Forget Me Not Read online

  A lawyer? Did her parents have a lawyer in New Jersey or in Florida? She realized that she hadn’t a clue. There must be a lawyer in the background somewhere. How else had her parents deeded the house and studio over to her? A lawyer would have handled that. In order to find that out, she’d have to go to the bank and look in her safe-deposit box, where she kept the deed and the legal papers that came with it. Truth be told, she’d never even looked at those papers. The day she’d gotten her MBA, her parents had given her the news that they were moving and the house was hers. One week later, they were gone, and she was rattling around in a six-thousand-square-foot house that looked like no one had ever lived in it.

  She hadn’t cried that day, either, when she waved good-bye at the front door. When her parents didn’t even look back, she had slammed the door and screamed, “Good riddance!” at the top of her lungs. Then she’d gone nuts and bellowed out the F word again and again as she banged on the door.

  No one to call. Angie was off on an assignment; no sense in upsetting her when there wasn’t anything she could do, anyway. Only the airline. Which she did call. She booked herself a first-class ticket on a one o’clock flight out of Newark Airport for the following day. Since she didn’t know how long she’d have to be in Florida, there was no point in driving herself to the airport and leaving her car in the long-term lot. She called a car service, who said they would pick her up at eleven thirty the following morning.

  With nothing else to do, Lucy banked the fire, closed the glass screen, turned off the television, locked the back door, and made her way up the long circular staircase that resembled something in an antebellum Southern mansion. She made her way to her bedroom and, as always, was amazed at the lavishness of it. Everything was silk, satin, or brocade in champagne colors. The bed was a high riser, and she needed a step stool to get into it. Her bedroom had changed over the years from a little girl’s pink palace to a teenager’s domain, then to what she was looking at that evening. She would come home from boarding school one day a month and see a brand-new bedroom, and no one would say a word. It was just there. More often than not, she found excuses not to go home, and her parents didn’t seem to care one way or the other. Finally, she stopped going altogether. Everything was always neat and tidy, nothing, not even a piece of lint, anywhere to be found. She’d learned early on that nothing was negotiable with her parents. It just was.

  Lucy sat down on a beige satin-covered chair and kicked off her sneakers. She leaned back and closed her eyes. She didn’t hate her parents, but she didn’t like them very much, either. Love simply wasn’t in the equation. She couldn’t really complain about her life. Her parents had been good to her. In other words, good providers in lieu of being loving parents. She’d wanted for nothing. In fact, she’d had more than most kids ever dreamed of having.

  She had lived in a fine house full of people who saw to everything until she was ten years old. The things she yearned for the most, however, friends and a pet, had been denied. But her days were full at boarding school, with dance lessons, gymnastics, and piano lessons after regular classes. On the rare visits home, dinner was eaten alone in the kitchen with the housekeeper, whoever she happened to be that particular month. Breakfast was also with the housekeeper; then she was driven back to her boarding school by the chauffeur. Her mother looked in on her at night, usually around nine o’clock, for the obligatory kiss on the top of her head and a whispered good night during those rare visits. Sundays her father called her at school, usually at noon, from whatever corner of the world he was in that particular Sunday. The calls never lasted more than five minutes.

  Boarding school was okay—she’d actually enjoyed being away from home and being with her peers. She remembered those days fondly. Then came college, where she’d made some good friends, specifically Angie, and had her first affair—which had turned into a disaster when she found out she was just one of a string of girls the jerk had been seeing. She had sworn off the opposite sex after that and had concentrated on her studies, graduating magna cum laude, to her parents’ supposed delight. There had been no fanfare at her graduation. Her mother had attended, explaining that her father was in Germany, operating on the chancellor’s daughter. She’d handed over a generous check and left.

  Lucy had stayed on and gotten her master’s, and that was when her life changed—her parents retired and moved to Florida. Funny how she remembered that and the white-haired guy sitting in the front row who had smiled and clapped when she walked across the stage to accept her diploma. She’d wondered at the time if he was a friend of her mother’s, because he was sitting next to her, but she had never asked.

  Time to get a move on. She hated it when her memories took her back in time. The past was past, and there was nothing she could do about it. So what if she didn’t feel anything at her parents’ passing? So what if she couldn’t squeeze tears out of her eyes? So what! There was no one to care but her. Assuming she cared, which she didn’t.

  Pack. Good thing she hadn’t packed away her summer clothing. She quickly emptied out a week’s worth of clothing and slammed it all any which way into a suitcase. And there wasn’t one stitch of anything that was black in the suitcase. All she had to do was pack her cosmetics and toiletries in the morning, and she could be on her way.

