Death Vetoes The Chairman (Lizzie Crenshaw Mysteries Book 7) Read online

  Sighing, I took a drink and turned my attention back to my work. As I started to get into a story about a new owner taking over the local animal shelter, there was a knock on the front door. Mittens jumped up and ran to the door, barking her head off. Babe raised her head, looked at the door, and flopped back down. So much for that killer guard dog instinct…who am I kidding? She’s never had that.

  I got up, took Mittens into my arms, and unlocked the door. When I opened it, I was surprised to see Dale Gordon, owner of the Brookdale News, standing there. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in the middle of nowhere, hiding from humanity.”

  “Are you going to let me in or are you going to let me freeze on your front porch?”

  “Oh, get in here, you big baby. It’s not that cold out there,” I said, stepping aside so he could come in. Closing and locking the door behind him, I put Mittens back down, and she went over and put her front paws on Dale’s left leg. He leaned over and scratched behind her ears. “So, what can I do for you, Dale? Is this a social call? How long are you planning on staying this time?”

  “It’s good to see you too, Lizzie. Tough day at the office?”

  “No more than usual. Would you like something to drink?”

  “Water will be fine, thanks,” he replied, taking off his coat and hanging it on the front doorknob. When I came back with his water, he was sitting in my brown suede recliner, and Mittens was in his lap.

  I handed him the bottle, sat down on the couch, and waited for him to take a drink. “So, what’s new?” I asked.

  “I came by to talk to you about the newspaper.”

  “What about it?”

  “I’m still planning on selling it.”

  “Jake will be happy to hear that.”

  “Why do you say that?” he said, looking puzzled.

  “You told me you were going to sell the paper to him.”

  “I said I was thinking about selling to Jake.”

  “Did you change your mind?”

  “No, I’m still going to sell the paper…just not to Jake.”

  “What?!”

  “Let me rephrase that,” Dale said. “I’m not going to sell him the majority stake.”

  “I see,” I said. “So, you’ve been gone all this time trying to find someone to buy the majority share?”

  “I have someone in mind,” he said cryptically, “I just haven’t talked to them about it yet.”

  There was a sharp pain over my right eye, and I gently rubbed it. “Dale, I have a lot of work to do, and you’re starting to give me a headache. Would you please hurry up and get to the point?”

  “Grouchy tonight, aren’t you?” I glared at him. “I plan on offering Jake a twenty percent share of the newspaper, and I’m offering the other eighty percent to you.”

  My mouth fell open. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m offering you the majority stake in the paper.”

  “Are you crazy? I don’t have that kind of money, Dale. I don’t think I could even get a big enough mortgage on the house to cover what you’re going to ask for it.”

  “Why would you need to mortgage the house?”

  “Because I’m as poor as a church mouse! What kind of stupid question is that?”

  “Have you read Debra’s will yet?”

  I glanced guiltily at the envelope by my glass before shaking my head. “I’ve been busy.”

  “Didn’t you get the messages I left you this week, asking you to read it?”

  “I told you, I’ve been busy!”

  “Read it. Right now.”

  Reluctantly, I leaned forward, grabbed the long envelope and opened it. “I, Debra Leighanne King Cosgrove, being of sound mind and body…” I looked up at Dale. “Who is she kidding? She was as crazy as a rabid raccoon! This isn’t going to stand up in a court of law.”

  “She submitted to a psychiatric examination, and was declared sane.”

  “I wonder how much she paid for that diagnosis,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Keep reading,” he ordered.

  “…being of sound mind and body, do hereby declare that this is my last will and testament. I will make this short and simple. I leave all my worldly possessions, including a bank account in Brookdale, Texas, a bank account in New York City, New York, as well all contents of my safety deposit boxes in various locations (detailed in a separate letter), and access to an overseas account in London, England, to my half-niece, Elizabeth Crenshaw. The grand total of these various accounts comes to roughly…” I sputtered to a stop. “She’s joking, right?”

  Dale shook his head. “We went over all of her accounts with her lawyer and her accountant. That amount is correct. She did set aside enough to cover inheritance taxes, so you won’t have to worry about that.”

  “I can’t accept that money, Dale! It’s blood money,” I said, throwing the will back on the coffee table.

  “She knew you’d react that way. Check the envelope again; there’s a letter in there for you.”

  Sighing, I picked up the envelope again and looked inside. Sure enough, there was a white envelope with my name written on it. I opened and began to read it silently:

  Dear Lizzie,

  If you’re reading this, well, obviously things didn’t work out like I had hoped, and I’m dead. Hopefully, Dale followed my directions and scattered my ashes where I asked him to. If not, I’ll come back and haunt him until the day he dies.

  And, if you’re reading this letter, then that means you’ve read the will, and you told him there’s no way you’re going to take the money because of how I got it. There’s nothing I can do about that, and I’m not going to apologize for what I did.

  However, I took the majority of the money and invested it. The money in Brookdale, London and the safety deposit boxes was for emergencies. There’s not much in the boxes, maybe a million or so. Donate it to a good cause if you want.

