there will be a lot of people. In the moment it seemed so much easier than bothering Stanton with it, and Mitchell had some valid points. But it was Donnie that really got to me. He’s desperate, Charlotte. I just couldn’t wait and I don’t think I want to know what he’s caught up in.”
Charlotte wondered if Donovan’s desperation was real—or if he was just a really good actor, a practiced con man, able to snooker Helene as well as herself. She relayed her experiences of arriving at the house and meeting Mitchell, his charm, familiarity with Olivia’s kitchen, Donovan’s ill at ease manner, and Mitchell suddenly turning hardline. “I had to bite my tongue when he said ‘Van really needs to do this,’ because the contents of the house are yours, according to the will.”
“They’re certainly my responsibility, but apart from anything I can do to find the notebooks and get them published, I have no desire to be involved in Olivia’s spiteful ruling from the grave.” Helene’s expression was dark and thin-lipped as she took another sip of tea.
“Do you think Donovan is playing you?”
Helene looked up sharply. “I don’t care. You know, Charlotte, I’ve never had children of my own, but I’ve worked with them most of my life, some of them from toddlers until adulthood, and have observed so many different kinds of parent-child relationships. The parents, almost without exception, set the tone, set the stage for the future. Donnie’s path in life started as a reaction to Olivia as much as to Ronson. It’s not my place to sit in judgment of him, whether or not he’s truly in a bad way. If he’s desperate, getting the money to him quickly will help. If he’s not, getting the money to him quickly will get him out of my hair.”
“Makes perfect sense,” said Charlotte. She really couldn’t blame Helene under the circumstances.
Twelve
Also Thursday, September 19th
Charlotte rubbed the back of her neck as she surveyed the contents of her basement yet again, and tried to decide what had to be tackled next. Fatigue was setting in. When she was tired, it was hard to stop her mind from replaying the various scenes that led up to this sudden change in life, from the day Ellis learned that she was accepted to the Conservatoire, to the announcement that the magazines were closing. She knew that anger, at this point, was useless. The circumstances weren’t personal. Ellis did not go to Paris to abandon her. The magazines did not fold to reject her. Jack did not stop the child support to spite her (as much as it would have suited her to think this). The economy did not tank to nearly bankrupt her. It just was, like the weather. Nothing personal. So many others, like Donovan, were in worse shape.
But was he in worse shape entirely due to circumstances? Or was he a victim of some very poor choices? Charlotte knew that, at one time, the local steel mill workers earned good money with good benefits. They could buy nice homes, decent cars, take vacations, get nearly any kind of medical treatment they needed, and send their kids to college. If they started right out of high school, like Donovan, they could look forward to retirement and retirement benefits at an age young enough to start new careers if they wanted. She knew of a chiropractor who’d started training on his forty-seventh birthday, a week after he’d retired from the mill. Several of the real-estate agents and business owners in the area were once mill workers that had retired in middle age. Then things bottomed out, devastating scores of middle-aged workers and their families, and their loss of buying power impacted the entire region, long before the current recession.
Different people take different steps, though. Maybe Donovan, who was never married or had a family (as far as anyone knew), had less to worry about, or was willing to take more chances. Or perhaps he was more inclined to find an “easy” way to make money, even illegal ones? Charlotte thought of the world around the Warren Brothers pawn shop; even in a small town like Elm Grove there was usually an undercurrent of criminal activity, of drug dealing, prostitution, black markets, larceny, illegal gambling, and money-lending. Just because she hadn’t seen much of it before pawning her jewelry didn’t mean it didn’t exist. Even out in the countryside there were plenty of meth labs amid the cornfields. There had been more than one story in the local paper about former mill workers getting nabbed for anything from shoplifting to gun running or worse.
