Page 32 of Nash Falls
He drove off to catch his private jet ride back home. Despite all that had happened, and now with a permanent scar on his body, Rhett Temple exhaled in relief.
I’m alive.
CHAPTER
16
THE FOLLOWING MORNING JUDITH WASgone from the bedroom before Nash woke. He imagined he could hear the treadmill in the lower-level gym whirring away. After getting ready for work he passed by Maggie’s room and thought he might tap on her door and say some conciliatory words that would soften what he had said before. But he doubted she was even awake, and he doubted he could find the necessary phrases.
He bought a cup of coffee on his way to see Mort Dickey. The man’s office was in a strip mall about a mile from his father’s home. Dickey and Associates was sandwiched in between a vape shop and a dry cleaner. A forty-year-old pale yellow Mercedes convertible was parked out front. Its vanity plate readTHE LAW.
He had to buzz to be let in, and a woman in her sixties greeted him. “Mr. Dickey is expecting you, Mr. Nash. If you’ll wait out here, I’ll just go and get him.”
“Thanks,” said Nash as he looked around at an office space that clearly had not seen a serious refreshing in decades.
He sat and spied aSports Illustratedmagazine lying on a table. Nash did a double take because Michael Jordan in a Bulls uniform was on the cover. He thought it might have been some sort of recent commemorative edition until he saw the date of the publication on the cover.
Nineteen ninety-six?
He hoped Dickey’s legal skills had been kept more updated than his waiting room reading selections.
A minute later the man himself appeared in the doorway and beckoned him back.
The brown three-piece suit hung heavy on the man, and Nash noted the large, blackened mole on his neck as he followed Dickey to his office. Nash didn’t see any other people around and wondered if the “and Associates” in the name of the firm still was or had ever been true.
Dickey led him into a cluttered office smelling of cigarettes. It had an oppressive mustiness that Nash would never have tolerated. But then again, Dickey might not have a choice. The lawyer pointed to a stained, upholstered chair. Nash sat and waited as the man pulled out some documents from an estate box labeledTIBERIUS Q. NASH.
Nash knew that theQstood for Quarles, though his father had never told him where his given names had come from. In fact, while he had met his maternal grandparents, Nash had never met the paternal side of that equation, nor did his father ever speak of his parents. He had learned from his mother that his father’s first wife’s suicide had occurred while Ty Nash had been deployed in Vietnam. He had no idea why she had taken her own life. But then again that might not be something a husband would divulge to his second wife.
“Not quite the official digs you’re used to, I’m sure,” said Dickey, with defiance stitched over his grizzled features. That made Nash think that his unspoken opinion of Dickey’s office environment had been betrayed in his expression, and the lawyer was calling him out over it.
Dickey added, “I’ve driven past your building. One of the biggest skyscrapers in town, and you right at the top. In lots of things, so to speak. Symbolic.”
Nash made a point of looking around. “But as with any office, the address, size, drapes, carpet, and furniture matter for little. It’s the work product that counts, isn’t it?”
Dickey’s defiant look vanished and was replaced with a more sober expression.
Nash continued. “And the quality of that comes from what’s up here.” He tapped his forehead. “And since my father entrusted his last wishes to you, Mr. Dickey, you must be decidedly more than competent, because he never suffered fools gladly or any other way.”
Nash did not have time to indulge in pointless games with the man. He just needed information so he could make decisions and move forward. That, in essence, had been Nash’s entire life: data, consideration, decision, and then move the chess pieces.
A chastened Dickey coughed to clear his throat. “Your father was a good, if demanding, client.”
“He could be very demanding, in many ways,” remarked Nash.
Dickey spread out some papers, then picked up one set with a blue backing and unfolded it.
“First things first. As I alluded to before, youarenamed as the executor of his estate. He owned the house free and clear. Your father wanted his companion, Rosalyn Parker, to have a life interest in it. But she would be liable for all the payments, taxes, insurance, utilities, and so on. However…”
“However what?”
“He left it to your discretion whether she would get the life interest or not.”
“And why would he leave that decision up to me?”
Dickey shrugged. “He didn’t confide in me on that point.”
“Do you know anything about his and Parker’s relationship?”
