“He told you this young man was his son,” Murchison said, nodding at Toby but not looking at him.
“He made it explicit, in the estate planning documents he had me prepare.” Tina produced next from the clipped stack of papers a will, an advance health care directive, and a durable power of attorney for property and personal affairs. “If you look at the will, Article One, ‘Introductory Provisions,’ you can see under the second paragraph he identified Toby Marchand as his only child, and that all references to ‘his child’ in the will are to Toby.”
Stluka picked up the power of attorney, shook it, thumbed through the pages to the back. “This isn’t signed.”
“Neither is this,” Murchison said, checking the second-to-last page of the will.
“No,” Tina said, faltering a little. “He had an appointment to come in to execute them this coming week.”
“But he was killed before he could do that,” Felicia said.
“It does, perhaps, speak to motive,” Tina said.
Toby cringed. He didn’t want to save himself by letting this lawyer, a white woman, cast blame inside the family. And yet he hadn’t tried to stop her.
“Mr. Carlisle confront his sister over the forged deed?” Murchison asked.
“I can’t say,” Tina replied. “Judging from what I know of his character—”
“Did he?” Murchison posed it to Toby.
Toby snapped to. “If he did, he didn’t tell me.”
“Which would not have been unusual,” Tina snuck in.
“Raymond to a T,” Felicia affirmed.
“I’m lost,” Stluka said, tossing the power of attorney back onto the table.
“Perhaps,” Tina said, “I haven’t explained it as clearly as I might.”
“Not the problem,” Stluka said. “This old man gets cheated out of full title to his own house but doesn’t tell his much-beloved son? His chosen heir? This from a guy who spared no words, the way I hear it. Got into three fights the same night.”
“He’d been drinking,” Toby said.
“Not every day, all day. Am I wrong?”
“Raymond, for all his windiness,” Felicia said, “was a very private man about his personal affairs.”
“He never—and I mean
never
—mentioned any of this stuff to me.” Toby nodded toward the documents on the table. “I would’ve been dumbstruck if he had.”
Murchison leaned in toward the table, reaching out his hand to suggest they all slow down. “Something we’ve heard,” he began guardedly, “is that it was common knowledge that Mr. Carlisle accepted Toby as his son. Even though, in fact, he wasn’t.”
“Common knowledge?” Tina said it sarcastically. “And you
heard
that from—”
“Veronique.” Toby’s mother rolled her eyes. “That has to be Veronique.”
“No,” Murchison said, “it wasn’t. We haven’t spoken to Mr. Carlisle’s sister yet. We got this information in follow-up interviews with a few of the neighbors. And we also heard the only reason Mr. Carlisle accepted Toby as his son was to win you back, Ms. Marchand.”
All eyes turned to Felicia. She sat there frozen.
Tina tried to reassert control. “I only brought this up to clear away a confusion. If paternity is relevant to Mr. Carlisle’s murder—”
“Wait,” Felicia said. “No. It’s time this got settled.” She met Murchison’s stare. “It is astonishing to me that rumors so old, so wrong, so mean-spirited, could spring back to life at a time like—” Her voice caught. Tina reached over to touch her arm, but she waved the gesture off. “All right then.” She squared herself in her seat. “This is not easy for me. I do not enjoy recounting my failings. I’ve made my peace about what I did. But I understand. You need to know. Well, then—”
She lowered her eyes and folded her hands as though in a silent, preliminary prayer. Toby felt an immediate desire to go to her, offer consolation, and at the same time gave in to a curious refusal to move.
“I was married at the time I met Raymond. Separated from my husband, yes, but still married. The Oakland Church Council had a citywide benefit. Raymond was with Johnny Otis at the time, and they headlined the show. Raymond knew a woman in my choir. She introduced us. You already seem to know that Raymond had a strong personality. He could be persuasive. And charming. And generous. I was lonely.”
She stopped. Tina said softly, “I think that’s—”
“Of course, of course, of course, of course I got pregnant. But not in my wildest imaginings did I expect the response I got from Raymond. He asked me to divorce my husband, get it final, then marry him. He’d be proud to raise the child, my two daughters, too. I could not do that. There was fourteen years between us. And Raymond, well, Raymond was Raymond. Exactly and forever who he was. I couldn’t change him and I couldn’t live with him. So I called my husband. I cried on the phone, told him I missed him, begged him to see me. The tears were genuine. I was so scared. He came back to the house, thinking it was just to talk, feel things out. I took him to bed as quick as I could, so he’d never suspect.”
