Please log in to recommend or discuss...
“Well, that can’t be good,” Benjamin Bradford said as he looked twenty-five feet up to the ceiling of the main dining room in his home, where the lights in the three large crystal chandeliers flickered. He wandered out of the room into the music room. The wall sconces were flashing intermittently. He returned to the dining room and called out, “Hendricks, come here.”
“Yes, sir, you called?”
“Look at the ceiling lights.”
“They seem to be going on and off.”
“I can see they are going on and off. What do you think is causing it?”
“Bad wiring,” Lee Hendricks said. “Should we think about canceling the event, sir?”
“Canceling, are you insane? This Saturday marks the tenth anniversary of our fundraiser. Celebrities, politicians and the well-to-do are all coming here.”
“Should I call an electrician, sir?”
“Hmmm,” Benjamin muttered, placing a finger over his mouth. “Carly, Carly, are you around?” Benjamin wandered through the house, shouting for Carly, until he ran into his head housekeeper, Juniper Ebberts. “Ms. Ebberts, where is Carly—I mean Ms. Thomsen?”
“Have you checked upstairs, sir?”
Benjamin proceeded out to the main lobby and climbed the circular marble staircase that led to the second floor, where eight well-sized bedrooms could be found, along with five separate bathrooms. He roamed from room to room until he found Carly Thomsen, pulling a bedspread across a large queen-size bed. She had her long golden hair pulled up into a bun; she lifted her round face and looked up at him with her piercing blue eyes. Her slender figure was dressed in the dark blue two-piece outfit that the three female staff wore in the house.
“Sir, did you need me for something?”
“Yes, can you come with me?”
He led the way downstairs to the main dining room, where he’d left Hendricks standing in his dark suit with gray vest, striped tie, and white gloves, pointing at the three crystal chandeliers that continued to flicker on and off.
“What do you make of that?”
She looked at the lights, looked at Hendricks and turned to Mr. Bradford. “I think there is probably a problem with the wiring. Why don’t you call an electrician?”
“Excellent idea. Hendricks, can you look after that and get them out here as quickly as possible? Come Saturday night, this room transforms into our gala hall for the event. You can’t have dancing without a ballroom.” With that, he turned and left the area. Hendricks just rolled his eyes, then stared at the twenty-nine-year-old Carly Thomsen.
“Don’t you have someplace to be, Ms. Thomsen?”
She smirked and turned
and began to walk out of the room.
“Wait,” Mr. Hendricks said as he walked up behind Ms. Thomsen.
She looked at him. “What’s the matter?”
He pointed at her collar. “That hideous thing on your back is showing. Fix your collar. This is a dignified house.”
“It’s just a tattoo.”
“Why didn’t you just get a small, discreet butterfly like the rest of the girls of your age?”
“I like dragons.”
“Why not a small dragon that is easy to cover up instead of that thing that covers your…”
“My back. Mr. Hendricks, have you been staring at my back when I’m not watching?”
“No, I have not. Though I would like to see the back of you now,” as he pointed with his finger towards the doorway, “going back to what you were doing.”
Ms. Thomsen turned in her original direction and headed back upstairs to get the bedrooms ready for the guests who would arrive at the estate in the next few days. Lee Hendricks left the dining room and made his way downstairs to a small office that he worked out of by the kitchen and near the staff quarters. He closed the door behind him and emerged after about ten minutes and returned to the main floor of the house and walked around looking for Mr. Bradford, to find him once again in the dining room staring up at the ceiling.
“Dammit,” Benjamin said.
“Problem, sir?”
“I came back in here and the lights were fine, then you come in and they start to flicker. I’m starting to think you might be the problem. Do the lights have it in for you, Hendricks?”
“I don’t believe so, sir, I have done nothing to them. I found an electrician for you.”
“Excellent. Are they coming this afternoon? We need to get this taken care of as soon as possible.”
“Thursday, sir.”
“Thursday; that is two days from now. Tell them I will double their rate, triple it if need be.”
“I tried that, sir, they are booked solid, and they are the only one available this week.”
