Fixing To Die

She did not comply. Instead she tossed her head. “Truss, don’t be such a weenie. We have every right to come into this house. Part of it belongs to my family anyway.”

The man took a breath, held it for a moment, then slowly expelled it. He smiled at An’gel. He was quite handsome, she decided, but had begun to run to seed. Probably because of his fondness for brandy and cigars. And younger women, she thought.

“Ma’am, again I beg your pardon. I am Truscott Anderson Wilbanks, the fourth of that name. Perhaps you have heard of my family, who have been in Natchez for generations.” He didn’t wait for An’gel to reply, which was just as well because she had never heard of him or his family. “This young lady is Serenity Foster. She and her brother, Nathan Gamble, are distant cousins of Mary Turner Catlin.”

“Thank you for introducing yourself and your client, Mr. Wilbanks.” An’gel then introduced herself and Dickce, who had hovered behind her impatiently the whole time. Once her introductions were acknowledged, she stood aside and let Ms. Foster and Mr. Wilbanks enter the house.

“I thought I heard the front door,” Mary Turner called out as she came down the hallway from the back of the house. An’gel and Dickce moved aside to let her see the newcomers, and Mary Turner’s progress faltered. An’gel saw a grimace, quickly erased, as her hostess stepped forward.

“Hello, Serenity, Truss. What brings you here today?” Mary Turner said, her arms now crossed over her chest. Not a welcoming stance, An’gel thought.

Wilbanks started to speak, but Serenity Foster interrupted him. “Nathan said he was coming here this afternoon, and I’ve got to talk to him. He’s going to have to change his mind about the trust fund.”

Mary Turner frowned. “Nathan? He’s not here now, and this is the first I’ve heard he was planning to show up here today.” From the young woman’s tone, An’gel deduced that Nathan would be no more welcome than Ms. Foster and Mr. Wilbanks.

“This isn’t a good time for him to come bothering me yet again with the same old crazy story,” Mary Turner said, her tone becoming increasingly heated. “He’s got to get it through his head that he has no legal rights here. No one in the Gamble family does. That will probably never existed, but if it did, it’s long gone by now. Henry Howard and I are sick and tired of dealing with Nathan.”

The name Gamble struck a chord. An’gel remembered then that her friend Jessy, Mary Turner’s grandmother, had often mentioned the Gambles—offshoots of a younger sister of a Turner sometime in the nineteenth century—but never in a friendly or complimentary manner.

Serenity Foster shrugged. “That’s Nathan’s gig, not mine. He’s obsessed with finding that will, and I don’t care what he does. What I do care about is him trying to cheat me out of rights to the trust fund.”

An’gel knew that she and Dickce should politely withdraw, but she had the odd feeling that Nathan Gamble might have something to do with the problems at Cliffwood. If he had a claim against the estate, perhaps he was trying to drive Mary Turner and Henry Howard out of the house. The pertinent question was, of course, what kind of claim did Nathan Gamble have against the Turner family and their possession of Cliffwood? An’gel decided she and Dickce needed to know everything they could about this. She stood where she was and indicated to Dickce that she should as well.

“You’ve got no call to bring your dispute with your brother here,” Mary Turner said. “This is my home, but it’s also a place of business. I can’t have the two of you screaming and carrying on with each other while we have guests here.”

Wilbanks stepped forward and laid a hand on Mary Turner’s arm in a placatory gesture. “Serenity has no intention of creating that kind of disturbance here, Mary Turner. She simply wants to talk to her brother, who has refused recently to let her in his house.” He smiled briefly. “As her advisor, I suggested that meeting with him on neutral ground was the best approach. Cliffwood is her best chance, and she has to talk to him soon. He’s got to see sense, or she is going to lose her case for joint custody of the twins. All she needs is money to catch up on her mortgage and show the court she has a good home for the boys.”

At these words, Serenity Foster started to cry quietly, her expression full of tragedy and loss.

This was sounding more and more like a soap opera, An’gel thought, and Serenity Foster was now behaving like the downtrodden heroine looking desperately for help. An’gel had never trusted women who could cry on cue like that, and she was convinced that was exactly what Serenity Foster was doing.