I went back to my office–closet and dialed Ethan Crane’s number. A receptionist answered in a nasal singsong: “Ethan Crane’s office.”
I gave my name and said, “I’m returning Mr. Crane’s call.”
She immediately put me through, which told me two things: She had been told to be on the lookout for my call and Ethan Crane wasn’t very busy.
His voice was a smooth burr. “Ms. Hemingway, thanks for calling. I’m sure you’re aware that Marilee Doerring is dead. We need to meet and discuss her will.”
“Why?”
“That’s what we need to discuss. I’d rather not get into it over the phone, but you are one of the principals named in the will.”
I shook my head like a boxer taking one punch too many. “Mr. Crane, I hardly knew Marilee Doerring. I take care of her cat when she goes out of town, but that’s my only involvement with her.”
“Can you come to my office?”
Still dazed, I said, “When?”
“How about right now?”
I still felt like I was being set up for something, but I told him I’d be there in fifteen minutes. To make myself feel more like a grown-up, I put on a white linen skirt with a toast-colored cropped top. I put on high-heeled sandals, too. If you’re going to match wits with a lawyer, you need to stand tall and stick your tits out.
Twenty-Seven
Ethan Crane’s office was in a narrow building on a side street in the cluttered business section of the key. The building was old and crumbling, set so close to the sidewalk that dark fingerprints and smudges from palms and shoulders spotted it. Down at ground level, chunks of stucco had flaked off like scabs from an old sore. The doorway was recessed in an alcove lined with wooden benches like church pews, on which a vagrant and a couple of tourists too tired to go on sat mutely staring at one another.
Old gilt paint on the glass door had faded so the words ETHAN CRANE ESQ., ATTORNEY AT LAW were barely discernable. Feeling like a character in a gothic novel, I pushed the door open and went up a flight of worn wooden steps rising from the linoleum-floored vestibule. Why in the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed world would a woman like Marilee Doerring choose an attorney in a dump like this?
At the top of the stairs, a door stood open at the far end of a wide oaken landing, with two closed doors on either side. A man sat at a desk watching my approach. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a dark tie that had been loosened and thrown over one shoulder. He stood up, rearranging himself with amazing speed and grace, so that by the time he was fully erect, his tie was hanging true and knotted firmly under his collar, and his shirt cuffs were buttoned. He was fortyish, ruddy-complected, and extraordinarily good-looking. The reason for Marilee’s choice of attorneys might not be so mysterious after all, I realized.
He said, “Ms. Hemingway?”
I nodded and we shook hands. He had a nice handshake, not the sweaty clasp I’d have expected from somebody in such a sleazy office. He was also a lot younger than the aged sign on the door had led me to expect. He gestured to a leather chair with a seat hollowed and darkened by decades of rear ends. I sat down and crossed my legs, giving the room’s drab walls and musty bookshelves a quick once-over. I hadn’t spoken yet, and that seemed to amuse him.
Before he sat down, he leaned forward to hand me a brown leather folder, and I caught a whiff of lime and musk and sweet cigar.
He said, “I think this will clear up some of your questions.”
He leaned back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head and watched me. Like a blind woman expecting Braille, I ran my fingertips over the folder before I opened it. It had a grainy texture like painted-over grit. Slowly, I opened it and read the heading on the first page: “The Marilee Doerring Living Trust.”
The first few pages were standard explanations for a revocable living trust, and I skimmed through them quickly. Florida probate laws are so complicated and expensive that most Floridians have revocable living trusts instead of wills. A revocable living trust holds whatever assets a person chooses to put in it until the person either dies or revokes the trust. If it hasn’t been revoked when the person dies, an assigned trustee carries out the wishes expressed in the trust without having to pay probate fees or being under the constraint of a court’s supervision.
After the explanatory section, there was a quitclaim deed to Marilee’s house, and then four more pages of legal explanation. On page five, under a section headed “Trust Income and Principal Distribution,” were instructions for the trustee in the event of Marilee’s death. Mainly, the instructions specified that all listed assets were under the control of the trustee, to sell or maintain as the trustee saw fit, for the benefit of the named beneficiary. Listed assets were Marilee’s house, her car, and all personal possessions within the house.
I was named trustee.
The beneficiary was Ghost.
At Ghost’s death, any remaining assets would go to me.
I looked up at the attorney and caught his amused look.
“This can’t be right,” I said. “What about Marilee’s grandmother?”
“Ms. Doerring had a separate irrevocable trust set up for her grandmother,” he said, “fully funded with enough to take care of her for the rest of her life. The revocable trust for the cat will hold up, don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried! I don’t want it. I don’t want Ghost, and I don’t want the responsibility of handling all that money.”
He shrugged. “Sorry. You’ve got it anyway. The cat and the money.”
“Can she just do that? Without asking me?”
“Can and did,” he said.
“Can I refuse it?”
“Yes. If you refuse, everything in the trust reverts to the state.”
“Including the cat?”
“Including the cat.”
I shuddered. That was pretty much the same thing as saying the cat would be euthanized.
“When did you draw this up?”
He pointed at the folder. “It’s dated there. I didn’t draw it up, my grandfather did. He passed away a few months ago, and I’ve taken over his practice. I never met Ms. Doerring.”
I flipped some pages to find the date the trust had been signed. It had been a little over a year before, shortly after I’d begun taking care of Ghost when Marilee went out of town, when Ghost had been still a kitten.
“You’re not Ethan Crane?”
“I am, but not the same Ethan Crane who drew up that document.”
He really was a handsome man, and it annoyed me that I was aware of that, especially when I was seeing my life pass before my eyes like somebody going down for the third time.
He leaned across the desk and clasped his palms together. “Look, it’s not as bad as it sounds. There are no bank accounts involved, no stocks or bonds or cash other than what’s in the house. You’ve got complete power of attorney, so you can do whatever you want to with the house, the car, the jewelry, whatever her personal possessions were. If you want to, you can move into the house with the cat and use the car and everything else as if it’s your own. If you don’t want to do that, put the house on the market and let an estate-liquidation company sell the rest of it. So long as you see that the cat’s well cared for until it dies a natural death, you can do whatever you want to with the assets in the trust. It’s a pretty sweet deal.”
I could feel my lower lip creeping out like a sulky four-year-old’s, and I felt like throwing myself on the floor and kicking and screaming. A healthy, happy, active cat can live twenty years or more, and Ghost was less than two. The last thing I wanted was to complicate my life for the next twenty years with a dependent. I didn’t want Ghost for my own. When Michael and I were growing up, we’d always had pets, but I didn’t want a pet now. Owning a pet requires a commitment. It forces you to have a close relationship with a living being with needs and feelings. I didn’t want to make that kind of commitment. I didn’t want a close relationship with anybody, no matter how many legs he had.