“Mmmm,” Bob Cheswicki said. “Well. Yes.”
Russell Donahue put his hands in the pockets of his trousers.
If it went on like this much longer, they would all be frozen into immobility by embarrassment. Gregor looked around the room at the people now arrayed there. Alyssa was still on her love seat. Caroline was still on the long couch and put her feet on the floor, with her knees and ankles together, in the pose Bennis made fun of as “dancing-class rigor mortis.” The men were all still standing, however, police and suspects both. It was as if they wanted to be ready for an impending emergency. Gregor considered the situation and made up his mind to it. This wasn’t what he had expected, but it was what he’d gotten. He might as well use it.
He walked across the room to a fragile-legged wingback chair and sat down in it. It left his back to the wall of weapons but allowed him to face all the people, which was what was really important. He put his hands on his knees and leaned forward.
“For the moment,” he said, “I would like a little information about the financial arrangements in this house. I would like to know about the trust funds Paul Hazzard set up for his children, and about the legacy of Jacqueline Isherwood Hazzard and how it was left. Was there a lot of money in those trust funds?”
James Hazzard folded his arms across his chest. His eyes grew cold. “I don’t think we have to tell you that,” he said. “I don’t think we have to tell you anything without our lawyer present. And even then we don’t have to tell you anything at all.”
“True,” Gregor said. He forbore pointing out that Fred Scherrer was a lawyer, one of the best in the United States, and right on the scene. He didn’t know what sort of relationship there was between Scherrer and the Hazzard children. He went on. “Jacqueline Isherwood Hazzard’s will is not a secret. It was probated over four years ago. The arrangements made by Paul Hazzard for putting money in trust are somewhat more private, but not by much. This is a murder investigation. It would take only a few phone calls.”
“Make a few phone calls, then,” James said.
“Oh, whatever for?” Alyssa countered. Her face was pale. “What difference does it make if he knows about our trust funds? They’re not that large, Mr. Demarkian. And I’m not sure about the capital. I just know I get about forty thousand dollars a year, and so do the other two.”
“That’s right,” Caroline said.
James shrugged. “What’s the old saying? ‘Enough to do anything we want to do but not enough to do nothing at all.’ It’s too bad Dad wasn’t as careful about the money he kept for himself.”
“The rumors are true, then, that he was broke?” Gregor asked.
“He wasn’t exactly broke,” Alyssa answered. “It was more like he just didn’t have enough money to go on living the way he had been living. I mean, the upkeep on the house was taken care of—”
“That’s in Jacqueline’s will,” James put in. “She made a trust fund for the house, or something.”
“That’s right,” Alyssa went on. “So we could all live here forever for free and that meant Daddy too, but you know what people are like. He was used to getting his suits custom-made and flashing an American Express platinum card everywhere he went. He didn’t want to give that up.”
“He had to give that up,” Caroline said distastefully. “Jacqueline’s murder absolutely destroyed him. Nobody wants to go to a therapist who may have murdered his own wife.”
“Daddy didn’t murder his wife,” Alyssa said.
Gregory’s chair looked reasonably padded, but it wasn’t really comfortable. “Let’s go back to Jacqueline Isherwood Hazzard’s will,” he said. “I take it it wasn’t what you all had expected before she died.”
“It wasn’t what Dad had expected,” James Hazzard said uneasily. “You could see that immediately. When he discovered the provisions, he was in shock.”
“It had been changed,” Fred Scherrer put in. “Just a couple of months before Jacqueline died, she’d moved it all around. We think—although there’s no way anybody can be sure about it now—we think it was because she found out about Paul and Candida.”
“The original will was much more usual?” Gregor asked.
“The original will gave Paul a life interest in Jacqueline’s estate and then divided the estate among Caroline, James, and Alyssa on Paul’s death,” Fred Scherrer said.
Gregor nodded. “That’s not very different from what the will read in the end, is it, except for the provision for Paul Hazzard himself?”