Deadly Inheritance

By Alice Sharpe

Soon after Meg buys a house near the ocean, neighbors inform her the former owner killed herself. They paint a picture of a crazy woman named Gerda. But Gerda's nephew, Matthew, reveals the tragedy behind his aunt's madness, tragedy she revealed in scary paintings. When those paintings start missing, it's up to Meg to figure out what Gerda was trying to say before the past destroys the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alice Sharpe
• Release date: Dec 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466081246

Alice Sharpe

I was born in Sacramento, California where I launched my writing career by “publishing” a family newspaper. Circulation was dismal. After school, I married the love of my life. We spent years juggling children and pets while living on sailboats. All the while, I read like a crazy woman (devoured Agatha Christie) and wrote stories of my own, eventually selling to magazines and then book publishers. Now, 45 novels later, I’m concentrating on romantic suspense where my true interest lies.

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DEADLY INHERITANCE

Alice Sharpe

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011 by Alice Sharpe

Cover art and design by Patricia Schmitt/Pickyme

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in encouraging piracy of copyrighted materials in violation with the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

CHAPTER ONE

THE MAIL came late that Friday morning, and if I hadn’t been so dismayed about the hole in my roof, I’d have sorted it right then and there. As it was, I placed the small stack next to the telephone and went up the creaky stairs to confront Jed J. Lorning, carpenter. At least that’s what the sign on the side of his truck promised he was.

Watch your head, he called as I stood under his ladder.

From my vantage point I could see, in order, Jed’s stomach, a hole in my ceiling, the hazy attic, a hole in my roof, a cloudy blue sky. A piece of plaster the size of a saucer dropped from the ceiling and landed by my feet.

How’s it coming? I asked as I stepped out of the way.

Jed Lorning was about thirty-five, a muscular man running to fat. He had thick black hair, small brown eyes, and a stance like a chubby pit bull. He rested hairy forearms on top of the ladder and looked down at me. It may take a little longer than I thought it would, he said.

How much longer? I asked.

A week, maybe two. But when I’m finished here, you’re going to have one heck of a skylight.

I smiled weakly, unable to get over the feeling that it might go faster if he used power tools. And shouldn’t he have framed-in the interior hole before he cut the one in the roof? Well, there was no use getting upset with his methods now. He’d made a big issue of being prepaid for the job, so I was stuck with him.

What if it rains? I asked.

Plastic, he answered curtly. He’d gone back to work with his handsaw, and more plaster showered to the floor. I beat a hasty retreat down the stairs.

I loved the old house. It was the first house I’d ever really lived in, and I wouldn’t have had it if my Great-Aunt Pauline hadn’t been so appalled at what she called my parents’ gypsy spirit. On her deathbed she willed all her worldly possessions to me. Her house had been the biggest and most valuable of those possessions. That was not this house, however; hers had been located in the suburbs. I’d unloaded it as soon as probate allowed, moved with the cash to the rugged northern California coast, to a small town called Seaport, and promptly bought myself a house no one else wanted. A dapper real estate agent by the name of Rory Miles admitted the house had spent the last year empty. I hadn’t asked why it was so slow to sell at such a low price, and he hadn’t volunteered the information.

And now the house had a giant hole in the roof leading directly to my bedroom. I picked up the pile of mail and began sorting through the ads and circulars, pausing when I heard a knock on the door.

Meg? You home? The door opened immediately, and my one and only neighbor, Racine Jenkins, appeared in the entry. She was in her early fifties, with eyes placed close to a narrow nose, improbable red hair, and a bony, angular body. She was wearing leopard-patterned stretch pants and a black turtleneck blouse. She handed me an empty measuring cup and said, Be a dear and lend me a cup of red wine, will you?

I put the mail back by the phone and started toward the rear of the house, toward the kitchen. What are you cooking? I called over my shoulder.

Nothing. Is that Jed’s truck I see in your yard?

Of course she knew it was Jed’s truck. She was the one who had recommended him to me when I mentioned I needed a carpenter. She didn’t follow me into the kitchen, and I imagined her looking around the quaint old drawing room at the still-draped furniture, at the strange paintings on the walls, or up the stairs, craning her neck for a peek at what Jed was up to. She had told me right from the start that she was nosy and that I was something of an enigma to her, being the only twenty-two-year-old woman she knew who had actually bought herself a house, even if it was an old, spooky one. I hadn’t asked her to explain what she meant by spooky.

