“But he would have known about a board meeting sooner than the night before,” I objected.
Wes shrugged. “Looks like he screwed up and double-booked himself.”
“Were there any calls on the day Mr. Grant was killed?”
“Yeah. From you, his daughter, and his neighbor. That’s it.”
“But then how did Barney learn that Mr. Grant was killed?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
I shrugged. “I’m just wondering… did he show up at the Grant house for his appointment that afternoon?”
Wes looked intrigued, wiped his chocolate-sticky fingers on his jeans, and wrote a note on the folded square of paper. “Good question,” he said. “I’ll check it out.”
“What about fingerprints?” I asked.
“Apparently yours were everywhere. Barney’s were around, too, but not as many as yours.”
I smiled. “I’m more thorough.”
“I’ll keep that in mind when I’m ready to sell my family’s treasures.”
“Does your family have treasures?” I asked.
“Hell, no. I was joking.”
“Too bad. I would have made you a good deal.”
Wes shook his head, grinning a little. “There were other prints, too. Miscellaneous and explainable. Grant’s wife, for instance, obviously from before she died, a house cleaner who came in periodically, and a delivery boy from a grocery store in town. There was one set of prints in the living room that is still unidentified.”
“Can they tell anything about who left them?”
“No, not to quote them on. They’re adult prints, but smallish, so based on the size, they may be from a woman.” He shrugged. “But there are small men, too. And large men with small hands.”
“Doesn’t it seem incredible that no other prints were found? I mean, what about his daughter and granddaughter? Or other delivery people? Or friends?”
“I guess he lived a pretty quiet life.”
I shook my head, wondering what prints they’d find in my house if they looked. I wasn’t a bad housekeeper, but I wasn’t a nut about it either. It made me wonder whether maybe one of my dad’s prints was still somewhere, maybe on the side of a dining room chair, a remnant from one of the scores of times when he’d sat, idly tapping a beat, waiting for me to serve the meal.
“Anything else scheduled for that morning?” I asked, focusing on Wes, chasing away the memory. “Besides me?”
“Just Barney Troudeaux’s nine o’clock appointment.”
“I thought he changed it when he called the night before.”
“That’s what he says, but it was still in the diary.”
“Maybe Mr. Grant hadn’t gotten around to changing it before he died,” I said, saddened at the thought.
I recalled the day that I’d made a mistake in my schedule, realizing it only after I’d left the Grant house. I hurried back and knocked on the door. When he answered, I apologized for my error, he assured me it wasn’t a problem, and escorted me back to the kitchen. I could picture him sitting at his kitchen table, erasing the mistaken entry, turning pages to find the correct date, his callused index finger running down the center of the page until he located the time slot he wanted. He smiled then, and using a freshly sharpened pencil, he wrote my name.
“We’ll never know, I guess,” Wes said.
“Yeah. And probably, it doesn’t matter. Because Barney was at the board meeting, right?”
“Right.”
Bright sunshine unexpectedly illuminated the beach from a sudden break in the clouds. I heard the dog bark, and squinted into the sun in time to see him run a circle around his owner as they made their way up the dunes. I took another bite of doughnut. My coffee had cooled enough so it was comfortable to sip.
“How about Mr. Grant’s background? Were you able to learn anything about him or his family?”
Wes nodded. “Yeah. Quite a story, actually. He was born in Kansas, the only son of successful ranchers. He came east to go to prep school, and never lived in the Midwest again.”
“Was he in the war?”
“Yeah. He joined the army in 1942, and for a lot of the time, he was stationed in France. That’s when he met his wife. According to all reports she was a piece of work. A tough old bird with a temper. She was maybe French, maybe Belgian, maybe who knows what.”
“What do you mean, ‘who knows what’?”
He shook his head, and gestured that he had no idea. “I know that her name was Yvette. Or at least that’s what she called herself. I couldn’t even find a record of her maiden name.”
“How can that be? What does that mean?”
“Probably nothing. Maybe she was a Jew on the run. Maybe she was a Nazi sympathizer. Who knows? Back then, there were lots of good reasons to change your name and reinvent yourself.”
I thought about that for a long minute, watching as shards of sunlight dappled the sand and water. Gretchen had wanted to reinvent herself, a fresh start, she’d called it. I wondered if Gretchen was her real name, or if, like Yvette, she too had changed it. No matter. She was Gretchen to me, and I felt grateful that her desire for a fresh start had led her to my door.
After a sip of coffee, I asked, “What did Mr. Grant do after the war?”
“He settled in Rocky Point and started a painting contracting business.”
“And?” I prompted.
“And he made a fortune. Everyone I checked with said he was a ruthless SOB, but likable. The kind of guy who could sell tulips to a Dutchman.” He shrugged. “Apparently he was a good talker and a terrific negotiator. But you’d better be careful every step of the way because if there was anything he could exploit, he would.”
“Why? What does that mean?”
“You know… it means that he was a smooth operator, a guy who knew the angles and never missed an opportunity to make a profit. He built his business by winning federal contracts until it became the biggest company of its kind in New England, then sold out to a national firm. That was about fifteen years ago.”
That sounded like both the Mr. Grant I’d met and the one I’d gotten to know after his death: charming and shrewd. “How big a fortune are we talking about?” I asked.
Wes glanced at the folded square of paper. “Somewhere around thirty million dollars, depending on who you ask.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Wow it is.”
I remembered that Max had planned to ask Epps who would inherit Mr. Grant’s estate, and wondered if he had done so. From my conversation with Mrs. Cabot yesterday, I assumed she inherited everything. It occurred to me that Wes might know.
“Does his daughter inherit everything?” I asked.
“Nope. Fifty-fifty split with the granddaughter. Nothing to anyone else.”
“No siblings, uncles, cousins? No other family?”
“No. Mr. Grant had a sister who died in her teens back in Kansas. Mrs. Grant-who knows what family she might have had. According to my source, no one else has surfaced yet.”
I nodded. That would account for Andi’s impatience. Fifteen million dollars would buy a lot of independence. I wondered whether she cared that she had such a small family. As the only children of only children, apparently Andi and I shared a common legacy-small families that grow smaller with each generation.
“Anything else of note?” I asked.
“Something about the daughter’s leaving after high school. Mrs. Cabot. She left to get married in… let me see here… 1964. It seems she and her father had an argument sometime during the summer after her high school graduation that was heard for miles around.”
“What about?” I asked.
“No one remembers. But they sure remember the shouting. The fight started on the beach, and continued through the village. Dana marched into the house, packed two bags, and, with her mother pulling at her and begging her to stay, left.”