“You did, huh? Feeling pretty generous with my money, aren’t you, Hendricks?"
“No, sir, I just know how important the annual event is to you.”
Benjamin walked over to a set of double doors that exited out to the patio. He looked at the seating covered by the pergola, the well-manicured hedges, the lush green lawns and the blue water of the pool, a couple of hundred feet beyond the patio. He sighed and turned to face his butler of almost twenty years.
“Sorry, I am taking this out on you. This old house has provided wonderful memories, but from time to time, she shows her age. In the 1930s, they knew what craftsmanship was. They just didn’t have the advantage of modern technologies that we have today. Thursday will be fine.”
“Sir, I booked them in for ten o’clock in the morning. However, I don’t know if you recall, but I booked the day off to go visit my sister up in New Bryden. I can call her and cancel my visit if that would be preferable to you?”
Benjamin walked back toward Hendricks and put his hand on his arm. “How is she doing these days? It’s tough when you lose your partner. Maddy has been gone eleven years. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about her. Her soul is in this house.”
“My sister has been doing the best she can. I still feel I should look in on her from time to time.”
“Right, you should. She has a son, does she not?”
“A daughter, sir, but they have been estranged for a number of years. My sister never approved of the choices my niece made in her life.”
Benjamin removed his hand from Hendricks’s arm and walked back, looking at the flickering lights in the ceiling. “I know that feeling. The last thing I wanted was for my only child to marry someone who calls himself an artist and only creates rubbish.”
“Will Mrs. Lizzy be joining us this Saturday? I don’t recall receiving a reply to her invite.”
“Yes, last I heard, she and Chad will be here. I’m making a big announcement this year and I want them to hear it with all the other guests, so there is no mistaking what I said.”
“I trust it is something she won’t care for?”
“No, not likely. I wish her mother was here. If only she were more like her mother. I wish I could count on her, but she has let me down too many times. We need to find a cure for this insidious disease, and I need
someone who can steward our mission and be there long after I am gone. Lizzy is not that person. Yes, please go, and give your sister my regards. It will be me and the ladies, looking after the electrician.”
“About that, sir. That is why I brought this up. Ms. Ebberts and Ms. Gidgins will be away at the caterer looking after final preparations for the food to be served on Saturday. So, it will be only you and Ms. Thomsen here.”
“What about Jeremiah?”
“I believe Mr. Jackson is planning on being here, though I believe he has some planting scheduled that day on the south lawn. I can ask him to join you if you like?”
“Hendricks, I ran a billion-dollar company with thousands of employees. I’m sure I can handle an electrician for the day. We will manage the best we can in your absence.”
“Thank you, sir. Will there be anything else you need?”
“No, I am good, thank you, Hendricks.”
Hendricks turned and walked out of the dining room. Benjamin wandered around the room, looking at the lights. After about fifteen minutes, the lights returned to normal and stayed on consistently. Benjamin stopped for a second and reflected on the comments he had made to Hendricks. He decided that before making the announcement, he had better share some of the details with one other person, and he made his way to his study, closing the ten-foot-tall solid oak doors behind him. He locked them from the inside, pulled the key from the lock and placed it down on the left side of his desk.
The study was a large room lined with bookcases on the left wall. Opposite his large, dark mahogany desk, a grand stone fireplace rested, the primary source of heat in this old room before the house had a furnace that it could rely on. To the right of the desk, three large sets of windows running twelve feet high, rounded at the top. A single oil painting in a gold frame hung on the wall in between the glass panes. The middle set was a pair of glass French doors leading out to one of the gardens on the property. Benjamin sat down at his desk, turned on his computer and pored through his list of over a thousand contacts for the name of a trusted friend. Years ago, he would have been able to recite his phone number from memory, but with the advancing years, his memory wasn’t as sharp as it once had been. He scrolled through the letters until he came to the Q’s. Not many people he knew with a last name beginning with Q, but Graydon Quill wasn’t just anybody. His name would have stood out among all the names in his directory no matter which letter it began with. He looked at the phone to his right and reached for the receiver, then stopped. He paused and licked his
lips. Ben looked over at the pictures on his desk of his wife and daughter and then looked up, staring into the face of a large oil painting of his late wife that hung above the mantel of the fireplace, an ode to the expression Behind every great man is a great woman.
