Finish the Story Contest - WEEK #34: The Last Will and Testament of Geralda Connors

Ya this is super late. But whatevs. Sorry but I've had a busy weekend full of bad luck and $150 in tiny paint scratches on a rent-a-car.

Onto the 34th contest!

Anyway thanks to the writer, @gwilberiol, for the nice set up. It's stopped perfectly at the moment where tensions have risen. There's a suspicious death of a rich old lady, there's racism and a ghost and psychic of sorts. All wonderful points of departure to take the narrative. I went standard.

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The Last Will and Testament of Geralda Connors

by @gwilberiol

My name is Elisha Crow and I hate my job.

I'm waiting in my office, a sealed envelope before me on the mahogany desk.

I glance at the potted plant, plastic since the real ones keep dying on me. Then at my Harvard's law degree nailed to the wall.

Geralda Heather, nee Connors, died last week, alone in her villa. Her husband left her with twelve million bucks, which she held very close, and a vast hatred towards humankind, which she spread passionately. She died with locked doors and closed windows; dogs and gardener outside on the lawn. No signs of a struggle. She had a weak heart.

I adjust my special glasses and examine my guests.

Sprawled on the sofa as if it belonged to her alone, Brigitta Connors scowls at me. She disapproves of any skin color but her own, and I'm black, wearing a suit that she decided I've stolen. She's the victim's sister, but they weren't on speaking terms. She has the only spare keys to the villa and an alibi.

Sitting rigidly on the small chair near the window, once-violin-prodigy Pearl Heather wilts under my scrutiny. She ran away from home in her teens. She's bald, wrestling with one of the bad cancers. Lost her flat and savings to the medical bills. She's the victim's estranged daughter. She has no friends, no prospects, a pair of lovely eyes and a motive.

Shuffling his feet and glancing at the armchair wondering if it's all right to sit down is John Cotter, the gardener. Employed by the Heathers for fifty years, and they weren't kind people. He's the key witness and a stubborn one, insisting nobody came to visit on that fateful day.
My cell phone vibrates and I glance at the screen. Finally!

Aconite. How did you know, you old fraud.

It's Francine. So bright, so full of life. I wish she'd let me date her, but she's too smart for my cheap lies.

I type: 'I had a hunch, Fran.'

Bull. And I'm Lieutenant Brown to you. Where are they now?

'They're all here. I'm about to start.'

We'll be there in thirty minutes. None of your theatrics, you read me?

'Can't promise that.'

I'm warning you, Crow!

I put down the phone. Sighing, I take off my special glasses, clean them with a handkerchief and leave them on the desk.

I blink as my vision clears. I see Brigitta, looking bored and haughty. Pearl, gazing dreamily at the sky outside. John, who settled for balancing uncomfortably on the armrest.

And the pale specter of Geralda Connors, my client, staring at her killer. She's livid.

I hate my job. I wish it was a job I could quit. You can stop an investigation; you can exit a tribunal. But anywhere I run, I'll still be a psychic. And the dead can tell.

"Ladies and gentleman; thank you for coming," I begin. "Before I read the will, there's a story you need to hear."

My Ending

"Once upon a time there was a sweet old lady. She enjoyed her tea, and demanded that everybody follow her rules when ‘tea time’ came around. You were to enjoy your leisure, silently, in the living room and sip from your tea. It was a ritual. Something that kept the family together. But her daughter hated it. She hated being told what to do by anyone, let alone her mother. That same mother insisted she practice the violin. So one day, in an act of malicious compliance-"

“That’s enough,” Pearl said. “I don’t know how you know about this but you’re a sick-“

“In an act of malicious compliance,” I said, cutting her off. “The daughter walks in and starts frantically playing her violin during tea time. The old lady screams her head off. The daughter smashes the violin to pieces, despite it costing tens of thousands of dollars, then storms right out of the house. The only friend the lady has at this point is her sister and gardener.”

I moved my eyes over to Brigitta. She scoffed.

“The sister tells her flat out that she’ll be taking care of the little girl, cause, lord knows, ain’t nobody else going to so. Sure as not her mother, who’s a no good rotten drunk and can’t even support her own sister when she was getting her house foreclosed on.”

I shifted my gaze over to the gardener.

“So, the lady had no one else, since her husband had gone and died, except the occasional affair of the gardener. So she kept this young buck around. Kept him around for a good fifty years. And he played his part the whole while, expecting the little miss to cut him off a piece of the good life. But did she? Lord, no. And that didn’t sit right. Now when he planted her some pretty wild flowers all over the lawn. Not when she asked for special kinds of treatment, special kinds of exotic flora.”

John cotter ran his tongue over his teeth.

“I’m a working man and I’ve worked on a number of lawns throughout that Buckhead neighborhood. This here Geralda was no different than any rich and lonely white woman. Aint got a dime of worry about my actions, cause I ain’t done a damn thing.”

“One of those flowers,” I continued, “came from the Himalayas, and was used by the native people there to hunt goats, once upon a time. You know, aconitum napellus? Those nice, long, dark purple pedals? So when Miss Pearl came home for the first time in decades, you greeted her and promised not to tell a soul. And that was awfully nice of you. Cause she came and went for tea time. And the next thing you know, that lady was dead. But of course, a daughter can’t come back home empty handed. She brought a special tea, from the old woman’s sister.”

Geralda’s ghost smirked.

“That sound about right?” I asked.