Cathy Pickens [Avery Andrews Hog Wild (epub)

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.With this letter, you have received one-third the price agreed upon.Should you fail to complete the instructions TO THE LETTER, you shall FORFEIT the remaining payment due you.Final payment will be made only after the monument with its completed inscription is installed.My executor has a duplicate copy of these instructions and is charged with seeing them fully completed before authorizing payment.Yours elsewhere,Harden AvingerI couldn’t very well ask his widow, but what kind of nut would write such a letter? I tried to tamp down the small suspicion that reared up.Maybe she had killed him.True, I liked what I saw in Magnolia Avinger’s face.No theatrics, despite her dramatic problem.But what did that really tell me?“Mr.Barker wants to do the right thing,” she said, “but he’s in a bind.He’s already paid for the gigantic stone angel and for shipping it from Vietnam.The thing is eight feet tall! If he doesn’t comply with Harden’s instructions, he doesn’t get repaid for that expense.He can’t afford to bear that loss.Frankly,” she looked down at the handkerchief she had pulled from her sweater pocket, “neither can I.Harden didn’t leave our finances in very good shape.I just don’t have that kind of money.” She shook her head, bewildered and frustrated.“I simply can’t have that monstrosity towering over our cemetery plot.I simply can’t.I’m so grateful to Innis for warning me about this.I came to you and not to Carlton Barner.He’s the executor, and I thought he was a family friend, but he never even breathed a word of this to me.”I scarcely knew where to start.Ordinarily, I might have explained why Carlton Barner couldn’t warn her, but I didn’t think Mrs.Avinger was in a mood to hear about attorney-client privilege.Maybe later I could defend Carlton, so she wouldn’t harbor hard feelings for somebody she’d known as a friend.First, though, I had some uncomfortable questions to ask her.“Miz Avinger, how did your husband.pass away?”“Lung cancer.He’d had all the treatments; we battled it for three years.Wouldn’t quit smoking, even with all that.Hospice helped him stay at home.His caseworker was even there with us the morning he died.”“Anything—unusual about how—” How the heck do you ask a widow about something like this? She would need to realize that, in light of what she’d face when her not-so-dearly-departed’s angel made its proclamatory debut in the city cemetery, my questions would be tame.She shrugged, her large brown eyes red-rimmed but dry.“I don’t know.What’s usual, really? He struggled for breath, for days.Each breath more racking than the next.I admit praying he would release himself, that he’d quit fighting.But that’s all I did to hasten it.It was a horrible thing to watch.He was unconscious but struggling, fighting to stay, to breathe.A horrid, futile rattle, for hours and hours.” Her voice tapered off, lost in bad memories.“Someone was with you all through his final hours?”She nodded.“From church or hospice or just friends.I couldn’t have faced that alone.” She blinked rapidly.“Who was Mr.Avinger’s doctor?”“Oh, gosh.He had so many, here and in Greenville.Dr.Randel was his primary doctor in town.He saw an oncology group in Greenville, when he was taking treatments.”“So Dr.Randel signed the death certificate?”She hesitated.“I think so.All that’s still something of a blur.”I scribbled on my notepad, buying time to think.“Miz Avinger—”“Please, call me Maggy.Everybody does.”Her manner was direct and sensible.Maggy was slender, maybe a tennis player? Studying her face, I could see she was older than my mother.Too many years spent in the sun.Around here, that usually meant gardening.“Thank you.Maggy.My questions may seem rude, but—”“Ask away.I’m the one who came to you for help.”“Okay.Why would your husband accuse you of poisoning him?”She raised both hands, beseeching.“I have no idea.It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.Harden was given to bad jokes.At least, he thought they were jokes, though few people ever laughed.No one will be laughing when that angel rises up over his plot.That’s for certain.”I wanted to ask, Did your husband really hate you that much? I’d been a lawyer long enough—and had observed the marriages of friends and relations for long enough—to know that more couples found themselves locked in mortal combat than bound in loving bliss.“Maggy, getting the monument stopped is only one issue.The other is stopping the rumors.”At first, she looked puzzled, then she gave a dismissive shake of her head.“I’m not worried about that.This is a small town and Harden’s stupid joke is bound to leak out, no matter what I do.I just figure if people know me and Harden, they know us both for what we were and are.Nobody else really matters.The truth will out, I always say.I just don’t want that garish monstrosity perched on my head when I’m dead.”She paused, staring past my shoulder and into her own thoughts.“If I’m truthful with myself, the gaudiness of that ridiculous giant angel bothers me more than anything.I’m embarrassed to have it associated with the family, and I’m mortified at the thought of being planted underneath it.Why that should matter, it’s only silly pride.But if I’m truthful with myself, it does matter”“You also don’t want the rumor and accusation following you around, either.” Bad word picture—I imagined a rumor in the shape of a sepulchral angel, gliding along behind her [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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