The Whole Town's Talking

  Although it had taken a while for it to go through the probate process, Hanna Marie’s will had just been validated by the judge, and when people heard about what was in it, they would be absolutely astonished. It was almost unbelievable that Hanna Marie would have left all of her relatives and charities completely out of the will. It just wasn’t like her. But according to the will, she had left her husband everything. And at the end of the last quarter, company assets were up to about thirty-six million. Even Laverne Thorneycroft, the judge’s wife, questioned it that night at dinner. “I don’t care what you say, Sam. There’s something rotten going on. She no more left that business to him than the man in the moon.”

  The judge shook his head. “Laverne, what can I say? All I can do is follow the letter of the law. I have to authorize closing the estate.”

  “Well, I still don’t believe she left everything to him.”

  “According to the will, she did. Hanna Marie was deaf, but not blind, Laverne. She could read and write. And as long as it’s on paper, it’s legal.” The judge carefully buttered his dinner roll, then added, “But if I were him, I’d be real careful crossing the street in this town from now on.”

  When word got out about the contents of the will, everybody was upset. They couldn’t understand how Hanna Marie would do such a thing.

  After the taxes were paid, and the dairy was now officially his, the first thing Michael Vincent did was fire anyone who had been closely associated with the Swensen family. The first person to go was Hanna Marie’s cousin Albert Olsen, who had been manager of the company for almost thirty years.

  Albert was devastated. He told his wife that Ander would be rolling over in his grave if he knew how Vincent was running the dairy now. “That guy has no idea how to run a dairy. He’s fired almost everybody in management, and these new farm workers he’s brought in aren’t trained to work with cows. He doesn’t care about the cows or the quality of the product—just how much and how fast. This used to be a one-company town. Everybody knew everybody. These new workers don’t have any roots here. Hell, some of them are still living in their cars. God knows what he’s paying them. Mark my words. Before he’s through, he’s going to run that dairy right into the ground or he could turn around and sell it to some big conglomerate.”

  Albert’s wife sighed. “When I think of how hard Ander worked all those years to build it up, how hard you and everybody worked, it just breaks my heart.”

  The next day, one of Albert’s sons told Police Chief Ralph Childress, “I’m telling you in advance, Ralph, after what Vincent did to my dad, if I ever catch him alone, I’m gonna beat the hell out of him.”

  He was the third person that day to tell Ralph almost the same thing. There wasn’t a person in town who didn’t entertain thoughts of killing Vincent, or at least maiming him in some way, including Ralph. Even his own wife, Edna, had remarked, “I’d like to poison the rat.”

  When Mrs. Grace, Judge Thorneycroft’s cook, passed away, and she told her friend Verbena Wheeler about Hanna Marie’s will, the news spread like wildfire that the husband had gotten everything lock, stock, and barrel. The people up in Still Meadows were as shocked as the people in town had been. And Hanna Marie was utterly dumbfounded.

  She knew what was in her will. Her father had trained her to read documents, and she had read every word before she’d signed it.

  Under no circumstances shall the business and properties known as Sweet Clover Dairy be sold or deeded to any individual, other than a Nordstrom, Olsen, or Swensen family member.

  Ander was particularly upset. He had promised Lordor on his deathbed that the dairy would always be a family-run business.

  Hanna Marie had done exactly as her father had requested and included in her will the very same clause that had appeared in his, and she had been careful to make sure that all her charity donations would continue after her death. “I don’t know how it could have happened,” she said. “I’m just at a complete loss.”

  Little Miss Davenport, over in plot 258, had not wanted to say anything before, but now she felt she just had to speak out. “Hanna Marie?” she said. “It’s Dottie Davenport. I used to work for your daddy…and then your husband.”

  “Oh, yes, of course, Miss Davenport. How are you?”

  “To tell you the truth, I’m just as mad as hell at myself.”

  “Oh, no, why?”

  “If I hadn’t gotten sick and died when I did, I could have stopped that man from stealing all your money.”

  The cemetery was suddenly all ears.

