“In my experience that is true of so many things.”
“Mrs. Fletcher . . .”
“Jessica, please.”
“Jessica, the first thing I want to assure you of is that your friend Dolores had nothing to do with Willis’s outrageous thievery. She is a sweet, warmhearted woman, and for the life of me, I never understood what she saw in Willis Nickens.” She looked at me as if expecting an answer.
“Affairs of the heart . . . who knows?” I shrugged.
“I guess. Anyway, my family has lived on this land for generations. My father owned it, as did my grandfather and his father before him. After my mother passed, Dad and I lived a peaceful existence and, I am embarrassed to admit, I had no idea about money, where it came from or where it went. Unfortunately, my father got sick. Lung cancer. He was headed for a slow and painful death.” Marjory started to tear up at the memory.
I reached over and gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “I am so sorry. That’s so grueling for a family member to go through.”
Marjory went on. “I didn’t know that over the years Dad had had serious money problems and mounting debt. He took out private loans, with the property as collateral. It’s a common practice among the old families. They call it ‘helping each other out.’ Then one day Willis showed up. Dad sent me out of the room but, naturally, I listened at the door. Willis was such a bully. I am sickened to this day that I was the pawn he used. He had bought up the loans and could call them due at any time. He said Dad had two choices: He could keep the house and leave me destitute and homeless when he died, or he could sign the house over to Willis. The debts would be canceled and Willis would set up a tiny trust fund so that I wouldn’t starve. He actually said that to my father: ‘You don’t want your daughter to starve, do you?’ Can you imagine?”
Although my acquaintance with Willis Nickens had been brief, I had no problem envisioning that he was capable of such despicable behavior. “That is truly reprehensible. If you don’t mind my asking, how did you acquire this cottage?”
Marjory sniffed. “When my father told Willis I had lived here all of my life and could never live anywhere else, Willis didn’t flinch. He’d obviously anticipated that roadblock and immediately offered to include this cottage in the trust—which is a revocable trust, I might add.”
Revocable trusts seemed to be the core mechanism Willis used to bend people to his will. First with Clancy, now with Marjory. I wondered who else he controlled that way.
Marjory sighed. “Well, at least I have some privacy because Willis moved the driveway. Not for my benefit, of course. He said this approach didn’t show Manning Hall to full advantage. He wanted everyone who drove up to be in awe of his house, the house that should be my house.”
The mention of the driveway triggered a notion lodged in my mind. “Speaking of the driveway, do you happen to have a clicker for the gate?”
“Sure, do you need one? I don’t have a car right now but I keep a couple handy for guests, deliveries, and the like.”
“Oh, no, thank you. The gate is so imposing; I was curious how accessible it actually is.”
But I already knew the answer. Marjory confirmed what Elton had told me. So much for security. The clickers were treated so casually that anyone and everyone could easily get one and enter through the gate at will. The Blomquists were the only people in the house before Willis’s death who hadn’t actually stayed on the grounds the night he died. And according to Dolores they were frequent guests, so if one of them had managed to get their hands on a clicker it would have been easy to circle back for a midnight tête-à-tête with Willis Nickens.
As I made my way back to the house through the pine trees and past the kitchen garden, I remembered what Dolores had told me. She was so proud of her bold, decisive husband who had bought the house and asked her to marry him all in one day. Perhaps it would be for the best if she never learned how Willis had maneuvered to make Manning Hall their home.
Clancy Travers was focused on chipping a golf ball out of the sand trap. He had just begun his swing when Abby saw me and waved her forearm. “Mrs. Fletcher! We went to the zoo. It was so much fun. Look, I have a koala tattoo on my arm.”
Clancy’s face morphed in frustration as the distraction completely crumpled his stance. He laughed. “I probably wasn’t going to pop it with one shot anyway. I’m still working out the kinks of my new sand wedge.”
I oohed and aahed over Abby’s tattoo and listened attentively while she told me how koalas sleep most of the day and that makes them very cuddly. She asked if I knew where they came from and was impressed when I said, “Australia.”
Clancy interrupted. “Okay, sweetie, why don’t you check the hummingbird feeder and see if we need to make more nectar? Daddy wants to talk to Mrs. Fletcher for a minute.”
Abby ran off toward a red plastic feeder that hung from a tall metal pole, and Clancy said, “She’s making me nervous. At every exhibit she talked about Emily and Willis. ‘Mommy read me a story once about koalas; Grampy said he would take me to see the tigers, but we didn’t have time to go.’ I don’t know what to say, what to do.” He spread his hands in a gesture of hopelessness.
“I’m sure it is a difficult time. Fortunately Abby still has Dolores, who is connected in her mind to Willis, and therefore to Emily,” I suggested. Knowing Dolores’s fear of losing Abby, I hoped to shore up her cause.
“How is Dolores doing? I gather
