Hard to Trust

Thursday evenings at the Dixie lounge were always louder than any other night. Jessica could never understand it. Friday night was the real night for revelry. Saturday night was for drowning yourself in whiskey, so you could forget what you did on Friday, and Sunday was for quiet drinks and preparing yourself to face another week. But the Thursday crowd were always rowdy, handsy, and crappy tippers. Maybe it was a Memphis thing. She had only been in town a few months and was still getting used to the vibe.

She whipped the bar towel off her shoulder and mopped up the end of the counter where one of her regulars upended a whiskey, a clear sign they were ready to be cut off, then put the glass into the dishwasher under the bar and draped the towel back over the same shoulder.

Every stool around the horseshoe bar was full and every table around the room as well. There were some pockets of people standing around, especially at the jukebox, which was currently blaring its fifth, or millionth, Jessica wasn’t sure, rendition of Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen.

“Jessica, can you go down to the cellar and tap a new keg of Frog Stomp IPA?”

Jessia looked over her shoulder at Jack, the mar Manager, who was pulling the tap and getting only froth.

“You got it,” Jessica yelled out over the music then hurried through the back store room into the cellar.

She hated tapping kegs, but everyone else seemed to be too afraid of the spiders in the cellar to want to bother. She twisted the coupler into the keg and was just locking it into place when her cell phone rang in her pocket.

“Shit,” she muttered and quickly pulled the lever into place, double checked the pressure in the cO2 tank then snagged her phone from her back pocket as she hurried up the stairs into the store room for better reception.

The number on the screen had a California ID and she frowned at it as she walked into the bar and waved at Jack to let him know the keg was ready then ducked back into the store room and answered the call.

“Hello?”

“Hello? Is this Maria Webber?”

Jessia tripped over nothing and put a hand against the wall to steady herself. It had been almost a year since anyone called her by that name.

“Depends on who’s asking,” she asked carefully.

“This is Marcus Weaving from Mason Hayes law firm, in San Diego.”

“Law firm? You’re a lawyer?”

“Are you Ms Webber?”

“Why are you calling?”

“I’m calling about the estate of Mr. William Foster.”

“Foster?” Jessica said and the name triggered a vague memory on the edge of her brain, just out of reach of recollection.

“William Foster, he was, I believe, an old friend of Ms. Webber’s father,” Marcus said carefully as Jessica moved across the store room and sat down on stacked slabs of beer cans.

“Willy…Willy Foster,” she muttered and her mind was flooded with the image of a tall, broad, dark skinned man with a smile as wide and slow as the Mississippi river. “He was in the army with my dad, he was in the helicopter with him when he was shot down.”

“Yes, that’s him,” Marcus said, with a little relief in his voice. “So, you are Ms. Webber?”

“Yes, I am.” Jessica felt the air seep out of her lungs as if every space in her body was filled with memories of the man who came to the house and told her mother her father had been killed. Who held her mother while she cried throughout the funeral arrangements, and held her hand at the graveside. That had been almost twenty years ago and she hadn’t seen him since he drove away after the funeral. “You said…you said his estate?”

“Yes, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but he passed away recently.”

“Oh,” she said, the only word she could utter as shock numbed her body and she slumped back against the wall.

“We tried to contact you for the service, but it was quite difficult to locate you.”

“Right,” Jessica said and felt tension race across her shoulders and she straightened up. It was all by design, but if this lawyer was able to eventually find her, then so could her ex. The hairs on the back of her neck rose with that realisation.

“But I’m glad we found you now,” Marcus continued and she heard him shuffle some pages and type on a keyboard before he chuckled softly.

She imagined Marcus in the classic wood panelled office with bookshelves overflowing with thick tomes and stacks of paper. His desk would be wide and cluttered and based on the soft rasp in his voice she guessed there’d be an almost full ashtray with one smouldering cigarette almost burned out.

“William Foster has named you as a beneficiary in his will.”

“Wait…what?” Jessica said and shook her head to pull herself out of her reverie and focus on the voice in her ear.

“He had one sister, who passed before him and no other family. He left everything, such as it is, to you.”

“To me?”

“There’s a letter here explaining everything. I can mail it to you if you give me your address.”

“You said everything such as it is…what does that mean?” she asked, dodging the question about her actual whereabouts. No one knew where she was and that was a carefully cultivated plan to disappear. She wasn’t about to give her address to anyone.

“Mr Foster wasn’t a rich man,” Marcus said, and she heard him use the keyboard some more. “Here we are. He left you a small sum of money, amounting to exactly seventy three thousand, two hundred, and eighty five dollars, and fifty six cents.”

