"Is that your new house?" Inez gasped as Kelly parked. "It looks like a princess lives there!"
The others agreed, and even though I had no hand in it at all, I took a little pride in the place. I jumped out the second we stopped and opened the back door. As the girls got out of the van, I noticed that they were all wearing their snake lanyards and looking at me expectantly.
"Is this a test?" I asked.
Ava spoke up, "You're not taking our camp names seriously, so we're going to wear these until you memorize our snake names."
I shook my head. "Not gonna happen. I can barely remember your real names half the time."
"Ladies," Kelly spoke up. "We're only here a few days. Why don't you save your camp names for next summer?"
"If you can't remember them now," Lauren reasoned, "you won't be able to one year from now. You'll be even older then."
Inez agreed. "My grandma is really old, and she never remembers my name. She calls me Jorge all the time."
"Who's Jorge?" I asked. "Your dad?"
"No," she said. "It's the dog. Grandma's really old." Inez looked thoughtful for a moment. "Like you."
I looked at Kelly critically. "She's got a point. You are old."
"I'm the same age as you," my best friend replied. She looked at the girls. "Ladies, it's just not going to work out this time. We have too much going on to worry about your camp names."
"And Mrs. Albers is old," I added. Three months older, in fact. But I wasn't going to mention that.
"Okay," Betty said. "We'll change them. I'll be Badger Tooth."
A rumbling of disagreement went up, as the girls all wanted to be Princess Badger Tooth. I couldn't blame them.
"No one is changing anything," I said. "There's the house. Let's go."
"Mrs. Ferguson!" Nigel called out as he caught up with me on the sidewalk. Where had he come from?
"Go check out the backyard with Mrs. Albers," I said to the girls.
They ran off. I heard Betty ask if they could jump into the river from the backyard. Kelly totally had this—even if she was ancient.
"How are you, Nigel?" I asked.
He made a face that indicated he wasn't happy with me using his first name. Then he gave me a pained smile. "I'm so glad I caught you. I have an outside party who wants to put an offer in on Aunt June's house."
So soon? "I haven't even put it on the market." I was a little put out that there was an offer and I hadn't even been inside it yet.
"Once you, the heir, arrived in town, people started to discuss it." He paused to smile for effect. "It's a very generous offer. They will give you $500,000 cash immediately."
My mouth dropped open. "You're joking."
Nigel shook his head to imply that he wasn't. It wouldn't have surprised me if he said he'd never joked a day in his whole life.
There was no way I was entertaining the offer that quickly. "I don't get it. No offence, but Behold isn't a half-a-million-dollar location."
Nigel didn't seem to be offended. "That is true. The buyer said they've always wanted this home."
"I can see that, I suppose," I said slowly.
"The buyer just found out it was on the market. In fact, they'd take it and everything inside sight unseen." He spread his well-manicured fingers as if casually looking at them. "I'm just passing it along."
"Did he, or is it she, find out because the obituary was in the paper?" I asked hopefully.
"The prospective buyer"—he dodged my question—"did not say how they found out."
I was going to have to be direct. "By the way, was there an obituary? Does Behold have a newspaper?"
He looked surprised. "Aunt June did not want an obituary printed. And in answer to your second question, no, we do not. We often get our news from that city."
I couldn't help it. "Dubuque?"
His eyes narrowed. "I realize that you are an outsider and don't understand our history." Then the mask changed and he smiled. "Maybe that is a good reason for you to sell."
"I'll have to think about it." I smiled back. "I mean, I just got here. I'd like to look the house over. It would be rude to sell it without going through Aunt June's things. Surely you understand."
I didn't want to keep the house. But he didn't know that. And it was a reasonable enough request to put off the buyer for now. I mean come on. If I didn't find anything interesting or discovered that she wasn't murdered, why not? There was a lot I could do with $500,000. I could donate to the Girl Scouts or buy thousands of cases of Scout cookies and give them to a food bank or take the whole troop to Israel to learn Krav Maga. The possibilities were endless.
"Of course. I'll leave you to it." And with that, he turned and walked away.
"Mrs. Wrath! You have to see this!" Ava called from the backyard.
My heart leaped a little—partly from the excitement of discovering something new and partly from the contagious enthusiasm of my troop. "Coming!"
I wasn't prepared for what I saw. The yard was beautifully landscaped, with flowers blooming, hummingbirds hovering, and the lapping sounds of the river at the edge. There was an elaborate, screened-in pavilion in the middle of the yard, which sloped down to a stunning stone patio with teal upholstered lounge chairs near the water's edge. I joined Kelly and the girls as they stared at the river.
"That's the Mississippi?" Inez said in reverent tones.
"Yes. That's it." I was a bit in awe myself.
You may think this is strange for someone coming from Iowa. But the fact of the matter is that, just like any other place, you ignore what's in your backyard because you assume you'll always have time to go