Red wine in hand, I went back into the hallway. I heard footsteps on the stairs. Racine was on the bottom step by the time I got there. Jed’s banging around up there, she said.

He’s installing a skylight. I handed her the measuring cup brimming with wine, and she absently took a sip. A skylight? she asked.

Yep. The upstairs bedroom was a little dark.

Which one, the one in front?

No, the one in the far back. I can see the ocean from the window, or will be able to once I figure out a way to prune the cypress tree outside.

Racine took a longer sip. You’re not sleeping in that room, are you? she croaked.

Well, not right this second I’m not. I mean, I won’t until Jed finishes the skylight and there’s isn’t a hole—Racine what’s wrong?

She drained the cup. She sat on the bottom step and shook her bright head. She had shoveled the pancake makeup on a little thick that morning, but a few beads of perspiration managed to push their way through the barrier to shine like dewdrops on her forehead. I should have told you, she said.

I sat down beside her. Told me what?

About Old Lady Williams. Gerda Williams.

What about her?

Racine rubbed her hands together without poking herself with her lethal fingernails and looked at me through troubled eyes. You’re so young, she said. Cute too. You could use a little makeup and a haircut. Maybe you could get Doris down at the Beauty Nook to put some highlights on your hair so it wouldn’t look so—well, mousy. I could give her a call—

Racine, we were talking about what you should have told me about someone named Gerda Williams, remember?

She nodded. I went to school with Rory Miles.

I decided not to respond. Eventually she added, You know, Rory Miles, the real estate agent? His office is down near Stanley’s Stop and Shop. Stanley’s wife, Doris, owns the Beauty—

Of course I know Rory, I interrupted. He sold me the house.

Right. She nodded and sighed. I didn’t know you from Adam, did I?

No, I agreed.

And I went to school with Rory. She looked at me again, read correctly the irritation in my eyes, and finally got to the point. I promised him I wouldn’t tell any stranger about the house. About how Gerda killed herself in this house.

I looked at the empty measuring cup and thought I could use a swallow of that wine right about now. Gerda killed herself here? I repeated.

In the room you’re sawing up.

Right on cue Jed dropped something, and it shook the ceiling above us. We both jumped about three inches off the step. She got up and tugged on her slacks.

And now I broke my promise, she said, but almost immediately her eyes brightened. ’Course, you already own the house, so I guess I didn’t, after all. You do own the house, don’t you? I nodded and she smiled. There now. Well, Meg, I’m off. Say hi to Jed for me. And then she was gone, leaving me on the step to think about what she’d said.

Well, so what? I decided at last. So some poor old soul had gotten depressed and put an end to herself. I didn’t want to think about how she did it or even why. I just wanted to put the entire thought of her out of my mind. I got to my feet and picked up the mail.

Miss Fisher? Jed called. He appeared at the top of the stairs, his tool belt clinking and jangling as the hammer hit the tape measure.

What is it? I asked.

‘Bout time I knock off for lunch, he said as he descended the stairs. Seeing as it’s Friday and I don’t work Friday afternoons, I guess that means I’1l be back on Monday.

Oh, Jed…

Don’t worry. I’m going up on the roof right now and nail a piece of plastic over the hole in case that rain they’re predicting shows up. He nodded at me as he sauntered out through the front door toward his truck.

I finally looked at the mail. The aforementioned circulars, an envelope from my parents that was covered with addresses as it chased me to my new locale from its origin in-I checked the postmark—Puerto Rico, and a second envelope marked Occupant. The third envelope made my mouth go dry.

It was postmarked San Francisco, the ninth of February, three days before, but that wasn’t what did it. What did it was the fact that it was addressed to Ms. Gerda Williams.

This is spooky! I whispered to myself. I held the envelope up to the light, but whatever correspondence existed inside was safe from prying eyes thanks to a lined security envelope. And, to make the matter more intriguing—as well as more frustrating—there was no return address.

A racket outside finally got my attention. I threw the letter beside the phone and ran out the door.

A metal ladder, fully extended, lay on the dry grass in front of the house. I went down the front steps and looked up. Jed was sitting on the flat roof of the porch, which ran halfway along the front of the house, his feet dangling over the edge.

Are you okay? I shouted up at him.

Lost my 1adder, he said.

I hoisted the far end of the ladder, groaning at the weight as I tilted the unwieldy thing until it fell forward toward the roof and Jed caught it.

I’ll hold onto this end till you get down, I told him.

Appreciate it.

