The Now-And-Then Detective by William Wells

Author:William Wells
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781579626365
Publisher: The Permanent Press
Published: 2020-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

THE PRESENT TIME

16.

An Unexpected Visitor

Marisa and I were seated in my usual booth at The Drunken Parrot, having coffee and chit-chatting, when she looked up and asked, “Who’s that classy chick in the Chanel knit cardigan set, Jimmy Choo Mirren 85 soft patent leather ankle boots, wearing a string of pearls with matching earrings, Mikimoto is my guess, and carrying a Hermes Himalayan crocodile Birkin bag?”

When it came to ladies’ fashion, Marisa knew her stuff. I looked toward the bar and saw, to my great surprise, Sam talking to a woman it took me a moment to recognize. If a woman dressed like she was had ever come into The Drunken Parrot before, I wasn’t there to see it.

It was none other than Libby Leverton, one of Henry Wilberforce’s two nieces, come all the way from Boston.

Sam nodded toward me and Libby walked over to our booth. I stood and said, “You’ve come a long way for our happy hour, Libby.”

She smiled. “I hear it’s a very good one.”

“Libby, this is my friend Marisa Lopez,” I said. “Marisa, this is one of Henry Wilberforces nieces.”

I moved to Marisa’s side of the booth and said, “Please join us.”

Libby slid in where I had been sitting and said, “Pardon me for just dropping in like this, Detective Starkey. But I have something I need to discuss with you and I thought it better to do it in person.”

Marisa looked at her wristwatch and said, “You’ll have to excuse me, I have a house showing.”

I stood so she could get out of the booth. When she was gone, I sat down and Libby looked at me, hesitated, then said, “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

Which was a guaranteed way to get my full attention. I made a mental note to tell Bill Stevens that that would be a great first line for a novel. How could you not keep reading?

“I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely straightforward with you when we met before,” Libby continued.

“In what way?” I asked.

“I really didn’t know that Uncle Henry was dead before you told me,” she said. “But, several months before your visit to Boston, I was called to a family meeting at Alan Dumont’s law firm in Washington. Alan is the husband of my cousin June. Alan, June, and Scooter Lowry, who is my other cousin, were there, in a conference room, along with a private detective Alan had hired, a most disagreeable man, to follow Henry around and document what we heard was his odd behavior. I was opposed to that, but I was outvoted. June had found out, I don’t know how exactly, that Henry was giving away large amounts of money. She said that, as his only heirs, we should do something about it. The detective had a list of some of Henry’s recent gifts, and photos of him around Lake Forest, wearing outlandish costumes. Alan said we could petition the Lake County Probate Court in Illinois to have Henry declared mentally incompetent to handle his own affairs, and have June appointed as his guardian.

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