Last Licks

They were getting close to Alfred’s address, but as Sunny looked out the window, she didn’t see the picture of gracious living she’d expected. The houses were nice and well kept, but they weren’t much bigger than the one she lived in, and they were rather close together. “Wait a minute, I know this neighborhood,” she burst out. “My dad used to call it ‘the servants’ quarters.’”

“Sort of Piney Brook by extension.” Will grinned.

“A dump, by Piney Brook standards. If this is where the Scatterwells come from . . .” It took Sunny a minute to find the words. “Well, let’s just say they put the ‘pretend’ in ‘pretentious.’”

“Oh, this is just Alfred’s place,” Will assured her. “The old family manse is a big, dilapidated pile right on the banks of the Piney Brook itself. That’s where Gardner used to live, although he closed the place up when he wound up in Bridgewater Hall.”

“I wonder if Alfred looks forward to moving up to the big house,” Sunny said.

Will grinned and sang, “‘Movin’ on up . . .’”

They stopped in front of a house not that different from its neighbors. Sunny wasn’t expecting Jeeves the butler to appear when they rang the doorbell, but the apparition that answered went way too far in the opposite direction. In a knit polo shirt and plaid Bermuda shorts, Alfred Scatterwell definitely hadn’t dressed for the occasion. Seeing his knobby knees and scaly elbows was bad enough, but his potbelly seemed to bobble with every step.

“So you found the place,” he said. “What do you want?” Apparently while he was only the all-purpose heir, Alfred had held himself back around his uncle. Now that he expected to rake in Gardner’s money, Alfred was letting his true nature out.

“First, we’d like to offer our condolences—” Sunny began, but Alfred waved her off.

“You saw how well the old man and I got along. Do you really think I’m bereaved?”

Smelling the brandy on his breath, Sunny had another description in mind.

“I think you should be concerned about the way your uncle died,” Will firmly told him. “There are some unusual circumstances.”

“The people at Bridgewater Hall told me Uncle Gardner died of a stroke, and his personal physician concurred,” Alfred replied. “Considering he had a stroke three months before, how unusual is that?”

“There’s a situation you’re not aware of.” Sunny told Alfred the story Oliver Barnstable had recounted to her and Will.

Scatterwell looked incredulous. “You’re taking the word of that flabby-faced loudmouth? The man is on pain medication, for heaven’s sake.”

“You yourself complained about the mortality rate at Bridgewater Hall,” Sunny pointed out. “Don’t you feel any responsibility to find out what happened?”

“I felt responsible enough to the family fortune to look into the possibility of suing for malpractice.” Alfred shook his head. “The outlay in lawyer’s fees didn’t match the uncertain chances of winning a settlement.”

Sunny didn’t know what to say to that. She looked over at Will, who was eyeing Alfred as if he’d encountered a strange specimen. “Mr. Barnstable raised enough concern that we’re looking into what happened to your uncle.” Will tried to appeal to Alfred’s penny-pinching side. “It needn’t even cost you anything. If you just approached the medical examiner and asked for some test—”

“Why should I?” Alfred interrupted. “If there was a policy with a big payout, the insurance company may want to quibble, but I don’t. My uncle always sneered at me for inheriting family money. But what did he do? He received the lion’s share of my grandfather’s estate and spent his life wasting it. There aren’t many Scatterwells left, thanks to people like Uncle Gardner who never had children. If I can amass enough money, invest it intelligently, there may be something for the next generation—and we could repair the mansion that’s going to rack and ruin. I was down in the big house yesterday trying to see if we could use any of the public rooms for a memorial. They’re all going to need work.”

Sunny couldn’t get over this attitude. “So you’d wink at murder to get your inheritance?”