Deception

By Michaele Lockhart

Behind their softly honeyed tones and a veneer of proper society, the women of a prominent San Antonio family have hidden their secrets for over 200 years. Social standing is what matters; morality and honesty are unimportant. When the elderly occupant of the family mansion dies without a will, the next-of-kin is summoned by the estate lawyers.

Dr. Jeanne Stewart has moved away, still carrying the painful burden of lies, secrets, and betrayals that are the family legacy. She returns reluctantly, for five days spent with the court-appointed estate appraiser, Elizabeth Blanchard of The Heritage Company.

Together they uncover the family’s history and treasures, revealing the often perjured past of the Mortons and the deceptions inflicted upon their family and the community where they reigned as social aristocrats.

In the hot and muggy world of South Texas, a storm is brewing outside and inside the derelict mansion, culminating in one final horrifying discovery and betrayal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michaele Lockhart
• Release date: Oct 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519983220

Michaele Lockhart

Michaele Lockhart brings a diverse background to her writing: a passion for history, a fascination with human drama, and a love of literature. Her education combines early and secondary schools in Europe, in addition to college at the University of Arizona and the University of Maryland. Embracing a variety of genres, her versatility extends from her favorite periods of history to contemporary social issues. A retired teacher and a talented nature and landscape photographer, she often inserts elements of visual lyricism into her writing. Her short stories and novels encompass historical fiction adventure to romantic magic realism to suspense. As an editor, she works with writers, helping them produce their best by publishing the most professional books possible. As an author advocate, she encourages clients to spend resources wisely, where their dollars will most benefit their books and careers. Michaele lives in Tucson, Arizona. Current projects include a collection of short fiction based on family memoirs of World War II in France and a mystery-suspense series set in the scenic beauty of the Southwest. Focused on Murder is Book One in the series. Connect with her online at MichaeleLockhart.com.

Book preview

Deception

a novel

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Michaele Lockhart

Chapter 1

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Registered mail. There remains something intrinsically ominous about a piece of registered mail, especially in a world of cell phones, cyber-communication, and instant messaging. An unexpected certified and registered letter, demanding a receipt—that stubborn green card obscuring everything about the sender—has retained the power to thoroughly unsettle me. I immediately recognized the classic symptoms of stress and distress: palpitations, shaking hands, and sweating palms....

The power of those words and what the little green card implied could rattle me more than any complicated case I’d ever faced during my long career as a surgeon in the operating room.

Whatever required such due diligence on the part of the sender couldn’t be good news. Had I botched some surgery beyond repair—at some time so many years distant I couldn’t recall? Perhaps when I was a resident? Or had the sins and evil of my forebears inevitably and finally found me? In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare wrote that the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children. How many generations more would it continue? Neither the Bard nor the Old Testament, which he was quoting, was specific. What about the sins of mothers?

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After ringing the doorbell, our smiling young postman, in casual blue shorts that day, had stepped out to admire the view from the deck that extended around our house. From there he could peer down over the hillside to where streaks of sun glimmered off a distant triangle of McMarlin’s Cove and the Pacific Ocean. Behind him and across the road, lofty pines extended up the hillside where Andrew and I had strolled together for so many years, when he was still with me, still able.

The young man returned when I opened the door, recalled to the business at hand. It’s sure beautiful up here, ma’am.

I didn’t know why he was there—not yet. Yes, it certainly is, I agreed. Thank you, Terry.

Recalling the business at hand, his duty to insure that the mail must go through, he strolled back to the front door. 

My Golden Retriever Sally galloped forward to greet the new arrival, skidding across the oak floors, her tags jangling and her tail waving madly. I stepped outside and closed the iron and glass storm door behind me, listening to Sally’s muffled whines of offended protest. Postmen weren’t supposed to pet dogs on their route. I understood the consequences and legalities involved, but Sally did not, panting open-mouthed in expectation of welcoming a visitor.

There’s a certified, registered letter for you today, ma’am, he said, his tone matter-of-fact. You’ll have to sign for it, and I’ll need to see some identification.

This was when concern began to assail me. The only clue I could see was where two numbers, 09, the last two digits of a zip code, peeped from under the cover intended to obscure all reference to the sender. Reading upside down, I clearly made out the little boxes marked: Deliver to addressee only and Signature with ID required.

The thick envelope was addressed not to Mrs. Andrew Stewart or even Mrs. Jeanne Stewart, but Jeanne Morton Carlisle Stewart, M.D. Malpractice? I’d retired nearly five years ago. Of course, there were broad statutes of limitations for filing certain cases, and my insurance remained in force for these contingencies. In all my years as a surgeon I had never been filed against or even mentioned in any lawsuit. This would be the ultimate irony, I supposed. Retired from the work I’d loved and only now sued. The four-letter word of any physician’s vocabulary. I tried to mentally review any complicated cases that might have had led to this.... I came up blank.

