The Kumquat Legacy
by Randal Koster
Copyright 2012 Randal Koster
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Chapter 1: The Dead Man
When I saw the dead man, he was sitting on a bench in Darcy Park.
I’d better explain that. He wasn’t dead when I saw him that Saturday. He was old, maybe in his 90s, but right then, that Saturday, he was obviously still alive. He died the following week, in his sleep. His heart gave out, just like that. Nobody was surprised. In fact, he amazed his doctor by living as long as he did.
They tell me that he visited Darcy Park a lot, so I must have seen him before. After all, I’m always in that park myself – it’s right near my house, and it’s a good place to hide out from chores and homework. If I did see him before, though, I don’t remember. I only noticed him that Saturday because of where he was sitting – on a bright, shiny green park bench that held a sign reading, in big capital letters, “KEEP OFF – WET PAINT”. He was looking straight ahead, at nothing in particular. His fingers danced lazily up and down on the back of the bench, just above the sign.
“Poor guy,” I thought to myself. “He doesn’t have a clue.” I slowed my bike to a stop and hopped off. “Excuse me,” I said out loud. “Did you see that sign? It says …”
“‘Wet paint’,” he said, finishing my sentence in a quiet, crackly voice. He said nothing more; he just sat there, looking at me. He sure seemed odd. Of course, at his age, he couldn’t help having a whiskery, sagging chin, wrinkles around his eyes, a freckled bald head, and thin wisps of hair coming out of his ears. But why did he choose to wear a blue suit that was much too big for him, with a bow tie on so crooked that his head looked like it was tipped to one side?
And his face – I couldn’t read that at all, not with all those wrinkles. Maybe he was grinning, or maybe he was frowning. I guess I stared at him. “You mean you know…”
“All my life, I’ve done what I should,” he explained. “I’ve done what all the signs have told me to do.” He lifted his cane and tapped it lightly on the words “KEEP OFF – WET PAINT”. “Here’s another sign telling me what to do. When I saw it, I got very excited. I wanted to break a rule! I went back to my room and put on my best suit. Then I came back here and sat down.”
“Oh… Okay.” I suddenly wanted to leave, as quickly as possible. I didn’t know what else to say to the old man, and even if I did, I wasn’t going to say it. He was weird. I gave him a brief nod – my way of being polite, I guess – and then turned to pick up my bike. That’s when he dropped the bomb.
“Your name’s Dave, isn’t it?” he asked, his quiet voice all too clear.
I froze. How on Earth did he know that? I looked back at him and saw that he had picked up a camera from somewhere and was holding it to his eye. Click! Before I knew it, he had taken my picture.
“I… I don’t understand…” I stammered.
“Your name’s Dave, and you have a sister named Loni and a friend named Brent,” the old man said. He fell silent again. He just sat there looking at me, as before. I tried reading his face. Did it look friendly? Evil? Mysterious? I couldn’t tell. If I had to guess something, I’d say it looked… sleepy.
“I have to go!” I said quickly. I jumped on my bike and sped off, only too glad to get away. I hoped I would never see him again, because now he was really giving me the creeps.
And I wished so much that he hadn’t taken my picture. I had a funny feeling that somehow, the picture would find its way back to me.
I was right.
****
The strange expression on the old man’s face haunted me all that morning and through lunch. I just couldn’t get the image of his old, sleepy eyes and his wrinkled grin, if that’s what it was, out of my head. Fortunately, though, the afternoon got busy, and I had other stuff to think about. I had just turned 13, so my family took me to the movies as a birthday present. The next day, Sunday, we drove to Los Angeles – a couple of hours away – to visit my grandparents. And then, of course, came Monday and school. My “school” is actually in our kitchen, since I’m homeschooled. My sister and I were trying to finish up several units that week, since summer was fast approaching.
We needed two weeks to finish all of our work. Those two weeks passed by very slowly – lesson, after lesson, worksheet after worksheet. I probably spent half the time looking at the clock. Finally, I handed in my final math test. “You know that horseshoe set I got for my birthday?” I asked my mom, as she scanned it. “Can I dig holes for the stakes in the front yard?”
“Oh, I guess so,” she said, her eyes still on the test. “If you take Loni out there with you.” That was no surprise. My mother is always trying to get my younger sister outside, out into the fresh air. Loni would much rather spend every minute of her spare time in the house, where she would read a book, play with her bizarre dollhouse, or work on puzzles. Loni is some kind of genius when it comes to puzzles, as you’ll hear about later. Anyway, she won’t play outside unless she’s forced to. Mom was forcing her to go outside now, sending her out with me.
“Don’t set up the stakes so that you’re throwing the horseshoes toward the house!” my mom called out as Loni and I ran out the door. “Set it up so that you throw them across the yard sideways!”
“I know! I know!” I called back impatiently. To be honest, though, I hadn’t thought of that.