“Am I doing the right thing? Should I just leave things the way they are and hope for the best? Maddy, I wish you would give me a sign. I fear Lizzy and her worthless husband will take all that I have worked for and discard it the moment I am gone.” He could hear her voice in his head, reassuring him about following his gut when the doubts became too much. His rise to great fortune began in high school when he got seated next to the most stunning brunette in math class, and his world had been changed ever since.
He picked up the phone and dialed the number on his computer screen. The phone rang once, twice, before being picked up.
“Well, you old salty dog, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” Graydon Quill said.
“Did I catch you at a good time?” Benjamin said.
“I always have time for you. What is it that you wanted to talk to me about?” Graydon said.
“I needed to tell you something, Graydon.”
“Okay, is this something that I want to hear?”
“You and Jacqueline will be here on Saturday, will you not?”
“We will, like every year since you started the event. Is everything okay, Ben?”
“I’ve made a decision that I plan to announce at this year’s event, and I thought with you being my oldest friend and the executor of my estate that I should tell you before telling anyone else. I’ve decided to change my will.”
“I see, Ben. What are the changes you are proposing?”
“I plan to allocate
ten million to a trust that I want my lawyers to create and you to oversee. That will provide an income to Lizzy and her family for the rest of her life.”
“That’s a big change going from what would have been over nine hundred million dollars to just ten. Where is the money going, Ben? Are you thinking about buying a rocket ship?”
The thought of rocketing into space was amusing and caused Benjamin to chuckle. “No, I want to create a foundation, to fund research into cancer and find a cure. The bulk of my money will go there, to support research centers and hospitals around the world.”
“It’s a noble cause and I can understand why you would want to do this, but have you talked to Lizzy about this? It’s going to be a big surprise if you just come out and announce it.”
“I fear if I tell her my plans in private, she will try to get me committed somewhere, saying I have lost my mind. Who knows, maybe I have.”
“Ben, don’t talk that way, it’s your money, I just don’t want to see you and Lizzy growing more distant in the years that you have left. Why not split your wealth in half? It would still fund a lot of research.”
“Do you think Lizzy and her husband, Chad, would be responsible with that kind of wealth?”
“Knowing Lizzy, no, but you don’t have to commit to a number now. Make the announcement, we will get the lawyers working on it. We can get them going next week. I don’t suppose you would wait on making the announcement until after all the legal tasks have been done, just in case there is pushback?”
“No, I would like to make the announcement on Saturday.”
“Are there any other changes that you would like to make?”
“Two. I want to reduce the amount left to Hendricks from one million to one hundred thousand for now.”
“That is a big change.”
“Graydon, I can’t say positively, but I think he has been stealing from me. Until I know for certain, I don’t want to jump to a conclusion, but at the same time I don’t want to reward the behavior if I am correct.”
“And the other change?”
“I want you to name Ms. Carly Thomsen as the head of the foundation that is established.”
“I’m not familiar with her. Is she a lawyer, an investment advisor?”
“She has become an advisor to me. I have been looking to her more this past year for guidance.”
“Okay, well, I am glad we talked. Jackie and I are looking forward to seeing you on Saturday. Hopefully, we will raise a lot of money this year.”
“Graydon, thank you
for being my friend. I know sometimes I haven’t made it easy on you.”
“Shut up, you old fool, and I will see you on Saturday.”
With that, the phone call ended.
Benjamin sat back in his chair, put his two index fingers together and pressed them to his lips as he reflected on what Graydon suggested he do. He reached down to the second drawer on the right-hand side of the desk, pulled open the drawer and retrieved a yellow pad of paper, where he had been making his notes on the proposed changes. Several paper clips were scattered underneath. He picked them up one by one and put them back into the container to the side of the drawer. He couldn’t remember knocking the container over, but his focus wasn’t as strong as it once was and likely he’d done it without realizing it.
