“If you speak with Peter Steinman’s mother, and if the boy is really gone, ask if she has his skateboard.”
“Will do. Anything else?”
“Yes. Watch the road.”
She ends the call and listens to the voicemail.
“Hello, Ms. Gibney, this is David Emerson. Call me back as soon as convenient, please. It concerns your mother’s estate.” After a pause he adds, “So sorry for your loss, and thank you for your remarks at her final gathering.”
Now Holly knows why the name was familiar; her mother mentioned Emerson on one of their FaceTime calls after Charlotte was admitted to Mercy Hospital. This was before they put her on a ventilator, when she could still talk. Holly thinks only a lawyer would find a fancy way around saying funeral. As for Charlotte’s estate… Holly hasn’t even thought about it.
She doesn’t want to speak to Emerson, would like to have one day when she doesn’t have to think about anything but chasing the case, so she calls back immediately, pausing only long enough to light another cigarette. Her mother’s ironclad dictum, badgered into Holly from the time she was a toddler: What you don’t want to do is what must be done first. Then it’s out of the way. This has stuck with Holly, as many childhood lessons do… for better or worse.
It’s Emerson himself who answers, so Holly guesses he is one of many now working from home, without the layers of help professional people took for granted pre-Covid.
“Hello, Mr. Emerson. This is Holly Gibney, returning your call.” Spread out below her is half a mile of Red Bank Avenue. It interests her quite a bit more than the lawyer.
“Thanks for calling back, and once again, I’m very sorry for your loss.”
Everything over there abandoned except for the U-Store-It, she thinks, and that doesn’t look like it’s doing much business. On this side of the street you have the least-used section of the park, where upright citizens fear to tread except in broad daylight. If you planned to grab somebody, what better place?
“Ms. Gibney? Did I lose you?”
“No, I’m here. What can I do for you, Mr. Emerson? Something about my mother’s estate, wasn’t it? There can’t be much to discuss there.” Not after Daniel Hailey, she thinks.
“I did legal work for your Uncle Henry before he retired, so Charlotte engaged me to write her will, and made me executor. This was after she began to feel unwell and a test showed she was positive for the virus. There’s no need for a reading at a family gathering…”
What family? Holly thinks. With cousin Janey dead and Uncle Henry vegetating in Rolling Hills Elder Care, I’m the last pea in the pod.
“…left to you.”
“Pardon me?” Holly says. “I lost you there for a second.”
“Sorry. I said that with the exception of a few minor bequests, your mother left everything to you.”
“The house, you mean.”
She’s not pleased by the idea; she’s dismayed. The memories she has of that house (and the one preceding it, in Cincinnati) are dark and sad, for the most part, leading up to that final Christmas dinner where Charlotte insisted that her daughter wear the Santa hat Holly had worn for the holiday as a child. It’s tradition! her mother had exclaimed as she carved the dry-as-Sahara turkey. So: fifty-five-year-old Holly Gibney in a Santa hat.
“Yes, the house and all the furnishings therein. I’m assuming you’ll want to sell?”
Of course she will, and Holly tells him so. Her business is based in the city. Even if it weren’t, living at her mother’s house in Meadowbrook Estates would be like living in Hill House. Meanwhile, Counselor Emerson has continued—something about keys—and she has to ask him again to rewind.
“I said I have the keys, and I think we should agree on a time when you can come up here and inspect the property. See what you want to keep and what you want to sell.”
Holly’s dismay deepens. “I don’t want to keep any of it!”
Emerson chuckles. “That’s not an unusual first reaction in the wake of a loved one’s death, but you really must do a walk-through. As Mrs. Gibney’s executor, I’m afraid I have to insist on that. To see what repairs might need to be made before selling, for one thing, and based on years of experience, I think you will find things you want to keep. Could you possibly do it tomorrow? I know that’s short notice, and it’s a Saturday, but in these situations sooner is usually better than later.”
Holly wants to demur, to say she has a case, but her mother’s voice again intrudes: Is that a reason, Holly, or just an excuse?
To answer that she has to ask herself if the disappearance of Bonnie Dahl is an urgent case, a race against time case, like when Brady Hartsfield was planning to blow up the Mingo Auditorium during a rock concert. She doesn’t think it is. Bonnie dropped out of sight over three weeks ago. Sometimes missing people who’ve been abducted are found and saved. More often they are not. Holly would never say so to Penny, but whatever happened to Bonnie Rae has almost certainly already happened.
“I suppose I can do that,” she says, and takes a final monster drag on her cigarette. “Can you possibly send someone up there today to disinfect the house? I suppose that sounds overly cautious, maybe even paranoid, but—”
“Not at all, not at all. We don’t really understand this virus yet, do we? Terrible thing, just terrible. I’ll call a company I’ve done business with before. Insurance issues, you know. I think I can have them in at nine. If so, shall we meet at eleven?”
Holly sighs and stubs out her cigarette. “That sounds all right. I imagine the disinfecting will be expensive. Especially on a weekend.”
Emerson chuckles again. It’s a pleasant one, easy on the ears, and Holly supposes he uses it often. “I think you’ll be able to afford it. Your mother was quite well off, as I’m sure you know.”
Holly isn’t exactly shocked to silence, but she’s certainly surprised. Shock will come later.
“Holly? Ms. Gibney? Still there?”
“I’m afraid I know no such thing,” Holly says. “She was well off. My Uncle Henry was, too. But that was before Daniel Hailey.”
“I don’t know that name, I’m afraid.”
“She never mentioned Hailey? The can’t-miss Wizard of Wall Street investment counselor that took everything my mother and my uncle had and ran off to one of those non-extradition islands? Along with God knows how many other people’s money, including most of mine?”
“Pardon me, Ms. Gibney, but I’m not following.”
“Really?” Holly realizes the lawyer’s perplexity makes a degree of sense. When it came to unpleasant truths, Charlotte Gibney was a master of omission. “There was money, but it’s gone.”
Silence. Then: “Let’s rewind. Your cousin Olivia Trelawney died…”
“Yes.” Committed suicide, in fact. Holly had actually driven her much older cousin’s Mercedes for awhile, the automotive guided missile Brady Hartsfield used to kill eight people at City Center and wound dozens more. For Holly, fixing up the Benz, changing its color, and driving it was an act of healing. And, she supposes, defiance. “She left a considerable amount of money to her sister Janey. Janelle.”