Another fifteen minutes passed and Skye could stand it no longer. She put her purse and book on the chair and went up to the desk. “Do you know how much longer Mr. Ginardi will be? I have other appointments this morning.”
“I have no idea.” The woman didn’t look up from her magazine.
“Would it be possible for you to check?” Skye gritted her teeth.
“He doesn’t like to be interrupted.”
Before Skye could think of anything else to say, a man poked his head out of the doorway behind the woman. When he saw Skye looking at him he flushed. “Ah . . . you must be Miss Denison. Come in.”
Skye followed him and sat in the chair he indicated.
He spoke to her without making eye contact. “I’m Bob Ginardi. I’m afraid we’ll have to be quick about this. I need to leave in a few minutes.”
Skye clenched her teeth. What nerve. First he made her wait over half an hour, and now he was going to rush her in and out. Still she couldn’t afford to offend him, yet. “I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.” Skye got out a notepad and pen. “Since you have only a few minutes for me, let’s get down to business. What I need to know is how my grandmother’s trust works.”
The lawyer frowned. “I really can’t talk to you about it since you’re not named in the trust.”
She reached in her tote and handed him an envelope. “That’s from my mother, who is a part of the trust, allowing me to act on her behalf.”
“It’s not notarized.” He slid the paper back to her, a look of relief on his face. “You’ll have to make another appointment.” Ginardi took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“No.” Skye realized this man not only didn’t want to talk to her, but was afraid to talk to her. What was he hiding?
The lawyer’s features registered surprise.
“I’m not leaving without this information. We are not talking state secrets here. All I need to know is how my family’s Bypass Trust works. If you feel you can’t tell me, I will call my mother and she’ll ask the questions.” Skye looked at her watch. “But that may take some time.”
Ginardi laughed nervously. “You can’t hold me hostage.”
“Maybe not, but are you willing to call the police to get rid of me?” Before he could answer, Skye continued, “Because if I don’t get answers today, the next time I come here will be with my mother, our attorney, and an auditor.”
He swallowed. “Okay, no need to get so upset. I have to protect confidentiality.” After using his handkerchief again he went on. “I guess I can explain the trust to you, at least in broad terms.”
“Fine.”
“A simple Bypass Trust means half of the estate goes to the surviving spouse at the time of the other spouse’s death. And the other half goes into a family trust with the income from that half going to the surviving spouse, as well.”
“So, except for Grandma, no one got a dime while she was living.” Skye tried to ease him into being more specific.
“Right.” He stared at a point above her head. “In the case of your grandfather’s estate, most of the value was in land. The land could not be divided except to pay for Antonia’s care, as long as your grandmother lived.”
“Was that being considered?” Skye clarified her question. “Selling off some of the land to pay for Grandma’s care?”
“We had been deliberating about the sale of some of the land, yes.” He looked at the contents of the file. “No decision would have needed to be made until fall. It depended on what kind of year the farm had, and how much the crops were sold for.”
“I know my uncles and my father do all the actual farming of the Leofanti land. Do they get any of the profits?”
Ginardi became fascinated with the crease in his pants. “Yes, the business is set up as if they were sharecroppers. They put in the labor, your grandmother put in the land, and the profits were divided, fifty percent to her and fifty percent among your father and uncles.”
Skye made a note. “What happens now?”
“The heirs can do what they wish as long as they all agree.”
“And if they all don’t agree?”
“Then the land will have to be sold and the money divided equally.”
Skye took a shot in the dark. “Is that what my Uncle Dante wanted to know when he was in to see you?”
Ginardi squirmed in his seat.
Skye continued to look him in the eye. She had found that pretending to know more than she actually knew could be very enlightening at times.
“Yes.”
Skye’s next stop was the library. She used the card catalog to locate the Dewey decimal number for poisons and found several books on the subject. She sat down at a table and tried to find a match for the name her mother had mangled.
After she read a few sections she found a likely suspect. Jatropha curcas. The common name was Barbados nut. It was found in southern Florida and Hawaii and the raw seeds had a pleasant taste. There would have been no difficulty getting her grandmother or Mrs. Jankowski to eat them mixed into brownies.
Farther down the page she found the symptoms. Difficulty breathing, sore throat, bloating, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea, and drowsiness. Wally’s guess was right, the murderer must have cleaned Grandma up. She needed to ask the chief if vomit and stool were present when they found Mrs. Jankowski.
The entry ended by saying that the poison, once ingested, took only fifteen to twenty minutes to kill.
When Skye got back to her car she noticed that there were still two hours before she was supposed to pick up Trixie to go swimming. She decided to see if she could take the local doctor to lunch.
Doc Zello was semiretired, working only half-days, but she headed to his office anyway. His was the only car in the lot.
As she walked up the familiar concrete steps and through the waiting area that smelled of antiseptic and cough drops, she felt as if she were ten again. Skye knocked on the closed dutch doors.
Doc Zello’s voice bellowed in answer. “I’m not here unless this is an emergency.”
She pushed her way in and found him at his desk. “It’s an emergency. I’m starving and I’m taking you to lunch.”
He looked at her over his glasses. “Looks like you could stand to skip a few lunches.”
“Looks as if you could stand to see a barber.”
His wild white hair stood on end. He absentmindedly ran his fingers through it, making it worse. “Okay, so why do you want to take me to lunch?”
“I want to pick your brain.”
“You know I can’t tell you anything confidential.”
“I’ll work around it.” She took him by the arm and they walked to her car.
After they had driven to the Feedbag, been seated, and had given their order, Skye started her questions. “You’ve practiced medicine in Scumble River for how long?”
“Over fifty years. I’ve lived here all my life.”
“Do you remember a nurse by the name of Esther Prynn? She was around here in the mid-sixties.”
He stroked his beard. “Can’t say as I do, right offhand. Why do you ask?”
Skye didn’t want to explain, so she ignored the question. “She might have done private duty nursing. Maybe for people who had what they used to call nervous breakdowns.”
“That was a long time ago. Are you trying to find her?”
“I don’t want to say too much until I’m more sure of my facts, but I think there might be some link between this woman and my grandmother’s murder.” Unless, of course, Uncle Dante or Hugo did it for the land. Or the twins for the jewelry. Or one of her other relatives for reasons she had yet to discover.