It was the room, Toby thought. He knew this story, knew the broader strokes at any rate, but he’d never heard it with such an edge of self-contempt. The room was to blame. It brought it out of you.
“Raymond, unfortunately, could not take no for an answer. He called the house, snuck by. Sonny, my husband, figured it out soon enough. To his credit, he did not just turn back around right then and leave me and the girls for good. Or Toby, once he was born. Sonny was a decent man. Not perfect, Lord knows, but better than I deserved, I suppose. He stayed longer than he wanted, longer than I had a right to expect. But when he finally did leave, I was desperate. I called Raymond, asked him to take Toby for a while. A year, maybe, till I got better work and saved some. Three children on what I made part-time with the church council? Not possible.”
“And Mr. Carlisle, he did take Toby in,” Tina said. “There are school records to verify that, which I intend to obtain, giving the address here in town as Toby’s residence, listing Mr. Carlisle as father.”
“Call me dense,” Murchison said. “But I still don’t see how that
proves
—”
“It suffices,” Tina said, “under the Probate Code. The first presumption is always that a child born into a marriage has the husband as father, regardless of biological paternity. Which, in this case, would mean Sonny Marchand is Toby’s legal father. But there’s a countervailing presumption. The biological father has a right to reassert legal paternity if three conditions hold: the mother affirms him as the biological parent, he takes the child into his home, and he holds the child out notoriously to the public as his own. All three apply here.”
“Notoriously?”
“It’s statutory language. The Family Code and Probate Code cross-reference each other on this point. It’s not clear whether preponderance of the evidence or clear and convincing evidence is the standard, but I think we can meet the higher burden.”
“You mean it’s for the court to decide.”
“Absent an executed will, but—”
“The deed’s joint tenancy. It’ll pass outside probate.”
“I’ll be filing a quiet title action. We’ll also petition for probate at the same time.”
She’d explained the mechanics to Toby, and it had made sense, after a fashion. First, without the house, there wasn’t enough property to probate, so you had to show Veronique didn’t gain the house outright through the phony joint tenancy.
Fraudulent conveyance
was the term. But even if they won that round, they’d have to go on to show that Toby was the rightful next of kin. Left unsaid: Even if he got the house, he’d have to mortgage it or sell it to pay her. What was the point, then? What was he inheriting, really, except a fight?
Murchison said, “Sonny Marchand, he’s where?”
“In Denver,” Toby replied. “I told you earlier.”
“He’ll confirm what I said,” Felicia told him. “I will provide you with his number.”
“And though I have not spoken to him yet,” Tina said, “Mr. Carlisle has a brother. He lives in Bremerton now, took the transfer when the shipyard closed. It’s my understanding he’ll confirm Toby’s relationship with his father, too, though he won’t much care for getting caught in the middle between his nephew and his sister.” She began collecting her documents together. Glancing up at Murchison, she asked, “Would you be needing copies of these?”
Murchison seemed a thousand miles away. Gathering himself, he said, “On your way out. That’d be helpful.”
“There’s something else,” she added, snapping her briefcase shut. “It’s probably the most important thing, but this other matter needed clearing up, and what I’ve got to say next is speculative. Evidence Code Section nine-fifty-seven says there’s no privilege still existing between me and Mr. Carlisle relevant to issues between parties with a tangible interest in his estate. So it’s my understanding I’m free to say what I’m about to say. He discussed with me why he did not want money or real property, just certain family personal effects, left to his sister.”
Toby squirmed in his chair, his uneasiness worse now. This part he’d learned just a little earlier as well.
“Mr. Carlisle didn’t explain to me how he came by this information, and I neglected to ask him. It didn’t seem relevant at the time. But he said he was aware that his sister, through her position as a title officer, had helped facilitate some questionable real estate transactions in town, up near his own property, involving a local convict.”
“Long Walk Mooney,” Murchison said.
Tina’s eyes shot open. “You know this?”
“I know that man’s name.”