I grabbed a shovel, found the perfect spots in the yard for the stakes, and began to dig. This was more difficult than you might guess. We don’t get a lot of rain where I live, and the shovel kept hitting sandstone. I was hacking away it, trying to scrape through it, when Loni startled me with a hard tap on the shoulder.
“That man was looking at you!” she whispered urgently.
I lifted my head quickly and looked over at where she was pointing. Sure enough, a man in a gray suit was standing in front of our house. Right then he was looking at the numbers on our mailbox while speaking into a cell phone. He had short, neatly trimmed black hair, black-rimmed glasses, and a nose that was much too skinny and long for his wide face. He put the cell phone away and turned to face us. His eyes rested on me, and he studied my face intently. He pulled something from his pocket and looked down at it.
He looked up again. “Is your name Dave?” he called out.
I turned to Loni and whispered, “Go inside and get Mom!” She left, and I called back to him. “I might be. Who are you?” I was trying to speak casually, to show him that I wasn’t nervous. I don’t think he was impressed.
The man stepped forward, holding out what he had removed from his pocket. I saw now that it was a photograph. “This is you, isn’t it?” he asked. I looked at the photo. It was me, all right. You’ve probably already guessed that it was the photo I’d been dreading, the one the old man had taken two weeks earlier. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised to see it.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to say anything, for at that moment, my mother opened the front door. The man, with a courteous, businesslike smile, stood tall and turned to address her. “Good afternoon, Ma’am. I’m wondering if I could have a word with you.” As he stepped toward her, he reached into his vest and pulled out a business card.
My mother, still standing in the doorway, took the card and studied it. “You’re a lawyer?” she asked, some surprise in her voice.
“Yes, Ma’am. I have some business to discuss regarding your son, Dave.”
My mother’s face tensed – in fact, her whole body te
nsed. She frowned as she looked back down at the card, and her eyes were filled with concern. She asked the man what it was all about, but he wouldn’t tell her – he kept saying that the whole thing was rather complicated, that he would have to sit down with her and tell her the whole long story, starting at the beginning. He asked to come inside, but my mother refused. Instead, she arranged to meet with him that evening at his office, along with my dad.
The lawyer nodded to me as he left. It was a dignified nod, neither friendly nor unfriendly, and I didn’t know how to read it. I’d had a lot of trouble reading people that month.
I ran to the house. “Mom!” I asked. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. Probably nothing. We’ll find out soon!” She tried to sound cheerful, but she wasn’t convincing. She pulled out her cell phone and called my dad. Afterwards, she said, “You two can have a pizza while we’re gone this evening. And don’t worry. I’m sure nothing’s wrong!”
I nodded my head without enthusiasm. “What’s jail like?” I asked, only half joking.
****
Okay, I admit it – I didn’t really think I was going to jail. After all, I hadn’t done anything. Still, the whole thing worried me a lot. What was the lawyer telling my parents? I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t even know what lawyers did, other than argue cases in courts. Nothing made sense.
And Loni – she was a pain, as usual. After we finished our pizza, she insisted on performing a “dollhouse” play for me – a play in which her wooden, felt, and cloth dolls acted out some kind of story, one she made up on the spot.
Loni’s dollhouse plays are always ridiculous and dumb. She makes them that way on purpose. That why I almost always refuse to watch them. This time, though, the evening was dragging by so slowly that I couldn’t stand it anymore – I needed something to take my mind off my problem. I looked at the clock. My parents wouldn’t be home for another half-hour. “Just this once!” Loni begged. I reluctantly agreed.
Loni’s eyes lit up with excitement. Without another word she found a flashlight and aimed it at her dollhouse. Then she turned off all the other lights in the house and stumbled her way back to her ‘stage’. “This story stars Princey,” she said proudly, holding up a small painted wooden figure. She wobbled him back and forth, as if he were dancing. Then she placed him inside the dollhouse and started the play. This is how it went:
Princey: What a hard day I had, weeping the peasants.
I’d better explain that Princey has a ridiculous accent. When he says “weeping”, he’s really saying “whipping”. Princey is not a friendly guy.
Queen: Oh, there you are, Preencey! Good news, good news! We have raised your allowance from one meellion dollars a week to two meellion dollars a week!
Princey: Of course you deed! But where are servants? I must weep them.
(Before Queen can answer, the sounds of a heavy rapping fill the air. Soon a policeman doll appears.)
Policeman: Is this the home of the Royal Family? I am here to arrest someone named Princey. Weeping, I mean whipping, peasants is against the law.
Queen: Oh, Dear! Oh, Dear!
Princey: No problem, no problem! We find lawyer. Lawyer find eenocent boy. Boy go to jail instead of me!
Loni, her eyes gleaming, looked at me with an evil grin. She knew that those last lines would get to me. And they did. Furious, I did what anyone would have done. I grabbed a pillow off the couch and threw it at the dollhouse, scattering the characters in all directions. Boy, did that feel good!
“Hey!” Loni yelled angrily. She picked up the pillow and threw it back at me with all her might.
