“Seven hundred dollars.”
“Seven hundred dollars to close out the estate of someone I don’t know?”
“Exactly,” he said.
“When did she pass?”
“Recently.”
“How recently?”
“How flexible is your schedule?” he clicked. No doubt, he was working on a breath mint. “West Haven’s just a couple of hours from you.”
I didn’t tell him I had no appointments scheduled, for anything. “I can rearrange things, be up there on Monday.”
“Morning, then?”
“What’s the rush?”
“I try to close out estates quickly. I like things nice and tidy.”
“Afternoon,” I said. It wouldn’t hurt to create the impression I had other things to do besides rehabbing a limestone turret to sell, should Rivertown ever become fashionable.
“One o’clock,” he said and started to say good-bye.
“Wait,” I said. “Who inherits?”
“It’s an odd will, Mr. Elstrom. Yours is the only name stated.”
“No one is named a beneficiary?”
“You merely execute, Mr. Elstrom.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I look forward to meeting you on Monday,” Aggert said and hung up.
Next to me, Leo was still stomping, his hat down over his chin. I tapped his hand with the phone in case the chartreuse had been too noisy for him to hear.
“That sounded intriguing,” he said, proving me wrong. He lifted his knitted veil.
I handed him the phone, picked up the plywood, and swayed back up the ladder.
A half hour later, we were on that half of the second floor that I call my office, because it’s where I keep my card table desk, the electric blue La-Z-Boy recliner I bought for twelve bucks, thirdhand, and the cartons of files from the days when I had a healthy business, chasing down information for law firms and insurance companies.
Leo, huddled in the white plastic chair and still bundled in orange and chartreuse, waved a mitten at the curved limestone walls. “What is it with you and inheritances?”
I’d inherited my grandfather’s five-story turret, the only part of his dream castle he ever got built, from an aunt who hadn’t liked me much. At the time I’d scoffed-it had come plastered with decades of pigeon poop, old tax liens, and a zoning classification that made it unsalable. Then my business and reputation got trashed, my bank account vaporized, and my marriage collapsed. My perspective got altered. I moved into the pigeon-scented turret prepared to shovel my way to a new life.
“It didn’t turn out so bad,” I said to the limestone walls.
Leo pulled the chartreuse another inch down his head.
“Besides,” I went on, “I’m not inheriting this time; I’m merely executing.”
“The estate of somebody you’ve never heard of.” He pulled the chair closer to the oil space heater I drag around in the winter. It won’t heat the whole room, but it keeps the coffee from icing over.
I switched off the computer, ending a quick Internet search for Louise Thomas, L. Thomas, Lou Thomas. There were hundreds, but none listed near West Haven, Michigan. “All I can figure is that she worked for a client,” I said, pointing to the boxes of old files. Nowadays, all that got added to the cartons was dust.
“I’ve got to get out of this igloo.” Leo stomped his feet as he stood up. Jamming his mittens into his traffic jacket, he angled his purple-pommed head toward the huge stone fireplace. There was one on every floor, each large enough to roast Paul Bunyan and his ox. “Don’t you ever want to build a fire?”
“It would take a cord of firewood just to get it going.”
“But jeez,” he said, tapping the space heater with the toe of his boot, “how long will that little thing take to warm up this pile?”
Central heating was several thousands of dollars away.
“Come July, this place will be toasty,” I said.
Sunday afternoon, Amanda Phelps stood behind the lectern on the stage of Fullerton Hall in the Art Institute of Chicago, her face owlish in the yellow glow above the little hooded lamp. She is round-faced and beautiful, and she is my ex-wife.
She snapped off the display from the overhead projector, ending her presentation. “Immediately following the concert, we will meet at the top of the Grand Staircase for a short tour to view Jean-Baptiste Joseph Wicar’s Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus, Octavia, and Livia, 1790 to 1793, Pompeo Batoni’s Peace and War, 1776, and Antonio Canova’s Bust of Paris, 1809.”
Of such came excitement-hers, not mine, although I did let myself hope that the name of the last piece, Canova’s, promised something akin to presenting Dolly Parton as the Bust of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
Amanda introduced the brass quintet, lit the hall with a dazzling smile, and left the stage to sincere applause.
She’d gotten me a center seat in the second row. “To keep an eye on me, to make sure I’m paying attention,” I accused. “To fully appreciate the interplay of the trumpets, trombone, French horn, and tuba,” she said, shaking her head. “To make it impossible for me to sleep discreetly,” I said. Winters, I get drowsy when exposed to heat. She smiled and said nothing more.
The five hornists, or whatever they’re called, materialized in suits dark enough to enthuse funeral directors and arranged themselves on the stage in a semicircle, trumpets at the outside, tuba fellow at the base. Amanda had carted me to enough performances at Chicago’s Symphony Center to learn to distinguish a violin from a drum, but never had I sat so close to the horns. For the first part of what the program called Hellendaal’s Centone No. 10, all went well enough. Then the group stopped, and the trombonist and the French horn player slid curved pieces off their instruments and began shaking them vigorously, as though they’d discovered cockroaches dancing inside their horns. It wasn’t bugs they were shaking out, though-it was spit, lots of it, glistening as it cascaded onto the hardwood floor. Incredibly, no one laughed; the audience sat patiently and silently, as though what they were witnessing was normal behavior.
The trumpeters got into the spirit of the event after the second part of the Centone, and removed their own bits of brass for a solid shake and spray. The performance became complete at the end of the third part, when the tuba player, a bald, genial-looking fellow who could have passed for a television weatherman, lifted the tuba above his head and began shaking it as if he were summoning Zeus to send down the rains. His face went purple as, indeed, the rains did come. Great gobs of spit pelted the floor like a summer thunderstorm. So it went, to the end of the program. It was wet work for sure, and at last I understood why, in full orchestras, the horn players are kept at the back of the stage.
Afterward, I followed the audience up the Grand Staircase to join Amanda for the gallery tour. I stayed with the group for fifteen or twenty minutes as Amanda explained some of the nuances in the works she’d presented during her slide presentation, though once I’d ascertained that Canova’s Bust of Paris had nothing in common with Dolly Parton, I lost interest and hung back as the group followed Amanda through the galleries. When it was over, I waited downstairs in the marble foyer.
She came down in a hooded black wool coat that matched her hair and was only one shade darker than her eyes. “What did you think of the performance?” she asked, slipping her arm through mine.
“Drainage,” I said, holding the door open for her.
“Hopeless,” she said as we went out.
We ate at the little trattoria where I’d proposed, two years before. Even though we were divorced, we were still trying, and it was still our place.
She tore a piece of Italian bread and dipped it in olive oil. “Tell me more about this mysterious phone call.”