The Inheritance Read online

  “Oh, yes,” the lawyer quickly assured her. “Age, blood type, et cetera. Your Dr. Kelman’s report matches this.” He opened the folder, pulled the top sheet of paper from it, and held it forward. She took it from him.

  It was a photocopy of a birth certificate. Holly Alicia Randall, born Christmas Eve, twenty-four years ago. She glanced at the names of the parents, and then up at the logotype at the top of the document. A chill of apprehension, or perhaps merely of wonder, coursed slowly through her as she stared, aware that the lawyer was once more watching her intently.

  “You were born there, in the infirmary,” Mr. Henderson whispered. “It’s—it’s a women’s detention center here in New York. Your mother was awaiting her trial at the time. You see, Ms. Randall—”

  “Yes,” she said, raising her gaze to meet his. “I know. My mother killed my father. She shot him twice in the chest, on April first—April Fools’ Day—in their apartment in Greenwich Village. The media called it the April Fools’ Murder. He was thirty-one, she was twenty-four. My age now.…”

  Holly recited the story she’d recently learned. Her mother was an actress her father had met when he saw her in an off-Broadway play. They were only married about a year and a half when the murder occurred. She didn’t even know she was pregnant until after her arrest. She had Holly in the infirmary and gave the baby to someone to put up for adoption, because her own family and the Randalls refused to help her. She claimed self-defense, but no one believed her. She was tried and convicted of second-degree murder, and sentenced to life. Five years ago, after serving nineteen years, she was released. She went to live in a cottage in a beach community on Long Island, near where she’d grown up. She lived in complete seclusion, because nobody would have anything to do with her. She lived there for nearly one year. Then, on April first, exactly twenty years to the day after the murder, she doused the cottage with kerosene, set it on fire, and shot herself. She was identified from the prison dental records. The media had another field day, thanks to the second “April Fools’” tie-in. She was buried in a public cemetery on Long Island, at the expense of the state.

  “… Her name was Constance Hall Randall,” Holly finished, “but everyone called her Connie. I don’t look like her, judging from the photos I’ve seen, but I’m definitely my father’s daughter.” She smiled at the attorney, picked up her cup and saucer, and took a sip. “This coffee is delicious.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, regarding each other across the desk. Then the lawyer nodded.

  “Well,” he said, “you’ve certainly made my part in this interview a great deal easier.”

  Holly laughed. “Yes. I spent the better part of three days at the library in Palm Springs, after I received the letter from Mrs. Wainwright. She’d been so cryptic about the circumstances of my adoption, and I was curious. I wasn’t prepared for what I found. I was just looking up the name Randall in Who’s Who. I figured, with that kind of money, there must be something written about them. What I found was the Randall Fish Company, which had eventually merged with National Food Corporation. My great-grandfather was chairman of the board. I also found out about the scandal. It was mentioned in the biography. So I went to the microfiche section, where all the newspapers are stored. I read everything available from the New York papers at the time. Quite a story. Quite a legacy.” She shrugged. “I mean, one minute my mother was a very nice interior designer named Mary Smith, and the next minute my mother was the April Fools’ Killer.”

  Mr. Henderson was watching her again. “Is that why you didn’t immediately respond to Alicia’s letter?”

  She nodded. Then she leaned forward again. “Tell me, Mr. Henderson, how did she find me?”

  Gilbert Henderson leaned back in his chair, smiling. “No mystery there. She hired private detectives. They started at the detention center, which somehow got them onto the adoption agency in L.A. I think she must have bribed someone there, because they finally relented and opened a confidential file, which led her to the anonymous party who had arranged everything.” He continued to smile as he looked at her.

  Holly nodded again. “The family lawyer. You.”

  “I wasn’t the family lawyer at the time,” he corrected her. “In fact, I’ve only been working for her—for you, actually—since she tracked me down some four months ago, just before her death.”

  She shook her head absently. “Then, why did you …?”