I knew she was going to miss. She always misses. She has terrible aim. I just had to guess where the pillow would go, so that I could catch it before it knocked over a lamp or something.
Sure enough, it was heading straight for my Mom’s favorite lamp. I jumped sideways across the living room, and even though it was pretty dark, I caught the pillow easily, like a soccer goalie stopping a penalty kick.
Loni had found another pillow and was about to throw it when the front door opened. I quickly turned and watched my Mom and Dad enter the room and turn on the light. They had funny looks on their faces.
I forgot all about my sister. “What happened?” I asked quickly. “What’s going on?”
My dad turned his head sideways and looked at me for several seconds. “You’ll never believe it!” he said. “I don’t see how this could have happened!”
“What?!” I demanded.
“Some rich old man has just died, and you’ve been named in his will!”
Chapter 2: The Reading of the Will
“This Cyril guy is a jerk.” That’s what I said to myself the next afternoon, as I squirmed about in my seat – a big cushy chair near the end of a long, polished wooden table. Cyril Morton was sitting directly across from me. His large, mustached mouth was frowning, and his dark eyes, half hidden beneath bushy eyebrows and a huge mop of brown hair, spent half their time glaring at me and the other half shut tight in concentration, as if he had to draw on huge amounts of inner strength just to put up with me. A few minutes before, when I introduced myself, he said some words to me that I’d better not write down here.
For an adult, he was acting pretty childish. I resisted the temptation to glare back at him. Instead, I sent my eyes around the rest of the table. Just to my left sat the lawyer who had found me at my house. His name, I learned, was Mr. Andrews, and he worked in an office down the hall from where we were now sitting. To the left of Mr. Andrews was a young, blonde woman who we first saw at a desk in the reception room when we got off the elevator, and across from her sat a very distinguished old man in a three-piece brown suit. He was studying some papers in front of him. He had friendly eyes, and for some reason I felt I could trust him.
I turned to my right and saw my Mom looking at her watch. She looked up at me and smiled. “It’ll start soon,” she said, reassuringly. She was wearing her best clothes and, unfortunately, some perfume. I wish she never wore the stuff. I tried to ignore the smell.
No one in the room spoke. We were all waiting for the old man to finish with the papers. Finally, he pushed them away. “I guess we can get started,” he said, looking up. “As you know, we are here to read the last will and testament of Jeffrey Morton, who died last week at the age of 95. He was a dear friend, almost like a father to me, and I... I miss him greatly.” As he said this, he quickly touched his right eye with the back of a finger. I don’t think he was crying, though. He continued. “My name is Arthur Halverson, and I…”
I stole another glance at Cyril. His chin was pressed down hard on his thumbs, and his face was beginning to tremble. Apparently, he couldn’t stand it any longer, for he suddenly slammed his fist down on the table.
Everyone jerked around to stare at him. Cyril, fuming, pointed at me and exclaimed, “What’s he doing here? He’s not family! I’m the only living relative! I’m the only legal heir! Send him home!”
Mr. Halverson took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Mr. Badger’s presence will soon become clear, Mr. Morton,” he said with patience. “Please let me proceed.” He picked up the small stack of papers in front of him. “As I was saying, my name is Arthur Halverson, and I am the executor of this will. That means that I’m in charge of seeing that everything goes to the right people.” He turned to me when he said this, implying that I wouldn’t know what an executor was unless he told me. I didn’t feel insulted, because he was right.
“Jeffrey wrote this only two days before his death,” he continued. “It therefore takes the place of his previous will. It is all in order and is signed by two witnesses.” He held it up and showed it to us. It was typed except for the signatures. Jeffrey Morton’s signature was scrawly and in blue ink.
Mr. Halverson cleared his throat. “Let me read it to you now, from start to finish.
“I, Jeffrey Morton, being of sound mind and body, hereby set forth this last will and testament…”
What followed was a bunch of boring legal stuff. I won’t bother you with it here. I tried to listen carefully, but my mind started wandering when Mr. Halverson started going through the lists of stocks, deeds, and property. Believe it or not, I entertained myself by watching the changes in Cyril Morton’s face. What a transformation! Cyril started out looking angry and whiny, but then, as it became clear that he would inherit all of Jeffrey Morton’s land and money, he started looking pleased with himself – his brows relaxed, and his mouth took on a slight, superior smile.
Mr. Halverson picked up the last page and reached for a glass of water with his other hand. Cyril used this opportunity to speak up. All traces of anger were gone, but he did sound impatient. “And the Kumquat Legacy?” he asked, his eyes fixed on the old man. “Doesn’t that come with everything else?”
Mr. Halverson looked at Cyril with some irritation. “Mr. Morton,” he said, shaking the paper in his hand. “I’m getting to that. The Kumquat Legacy is addressed right here.” He set the now empty glass down on the table and looked around. “This part of the will is written less formally than the other parts,” he said. “It’s actually very interesting. Let me read it to you.” Here’s what he read: