Chapter Eleven
hopped the subway up to 42nd and Lexington and arrived thirty minute early for my appointment, so I walked down 42nd and found a small hardware store where I had a set of keys made from the ones that Echo had given me. I marveled at her willingness to share space with me given the fact that I'd come close to really hurting her in my sleep. I knew it wasn't my fault, but the nightmares scared me. Maybe she was right, and maybe I needed to talk to someone.
I paid for the keys and walked back over to the lawyer's office. I took the elevator up to the thirtieth floor and got out in front of a huge glass wall that had Gates, Weller and Markham, LLC. etched in it. I told the secretary who I was and watched her precisely sculpted eyebrow go up as she said, "I didn't know Dr. Powell had a son!"
"I'm the black sheep of the family," I winked as I wondered why this news was surprising to her.
"I see," she chuckled. "I'll tell Mr. Weller that you're here, Mr. Powell."
A little while later, another impeccably dressed young woman came out into the waiting area and called my name. She led me back to a large conference room that looked out over Grand Central Station and the Met Life Building. I politely refused her offer of coffee or tea, and sat down at the table.
My phone vibrated in my pocket and when I pulled it out, I found a message from Echo:
Got fired. On my way back to the apartment. Something strange going on. Meet me ASAP.
I started to reply when Jack Weller entered the room and said in a booming voice, "Well, I'll be damned! If it isn't Ryan Powell!"
He held out his hand and pumped mine up and down as he repeated how surprised was to see me. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I smiled and played along. My SEAL training had taught me that at least half the game was simply looking like I belonged.
"I'm so sorry about your father," Weller said looking genuinely sad. "It's a tragedy to lose someone so brilliant and productive."
"Yes, it most certainly is," I said watching him closely. He was dressed in a way that looked vaguely familiar. He was wearing an expensive tailor made suit, large gold rings on several fingers, and his slicked back hair reminded me of the Sopranos.
"And your father, of course," he quickly added.
"Of course," I replied.
"So, how can I help you, Ryan?" Weller asked. He'd come in with a stack of papers that he'd set down and pushed to the side when he'd first come in, but now was inching them closer as he waited for me to tell him what I needed.
"For starters, I'm concerned about where my father's body is," I said.
"Where is it?" he asked.
"That's just it, I have no idea," I replied as I felt my phone vibrate again. I had the urge to pull it out and check to see if Echo had sent me information that I could use, but instead I waited for Weller to give me an answer.
"I believe he's been transferred to the Blake and Sons Funeral Home in SoHo, per the wishes of your stepmother," he said pulling a sheet out of the stack and looking at it. "Yes, here it is."
"He didn't want a funeral," I said.
"Mrs. Powell said that she'd decided to have Blake and Sons handle the cremation," he said as he quickly scanned the sheet and pushed it across the table for me to see. It indicated that my father's body was to be delivered today and cremated tomorrow. The bottom of the sheet had been signed by the person named as the executor, but I couldn't read the signature.
"Who is this?" I asked pointing to the signed line.
"That's the executor your father named in his will," Weller said.
"And who is it?" I asked.
"His business partner, Julian Baines," Weller said after consulting another sheet in the stack.
"Wait, what?" I said doing a double take as I looked more closely at the cremation order. It looked like it had been signed and dated the day my father died. "Julian Baines is my father's executor not me or Eva?"
"It seems that your father appointed him in 1983 and never altered his will," Weller said as he pushed forward more documents.
"This isn't right," I said looking at the signatures on the sheets in front of me. "He could not have appointed Julian to take care of his personal business. That doesn't make sense."
"It makes more sense than you might think, Ryan," he said. The way he spoke to me like I was a child was starting to get on my nerves. "Often times people will appoint business partners or associates to be executors of a will because they are close enough to the deceased to look out for their interests, but they aren't grieving the way that family members often do. It's often easier for them to make decisions that are too painful for the family to make."
"But my father knew I would take care of things for him," I murmured as I studied the papers in front of me. "This doesn't make sense."
"I think your father knew that it was possible that you might not be around to take care of this, Ryan," he said gently.
"Goddamnit, don't talk to me like I'm a child!" I shouted. "My father chose his business partner over me to ensure that his affairs were taken care of, that's the bottom line. So what do I need to do?"
"There's nothing for you to do right now," he said as he looked over a checklist of things that needed to be done. "Your father's will is in probate until a judge can verify that it's authentic and that the assets are, indeed, his."
"If you have to verify authenticity, then why is Julian allowed to function as executor?" I asked. Suddenly I wondered what Weller's investment in this was.
"Your father and Mr. Baines signed the paperwork naming Baines as executor separate from the will," he said. "That's not in question, only the will itself."
"I see," I said. This all sounded fishy to me, and with the foreclosure on the apartment, I wondered what was going on. "Then I need to check with Mr. Baines about my father's body?"
"Yes, exactly!" Weller cheered as if excited that I had grasped a difficult concept.
"What about his accounts? How is Eva going to live, if she has no money?" I said avoiding mentioning the fact that I had no place to live.
"Mrs. Powell has been well taken care of," Weller said. "I assure you that she will not want for anything while the will is being moved through the probate system."
"Very well," I said. "Is there anything else I need to know about my father's will? I don't want any surprises."
"Well, I'm not sure how to tell you this, Mr. Powell," he said looking nervously at the sheet in his hand. "But you've been disinherited."
"What?" I was stunned by this news.
"Your father eliminated you from his will when he married Mrs. Powell, it seems," he said as he pushed another paper toward me. I looked at it and immediately knew something was fishy, but I said nothing.
"I see," I nodded. "Well, I guess those are the breaks, aren't they, Mr. Weller?"
The surprised look on Weller's face was worth the struggle to keep my emotions in check. I wanted to throttle the guy and make him tell me what was really going on, but I knew that this was something larger and that if I played my hand now, I'd never get the information I needed to make it right.
"Well, win some lose some, right, Mr. Weller?" I shrugged. "I guess I'm going to have to check in with Eva and see what I can do to get something from her."
"That sounds like a solid plan," Weller nodded looking relieved that I wasn't going to push the issue. "If there's any way I can help you, please don't hesitate to let me know."
"Oh, I won't," I said as I shook his hand and held his gaze. "I definitely won't."
As I left the office, I thought about how I was going to deal with the problem of my father's will. None of this was adding up, but I didn't have enough pieces to put the whole puzzle together. As I stepped off of the elevator and headed across the lobby, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I stepped out into the warm afternoon sunshine and checked it. There were four messages. The first one said "Meet me downstairs at Nemo's" and the other three read: "Come home now. Urgent."