He climbed down slowly, his hammer clanging against each rung of the ladder. His foot had barely touched the ground when I cleared my throat and asked, Jed, did you know Gerda Williams?

He repositioned his tool belt. Why are you asking? he said, his brows hunched together in the middle.

I just wondered. She lived here before me.

He didn’t answer straight off. He took a deep breath, walked past me, lifted the rest of the roll of black plastic off the grass and tucked it under his arm. I was beginning to think he wasn’t going to answer when he said, Old lady hanged herself right here in this house. I guess everyone in Seaport knew old Gerda. Crazy as a loon.

Hanged herself. I swallowed and said, Oh.

He nodded. I did a few jobs for her. Nothing fancy like what you got plans for, just little things. Don’t know why I did, ’cause she never got around to paying me, and neither did that cheap nephew of hers. Anyway, just being in the house with her made me feel funny.

I see, I said uncertainly.

He laughed nastily. You worried about her ghost creeping around in the house in the dead of the night?

Of course not.

Good. Heck, I cut a big old hole in the very room she strung herself up in, right? Whatever crazy spirit she left is long gone by now. He chuckled to himself as he threw the plastic into the back of his truck. Mind if I leave the ladder here for a while? I mean, no use hauling it back to my place and then back over here again.

I don’t mind, I told him as he hefted himself into the truck. The door slammed, the engine gunned, and Jed Lorning was gone till Monday morning.

I watched the trail of dust as his truck followed the long dirt driveway that led from my house to the county road. Off to the left of the road was a dense forest of redwood trees. The land rose steeply in that direction, ending, Rory had told me, in a bluff high above the ocean. To the right, beyond a small barn that made the house look modern, was an overgrown orchard: branches twisted and intertwined, forming a gnarled canopy above the weedy ground. On the other side of the orchard was Racine’s house; a recently revived path of trampled weeds existed between her land and mine.

Behind the house, in a view that reminded me of all I’d grown up with, was the Pacific Ocean. To be sure, it was a rocky drop to the actual beach, but the ocean was down there all the same, pounding against the cliff, washing against the tiny strip of sand, pooling in the rocks during low tide, sending its relentless music up the bluff to my ears. I walked around the house to admire it; then I turned to face my home of two weeks.

The house was two stories of dingy shingles, Jed’s plastic patch a shiny bandage on the pitched roof. I’d been polishing windows for the better part of a week, and now as the sun hit the glass, I saw all the milky-looking streaks I’d left. A huge cypress tree was too close to the house, and its battered branches scratched at the eaves. When the night wind worked through the tree, the wood groaned like a boat tossed at sea. I’d grown up with that sound, and though I doubted I’d ever go back to the nomadic seafaring life, the sound of wood creaking was still somehow comforting.

My gaze wandered to the window behind the cypress tree, the window that looked out of my bedroom. That was the room Gerda had hanged herself in. My earlier complacency about her death seemed to desert me as I stared at that dull, dark window. How could I have slept in that room and not felt her anguish?

The back door slammed behind me as I stepped into the kitchen; the hair on my arms bristled, and a tingle ran up my spine. Both sensations were caused by my own imagination. It was just that up until an hour ago the house had been mine—all mine. An old decrepit house with a colorful history completely unknown to me. I hadn’t realized how attractive that was until I lost it. Now the house was Gerda Williams’ house too.

I made my way through the spacious kitchen toward the front hall and slowly climbed the stairs to my bedroom, to Gerda’s bedroom. It was dark because of the black plastic. The attic was open to the room now, thanks to Jed’s handiwork, and I could see the cobwebs and the old dark rafters that supported the roof. It was like a hole into the unknown—I’d yet to poke around the attic—and it brought the shivers back.

The room itself was as ordinary as a room can get. The same high ceilings as in the rest of the house, the same crooked molding and musty wallpaper. All the furniture had been pushed to one side and covered with a canvas tarp to protect it from Jed’s work. I looked up at the ceiling and tried to imagine the scene, but I couldn’t. I knew nothing about Gerda except how she’d died, and besides, a fourth of the ceiling was gone now.

What exactly had she managed to hang herself on, anyway? The light fixture? It was an old metal affair consisting of a central column and four branches, each ending in a light bulb. Earlier that day it had been a quaint light fixture; now it was a claw, a skeletal hand, reaching down from the ceiling. More shivers, and then, without making the conscious decision to do so, I was closing the door and hurrying toward the stairs. I