Once again she told herself, Snap out of it! She didn’t have the luxury of time at the moment. The best thing to do was to think about Olivia’s mystery while in Elm Grove, and her own situation while in Lake Parkerton, or something like that. The stacks and collections of things that were self-evident, like toys and Christmas decorations, she could leave for Stanton to sort out. The things inside storage boxes were another matter, particularly the ones full of old papers, schoolwork, and files. It took her an hour to find them all and move them up to her office to sort and shred.
Mental fatigue, however, was making concentration on the task difficult, as she found herself explaining over the phone to Diane, who called for a friendly update.
But Diane disagreed. “Nope. I mean, sure you’re really tired, and you ought to be, given all the stuff you have going on right now, and I’m sure it would drive anyone to drink, or at least wanting to crawl into bed and pull the covers over your head.” She paused to get a breath, and Charlotte jumped back in.
“Well, then what is it? And what are you drinking? Buzz juice? I could really use some of your energy right now.”
“Just espresso. There’s a gorgeous new barista at The Coffee Grove. Too young, yeah, but I don’t care. Makes the best shots, so gifted, I swear.”
“Oh stop robbing the cradle already! We’re talking about me. Why am I spacing out like this when there’s so much I need to do here?”
“Because you’re in the middle of a murder mystery, you idiot! I mean, face it, it’s a lot more interesting than packing up your crap for a move, but you also care about Helene, and by extension you care about Olivia, or at least you have concern for your fellow human beings, and in the case of Olivia, there’s the whole mystery of the notebooks and the way she lived and why. You have a huge void in your life right now, no kid in the house and no regular job to answer to, just this downsizing stuff and you know how nature abhors a vacuum.”
“You have a point, there, about the vacuum. But we don’t know that it’s a murder, necessarily. It might just have been an argument gone wrong and an accident.”
“Somebody left an old lady there to die. Smells like murder to me.”
“Maybe. I guess I can’t help trying to figure out what happened, what it all means and why. It is intriguing, hard to stop thinking about.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself, Charlotte. I can see the way your brain works, what makes you really good at observing and analyzing trends, would make it natural for you to try to sort out what happened to Olivia. Hold on,” she paused, and Charlotte could hear background voices. “Sorry about that. Client’s here, I gotta go. Hang in there.”
The pep talk made Charlotte feel better, and she tackled the papers with renewed vigor, scanning things which could be saved in digital form, shredding anything too personal or which could lead to identity theft, and throwing the remainder into paper bags for recycling. She found it helped to imagine she was in an embassy about to be stormed by a military coup and she had to evacuate with only a briefcase of the most important things. In a sense, she really did have to leave, and in a hurry, and it sped up the decision-making process. Box by box, she whittled everything down with the goal of ending up with just one expandable file and a thumb drive. Whatever she couldn’t do today, she could finish while the crew from Stanton Estate was setting up in the week ahead.
After an hour, her phone rang again, showing Helene on the caller I.D. She welcomed the break and went out to the kitchen as she took the call, taking the opportunity to make a fresh half pot of coffee. It wasn’t good news.
“Oh, Charlotte, it’s terrible,” said Helene. ?
??The police have been questioning me all over again about Olivia.”
“Why? Do they know anything more than they did?”
Helene sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. They just left a few minutes ago. They asked me another million questions about Olivia, her son, her husband’s work and his side of the family. They wanted to know everything about her lifestyle, her money, her will, just everything, and I had so little information for them. I might live nearby now, but we hadn’t been close in years and they look at me like I’m lying to them. Does everyone really think family members ought to know every last thing about one another, particularly if they are two old widowed sisters?”
“Are they aware of how, well, eccentric she was, that it wasn’t easy to have that sort of relationship with her?”
“They seem to understand it when I tell them, but they keep coming back with questions that suggest they haven’t taken it on board. I’m not used to having my statements of fact challenged like that. Very disconcerting.”
“Do you think you’re going to need a lawyer?”
“Oh heavens I hope not! I mean, what could I possibly be guilty of? I’m another old woman. What would I gain from such a thing? I’m comfortable.”
Charlotte thought the whole thing odd, and the idea of the police making Helene feel