Uncle Raymond, surprisingly enough, shook his head. “I wouldn’t claim I was angry, more along the lines of apprehensive. But I only found out about the new will because Mrs. Wagner told me. If anyone had reason to be upset, it was her, what with how she and James had been quarreling. Given that she was not left a bequest in that new will, something she could have very well learned while in the midst of that heated argument, it stands to reason that she, far more than I, had reason to kill him.”
“Which is something we’ll revisit in a moment. For now, I’mmore curious to learn how you felt about not being left a stake in Mason Mines,” Cooper said.
“I wasn’t thrilled about that, but in the spirit of transparency, I had an uncomfortable conversation with James directly after Mrs. Wagner told me about the new will. I asked him if he’d taken me out of his will. He told me I was still in it and then disclosed he was leaving me ten million dollars but I wasn’t to expect being left a percentage of Mason Mines. He also told me that he was leaving Hazel one million dollars, and my son, Howard, five million dollars.”
Mrs. Wagner sucked in a sharp breath. “You never told me James left you ten million dollars.”
“Why would I mention the extent of my inheritance to you?” Uncle Raymond asked. “You’re not actually family, even though you enjoy claiming differently.”
As temper flashed through Mrs. Wagner’s eyes, Cooper flipped to another blank page. “Since we’re discussing the will, the next question I have is for you, Mrs. Wagner. Why were you taken out of James’s will, and how did that make you feel when you discovered you weren’t going to be left a bequest?”
“I believe this is where Mother and I should take our leave,” Vincent said, moving to take hold of Mrs. Wagner’s arm. “You may direct any further questions you have to our attorney, whose name I’ll provide you with in a few days.”
As Eunice’s thoughts began to whirl with ways to keep Mrs. Wagner and Vincent from leaving, an idea, albeit a questionable one, suddenly sprang to mind.
“I think it may be time foreveryoneto take their leave,” she said, drawing more than a few murmurs from her family in the process as well as confused looks from Cooper, Ivan, and Arthur, which she ignored. “I’ve just had the most curious memory flash to mind from out of the blue, and I need to act on that memory while it’s still fresh in my mind.”
Uncle Raymond thumped his cane on the floor. “Have you lost your wits, girl? Now is not the time to disband the family meeting. We’re making progress here—progress that I’m sure is going toclear the suspicion surrounding my name once and for all since obviously Mrs. Wagner has been the guilty party all along.”
“But if I can uncover the clues I just realizedwereclues given to me far too subtly by Grandfather on the night before he died, I believe we’ll be able to unmask the guilty party once and for all,” Eunice said.
“What clues?” Vincent asked, glancing to his mother before returning his attention to Eunice.
“Well, to be honest, I always thought when Grandfather sought me out to wish me well on my trip, it was somewhat peculiar, and definitely confusing. Now, though, everything he said to me makes perfect sense.”
“What makes perfect sense, or better yet, what did he say to you?” Vincent pressed.
“He said if anything unexplainable happened to him that I should look in the spots where I keep my secrets because he’d left me a letter, one that held important information.”
“What kind of information?”
Eunice shrugged. “I’m not certain. Frankly, at the time, I thought Grandfather might be experiencing a bit of an elderly moment because it was beyond peculiar. However, in retrospect, he was obviously telling me where I could find clues as to who killed him if, in fact, he ended up dead under suspicious circumstances.”
Even though Eunice was relatively certain she’d just told a flimsy story if there ever was one, and one that clearly suggested she didn’t have a future as a fiction writer, given that everyone was watching her with wide eyes and no one was scoffing at the tale she’d just spun, there was actually a slight possibility that everyone believed her.
Not wanting to leave time for any questions that might trip her up, she turned to Cooper. “Would you care to accompany me to search for that letter?”
Mrs. Wagner began fanning her face with her hand, her forehead, tellingly enough, beaded with perspiration. “You’re going to search right now?”
“I don’t see any reason to delay the inevitable, although...” Eunice caught Mrs. Wagner’s eye. “If someone in this room wants to confess, it would save me the bother of going on, shall we say, a treasure hunt?”
Mrs. Wagner’s gaze darted to Vincent, who was watching her with narrowed eyes before he shook his head ever so slightly. Mrs. Wagner squared her shoulders, dashed a hand over her forehead, and leaned closer to her son.
“Know that I love you more than anything, darling,” she said before she turned to Eunice. “To spare my son the drama of what is certain to unfold once that letter is found, allow me to confess to what I’m sure everyone in this room, save my son, is already thinking. If there’s a name in that letter, yes, it’ll be mine.
“I’d been blackmailing James for years about what he’d done to Georgette and Douglas. He was more than willing to pay for my silence because while he wouldn’t have cared overly much if Georgette found out, he would have hated for you, Eunice, to realize he was responsible for why you never knew your father.” Her expression turned ugly. “The last time I approached him for money, though, he agreed to give me a sizable bank draft but told me it was going to be the last of the money from him. The next thing I knew, he’d gone to his attorney and redone his will, taking out the bequest he’d always promised me. And while I did have a nice nest egg saved from all the money he’d paid me over the years, the fact that he was trying to have the last word against me was maddening.”
“You need to stop talking, Mother,” Vincent muttered.
Mrs. Wagner sent him a sad smile as she took hold of his hand and placed a kiss on it. “It’s too late for that, my dear boy. Everyone in this room, including you, now knows the truth about what happened to James. I killed him for taking me out of his will, and to be clear, I don’t regret it in the least.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-Nine
Arthur reined Wyatt in after allowing him his head, smiling as Eunice galloped up to join him, the look of disgruntlement on her face suggesting she was a bit put out that Wyatt had left her and Samantha in his dust.
“I’ll give one thing to Wyatt,” she said, drawing Samantha to a stop beside him. “He can move.”
