“That’s fine, then. With a dab of mustard, not too much. And plain water to drink, please. No ice.”
She rolled her eyes at me, scribbled on a green pad, and swept away.
I asked Warren to request a year’s extension at the higher rent, and he agreed to contact Chip. He also suggested building options into the lease that I could exercise if I wanted, but that weren’t automatic renewals.
Our lunch arrived in about ninety seconds and I thought back to that morning at my store, and how this whole thing had started with Harriet trying to buy my dollhouse.
“You know, Warren, I’m wondering if Sophie even wrote a will at all. Harriet Kunes seemed convinced she did, but maybe she never got around to it. But let’s say that a will does turn up. What happens then?”
“Probate could be reopened, I suppose, although there might be a statute of limitations. Probably a year.” He peeled back the bread, inspected the corned beef, and apparently satisfied, picked up his sandwich. “Actually, and this is in the strictest confidence, Daisy . . .”
I held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
The corners of his mouth quirked up. “Sophie Rosenthal contacted me shortly before her death. Said she was thinking about changing lawyers. She seemed convinced her attorney couldn’t be trusted anymore.” He took a delicate bite. “I thought she sounded a bit paranoid at the time, but who knows?”
“Was Chip trying to get power of attorney over her or something? Manipulating her somehow?”
Warren shrugged his slender shoulders. “She didn’t say. It was as if she was afraid someone was listening in on the line. She abruptly said, ‘Never mind,’ and hung up.”
I dunked a curly fry in a pool of ketchup. “I wonder if these two deaths could be about something else entirely, and not Sophie’s estate at all.”
“It’s possible, but as it turns out, there’s an awful lot of money involved, what with Sophie’s house, your store, and the waterfront acreage.” Warren sipped his water, his eyes solemn behind the round spectacles. “If I had to hazard a guess, and a conservative one, I’d say we’re talking close to three million dollars.”
• • •
The next day, Friday, I hurried out of the store as soon as Laura arrived. Warren had promised to contact Chip today, and I was confident that by early next week, I could put the matter of my lease renewal behind me. Which still left the puzzle of what happened to Sophie and who had rigged Harriet’s lethal dollhouse.
I considered my list of suspects. Who was the only person with a concrete connection to both victims?
Birch Kunes.
I decided I needed to educate myself on the subject of diabetes, and see what else I could find out about Birch’s relationship with his patient, Sophie Rosenthal. My efforts to run into Bettina Waters at the dog park had proven fruitless, so I grimly got back on my bicycle, for what promised to be over an hour’s ride in my current out-of-bike-shape to Doylestown.
I wasn’t quite sure what I’d say when I got there. In the back of my mind was some half-baked plan about saying I had an elderly relative who’d recently been diagnosed with diabetes and I wanted to learn as much as possible about her condition.
At first, my muscles were tight and sore, but surprisingly after about twenty minutes on the road, I felt better. It was one of those glorious fall days where the sky is a cloudless blue, and the air is cool, but not frigid. Leaves were turning color more and more now, and the red maples were ablaze. Majestic sycamores with their towering trunks and peeling bark like beige camouflage spread fiery orange crowns overhead. Delicate river birches sprinkled the ground with pale yellow confetti.