli interrupted. “I mean, I’m glad Mia got the trust money, but everything should be divided equally. I don’t believe this.”
Mia glanced at him wide-eyed.
“That’s not how your daddy set things up,” Mason folded his glasses and set them on top of his papers. “He didn’t want to have to choose who got which house—and there was no way to divide two houses three ways. So he came to this arrangement—on his own, I might add. You know how Lee liked gambling.”
Eli helped himself to more Scotch. “I guess I’d better get the dice.”
“Now?” I stared at him. “You want to do it
“Why not? You can’t practice for this, you know.”
“Very funny. I’m really tired.”
“Let’s get it over with.”
I looked at Mason, who nodded. “Just as well.”
Eli went back inside the house, the screen door banging noisily behind him.
“Do you want another drink?” I asked Mason.
He reached for the bourbon. “I think I will. You having something, too, darlin’?”
“The white wine must be in the refrigerator. I think I could use another drink, too. Mimi, you change your mind? Want something?”
She was sitting on the love seat Indian style, picking the petals out of her daisy and setting them in a pattern on the coffee table. She looked up. “You haven’t called me that in years.”
“Old habits.”
“Nothing, thanks.”
Eli held the dice, clacking them in his hand when I came back to the porch with an open bottle of last year’s