  “You probably don’t remember, but I was in the office the day you came in to sign your will. And after you signed it and left, your husband handed me a key and told me to go put the will in the private security box in the file room.”

  “I remember that.”

  “Well, he doesn’t know it, but on the way to the file room, I read your will, and I know where you wanted your money to go.”

  “You read it?”

  “I wasn’t supposed to, but I did. And I’ll tell you something else he doesn’t know. Before I put it in the box, I stopped and made a quick copy of it, just in case he ever tried to pull something funny.”

  At this point, Verbena Wheeler was almost beside herself and yelled, “Oh, my God…did everybody hear that? Little Miss Davenport made a copy of Hanna Marie’s will!”

  “And what did you do with that copy, dear?” asked Hanna Marie.

  “I hid it.”

  Verbena yelled again. “She hid it, everybody. Little Miss Davenport hid a copy of the will!”

  Ruby said, “Be quiet, Verbena! Let her finish. Go on, Dottie, where did you hide it?”

  “Well, I didn’t have much time, so on my way back with the key, I folded it up and stuck it behind your daddy’s portrait.”

  Ander spoke up. “The one in the boardroom.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did anyone see you do it, Dottie?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so, but they might have. At that point, people were always spying on one another, trying to get in good with him.”

  “Do you think the copy’s still there?” asked Ander.

  “I have no way of knowing, Mr. Swensen.”

  Hanna Marie said, “But you were so brave to try and protect me. I really appreciate it, more than you know.”

  “Oh, thank you. But if I only had outlived you, even by a few months, I would have heard about it and could’ve stopped him cold. I think he and that woman lawyer got together, pulled a fast one, and changed your will, and I could have proven it.”

  This news was a surprise to Hanna Marie. “What woman lawyer?”

  “The one from New York. She used to come to town every once in a while, supposedly to talk business, but they always looked a little too hanky-panky for my taste.”

  “I don’t remember ever meeting her. What did she look like?”

  “Oh, she was pretty, I guess, if you like redheads.”

  “Did you hear that, Hanna Marie? That woman at your grave that day was his lawyer.”

  Everybody immediately thought, “And probably his girlfriend as well,” but nobody said it.

  —

  HEARING THE INFORMATION LITTLE Miss Davenport had just revealed upset all of Hanna Marie’s friends and family out at Still Meadows, especially her mother, Beatrice. “He’d seemed like such a nice boy,” she said.

  —

  HANNA MARIE WAS ABSOLUTELY devastated to have let her father down. She kept saying, “I’m so sorry, Daddy. I’m just so sorry.”

  Ander said, “That’s all right, honey, it’s not your fault. I had a feeling he might try and pull something. That no-good…”

  Birdie Swensen, Hanna Marie’s grandmother, jumped in. “Hanna Marie, this is Grandmother. Don’t blame yourself. Nobody is mad at you, isn’t that right, Katrina?”

  Katrina, her great-aunt, said, “Not one little bit, sweetheart. It’s that man we’re upset with. He must have done something shady.”

>   Gene Nordstrom, her cousin, called out, “I just wish I could get my hands on that guy.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” said Gustav Tildholme. “I’d give him what for.”

  Pretty soon, the whole hill was humming about what they would do. Merle Wheeler said, “There are ladies present, or I’d tell what I’d do.”

  Katrina didn’t say it, but she knew that it would have broken Lordor’s heart to know that the dairy had gone to a stranger. And the idea that this man was going to get away with it didn’t seem fair.

  —

  AT THE END OF THE DAY, Elner Shimfissle pretty much summed up the frustration everybody was feeling. “Well, dag-dog it,” she said, “this is definitely not one of the perks of being deceased. Here we have pertinent information that could send that no-good crook to jail, and there’s not a single thing we can do about it.”

  Her affair with Michael Vincent had started in New York. She had been in the legal department of the advertising agency that handled the dairy account. He said he and his wife were not happy, but she was deaf, and he just didn’t feel he could divorce her.