“Oh my god,” she muttered with a soft gasp.

“As well as the deed to the property he owned in California, outside a small town called Northbridge.”

“California?” she exclaimed and ran her hand through her auburn hair to pull it away from her face. This was all too much for a random phone call on a Thursday evening.

“It’s a bar, with a small apartment above it. I can send you all the details if you share with me your email address.”

“A bar? He left me a bar?”

Marcus chuckled again and she could see him sitting back in his large leather wingback chair. “It’s more of a roadside tavern. I have the business accounts which I will also share.”

“Oh my god,” she said and she dropped her chin to her chest and took a few deep breaths.

“You don’t need to make any decisions right now.”

“Decisions? What kind of decisions?”

“About whether or not you want to sell the property.”

“Sell it? Is it valuable?”

“Not particularly,” Marcus said carefully. “If you give me your email address I’ll send you the business details.”

“Right, ok,” Jessica said, and she took a few more deep breaths as she prepared to give out her email to a stranger. Could this be real? Or was it all an elaborate way of getting her info? Was Elliot behind all of this?

She felt a cold bolt of fear sluice down her spine and chill her core. She stood away from the wall and started to pace, as one hand worried her hair.

“Marcus Weaving you said, right?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“From Mason Hayes Law firm?”

“That is correct.”

“Okay, I need to digest all this news and think about it. I’m going to call you back in a few days.”

“That’s a good idea, Ms. Brady,” Marcus said, and Jessica felt a wave of relief that he wasn’t going to push her for her details. “Let me give you my direct number-”

“That’s ok,” she said and cut him off. “I can find it when I need it.”

“Okay,” he said with another soft chuckle, the sound of which was beginning to annoy her.

“I’ll talk to you soon,” she said, then hung up the phone before he could say anything else.

She shoved it in her pocket then hurried out to the bar and got back to serving customers. She didn’t have the time or energy to think about that phone call. She didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to recall Willy Foster in all his great strong protective glory. And she certainly didn’t have the brain power to make life altering fiscal decisions. She pushed everything to the back of her mind and let it marinade there while she focused on closing out her shift.

By the time the bar was cleared out, and her till was accounted for, she grabbed her jacket from the back room, patted it down to be sure she had her keys then waved a hurried goodbye to Jack who was reading the newspaper with a whiskey in front of him, his usual nightly routine, and left the bar.

She pulled on her jacket and kept her keys in her hand with the small jagged metal parts stuck out between her fingers. All the self defence classes she took told her how this was a bad idea, but she couldn’t help it. It offered her some comfort, so she kept doing it anyway. Her apartment was only a few blocks from the bar and with her quick pace she was home in no time.

She quickly locked the door behind her, bolted it, and flipped the latch into place then took a slow deep breath. In her apartment she could breathe a bit easier as she slipped off her jacket, toed off her sneakers, and crossed the small room to the Murphy bed she left perpetually down.

The rental agency generously called the apartment a studio though Jessica was sure there was likely some legal size requirement for that title to be accurate. When she stretched her arms out she was only a couple of feet shy of being able to touch two opposite walls. Her bed was against one side of the room and it meant there was no space to walk around the apartment. The kitchenette consisted of the world’s tiniest sink, a stovetop with two burners, one of which didn’t work, and a small chopping board that pulled out from under the stovetop. She could sit at the end of her bed and chop vegetables then just needed to stand up to cook them. The bathroom was basically a small wetroom with a toilet, that had a sink in the cistern, and a showerhead against the opposite wall.

Overall, the apartment had everything she needed and she didn’t intend to stay for very long anyway. She grabbed her battered laptop from the end of her bed and sat Indian style in the middle as she flipped it open and waited for it to boot up. The first thing she did was search for the law firm in San Diego, then scoured the staff pages and found Marcus Weaving.

He was not at all like she imagined. He was older, much older than she thought, possibly in his sixties. He had a full head of white hair that was combed into a tasteful style, and a warm smile. The panic that had been bubbling under her surface since that phone call started to subside. She took a few steadying breaths and dropped her head back and released a lungful of air with puffy cheeks.

She opened a new tab and searched for WIlliam Foster. When she found his obituary immediately it brought a tear to her eye. It had been so long since she had seen him, but he was still the same man with a wide smile, and gentle eyes. Vivid flashbacks plagued her mind like a kaleidoscope of memories and she felt exhausted from the bombardment.

She closed her laptop and shoved it aside then curled up against her pillow and fell asleep almost immediately.