2
Floyd Evers turned out to be a short man in good shape with sparse hair, dressed in the kind of suit Gregor always thought must be ordered from a lawyers’ uniform supply house. He was not, however, anywhere near losing control. When Gregor and Jackman came into the study, he was sitting in the chair behind Robert Hannaford’s desk, looking exasperated.
Unlike most of the lawyers Gregor had met, Evers gave off neither a fog of evasion nor a bristle of self-importance. He didn’t even have many papers. There was a briefcase in front of him on the desk, but it was neither too thick nor too thin. It contained a small sheaf of typed, legal-size pages bound together with a paper clip. Gregor pegged him instantly as married, children, Bucks County. It was a stereotype, but not necessarily an inaccurate stereotype. There were two kinds of lawyers in major cities like Philadelphia. Evers didn’t come off as a man who would do anything for money.
In Gregor’s experience, the kind of man who did had a job in a firm with too many names on the masthead, a condominium in Radnor, and two mistresses.
Evers stood up as soon as they came into the room and extended his hand. It was a mistake. Jackman was in a combative mood.
“You,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you for a week.”
Evers sat down again. Now Gregor saw what the patrolman might have meant by saying Evers was about to lose control. At the moment, the man’s good humor was only tenuously pasted on. Underneath the self-disciplined politeness, he was very angry about something.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “You’ve been looking for me for a week,” he said. “That’s just fine. You’ve been leaving messages for me all over creation, mostly at my office. That’s just fine, too. You’ve made my partners think I’m about to be indicted for child murder at the least. That’s just fine, fine, fine. In the meantime, Mr.—”
“Jackman,” Jackman said.
“Jackman,” Evers repeated. “It’s Christmas, in case you haven’t noticed. If you’d taken any time at all to think the thing through, you’d have known I was where everybody else is who can get the time off.”
“Where?”
“Visiting relatives, Mr. Jackman. In my case, visiting relatives in Vermont, where my wife has family, and in Connecticut, where she also has family. It is not a suspicious circumstance when someone isn’t spending Christmas in his own damned house.”
“Don’t you leave a contact number with your office?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Jackman said.
“And on top of it all, I can’t for the life of me see what you need me for.” Evers turned to Gregor. “Who are you?”
Gregor introduced himself. Evers nodded, pleased. “That’s good. I’ve read about you. Are you working for the family or the police?”
“The police,” Gregor said.
“Well, it couldn’t hurt.” Evers unfolded his arms from across his chest and put his hands flat on the desk. He looked ready for action, but there didn’t seem to be any action he wanted to take. He had, however, calmed down. He glanced around the study, not lighting on any one thing, looking puzzled.
“It’s like I told you,” he said. “You don’t really need me for anything. The Hannaford situation being what it is, the only one who needs me is Mrs. Hannaford. She’s the one I’ve got to explain things to.”
“I was hoping you’d explain a few things to us,” Jackman said. Gregor was glad to see he’d calmed down, too, or at least decided to abandon his hostility. He dropped into the chair next to the window and said, “There’s been a murder here, you know. There may have been two. If it’s at all possible, we need to know everything there is to know about Robert Hannaford’s will, his—”
“But that’s the point,” Floyd Evers said. “There isn’t any will.”
Jackman blinked. “The man was worth four hundred million dollars and there isn’t any will?”
Evers sighed. “Obviously, you don’t read the newspapers,” he said, “or you weren’t reading them in 1980, when all this happened. There isn’t any will because there doesn’t need to be any will. Robert Hannaford was worth four hundred million dollars, yes, but not when he died. When he died, all he had was the income from most of that. Not the capital.”
“I don’t get it,” Jackman said.
“I think I do.” The last empty chair was stuck way off in a corner, facing the wall. Gregor dragged it into the center of the room, sat down, and turned to John Jackman. “There is something called a living trust,” he said, “for very rich people who want to leave their money to institutions. Foundations for diseases, universities, that kind of thing. Instead of putting those provisions in a will and making the institution wait until you die, you give the money while you’re still alive. The institution then guarantees to pay you an annuity from that money for life.”