We All Killed Grandma Read Online Free PDF Page B

more?”
    “I believe he said you’re a widower. Is that right?”
    “Yes, my wife died six years ago. Well, let’s see; I’ve been a friend of your whole family for twenty years. Started out knowing your father, August Britten, when he moved next door to me at that time. He was a widower, then—your mother, his second wife, had died when you were a toddler, years before. Let’s see—you were about eight years old twenty years ago, Arch was—he’d have been about thirteen. Grandma Tuttle, your mother’s mother, wasliving with him, taking care of you children. She’d have been—let’s see, forty-four. That would have been five or six years before your father died.”
    “I haven’t got around to asking Arch; what did my father do?”
    “Real estate. And after he died, Grandma Tuttle—in her fifties—got the idea of carrying on his business. Not too bad an idea; there wasn’t enough money for her to have raised you kids on. I think his estate was less than ten thousand dollars plus about a half equity in the house; she certainly couldn’t have sent you boys through college on that, let alone have had anything left for her old age. So she dived into real estate with both feet, and everybody was sorry for her and helped her at first—even if they were a little amused at it. Only they quit being amused within a year or so—because she turned out to have a touch of genius at it, and to be crazy about it.”
    “How much would you estimate she made?”
    “Oh, no great fortune. I’d say she averaged, over the fourteen years she was at it, twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars a year. But that was more than your father had ever made; I doubt if he ever did better than half of that. And she put you boys through college—and died leaving you a lot more money than your dad had left her.”
    Arch had told me most of that. I said, “You’re getting away from yourself, Mr. Henderson. Did you do much work for her?”
    “At first, all her legal work, helped her get started. Mostly out of friendship, because real estate work isn’t in my line. Insurance work is my real field; I represent most of the bigger insurance companies in town. So when, about ten years ago, my son got his law degree and hung out his shingle I talked Grandma into turning her work over to him. She did, for about five years, and then they had a tiff over some little thing, nothing important—and they never had liked one another very well, I’m afraid—so she quit him and wanted me to do her work for her again. We were pretty close friends by then, so I agreed, and I’ve done it ever since. Oh, not that there was an awful lot of it—just routine stuff—or that I made much money out of it. And I’d rather not have done it, because it wasn’t in myline and was just a lot of nuisance to me. But I did it out of friendship because she didn’t want anybody else. Not even Andy.”
    “Andy? Your son?”
    “Yes. Andrew J. You know him—knew him. He’s a couple of years younger than you are, but you used to play together as kids, living next door to one another. But you drifted apart when you each went away to college—different colleges—and I guess you’ve just been casual acquaintances ever since.”
    “He lives here with you? Or do you live alone here?”
    “Not exactly either, Rod. Andy married six years ago and took a place of his own—he’s made a grandfather out of me since, incidentally. But I have two other children who more or less live with me, and a housekeeper—the one who let you in just now. Both of the other children are away right now on vacations. A younger son, Manfred, twenty, still in college—he’s studying law, too—right now visiting a college pal on Cape Cod. And Alice, twenty-two, visiting for a couple of weeks with friends in Florida. She should be back in a few days. Yes, you knew both of them.”
    I said, “Hope I will again, Mr. Henderson.” I stood up. “Well, that’s probably about all I can