  I’m leaving everything to you, Lizzie, because I know you’ll do something good with it. Dale has told me of his plans, and I’m sure after you get over the initial disgust of the implications of this will, you’ll take him up on his offer. If you don’t, then you’re an idiot. He’s giving you the opportunity of a lifetime, and you’d seriously be a fool not to take it. Be your own boss, girl, or retire to some island and write the next Great American Novel. You now have the chance to do whatever your heart desires. If you want a few suggestions, might I suggest a new car (since that ratty old truck of Amos’ is now toast), and a bigger house? One with a big office, with a window overlooking a beautiful backyard garden with lots of shade trees for that lazy bloodhound of yours to sleep under. Don’t let the money go to waste. Or I’ll come back and haunt you, too.”

  I looked at Dale. “She’s joking, right?” He shook his head. “But…”

  “Lizzie, she wasn’t always a bad person.” I arched an eyebrow at that comment. “Ok, so she wasn’t as pure as the driven snow, but when she wrote that, she was trying to do something right.”

  “What are you doing mixed up in this, Dale? I’m having a hard time picturing the two of you as friends.”

  “Friends we were not,” Dale told me. “More like united in common misery, mainly because of Dorothy.” Dorothy was Dale’s late wife. She had suffered a serious head injury during a car accident that also killed their only child, Elizabeth. Dorothy’s whole personality changed, and her family put her away in a sanitarium for her own safety. Debra helped her escape, and Dorothy had killed someone, and had tried to kill both of us before she had been killed. “She wanted some advice, and I agreed to listen. When she had her will written, I agreed to be a witness, and I’m also the executor of her estate.”

  Somehow I wasn’t surprised by any of this. The whole situation with Debra had been one of the weirdest times of my life, and nothing I was eager to go through or relive any time soon…or ever. “Have you talked to Jake about this yet?”

  “Actually, I might have given him the impression that I was plannin
g on selling the paper to you.”

  “When did you tell him that?”

  “Shortly after I told you that I was thinking about selling it to him.”

  “You were trying to play us off each other?”

  “I guess it does sound that way, doesn’t it? Sorry about that. After talking to Debra the first time, before she drew up her will, I sat down and thought about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I realized I didn’t have a reason to stay here anymore. Plenty of places to go and see, things I’ve always wanted to do, but never dared, because I felt guilty about having a life while Dorothy was locked away in the nuthouse, and my daughter was gone. Having you working with me at the newspaper was definitely an eye opener, too. You always have fresh new ideas about things we can do to make the paper more up to date.”

  “I didn’t think you noticed.”

  Dale took a long drink of water before commenting. “I noticed more than you think I did, Lizzie. You care about the paper, about the type of stories we tell, and you care about the people who work there. That’s not my style. Since you and Jake took over, circulation has picked up and so has the ad revenue.”

  “A lot of the credit goes to Jake,” I replied. “I just followed his lead.”

  “Maybe at first. But my spies tell me that you handled yourself just fine, and you learned things pretty quick.”

  “I really think you need to be talking to Jake about this, Dale.”

  “Lizzie, stop selling yourself short,” Dale said sharply. “Jake is more a money man. He knows what to say to get someone to spend money. He was raised in that world. He doesn’t understand how to treat people with kid gloves, or how to take people’s feelings into account before writing a story. Whatever story is going to sell the most papers, that’s what he’s interested in. It’s like you said during the Norwell investigation: we shouldn’t write a story without knowing all the facts. Our job is to learn the truth, the whole truth, and print that. We’re not going to ruin someone’s life. That’s what you care about, and that’s the way it should be.”

  I rubbed my face. “This is crazy.”

  “Possibly.”

  Picking up my glass, I took a drink of Dr Pepper, which was flat and watered down from the melted ice. “Jake isn’t going to be happy about this,” I replied, putting my glass down on the coaster.

  “Probably not.”

  “Are you sure about this? About selling me the paper?”

  He nodded. “I’m sure. It’s time. I want to go salmon fishing in Alaska, walk around the Louvre in Paris, maybe even go to the Holy Land. Whatever I decide to do, I’m going to enjoy myself. Maybe I’ll write a book about my travels. Who knows?”

  I rubbed my right thumb back and forth across the palm of my left hand, something I did sometimes when I was trying to make a big decision. “There has to be some ground rules laid out, Dale. I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding about what my responsibilities will be at the paper. If he finds even a tiny loophole, he’ll walk right through it.”

  “I’ve had the same thoughts, and I’ve got some things written down,” he said, putting Mittens on the floor as he stood up. “Grab a notepad and pen. We’ll sit at the kitchen table and work this out.”

  “Shouldn’t we include Jake in this discussion?”

  “I went by his house earlier, but he wasn’t there.”

  “I haven’t seen him much since the fiasco last Saturday night.”

  “Do I even want to know?” Dale asked.

  “Evening gown, a guy who got too grabby, and a well-placed knee. That about sums up that night.”

