A FLECK OF GOLD
A Phillip Gold Mystery

by Mark W. Walma


Chapter One

It all began innocently enough on a cool Friday afternoon in April when a friendly-faced, keen-featured woman of about fifty-five strolled into my office, her eyes wide, her lip trembling. If I had known how it would end, I would’ve escorted her right back out, locked the door and drowned myself in whiskey before the sun went down.

What suckered me in, I guess, was that I knew the lady – behind the wire-rimmed glasses simmered the same intense green eyes that used to glare at me owl-like whenever I got my grade-three sums wrong. The years showed themselves only in a subtle web of lines that was beginning to show around Eunice Ballard’s eyes, the slightest of sagging in the flesh at her jowl, and the presence of the odd white strand in her chestnut hair. There may even have been an extra pound or two on her compact frame but she was still the same intense, likeable woman who had dominated my classroom 20 years before, when I was just eight years old.

“Well, look at you,” she said in a soft voice after I greeted her. “Phillip Gold, a lawyer. Who would have guessed?”

I liked Miss Ballard very much. My sister had died when I was in her grade-three class and Miss Ballard had shown exceptional care for both me and my mother. I hadn’t really noticed it then but as the years passed my mother had made sure I understood that I, that we, were indebted to Eunice Ballard.

So, apparently, were a lot of other people. Eunice Ballard was one of those solid citizens who was always there to help a neighbour, always took an active interest in local concerns, and was always first in line with chicken soup and a box of tissues when an old friend came down with a cold. She was also one of the city's best-loved elementary school teachers.

I gave her the hundred dollar smile, bowed slightly, and waved her into the inner office.

She stepped carefully past me, smaller than I remembered, a slight curve to her spine that made her seem smaller still. I caught a whiff of a familiar scent as she passed – cherry mixed with menthol. Cough candies she ate like popcorn, then and, apparently, now.

I held a client chair for her, then moved back behind the small tin desk I had salvaged from an empty office down the hall.

Miss Ballard sat primly on the hard wooden chair, her hands clasped (and clasping) on the surface of a dark skirt of rough wool, her blouse a prim beige with a flower pattern in muted yellows and oranges, her simple pearl-drop earrings hanging from wide, flat lobes. Her keen eyes moved about the office, taking it in, no doubt noting the battered desk, the threadbare carpeting, the war surplus file cabinets against the wall behind her.

I let her look. Even though I hadn’t spent much time with her in the 17 years since I left grammar school, I knew a lot about Eunice Ballard and her family. My own mother kept me up-to-date on the lives of all the people who lived in my old neighbourhood in the west end of the city, including the Ballards.

Miss Ballard’s mother, Grace, had died less than two weeks ago, her body found by a neighbour in the front hall of the Ballard home. Grace left two daughters, Eunice and Alice – Eunice a gem, Alice another story altogether. The classic good sister/bad sister dichotomy.

The good sister finally worked the tremor out of her lip and turned her gaze back to me. I offered another smile, sending the message that, whatever she needed, I could deliver the goods.

She gave me a weak smile in return.

“Bob Smythe has suggested I come to see you, Phillip,” she said after a moment, echoes of 20 years in her voice. “He thought you might be well suited to help me with a problem.”

Bob Smythe was a semi-retired lawyer from the Neighbourhood. I nodded. “I can try.”

A twitch appeared at the corner of her lip and a sparkle made its way into her smile. “Even two decades later, your eyes are still familiar,” she told me. She picked a black leather bag from the floor, fiddled inside it for a minute, then pulled out a small stack of papers, fastened in the corner by a single staple.

“My mother’s will,” she said, placing it on the desk between us.

I left it be. “I’m sorry,” I said in funereal tones.

Tears appeared and made their way down her cheeks. Her lips quivered as she reached back into the bag to extract a carefully folded white hankie. She waved away my words with the same hand. “It was time, Phillip,” she said. Then, as more tears flowed, she added, “I’m sorry,” in a muffled whisper.

I gave her a minute to pull herself together, scanning the document she had brought. It was a standard form will, right down to the seals and signatures. Dated just three months earlier, it showed nothing sinister on the surface. The witnesses were a local lawyer and a name I didn't recognise – probably his clerk. The signature seemed right. It was shaky, as if written with an arthritic hand, but I could see nothing to suggest it wasn’t Mrs. Ballard's handwriting.

"Is that your mother's signature?"

She nodded sadly. "Yes, I am almost certain."

The contents of the will, on the other hand, seemed totally screwy: everything Mrs. Ballard owned, including her house, her savings, everything, went to her daughter Alice. Not a cent to the good daughter who had moved back home to care for her in her waning years. In fact, Eunice Ballard was not even mentioned in the will. The executor was some guy named Cruickshank, Thomas Cruickshank. That name was new to me.

Eunice saw my eyebrows rise and she nodded her head quickly. “It is not what one would expect,” she said. She shook her head and more tears flowed. “I don’t mean to sound selfish but I cannot for the life of me understand why Mother would do this.”