He glanced down at the pad of paper. At the top, in capital letters, were the words PROPOSED WILL CHANGES. Number one was to set up the foundation and make Carly the administrator. Number two was to create a trust for Lizzy and her family. Number three, reduce the amount left for Hendricks, with the word Investigate drawn beside his name. Number four, leave remaining amount for the rest of the staff at one million dollars each. He looked at the pad and thought for a moment. “I really should add something else,” he muttered. He looked into the open drawer for a pen, then opened up the drawer above and pulled out a black lacquered pen and wrote point number five on the pad: Establish trusts of ten million dollars each for any other children fathered prior to my demise. This was his just-in-case-he-forgot-someone clause. He gazed down at the open drawer. The white pill bottle top looked back at him. Benjamin picked up his pills for his heart and looked through the amber plastic to count how many were left. He had four pills left; he would need to contact his doctor and get a refill. He set the pills down inside his desk and rubbed his chest above his heart. You need to keep going. There is still so much that needs to be done. He returned the pad of paper to the second drawer and closed the drawer. He rose from his desk, pushing his chair back; grabbed the key that he had put down on the desk; went to unlock the door and pulled the door open. The house was quiet, though rustling could be heard in the distance. The lights seemed to be fine now. Hopefully, it would be an easy fix for the electrician to complete on Thursday. If not, he might need to think about getting generators just in case and string lights through the house, connected to the external power source. Now, there was an idea. Benjamin liked to plan for all contingencies. He wandered down the hall through to the drawing room and exited out onto one of the back patios through a set of glass double doors. The air was cool, with a hint of warmth blended in. The
scent of orange milkweed surrounded him. He walked around the house until he came to a small series of buildings on the south side of the property. The first building, with its cedar-shingled roof, was the potter’s shed. Shed made it sound small, yet it was an ample size to house the equipment to maintain the lawns and gardens on the property. There were wooden benches with potted plants sitting on them. Tools lined the far wall, and bags of soil and fertilizer were stacked on two pallets in the far corner. Attached to the shed was a smaller home that served as the living quarters for Jeremiah Jackson. Mr. Jackson had come to work for the Bradfords about two years before Madison’s death. The gardens were her thing, and Jeremiah was a wizard when it came to their display.
Jeremiah was forty-two, stood at six foot one and was broad, with a fiery-red head of hair and beard. He had come to the United States in his twenties from Scotland with a degree in agriculture looking to better his life. He was tinkering in the shed as Benjamin entered the facility.
“Jeremiah, can I bother you?” Benjamin said.
“What can I do for you, Ben?”
Jeremiah was one of only two people on the grounds to refer to Benjamin as Ben. Most referred to him as Mr. Bradford, and only one would refer to him as Ben in the company of others; that was Jeremiah. In the years since Madison Bradford had passed away, Jeremiah had been the one that Benjamin had real substantive conversations with about life, philosophy and nature. Maybe it was his connection to the earth that grounded him so well.
“Generators, do we have any?”
“Aye, we have three, one large and two small. Why do you think we will need them?”
“Having problems with the lights in the house; just planning for the worst-case scenario. Don’t want our guests to be in the dark come Saturday night.”
“Do you want me to have a look?”
“Do you know anything about electricity?”
“Some.”
“Well, Hendricks has an electrician coming on Thursday. We will see what they say first.”
Benjamin could see Jeremiah looking past his shoulder to something behind him. He turned to see Ms. Thomsen standing on the west lawn, beating a rug.
“She’s a looker all right, and a pretty nice person beyond that. When are you going to do something about that, Ben?”
“Do what?”
“I’ve known you a long time. I see the way you look at her. Ben, I’ve seen the way she looks at you. I can’t say for certain, but I spent a lot of time with Mrs. Bradford before she passed. I think she would approve.”
“Ms. Thomsen has a good heart, but there will only be one person for me.”
“I think you should be checking out more than her heart, but that is none of my business. Do you need me when the electrician is here? ...
