A Dollhouse to Die For(30)
Carlos and I both peered at the wall. It looked fine to me, but Marybeth tapped on it with a long red fingernail, and he obediently applied his paintbrush. The store was one big open space, and I half listened as Marybeth talked about vanilla boxes and the landlord being willing to absorb some of the cost of the buildout.
I couldn’t seem to work up any enthusiasm though. Maybe my malaise was due to a lack of caffeine. I would have had several jolts with my compadres by now, but didn’t dare suggest bringing a cup of coffee into the pristine white vehicle.
“So. Do you have any idea who might have borne a grudge against Harriet?” I prompted once we were back in the car, heading east on River Road again toward New Hope.
Marybeth sighed. “Oh, Daisy, it could have been any number of people. After all, if she’d screw her own sister out of her rightful . . .”
Her voice trailed off, and her mouth tightened.
“Rightful what? Inheritance?”
She slanted a glance at me from under those perfectly shaded green and gold eyelids. “You’re not going to give up on this, are you?”
I shook my head and smiled a fraction. “Nope.”
There was a brief silence. To our left was the river and on the right was a towering slope of rock and ferns and rampant wild vegetation. Here and there huge logs lay where they had fallen, like a pile of giant matchsticks. River Road was a two-lane road with a double yellow line, edged in places by a low metal barrier. Sometimes the trees on either side cut out so much of the daylight it felt like we were heading for a shaft of light at the end of a long green tunnel.
“When my mother died, her will said that everything should be shared equally between me and my sister. Harriet took the lead in splitting up the estate. She insisted that I take my mother’s little house in Point Pleasant and she would have the jewelry. There was nothing much of value there, mainly costume stuff, apart from her wedding ring.”
We passed a weathered barn, a house with pieces of white stucco fallen off in places to reveal brown fieldstone underneath, and a tavern in a three-story Colonial situated on a corner. Black-eyed Susans tumbled over a low rock wall in front. It even had outside seating, if that’s what you could call the ramshackle collection of faded green plastic chairs.
“Harriet also got sixty-five acres in the Ohio River Valley that she said were next to worthless. I took her at her word. I knew it was a depressed area, hit hard by the downturn in industrial activity. My mother’s house was worth about a hundred thousand back then, so I thought I was getting the better end of the deal. After all, I trusted her. She was my older sister.”
I bit my lip as I looked over at Marybeth. Even with my limited experience with Harriet, I had a bad feeling I knew how this story would go, and it wouldn’t have a happy ending.
Her lips thinned. “But underneath that worthless land was a thick layer of shale, and six thousand feet below that was a mother lode of oil-and-gas-bearing rock. The energy companies paid three thousand an acre and a twenty percent royalty on production. A windfall for the people in that valley who are getting huge leasing checks now. Harriet received over two hundred grand in the first check alone. I only found out when I received a letter from one of my mother’s old neighbors who didn’t realize Mom had passed away.”
I gasped. “But maybe Harriet didn’t know that when she divvied everything up.”
“Oh, she knew all right. Turns out Harriet was the one who contacted the lawyer in the first place to put together the association of the landowners.”
We came to a one-lane bridge with a stop sign. Marybeth barely slowed down, and I gripped the armrest as the sedan swooped over the bridge. I closed my eyes briefly and prayed for no oncoming traffic. The road bent back on itself in a sharp S-curve and there were only inches to spare between the low stone wall and the side of the car.