“This is dated three months ago,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Did the two of you have a fight around then, something bad enough to send her scurrying to a lawyer to change her will?”

“No, not at all,” she said with a firm shake of her tidy head. “Our relationship was peaceful, companionable. Her mental faculties were somewhat compromised by then but I cannot imagine, even in her depleted condition, that she would see fit to make a change of this kind.”

“Who is this Cruickshank character?”

More tears, more fidgeting of the hands. “Alice’s male companion.” She wiped her chin, flexed her fingers together, then turned a more composed face toward me. “She is my sister, Phillip, so I will not speak ill of Alice but, what she finds attractive in that man, I do not know.”

I put feathers in my voice. “You mentioned your mother’s “depleted condition” – is it possible she was mentally incompetent when she made this will?”

She shrugged. “It is possible, I guess.” She squeezed her left hand with her right. “Mother had periods of, how shall I put it, mental waywardness, and they were increasing in frequency until she passed, but she had longer periods of clarity as well.”

“So it is possible this will was made during one of the periods of incompetence.”

“Certainly.”

Her hands did a dance together in her lap.

“You’re not convinced,” I said.

She shook her head, then looked troubled. She looked at me hard, glanced down at her hands, then around the office again. There wasn’t that much to look at.

“What’s bothering you, Miss Ballard?” I said while her eyes still traveled. “If there were no problems between you that might lead her to change her will, and if don’t feel she could have changed it while mentally incompetent, then what?”

She leaned forward in her chair, her eyes sharp, her lips drawn tight against her lips. “I believe,” she said, her voice suddenly firm, “that Tom Cruickshank somehow forced Mother to do this.”

“That’s quite a charge to throw at a guy,” I said, “and tough to prove.”

“That is why I came to you.”

We sat there for a minute, looking at each other like birds in separate cages. What I saw was a woman caught up in a whirl of different emotions – anger, fear, despair, sadness – and, slowly taking control of it all, determination.

“You want me to find sufficient evidence to have this will thrown out?”

“Frankly,” she said after a moment, “I don’t care about the will itself. Alice can have it all – even those items of personal significance that Mother had always meant me to have. They are meaningless to me now, in light of…” The lower lip trembled and tears flowed again. She buried her face in the hankie, her shoulders rocking with the sobs.

I gave her a moment, then said, “In light of?”

Her eyes were wide and moist, her nose red, her cheeks flushed. “I simply cannot bear the thought that Mother was abused by that man in any way.”

Eunice got up from the chair, began a slow, deliberate pacing of the carpet in front of the desk. The sobs dissipated and her shoulders became square again. “But if she was,” her voice now stronger, almost powerful in its resonance, “if he did abuse her, then I want it proven.” She turned to me, her face no longer gentle. “And I want him to pay.”

She paced for several more minutes, her eyes wide and distant, her teeth bared in front of ragged breathing. I let her do it, waiting for the tension to subside from her torso, the stiffness from her limbs.

When she sat back down, I said in a calm, quiet voice, “Okay. We’ll try.”

She gave one, decisive nod, as if my agreement was never in doubt, then smiled. “Thank you, Phillip.”

I waved that off, dragged a yellow legal pad in front of me and gave the will another quick glance. “Do you know who Horace Grant is?”

“The lawyer to whom Mother went to have this will made?”

“That’s the guy. Did your mother have a history with him?”

She shook her head firmly. “No. This is the first mention I have ever heard of him.”

“I’ll need to talk to him. If there was any form of coercion, or if she was not mentally competent, he should have noticed it.”

“But what if he did notice?”

I tapped the pen on the pad. “Then he shouldn’t have drawn up the will.” I jotted down his name, circled it for no reason, then added, “Unless he’s a shyster looking to make a quick buck.”

She watched as I pulled the local legal directory out of a drawer and looked Grant up, making note of his address and phone.

“Do you mean that he might have accepted payment for failing to notice?” she asked after a moment. Wide eyes stared at me from behind the glasses.

“It’s possible,” I told her. “Anything is possible. I don’t know much about this Grant guy so I don’t want to be jumping to any conclusions but…”

She let that drift, dabbing again at her eyes with the hankie.

“Now,” I said when the dabbing slowed, “tell me about the relationship between your mother and sister.”

Eunice leaned back in her seat, took a red candy from her bag and popped it into her mouth as she thought her answer through. “Alice and that man have been hovering around Mother since she started to falter two years ago,” she said, ice in her voice. “Although I never heard Mother say an ill word about Alice, she was clear about her feelings for Tom Cruickshank.”

“She didn’t like him?”

“There is not much about him to like.”

“Is he a big or a small man? Old, young? Strong, weak?”

“He’s huge, Phillip, perhaps a head taller than you and much more muscularly built. He must be about Alice’s age but he tries not to look like it – his hair is dyed blonde, for instance, and he dresses much too young for his stage in life.” She paused, her eyes closed. “As for strength, I would suggest him to be as weak of mind as he is strong of body.”