  There were two silver-framed photographs next to the telephone at the side of his desk. He reached over, picked one up, and held it out to her.

  Despite the warmth of the room, the silver frame was cold in her hands. She stared. Two young men against a snowy landscape, wearing identical Yale sweaters and stocking caps, their arms across each other’s broad shoulders, laughing into the camera. The dark-haired hunk on the left was obviously this man, Gilbert Henderson, some thirty years ago. The blond, blue-eyed beauty on the right was James Randall III.

  Her father.

  Oh, she thought, of course. They were classmates and best friends, and arranging for my welfare was the least this man could do for my father after his death. She thought all of this as she replaced the picture on the desk, but all she managed to say was “Oh.”

  Mr. Henderson stood up and came around the desk to stand before her. “Ironic, isn’t it? The man responsible for spiriting you away is now the man responsible for bringing you back.” His smile faded, and he leaned down to take her hand in his. “If it is you, and I hope it is. But I must ask you to please indulge me.” He sat on the edge of the desk, his two warm hands still holding her single cold one. “I was there, at the detention center infirmary, when you were born. I was the first person, aside from your mother, to hold you.” He suddenly blushed bright red. She thought it was at the memory, but she was wrong. “I—I noticed something then, something I’ve never forgotten.”

  He let go of her hand, turned to the desk, and pressed a button. After a moment, the pretty Asian woman in the wheat-colored suit came back into the room.

  “This is Ms. Choi,” the attorney said. “Paula, this is—uh, well, I think this is Holly Randall. Ms. Randall, I want you to do one last thing. I want you to submit to a test. You don’t have to, of course, but I would be grateful.”

  The test he’d mentioned on the phone: she’d forgotten all about it. She smiled at Paula Choi, who was looking down at the floor, and shrugged.

  “What do I have to do?” she asked.

  “Paula will explain,” he said, heading for the door. He was still blushing. “I’ll be right outside.”

  When the lawyer had gone, closing the door firmly behind him, Holly turned to the other woman. Ms. Choi, too, was blushing, and still apparently inspecting the carpet. For one odd, suspended moment, Holly felt a sudden, unaccountable stab of fear.

  Paula Choi took a deep breath and at last raised her gaze to Holly’s face, and the pink glow on her cheeks subsided.

  “I’m sorry about this,” she said. “He—he wants you to take off your clothes.”

  Holly stared. “My clothes?”

  “Well, the top, anyway …”

  Holly stared some more. “The top …”

  Then, all at once, she got it. So, this was the test. She actually laughed as she reached up and pulled her sweater over her head. She’d cursed the thing every day of her life, but now she silently thanked Heaven for it. It had always been a scar to her, a blot, a blemish. Now, as it turned out, it was something else entirely.

  She unbuttoned the flannel shirt and removed it. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She stood before Ms. Choi, naked to the waist. Then she reached up with her left hand and cupped her left breast, pushing it gently upward. With her right index finger, she pointed at the now-smooth skin just under the fold below her breast.

  Paula Choi stared at the small, wine-colored stain, the slight imperfection in the otherwise perfect skin. Then she smiled, clearly relieved, and raised her gaze to the face of the woman who stood grinning before her
.

  “Welcome home, Ms. Randall,” she said.

  “Thank you,” said Holly Alicia Randall. “Thank you very much.”

  The old man was standing at the window, staring out, when the butler came into the room and silently placed the lunch tray on the table near the bed.

  “Thank you, Raymond,” he said.

  “Of course,” came the reply.

  He could hear the butler behind him moving toward the door, but there was something he had to know first. “Raymond, is it—is it confirmed? Is the young woman from California really arriving?”

  “She is, so far as I know,” Raymond said. “Mrs. Jessel and the girls are getting everything ready. Mrs. Randall told us to expect Miss Holly at four o’clock Thursday afternoon.”

  The old man processed this information, nodding slowly to himself. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll be back for the tray in a while,” Raymond said. “Call down to the kitchen if you want anything else.” There was a slight pause, followed by the sound of the door being quietly shut.