  “I don’t need to know any more than that, thank you very much. You let me handle Jake. Pour yourself a fresh Dr Pepper, Lizzie. You’re about to become a business owner,” Dale said, leading the way into the kitchen.

  Me, a business owner? This can’t be a good idea, right?

  Chapter 3

  I met Dale at the bank on Monday morning. The plan was to gain access to Debra’s account and safe deposit box, and transfer the funds into my personal account. I was thinking about keeping the deposit box, if possible. It would be a good idea to have a rainy day fund.

  When we walked in, I was surprised to see Angel Ramirez manning the front desk. “What are you doing here?” I said as I bent over and gave her a hug. “Shouldn’t you be at home or at the hospital already?”

  She laughed. “I wish! But this little baby girl is taking it her sweet time.”

  “Girls are always fashionably late.”

  “One week past my due date is long enough, thank you,” she replied. “What can I do for you?”

  “We need to get into a safe deposit box,” I said, showing her the paperwork.

  Angel read the legal document and looked up at me. “Wow, really?” I nodded. “I wonder what’s in the box. Maybe it’s her hit list.”

  “Let’s hope not. Is there someone who can take us to the vault room?”

  She put her hands on the arms of the chair and pushed herself up. “I will.”

  “Mrs. Ramirez, you shouldn’t strain yourself,” Dale said, moving behind her and pulling the chair out of her way.

  “Walking will be good for me,” Angel reassured him. “It might help induce labor.”

  Dale’s face turned ghostly white, and for a second, I thought he was going to pass out right there in the lobby. He stayed on the other side of me, staying as far away from Angel as he could. I think if Angel had said “boo” at him, he would have screamed louder than a girl in a horror flick and run away.

  Debra’s box turned out to be one of the biggest boxes in the vault. Located close to the bottom, Angel started to bend over to put her key in the lock, but Dale and I stopped her. He took the key from her, and the two of us opened the box and pulled it out. We picked it up and put it on the table.

  I stared at it for a minute. The box wasn’t that long, but it was very deep. Maybe Angel was right about Debra’s hit list being in the box. Or maybe there were some weapons in there. If there were, I certainly wasn’t going to keep them. I’d turn them over to Owen, and he could do what he wanted with them.

  “Whatever’s in there isn’t going to bite you, Lizzie,” Dale said. “Just open it already.”

  I took a deep breath and pulled the lid up. There were some spiral notebooks, the kind I used when I was in school, a couple of photo albums, several envelopes of various sizes, a jewelry box and a silver, fireproof lockbox. “She put a lockbox in here?” I said, looking up at Dale. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t look at me; I’m just the messenger.” He pulled a key ring out with about five small keys on it, and found the one he wanted. “Here, this one will unlock it.”

  “What are the other keys for?”

  “Various locks that you’ll open soon.”

  “Don’t you think this is just a bit extreme? This is the behavior of a paranoid person.”

  “No, this is someone who was trained to be careful, trained to disappear at the drop of the hat. You better learn not to be surprised by anything you find from here on out.”

  He was probably right about that. I tried to lift the lockbox, but discovered it was too heavy. “Dale, could you give me a hand?”

  It took both of us to take it out. “I wonder how the heck she got this in here,” he said as we put it on the table. “I think I pulled a muscle somewhere.”

  “You need to start working out,” I told him.

  “Pot, kettle, black, young lady,” he retorted.

  I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at him, and inserted the key into the lock.

  “Uh oh,” Angel said.

  We looked over at her. “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “My water just broke.”

  Dale swayed a bit and grabbed the edge of the table as I looked down at the carpeted floor. Sure enough, there was a puddle between her feet. “How long have you been feeling contractions?” I said, moving over to her side. She grabbed
my hand and squeezed.

  “Off and on,” she admitted. “I thought it was just Braxton Hicks.” She gripped my hand so tight I thought she had cut the circulation off to my fingers. “When I went through this with the boys, it was hours before they were born.”

  I gently moved her to the left, away from the wet spot, and helped her lay down on the floor. “Dale, move those chairs out of the way.” He just stared at us, frozen in place. “Dale! Snap out of it! I need some help here. Move those chairs.”

  He did what I asked him to before moving to a far corner of the room. Angel gasped, and started doing some sort of breathing exercise. I had absolutely no idea what to do. From the expression on Dale’s face – eyes wide, mouth hanging open and totally speechless for once – I knew he wasn’t going to be any help at all. “This can’t happen here,” she said. “My husband isn’t even in town.”

  “I’m sure there’s plenty of time,” I said.

  “Can you call him for me?”

  “Let’s get you some help first.” I looked over at Dale. “Pull out your phone and call 911.”

  “Huh?”

  Trying to stay calm for Angel, I repeated myself. “Call 911. She needs an ambulance. Can you do that?”

  “Call 911…ambulance…got it.” He turned and ran out of the vault.

  “Dale, get back here!” I called after him. It was too late. He ran off faster than Usain Bolt leaving the starting line.