“Meaning?”

She smiled. “Meaning he’s not very bright.”

“Have you seen any signs of a violent streak?”

“He is verbally violent almost without pause – I do not think I have ever spent longer than ten minutes with him without at least one tantrum.”

“What about physically?”

She shrugged again, her shoulders heavy. “He is of such a large size that I suspect physical force is seldom required. He is an intimidating presence. I am quite afraid of him.”

“But you never saw him actually hit anyone?”

“No. If Alice angers him, he raises his hand as if ready to strike. That is usually enough for him to get his way.”

“What about your mother? Was he in her face?”

“Indeed. He was always at her, especially in the past six months and especially when I was not at home.” Miss Ballard paused, then shook her head. “Mother told me they would arrive at her doorstep almost daily, just as soon as I left for school in the morning, and they would always leave shortly before I returned at the end of the day.”

“Did she tell you they were abusing her?”

Tears again, followed by sobs that wracked her frame. “She hinted at it, Phillip, but she would not say it out loud.” Her words came out in fits and starts, between the sobs. She buried her face again, her shoulders shaking. “I couldn’t be there every day to protect her,” she cried. “I had to work. I even tried to stay home on odd days, just to catch them, but they must have watched for me to go.”

“You can’t blame yourself, Miss Ballard,” I told her. “You did more than your share.”

She settled her bag in her lap, her fingers laced, her teeth working the candy around in her mouth. After a moment, she said, “Well, then, how do we begin?”

I tried to twirl the pen among my fingers. “Give me a couple of days to draft up the proper court forms to challenge this thing. Maybe we can get together again on Monday so that you can sign them.”

She nodded. “I could drop in at the end of the school day, if that suits your schedule.”

I opened my day timer and wrote in her name at 4:30 at the end of a long, empty day. I was having a lot of those.

“Next, we need to get our hands on any existing older will, one that seems more in line with expectations. Would Bob Smythe have that?”

“I recall that Mother went with Father to see Mr. Smythe more than ten years ago for that purpose,” Eunice said. “Father’s will was probated as part of the settlement of his estate.”

“Good, I’ll give Smythe a ring first thing Monday.” I wrote that in the day planner as well. A busy week.

We spent the next half hour talking the thing through, listing names and addresses from a world I had left more than 10 years before. It seemed that Mrs. Ballard had only one doctor, Dr. Jackson, who saw her on a steady basis. Dr. Jackson was the neighbourhood’s doctor; I’d seen him myself until I left for law school.

There were also the people at the bank, the local grocers, the coffee shop and the local liquor store as well.

"Your mom was into the bottle, Eunice?" I said, surprised.

"Oh, there was nothing alarming involved, I assure you. Mother enjoyed a small vodka and orange juice every night before going to bed.” I showed her some teeth, encouraging her to go on. “It was a habit she developed years ago, after Father died. Mother said the vodka helped her to sleep without dreams – she wouldn’t go without it."

Her eyes began to well up. "It was like a tradition for us. Every night, after the 10 o'clock news, I would say to her, "Orange Juice, Mother?" and she would say, "Absolutely," and give a little laugh, like we were fooling someone. I would then go to the kitchen and mix us both orange juice and vodka in a small glass.”

She sat back again, a sad smile playing through her eyes. “Except for the times when she would wander, Mother slept well to the very end.” She turned her gaze back to me. “I shall miss those quiet evenings together.”

She got to her feet, fatigue now showing in the sag of her shoulders. “It is the memory of those lovely evenings together that makes it even more infuriating when I think of what that man must have been doing to her.”

“I know, Miss Ballard,” I said. “Don’t worry; we’ll get him.”

She nodded firmly, turned on her hell and left.

After I heard the elevator door clang to a close down the hall, I sat back with my feet on the desk and wondered at the world. I hadn’t seen Eunice Ballard in almost two decades and now her five-hundred-dollar retainer was locked in the top-left drawer of the desk, warming my bottom line. Challenging a will was not an easy game; it would be an interesting ride.

Rush hour traffic was starting to build on James Street, three storeys below my open window. A cold breeze rustled the papers on my desk, carrying exhaust fumes with it. I pulled the window down, set the lock, and got the office bottle from its place in the bottom drawer. It was still healthy so I plugged a heavy shot in a near-clean glass, dribbled in a splash of water from the jug on the side table, and raised a toast to the photo of my mother and sister, Tina, that graced my desk beside the telephone.

Another long, lonely Friday night awaited me. I nursed the single malt for another half hour, watching the memories that played themselves out in front of my eyes. As usual, they started happy then slowly, painfully, turned sour. And, as usual, the show ended abruptly with rage and screams. And death.

I drained the last of the scotch and walked the glass slowly down the hall to the washroom for a final rinse, dropped it back on the side table, and locked up the office for the weekend. The Lister Block was empty when I rumbled down to the street on the rattletrap elevator and the busy city was just as empty as I made my way home.

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If you wish to read more of A Fleck of Gold, please contact the author at mark.walma@gmail.com