Possibilities skipped through my mind in the few minutes it took to complete the necessary transactions; our postman waited on the porch while Sally frantically tried to scratch her way out. My heart thudded in my ears, my hands began to tremble, and my palms felt damp as conjectured scenarios, complete with sad-eyed witnesses and juries agape, swam through my mind.

Thank you, ma’am. Our postman returned my California drivers’ license and finished by making some highly illegible notations on his copy of the green registration card. For a moment, I found humor in our situation: my signature was no better and no worse than his.

He carefully detached the card along its perforations, what would be mailed back to the sender, whoever it was. He tucked the envelope—my envelope—under his elbow while he slid the USPS portion of the green card into a compartment on his satchel. I stood and waited. Had this young man studied the suspense techniques of Alfred Hitchcock?

Here you go, ma’am, he said at last. Have a great day. He finally handed over the bulging envelope and turned to leave. He’d been here but a few minutes and had actually left his white postal delivery van idling in front of my house. It had seemed like an eternity.

Finally, I dared glance down at the crisp, white vellum envelope and its return address: DaLucca, Goldsmith, & Fitch, Attorneys-at-Law. The address was a prestigious one in San Antonio, Texas; the zip code, indeed, 78209.

My heart might have stopped for just that moment, then resumed beating normally. What a strange twist of fate that five years after I had ceased to hold a scalpel, that I would face a law suit. At least, I thought with cynical satisfaction, since I was retired, it wouldn’t cause my malpractice insurance to go up at this point. Several of my colleagues had endured lawsuits for one reason or another, usually not because of something they had actually done wrong, but because some zealous lawyer had sought out a particular group of patients for a class action suit.

Well, old girl, I called to Sally. Come here. She rushed up to me, her tail waving, and she offered to lick my face off. In return I showered her with a double dose of affection to compensate for the affront she’d just suffered: some nice man had wanted to pet her, and I had prevented it. Let’s go out back and read the bad news together.

I stopped on my way through the house to collect a sweater; afternoons here on the coastal edge of the Sierras would turn chilly. Oh, what the hell, I thought, pausing in the kitchen, why not? I pulled down a wine glass from the hanging rack Andrew had assembled and mounted for us, poured it brimming with a chilled Fumé Blanc, and grabbed the letter opener I’d abandoned on the counter with yesterday’s mail. Let’s go!

Sally loped ahead of me, slowing with caution on the hardwood floors, but she quickly settled into her favorite position beside my chair on the deck. I eased down onto the faded canvas cushions, took a sip from my wine glass, and inserted the letter opener along the flap of the suspect envelope, slicing carefully through the creased, heavy parchment.

As I lifted the enclosed bundle of folded pages, a sealed inner envelope fell onto my lap. It was from lawyers, all right. However, according to their letterhead, DaLucca, Goldsmith, & Fitch were specialists in Estate and Probate law. They weren’t suing me after all.

I had only to read the subject line: In the matter of the Estate of Deanna Morton Carlisle Ruhl Mckinney Jarvis Smith, deceased intestate, this Estate now reverted and become Property of the State of Texas.....  I hadn’t known she’d died, but then, there was no way I could have. She hadn’t spoken to me or anyone in my family for decades.

No other doctor in the history of modern medicine has probably ever wished for a lawsuit: I would have preferred anything but this. What they were asking of me was presumptuous, impossible... and too agonizing to contemplate. I simply couldn’t and wouldn’t do this for them.

Then I opened the inner envelope; it contained round trip airline tickets, first class, for the day after tomorrow. DaLucca, Goldsmith, & Fitch were determined to have their way.

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Monday

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Chapter 2

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We stood in the cramped, dusty confines of what had once been the Morton Mansion’s gracious, mid-nineteenth century parlor, two women who had never met before, each there for vastly different reasons. This stranger would locate what remained of value in this place where I’d spent portions of my childhood. I had volunteered to help her, recounting history where I could, in order to bid it farewell.

In the process, I would be forced to repeat generations of family lies, what constituted the Morton family history, and those words would be uttered for the last time, ever. That was the solemn vow, and what I’d promised myself.

The appraisal agent for the State of Texas, elegantly dressed in a black suit, a soft white silk blouse, and the high-heeled pumps of our time, was the picture of grace and sophistication. I, on the other hand, was not. To say that I dressed comfortably and practically, as someone of my age ought, might be the kindest of statements.