  And then to make matters worse, he found out that his wife’s last will and testament had left him entirely out. His father-in-law had been a bastard and, besides, he said his wife had not been in her right mind when she had made it out. She had been manipulated by other family members to cut him out of what he deserved. It wasn’t fair to Michael. He had worked so hard for so many years and had built the company from scratch, and then to be treated like that. At least, that’s what she had been told. And she had been head over heels in love with him. Sometimes a woman in love doesn’t see what’s right in front of her eyes. Even a woman with a law degree.

  —

  SHE HAD BEEN WITH HIM in his hotel room the day he received the call about his wife’s accident. Although they had not lived as man and wife for a long time, he seemed terribly upset.

  She had changed the will for him, long before the wife had died, long before she had found out what a monster he was and how she had been used. It hadn’t been too hard. Remove a clause here, a clause there, reword a few things, change the names of the beneficiaries. Of course, she could have been disbarred for doing it, but at the time, he had been so grateful, and it was, after all, for both of their futures, he had said.

  What a fool she had been to believe him. After the wife died, he stopped calling. That’s when she started putting two and two together. She had flown in, rented a car, and driven to his office in Elmwood Springs to confront him. When she threatened to go to the authorities and turn him in, he had laughed. “Go ahead. I’ll be happy to tell them how you forged my wife’s will. You might get out of jail in ten years or so, if you’re lucky. So why don’t you pack up your little panties and get the hell out of here before I throw you out!”

  The lawyer stood there and stared at the man she had never really known until this very moment. “Oh, my God…your poor wife. What did you do to her?”

  When she said that, something glittered behind his cold blue eyes, something chilling that made her blood run cold and scared her to death. She turned around and left. She got back in the car and drove out of town. But before she did, she’d made one stop at the cemetery.

  On Mother’s Day, Dwayne Jr. was back up at Tot’s grave, drunk again, feeling sorry for himself, crying in his beer, wailing at her tombstone. “You damn crazy old woman. Why did you have to go and die on me, Momma? I loved you, and you didn’t leave me nothing. Not one damned cent. Goddamn you. I loved you, you Goddamn crazy old woman. I loved you. You should have bought me that motorcycle. It’s your fault I don’t have no money. Why’d you die and leave me? I loved you.”

  Tot was not moved at these drunken confessions of love. When she had been alive, he had done nothing but steal her blind.

  She told James that one day she’d come home, and he’d stolen her entire dining room set.

  James said, “Damn. He got that from me. I used to steal from you. God and I hate a thief. Thank God I finally got sober. I owe my sanity to AA.”

  “Good for you. I owe mine to the Pointer Sisters and disco.”

  “Disco?”

  “Yeah, I was way too old for it at the time, but I didn’t care. It saved my life. After you left me, I couldn’t stand to be alone. I hired a babysitter for Momma and the grandkids, and every Friday and Saturday night, I’d get off from work, put on my makeup, curl my hair, and head on out to Disco City. What a place. They had this big mirrored ball hanging over the dance floor, twirling and sparkling…whistles blowing, colored spotlights turning you blue and yellow and pink whirling around. Wow! Me and about twenty gay guys from Joplin, all wearing pink feather boas, dancing to ‘She Works Hard for the Money’ in our big platform shoes, all decked out in our bell bottoms and false eyelashes. I must have danced a thousand miles that year. It was great. Too bad you missed it.”

  2014

  When she was thirty, Norma had made a vow that when she hit sixty, she would stop dyeing her hair, but, of course, she hadn’t. Gray looked pretty good on other people. Macky looked great with it, but she didn’t. Her skin was too fair. She just looked old and washed out. She didn’t want old-looking teeth either, so she spent a small fortune getting a “smile makeover.” She now looked like an older woman with sixteen-year-old teeth.

  However, after spending all that money, she really didn’t have much to smile about or that many people to smile at. She basically just went to the supermarket and back. And the girls at the checkout counter certainly never noticed her smile makeover. They hardly ever looked up.