  When the butler was gone, he turned from the window to face the room behind him. So, he thought, it’s true. This woman who is apparently Holly Randall is coming here.

  I must be ready for her.

  He thought about that. After a moment, he moved rather unsteadily over to the bookshelves and selected a big scrapbook from the upper shelf. Slowly, with careful effort, he carried it over to the table near the bed and lowered his withered body into a chair. He pushed the lunch tray aside and placed the book on the table. He opened it and began to pore over its yellowing pages, pausing from time to time to read a faded newspaper clipping or to study a face in one of the many old photographs.

  The familiar images seemed oddly new to him today, because he was imagining that he was seeing them through Holly Randall’s eyes. He wondered what she would make of them, how she would feel about everything that had come before. The family history. Well, it was her history, too, and she was now a part of it.

  Then his vision cleared. He was no longer that unknown young woman looking at the albums, but himself again. These people in the photographs were not strangers, but people he had known and loved. As he stared down at them, he felt the rush of old pain suffuse him. And he felt the newer, more alien emotion that had recently entered his catalogue of sensations: suspicion.

  He had a horrible suspicion, and he was afraid.

  Yes, he thought again. I must be ready for her.…

  Holly was fully dressed and seated again, sipping coffee, when Mr. Henderson came back into the room. She clutched the cup and saucer tightly in her hands to keep them from rattling together, because she did not want the lawyer to see how nervous she was, or the full extent of her great relief. She smiled warmly up at him as he briefly squeezed her arm, and the smile remained as she watched him go around the desk and sit. And all the while the phrase blared and jangled in her mind, over and over: I’m Holly Randall. I’m Holly Randall. I’m—

  “So,” Mr. Henderson said. “You’re Holly Randall.”

  “Yes,” she replied, still smiling. “I am.”

  His little sigh was accompanied by a single, decisive nod. “Well, then, we can proceed now. First, Mr. Lawrence and I will arrange for you to have access to your money. We’ve opened a checking account for you, and he’ll have your new credit cards with him. You may want to merge your old accounts, your Holly Smith accounts, with the new ones. Mr. Lawrence can do that for you.”

  She stared at him, trying mightily to take it all in. She smiled blankly, idiotically. I’m Holly Randall.

  “You’re going to be signing a lot of papers,” he continued. “I hope your wrist is up to it.” He laughed at that, and she joined him. Then he leaned back in his chair, regarding her. “So, do you have any questions, Ms. Randall?”

  She nodded. “Mr. Henderson—”

  “Gil. Please. May I call you Holly?”

  “Of course. In fact, I insist. Gil, what can I expect when I get there? Randall House, I mean.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “Your new family. Well, there was your great-aunt Alicia, of course, but I’m afraid you won’t have that pleasure.…”

  “I guess not. What, um, pleasures will I have?”

  They laughed together again. She had the distinct impression that Mr. Henderson—Gil—was stalling, playing for time. He was arranging information carefully in his mind: she could read it on his face. At last he continued.

  “Your uncle John is currently living there with his wife, Catherine. I only met her once, at Alicia’s funeral, but I know him. Jim—your father, James—and I were seniors at Yale when he arrived as a freshman. I can’t say I ever liked John. Jim didn’t like him, either. They were never close, the Randall brothers. Anyway, John’s been in residence at Randall House since last February, when Alicia had her first heart attack. I understand he’d been living on the Continent for several years before that, where he met Catherine. They were married two years ago. If I were you, I’d watch out for him.”

  Holly stared, confused. “What do you mean?”

  Gilbert Henderson sighed. “Well, it’s no secret that John is the reason you’re here now. His brother wasn’t the only one who didn’t get along with him. Alicia loathed John, and so did his own father. James Randall, your grandfather, changed his will shortly before he died. After Jim was dead and your mother.…” He trailed off, glancing down at the framed picture on his desk before clearing his throat and continuing. “Anyway, your grandfather passed over John in favor of you.”

