James Grippando - Last to die

But why?

“I, Sally Fenning, being of sound mind and body…”

Vivien read slowly, and Jack listened to every word. He was a lawyer, after all. Words were his business, and words were all you had when it came to dealing with the wishes of the dead. But he was beginning to think that whoever wrote this will must have been paid by the word. It went on for several pages, dry and repetitive as hell, about as bearable as a Swyteck family reunion without Zanax.

“When do we get to the good stuff?” asked Tatum. Jack glanced at his client. The big guy’s eyes were about to glaze over.

“I’m turning to that now,” said Vivien as she slid another document from her dossier. “The trust instrument.”

“Trust?” said Jack.

“Bear with me,” said Vivien. “This is a multimillion-dollar estate, after all. It’s a little more complicated than leaving Uncle Ralph the rice maker and a pair of old bowling shoes.”

“Take your time,” said Jack.

Vivien read on for another fifteen minutes. Although the language was just as dry and legalistic as before, she managed to hold the attention of everyone in the room. Especially at the end, when she mentioned each of the beneficiaries by name.

Jack scribbled down five names as she read them. “The sixth?”

“I told you, you’ll get the sixth after I’ve had a chance to meet with him.” Vivien returned to the document, reading all the way down to the date and place of execution. When she finished, she laid the papers on the table before her, saying nothing further.

The others looked at her, then at one another, as if not quite sure they’d heard it correctly. Or perhaps they were just stunned into silence.

Finally, Sally’s ex spoke up. “Are you saying she actually left us her money?”

“Forty-six million dollars?” said the Genius. He seemed dumb-founded, somewhere between giddy and on the verge of a panic attack, almost speaking to himself. “I can’t believe she left it all to us.”

Vivien said, “Well, technically, she didn’t leave it to all of you. She’s leaving it to one of you.”

Tatum scratched his head, made a face. “I’m not followin’ any of this. Who gets what, and when do we get it?”

Vivien smiled patiently and said, “Mr. Knight, let me put this in terms that everyone here can understand. All of the assets of Ms. Fenning’s estate will go into a trust. There are six potential beneficiaries. One by one, your rights extinguish upon your death. Until there’s only one of you left. That’s when the trust shall be distributed, principal and any accumulated interest. The last person living has all rights of survivorship.”

“Speak English,” said Tatum.

Vivien looked at him coolly and said, “Last one to die takes all.”

The reporter looked up from her notes. “Is that legal?”

“Sure,” said Vivien.

Tatum said, “Let me get this straight. If all these other jokers live eighty-nine years, and I live ninety years, I get the money, but I have to wait ninety years before I gets a single penny.”

“Exactly. But you get interest.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Let me give you another for instance,” said the Genius. “Let’s say that we all walk out of here, and these fine folks get hit by a bus. And I don’t. That means I’m a millionaire?”

“No. There is still one other beneficiary who’s not here.”

“Him too,” said the Genius. “Let’s say they’re all on the same bus, and it rides over a cliff. Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

“Then, yes, you’ve hit the jackpot. You inherit forty-six million dollars as soon as everyone else is dead. The only condition is that you’re still alive when everyone else dies.”

“Doesn’t matter how they die?”

“No. What matters is when they die.”

A tense silence filled the room, which was prolonged by an anxious exchange of eye contact among a group of strangers who now, for some reason, seemed forever linked to one another. Finally, Gerry the Genius said, “It’s as if she’s encouraging us to bump each other off.”

More silence.

Vivien looked each of them in the eye, then said, “I’m not suggesting that anyone here is so inclined, but if any of the beneficiaries under this will were to bump off the others in hopes of inheriting the whole pie-well, just forget about it. Your motive would be obvious, so you’d never get away with it.”

Miguel chuckled, more philosophical than angry, as if the beauty of his ex-wife’s scheme had suddenly come clear. “So the joke’s on us. She makes us feel close to the money, but no one can really get it. At least not soon enough for it to be of any use to us in our lifetime. We’ll just go on living and hoping we’ll be rich some day, but we’re all just going to die as poor as we ever were.”

Vivien said, “If you’re feeling abused, you can always opt out. Nothing prevents a beneficiary from rejecting his right to an inheritance.”

He looked around the room, seeming to be doing some quick computations in his head as to the odds of his outliving everyone else in the room. “No. I’ll play her little game. I’d be happy to take her forty-six million.”

“And she’d be happy for you to have it,” said Vivien. “And I mean that. Sincerely.”

“So all we can do is wait?” asked the reporter. “Just go on living our lives and wait for everyone else to die?”

“That’s exactly right,” said Vivien.

Gerry the Genius flashed his plastic grin. “And, of course, we should all rest a lot easier and live a lot longer knowing that none of us here is a trained killer.”

He laughed too hard at his own joke. They all laughed, but it only made the moment all the more uneasy.

“Yeah,” said Tatum, catching Jack’s eye as he spoke. “Thank goodness for that.”

Things were moving fast. On Tuesday morning, Jack and Tatum were in court already. The plan was to move things even faster. Jack didn’t often find himself in probate court, and it was a bit of an adjustment for him. In some ways it was the most uncivil of places in the entire civil court system, the bloody arena in which sisters fought brothers and sons betrayed mothers, all in pursuit of family fortunes. Yet it was regarded as a strangely courteous environment, at least among members of the bar. Lawyers held the door for each other, said good morning, shook hands, knew each other by their first names. They even seemed to talk softly when addressing the court, as if in respect for the dead. Here, the stakes were as high as in any courtroom, but the style was different. That was why they called it “Whisper Court.”

“Good morning,” said Judge Parsons from the bench. He was one of the more respected members of the Miami-Dade County judiciary, a wiry African-American with thick, gray eyebrows and a shaved head that glistened like a brand-new bowling ball.

“Good morning, Your Honor.” The reply was a mixed chorus of lawyers and clients. Since the meeting at Vivien Grasso’s office, the number of relevant players had grown appreciably. Evidently, none of the beneficiaries was willing to play Sally’s forty-six-million-dollar game without topflight legal representation. Ex-husband Miguel Rioshad hired Parker Aimes, the five-time chairman of the probate section of the Florida Bar and a distant relative of the late Will Rogers. (The joke was that he’d never met a decedent he didn’t like.) Reporter Deirdre Meadows was represented by not one, but two lawyers from Miami’s biggest firm. Assistant State Attorney Mason Rudsky had already dumped his first lawyer and replaced him with a former law professor who had literally written the book on Florida’s law of estates and trusts. With Vivien Grasso as personal representative of Sally’s estate, the introductions were starting to sound like a Who’s Who of the probate bar, with one notable exception.