  Another problem was that all of her life, most of her good friends had been much older than she was. She had read that this was common in only children. But now, most of her friends had passed away.

  They say that you should make friends with younger people, and there were a few of Linda’s old school friends still in town who would say hello to her if she ran into them, but most of them had moved away years ago. She blamed the Internet. Now that people could work at home, they ran off to other places to live. Some had even moved to other countries like Puerto Rico or Costa Rica or some place called Palo Alto.

  Her daughter, Linda, had moved to Seattle, and she almost never called anymore. She preferred texting. But Norma needed to hear the sound of her voice. She really couldn’t tell how she was doing by an impersonal text. Besides, she didn’t really know how to text. She had never been very good at typing. Macky tried to teach her, but she just couldn’t get the hang of it, and she felt so stupid and out of date.

  Her six-year-old granddaughter already had a Facebook account. Even Aunt Elner had learned to use a smartphone. Elner and Linda used to text and email back and forth with each other all the time. Norma was sure she must be the only person in America who didn’t have an email address. A few of her old friends she used to keep up with never called anymore. Nobody wanted to talk on the phone. Even customer service was done over the Internet now, and if, by chance, you were lucky enough to speak to a live person, they were usually in India, and she couldn’t understand them.

  She was feeling so lonesome. Lonesome for the sound of old, familiar voices. Lonesome for people to talk to about the good ol’ days, to laugh with and sometimes cry with.

  Norma had never dreamed that one day, most of her friends would be gone or that she would fall asleep sitting in front of the television set or that she and Macky would sometimes go to bed before nine. Or that she and Macky would reach an age when they were actually talking about moving to a retirement community, looking at brochures showing good-looking, well-dressed gray-haired couples standing around laughing and drinking wine.

  “But what can you do?” she thought. You can’t push a rewind button and rewind yourself back to when you were young. All you can do is try to grow old as gracefully as you can, keep your mind active, and try not to fall down. Since she had been wearing progressive lenses, she had fallen down the front stairs, and then she had fallen going up the stai
rs.

  And her memory wasn’t what it used to be. Last week, she’d gone to the police station and reported to Ralph Childress that her purse had been stolen. Later that afternoon, she had found it in her own refrigerator.

  When Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Kidd, both automobile accident victims, showed up at Still Meadows, they said that it hadn’t been a drunk driver that caused it. They had slowed down to avoid hitting a dog, and some teenage kid who was texting while driving careened right toward them.

  The next day, Tiffany Ann Smith, the teenage driver, came up as well, and someone made the mistake of asking her how it had happened.

  “Oh, well…like, uh…I was driving out to meet my girlfriends? At the mall, you know? And I was late? And like…uh…I, uh…looked down just for like…uh, a second? To like see, uh…like, uh, if it was them texting me? And like…uh…it said like, ‘Where R U?’ And, uh, I went to text them back? And I hit, like, this car? And…I mean, like…I don’t…like, uh, know whose fault it was…or anything? You know? Like…I mean…like, I don’t think…like, it’s really fair? You know, like, to blame me. Like…those people in front of me, like, uh, shouldn’t have stopped. Like, it wasn’t a stop sign or anything. Like…uh…how was I supposed to know that there was, like, this dog in the road?”

  While Tiffany continued explaining the long and painful saga of how she came to be at Still Meadows at such an early age, Mrs. Carroll in plot 298, a literature major who cared deeply about English language, murmured to her neighbor, “I feel sorry for the young lady, but dear God, if she says ‘like’ one more time, I may scream.”

  As it turned out, Gene Nordstrom wasn’t the only soldier at Still Meadows to receive a medal.

  On Memorial Day 2014, Ada Goodnight looked up, and there stood Fritzi Jurdabralinski and Bea Wallace, two of the women she had served with in the WASPs during World War II. She was stunned. She had not seen them in over thirty years, since her last WASP reunion. What in the world were they doing in Elmwood Springs? And why were her nieces and the mayor with them? And a color guard and Cathy Calvert from the newspaper? Hell, there was a whole crowd gathered behind them.