  “Do you have any idea why he did that?” she asked. She leaned forward in her chair, studying his face.

  He grimaced. “My dear, all you have to do is meet John Randall. I can’t speak for your family, but I wouldn’t give him cab fare, much less a fortune. He was expelled from Yale in his sophomore year. He’s spent his entire adult life wandering around the world on his trust fund, being a sort of international playboy and doing absolutely nothing constructive. He’s a leech, a freeloader, and he always was. Now, he’ll only get a fortune—I mean a big fortune—under certain circumstances.”

  “And what are those circumstances?”

  The lawyer shrugged. “Well, there’s a contingency plan for the estate. Your grandfather designed it, and your great-aunt continued it in her will. Since you’ve been located, and you’ve proved your identity, all you have to do is get through a grace period. This was put in as a stopgap, for your sake as well as the family’s. A period in which you may decide whether or not you really want the fortune, and in which I and Mr. Lawrence may observe you, to be certain that you are—please forgive me, it was your grandfather’s request—that you are suitable. That you deserve the name Randall.”

  Holly nodded. “I understand. How—how long is this grace period?”

  “One year. One year in which you must stay at Randall House. You’ll have access to the fortune, or a reasonable percentage of it. If at the end of the year you want to run the estate, and if Mr. Lawrence and I give our approval, you inherit the bulk of the fortune. Certain amounts go to charities, of course, and your uncle John will receive five million dollars, in addition to his lifetime annual allowance of two hundred thousand.”

  “I see,” Holly said. “And what is the contingency?”

  Mr. Henderson folded his hands together on the desk in front of him. “If you hadn’t been found, which you were, or weren’t deemed ‘suitable,’ which I’m sure you will be, or if you refuse the inheritance, or in the event of your death before the year is up, the Randall estate is settled quite differently. Barring another heir, three-fourths of it will be divided as your grandfather instructed, a lot of it in scholarships to Yale, and a lot more, including Randall House and its property, to the State of Connecticut. The Heart Association, Amnesty International, UNICEF—oh, various things. Alicia added a few, notably the Humane Society and the ASPCA.”

  Holly could see where this was going. “And the other one-fourth?”

 
He nodded again, knowing that she’d figured it out. “Your uncle John.”

  She stared at the man across the desk. “I see. If I inherit, he gets five million and an annual allowance. If I don’t inherit, he gets, let’s see, about a hundred fifty million.”

  “Exactly. Barring another heir.”

  “What does that mean, ‘barring another heir’?”

  The lawyer shrugged. “A technicality. Your grandfather and great-aunt left everything specifically to the issue of your grandfather’s children. So far as anyone knows, that means you, period. Jim had no other children, and John and his wife don’t have any, either.”

  “What if they adopt?” Holly asked.

  He shook his head. “Alicia’s will is specific: only children extant at the time of her death. She named you as principal beneficiary, despite the fact that you were adopted out of the family, and therefore not necessarily entitled to the fortune. The passage now reads”—he shuffled through some papers until he found what he was looking for—” ‘… to be divided equally among the issue of my brother’s children, regardless of new adoptive status.’ That was obviously for your benefit. Alicia then mentioned you by name: ‘the child born Holly Alicia Randall, later adopted by others.’”

  She nodded. “I see. So, Uncle John may not exactly be overjoyed by my arrival.”

  Gil Henderson grimaced. “As I said, I’d watch out for him if I were you. John Randall is—” He broke off, waving a hand dismissively. “Well, judge for yourself. You’ll meet him soon enough.” He smiled then, and rose to come around the desk. “Speaking of which, I’m sure you’ll be very busy tomorrow. You’ll want to be ready for Randall House. I doubt whether a girl from southern California has the right wardrobe for a New England winter. And with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, you may be attending a few parties.…”

  “Oh, gosh!” Holly said. “Clothes!”

  He chuckled. “Are you familiar with New York?”