Elizabeth Blanchard, fair-skinned and her soft blond hair pulled into a classic twist, turned toward me, a dark object in her hand. Shadowed and indistinct, it could have been almost anything, outlined against the dust-mote filled backlighting that struggled past heavy velour portieres and around stacks of newspapers that dated back to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

She had found her way around the many obstacles—trash, broken furniture, chairs piled high with who knew what, stacks of china, and empty cartons from Top Ramen noodles—probably by instinct. I’d lived here once, yet my surroundings looked as unfamiliar as if I had been dropped into the heart of some alien planet.

Do you know the history of this piece? she asked, enunciating each syllable carefully as if she were repeating the question for me. Perhaps she had already asked.

Giving myself an extra moment to answer, I glanced down at her business card:  Elizabeth Blanchard, ISA AM, Accredited Member International Society of Appraisers, The Heritage Company. The card, like the woman, reflected the ultimate in propriety and good taste; the quality vellum was suitably engraved in Copperplate.

Mrs. Blanchard, I began and then stopped, unsure how to continue. What would help her most? She would probably need to learn significant dates and other information that might increase an object’s potential for sale. Whatever she found would be sold at auction, if anything of worth remained beneath these piles of things. Would the truth decrease an object’s value?

The City Health Department had pronounced the structure a hazard. It was. Several neighborhood associations had petitioned to have it torn down, and a wrecking crew was scheduled to arrive in ten days. Urban Renewal was itching to build low-income apartments on this broad swath of land. The Historical Commission had at last surrendered and the members had withdrawn their support to Save the Morton Mansion once they’d learned about its dreadful condition. Yesterday, I’d witnessed the formal removal of the Commission’s coveted brass plaque beside what had once been our front door. The workman’s screwdriver turned out to be a formality; he pulled, and the plaque came away in his hand, crumbs of rotted wood clinging to the four long bolts.

Please, it’s Elizabeth, she said. After all, we have a week to work together on this. If you call me Mrs. I’ll be looking over my shoulder, expecting my mother-in-law. She smiled and motioned me closer. She glanced around, as if seeing the room in its entirety for the first time, and took in the clutter, the trash and the treasures all at once. It was kind of you to come. How was your flight?

Like all air travel today, inconvenient. Immediately, I regretted my words.

A soft frown creased the woman’s pretty forehead. We specified business class, Dr. Stewart. That should have been somewhat better for you.

I’m sorry. The seats were excellent, and I thank you for that. Nothing compensates for the discomforts of stripping at security and a luggage search. I hoped I’d apologized sufficiently. Yes, one week together should require first names. No need to call me Doctor. It’s Jeanne.

Elizabeth smiled and would have grasped my hand, but grime from the object she was holding had transferred to her hands, turning them black. This?

I nodded. She would pick that up first. The heavy sterling teapot was so tarnished that its provenance, let alone its function, would be unrecognizable save to an expert. She wanted to know whether I knew the history. I not only knew the history, I had lived it. All of us, a motley assortment of granddaughters, nieces, and grandnieces—never boys or men—were weaned on these family stories. Peter Rabbit and Goldilocks and Grimm’s Fairy Tales and other childhood staples were forgotten, if not totally neglected. Oh, what fairy tales these were instead! History as the Mortons had invented it! We all lived one big, ongoing, extravagantly conceived piece of fiction, and it had been our family obligation to perpetuate it.

The story about the teapot might be our family’s only honest piece of history. Should I save it for last? Would you mind terribly if I tell you about that later? That way my final words to her would not echo with deceit or recall the pains inflicted by it.

She studied me with a long thoughtful glance, but nodded in agreement.

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I’m surprised the smell isn’t any worse than it is, I commented after we’d finally opened the front door that first morning. Mainly, the house smelled of mold and decay and, if such a thing existed, a deterioration of spirit. A slight fecal odor and a hint of urine remained, but something vaguely animal lingered just below the surface. Mice? Rats? Squirrels? Feral cats would smell much stronger. We would find out soon enough.

I hope you’ll understand my grieving was done in private, many years before she died. Why I felt compelled to explain this, I don’t know. My sister was lost to me then. One tries to help and offers, but it can’t be forced.

Elizabeth nodded. I understand. Sometimes that’s just how things are.

Her smile gave me the courage to continue.

Perhaps my medical background enabled my coolly analytic perspective. Of our dysfunctional family, my eldest sister had been its poster child. She had managed to inflict pain and her psychotic behavior on everyone whose life she touched. She narrowed the focus of those whom she controlled and how she manipulated each one as more family members preceded her in death. Then, of course, she’d been found dead here. So many months had passed that the biological processes of decay had started and then come to a halt somehow. Fortunately, it had happened in late fall, during milder weather. Neighbors finally discovered her in the icy chill of January. A passing newspaper boy had noticed frost and icicles forming inside the windows.

An autopsy done on the remains reflected natural causes. The county’s criminal forensic team—required on unattended home deaths—pronounced that she had died of