you.”
Judith shoots her arm up.
“Yes, Mrs. Rosen?”
“These ‘recent changes’ to the will. Was my father-in-law of sound mind when he made them?”
Boom! She just blurts it out. Guess now that the guy is dead there’s no reason for her to be subtle.
“Rest assured, Mrs. Rosen,” says the lawyer, “whenever Arnold and I met to discuss estate planning issues, I was quite cognizant of his advanced age and, therefore, administered an MMSE test.”
“What’s that?” asks David, who always seems like the most confused person in any room. “What’s an MMSE? That like the SAT’s?”
“No, it’s the Mini-Mental State Examination test,” explains Robins. “A brief questionnaire we use to screen for cognitive impairment. Suffice it to say, despite his age, Arnold Rosen’s mental state was quite sound. If you’d like to see proof, I can supply you with his MMSE scores.”
“Gosh, no,” says Judith, sounding all sugar-frosted corn-flakey again. “I just didn’t want anybody around this table raising red flags.”
“Now then,” says the lawyer, before he does a good throat clearing. “To the particulars of his estate. As I said previously, Arnold’s will is neither complicated nor complex. He left two specific bequests of monies to be drawn from the sale of all his investments and assets and asked that they be cited as a mitzvah. To his devoted caregivers, Monae Dunn and Christine Lemonopolous, he bequeaths fifty thousand dollars. Each.”
Christine and Monae both sort of gasp.
Hey, I don’t blame them. I would, too.
Then Monae starts flapping her hand in front of her face like she’s about to faint. “Fifty thousand dollars?” she squeals. “This is better than hitting the Lottery!”
Judith Rosen? She’s fuming.
“The remainder of his estate,” says the lawyer, “which, given current market positions, land values, and comparable real estate sales in Cedar Knoll Heights, our accountants conservatively estimate at two point two million dollars, Dr. Rosen leaves to David and Judith Rosen in trust for his quote living legacy end quote Arnold David Rosen.”
Little Arnie. The smiling blonde kid in all the photographs is an instant millionaire. Unless, of course, his parents blow it all on guitar lessons, Bart Simpson watches, and liposuction before he hits twenty-one.
This is why Judith wasn’t pleased when Christine and Monae scored their fifty thousand dollars each. That little mitzvah cost her family one hundred thousand dollars. Still, two point one million dollars is nothing to sneeze at. It’s better than beer and pretzels rich. It’s practically Adele Ceepak rich.
“This isn’t fair,” protests Michael, his voice trembling.
“Really?” says the lawyer. “I’m surprised to hear you say that, Michael. Surely you can’t begrudge your nephew his inheritance. You earn nearly that much in two weeks.”
“This isn’t about money.” Michael says with a laugh even though I can tell he is spitting mad. “This is about fairness. This is about family.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My partner Andrew and I recently adopted a child. An African-American boy we named Kyle.”
“Was your father aware of this?”
“I told him Friday night. At dinner.”
“That was his ‘big announcement,’” says David.
Judith sniggers.
Michael? He looks like he could weep. Or explode. Maybe both.
“I’m so sorry, Michael,” says the lawyer. “Perhaps, had he lived longer, your father would’ve once more amended his last will and testament to include your son as well.”
“No,” says David. “He wouldn’t have. We talked about it at dinner on Friday night. Dad thought Michael and his ‘partner’ pretending that they were parents was stupid. Dad didn’t believe in adoption. He believed in bloodlines. And legitimate heirs.”
“Dad was all about
“You, Judith,” says Michael, sounding completely heartbroken, “are a fat, repulsive bitch.”
“Watch your mouth, little brother,” snaps David. “That’s my wife you’re talking about.”
“I know who and what she is-a hideous and heartless cow.”
“Gentlemen?” says the lawyer, banging the table with his fist like it’s a gavel.
Michael storms out of the room.
David and Judith shake their heads as if to say, “Poor, poor Michael.” Then they smile a little to savor their triumph.
Christine? She’s looking at me with a very nervous expression on her face.
I’m kind of looking at her the same way.
Because I have to wonder: Did the last elderly patient she took care of, Mrs. Mauna Faye Crabtree, also leave her a little sumpin’-sumpin’ in her will like Dr. Rosen did? Are deathbed bequests the bonuses of the home health aide trade?
If so, Christine might’ve had a solid motive for helping ease another one of her patients out the exit door.
42
Bright and early Monday morning, Ceepak and I are in his office sipping bad coffee from mugs we poured out of the desk sergeant’s congealed pot and working the phones.
It doesn’t get any more detective-y than that.
Ceepak’s in his blazer and khaki cargo pants. I think there’s a zipper near the knees if he wants to turn them into shorts later in the afternoon. He seldom does.
I’m in cargo shorts and my favorite FDNY Engine 23 T-shirt. It’s been lucky for me in the past. Both of us are carrying sidearms.
We have a busy day ahead of us.
My first call of the morning is to Christine. I tag her on her cell because my apartment doesn’t have a landline. Landlines are like e-mail: so two thousand and late.
I go over the list of all the elderly patients she’s taken care of since losing her job at Mainland Medical.
“They’re all dead, Danny,” she tells me. “But that doesn’t mean I killed them.”
It also doesn’t mean I won’t be making a few more phone calls to the families of the deceased to see if any of Christine’s other patients died suddenly or under suspicious circumstances.
Ceepak spends his coffee and phone time with Bill Botzong at the Major Crimes Unit.
They’re trying to track down and trace any shipments of potassium cyanide into Sea Haven. Botzong and his team will be doing some serious data mining with all the known suppliers of the chemical compound, cross- referencing their records against the names and addresses of all our suspects, including Joy Kochman up in Lavallette, whom we will be visiting just as soon as we finish up our phone calls and hit the head.
Bad coffee? It’s like beer. You can’t buy it. You can only rent it.
We hop into Ceepak’s Batmobile and cruise up the Garden State Parkway toward Seaside Heights.
“Fascinating,” mumbles Ceepak, somewhat randomly, seeing how we’re basically humming up a generic highway filled with generic cars surrounded by garden-variety Garden State evergreen trees.
“You and I have dealt with several murderers in the past, Danny. In all those instances, the killer had to brutally confront their victim. They possessed strength, skill, or, at the very least, a warped sense of courage.”
“But in this case,” I say, “all the killer had to do was plop a pill into a plastic box and wait.”
“Precisely. It is the easiest murder to execute, perhaps the most difficult to solve.”