“No. That wasn’t just a lucky guess.”
“Like I said. His name, it’s come up. Property?”
“He uses straw men, usually just other people in the community, family members of kids in his—” She flailed her hand, struggling for the word.
“Crew,” Murchison prompted.
“Thank you. I was going to say organization—”
“Knights of Columbus is an organization,” Stluka said. “Mooney runs a crew.”
She smiled, unfazed. “Yes. In any event, he secretly buys these properties, and Ms. Edwards converts his cash into cashier’s checks for deposit into escrow and makes sure the sales go through smoothly. If he rents out the properties, Ms. Edwards handles all that, too. In a few cases, he’s paid for renovations for people who couldn’t find credit, then taken out a second mortgage against the property, again using others as stand-ins. Sometimes he just loans out cash, with the same arrangement—repayment secured through the property.”
“She’s laundering for him,” Murchison said.
“Mr. Carlisle seemed to have a grudging respect for it all, as though his sister wasn’t so much wrong in what she did as too smart for her own good. He said capital’s hard to come by for people up in Baymont and St. Martin’s Hill and he hadn’t heard anyone complain about terms.”
“People don’t complain about loan sharks.” Stluka, arms crossed, eyed her like she was a fool. “It’s unhealthy.”
“I don’t think Mr. Carlisle saw it that way. Perhaps he was just jaded about it all. He also mentioned a couple of businesses—a body shop, a liquor store, a Laundromat—all owned secretly by this Mr. Mooney as well. But my point here is, two of the properties he owns through third parties are the Victorians to either side of Mr. Carlisle’s home. Mr. Carlisle suspected that the reason his sister wanted his house so badly was because she’d promised it to Mr. Mooney.”
“Or sold it to him already,” Felicia said.
Finally, Toby got the will to stand. Maybe what was being said about his aunt was all true, but he had no stomach for stirring up this kind of trouble inside the family.
“This is my cue to leave,” he said.
Tina, startled, glanced up at him. “Toby—”
“My aunt is many things. Content with what she has is not one of them. But she did not kill my father.”
“I’m not saying—”
“Or arrange it through anyone else. It’s just—no. And this—what is going on here? Don’t make me part of it.”
“You don’t know her like I know her.” His mother sat with her hands folded in her lap now, an air of almost wily contentment about her. Justice at last. Veronique made to pay. “Way that woman cries after a nickel, God only knows what she’d do for a dime.”
“I’ll grant you, she’s a hard woman,” Toby said. “And greedy. God, yes. But—”
“Why do you think I never even made an attempt to try to make things work with your father—think it was just him? After Sonny left, I had a mind to, believe me. I did. Your father was a trial, God yes, but all men are. Even sons.”
Here it comes, Toby thought.
“But your father was nothing compared to his sister.” Felicia turned a little toward Murchison, to include him. “There are women who never let go of their brothers. Girlfriends, wives, they come and go, but a sister like this? Her hold is relentless. These outsiders, these other women—and their children, Toby—they can’t be allowed to stake a claim on the family. That was Veronique. How do you think I knew to call Ms. Navigato? Your father told me about her—the usual, some offhand snip in a two-minute phone call—said to watch out for you, beware of Veronique if anything should happen to him. I wish all this”—she fluttered her hand to suggest the room but, beyond that, the police, the investigation, the murder—“surprised me. But it does not. She will ruin you, Toby. See you squander every dollar of your inheritance, one court battle after the next, before she ever allows you to claim one penny of it for your own.”
“That doesn’t mean she killed Pop or had anything to do—”
His mother shook her head. “You’re blind.”
I need to get out of here, Toby thought, before I say what’s truly on my mind. He turned to Murchison. “My girlfriend is at the hospital, correct?”
He shot a final glance toward his mother and saw the disbelief, replaced quickly by a wounded resignation. They’d had this talk. A white girl. And musical, like his father. It was doubtful he could have done worse dating a goat.
“I’ve been advised by my lawyer I’m free to go. So if there are no objections.” He pushed himself up from the table—light-headed, the stress, no sleep—and collected his jacket. He could feel the eyes boring into his back as he headed for the interview room door.
Murchison said from behind, “I still have to insist you stay in town.”