Free Breaking Ground by William Andrews Page B

she was going to change her will to leave one-third of the estate to the historical society if at the time of her death Steven had no heir.”
    â€œNo heir?” Julie repeated. “What century is this?”
    â€œMeans what it says: Steven and Elizabeth have no children, and Mary Ellen never missed a chance to criticize them for that. God, Julie, I’ve got a pack of kids, and on lots of days I’d be happy to loan or sell a couple to Mary Ellen or anyone else who was interested, but obviously Mary Ellen wanted grandchildren.”
    â€œAnd Steven?”
    â€œWho knows? Didn’t want to, couldn’t, whatever. And, from what I know of Elizabeth, she’s not exactly maternal. But look, this isn’t for me to say, and it’s not the point. The point is that to act properly here, I needed to know that Mary Ellen didn’t tell you about her idea.”
    â€œNo, absolutely not.”
    â€œGood; please keep that to yourself then. Now I can file her will as written and not have any concern that it didn’t express her intentions. And Steven will cooperate on getting the money for the building before the estate’s settled. He’s going to inherit quite a bit, and that prospect tends to put people in a good mood, eventhough they have to wait a lot longer than they think for everything to settle.”
    â€œHow long, Mike?”
    â€œOh, in Maine you can usually get it done in a year. Actually, getting the half-million right away will ease things since that will resolve one of the principal claims. So Steven and Elizabeth will probably be happy to wait, considering what they can expect.”
    â€œI know I shouldn’t ask, but curiosity is one of the traits required by my job description.”
    â€œAnd discretion is one of mine, Julie,” Henry said firmly before she could get to the obvious question. “I’ve told you more than enough already. When the will’s probated, it’ll be a matter of public record. For now, just be assured it’s a big, big estate. It’s fair to say Steven and Elizabeth are going to be rich.”

C HAPTER 12
    When the conversation with Henry ended, Julie sat quietly at her desk, intrigued, trying to puzzle out everything they’d just talked about. As a child, Julie could spend hours on a rainy day fitting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. She loved the features in the Saturday newspaper that invited her to find the monkey hidden in the picture, or presented stories that required her to create the correct ending. In school, she couldn’t wait for assignments that took her to the library to track down obscure facts. So becoming a historian wasn’t exactly a surprising move. Not that it prepared her to solve a murder so much as it honed her sense of putting together pieces to explain a picture. In fact, Julie was strongly visual and tended to convert abstract and verbal problems to pictures. Making doodles and notes on a pad was her preferred method of working through a problem. So she took out a yellow pad from her desk and began to jot her thoughts on it.
    The first thought she had was how incredibly naive Henry seemed, especially for a lawyer. That was because Julie saw two huge matters that Henry didn’t—or, if he did, he at least wasn’t letting on that he did. One was that because Mary Ellen died on the third of July, she could not exercise her right to cancel the land sale to Nilsson and Dyer. Lucky them! The second was that if Mary Ellen hadn’t died on the third of July, Steven and Elizabeth might have lost one-third of a very large estate. So lucky them, too! But not so lucky Mary Ellen.
    On her pad Julie wrote “Steven” and put a large dollar sign beside it. She did the same with “Elizabeth.” Then she bracketed the two names and put a question mark beside the bracket. Motive seemed obvious enough for Mary Ellen’s son and his wife, singly or together. Of