  Lucy brushed her teeth, stripped off her clothes, and pulled on her pajamas, certain she wouldn’t sleep a wink and would end up staring at the ceiling all night, even though she’d consumed two bottles of beer.

  She was wrong; the minute her head hit the pillow, she was out like the proverbial light and didn’t wake till seven thirty the following morning. She showered, dressed conservatively in an olive-colored, lightweight suit, and headed downstairs, where she had coffee and a muffin. She watched television at the kitchen table while she waited for the car service to arrive. Her thoughts were everywhere and nowhere as she contemplated what lay ahead of her.

  Chapter Two

  Lucy let herself into her parents’ house, or, as she thought of it now, the other hateful house. She thought at that moment that the house was giving off vibes that the people who had lived in it were gone. Gone as in never coming back. She dropped the house keys, her mother’s keys, in a little crystal dish that sat on a table in the massive foyer. She knew they were her mother’s keys because they were in the purse the police had given her. Everything had been in a sealed clear plastic bag. A purse whose contents were sparse: a package of Kleenex that hadn’t even been opened, a cell phone, the keys, a small wallet with two credit cards, a driver’s license, an insurance card, and ninety dollars in cash. A small coin purse had $3.47 in change in it. In a smaller plastic bag inside the police-tagged bag were her mother’s earrings, her watch, and her wedding ring. All that was left of Helene Brighton.

  There wasn’t even that much in her father’s police bag. His wallet with two credit cards, his insurance card, his driver’s license, along with the car registration; a cell phone; and $451.00 in bills, plus ninety-four cents in change, which must have been in his trouser pocket at the time of the crash. His watch, his tie clip, his wedding ring, and his car keys barely filled the little bag. It was all that was left of Fritz Brighton, the world’s most respected and renowned heart surgeon. How sad that her parents had been reduced to two small plastic bags. Right now, right this moment, she couldn’t even remember where she’d put the two plastic bags. Probably in the kitchen, which looked like it had never been used.

  Lucy looked at herself in the foyer mirror. She didn’t look like she’d just come from a funeral. To her eye, she looked the way she always looked. She had pulled her hair back in a bun; she was wearing makeup, something she didn’t normally wear during the day. Her dress was simple, a beige, sleeveless A-line dress with a pair of pearls. Her shoes and handbag were a darker beige. She kicked off her shoes and padded barefoot out to the kitchen, where she brewed a pot of coffee. While she waited for the coffee to run through the filter, she stared out across the deck, which was e
mpty of furniture or flowers. The day was gray and gloomy, and if she was any judge of the weather, it would rain before the day was over. Funeral weather.

  Now, where did that thought come from? What she knew about funerals and weather would fill a thimble. Must be from television shows. Or perhaps she’d read it in a book? That was the best she could come up with for an answer.

  Lucy poked around in the refrigerator, thinking she should eat something, but she wasn’t hungry. Maybe later. Instead, she thought about the funeral, which wasn’t really a funeral—only a service, since she’d had her parents cremated. She hadn’t been able to find a will in the house, which would possibly have stated her parents’ burial wishes. So she’d gone ahead with the cremation since, according to the police, the bodies had been so mangled during the accident that identification was all but impossible. The detective had gone on to tell Lucy it would be better to remember her parents the way she’d seen them last and not the way they’d died. She remembered nodding as she agreed with the detective.

  Lucy sipped at her coffee, wishing she could cry or feel something. When no tears or feelings emerged, she sighed and looked around the marvelous kitchen, which had every right to be featured in Architectural Digest. Everything looked bright and shiny new. Barely any staples in the butler’s pantry, little to nothing in the refrigerator. Did her parents eat out every day? Her mother had never been a cook, and her father had teased her about burning everything, which was why they’d always had a cook while she was growing up. Did her parents have a cook here? A housekeeper? If so, where was she? Maybe she needed to talk to the neighbors, ask a few questions about her parents.

  It was odd, Lucy thought, that none of the neighbors had stopped by to offer their condolences. Neighbors did things like that back in New Jersey. And no one had been at the service except for herself, the pastor, and someone named Lucas Kingston, who, the pastor told her, was the developer of Palm Royal, the enclave where her parents lived. An elderly couple, perhaps her parents’ age, had sat in the last pew, but when the service was over and she turned around, they were gone. They could have been neighbors, for all she knew, or they could have been strangers who just attended services because they had nothing better to do with themselves.

  How could her parents have lived here in Palm Royal for five years and not have friends who would attend their funeral service? It was all so weird that she didn’t know what to think. But thinking wasn’t going to get her anywhere; she knew that for certain. Just then, though, she needed to get off her duff and dive into what needed to be done until she could figure out if her parents had an attorney, a will, or where they kept their records. And she would have to make a decision if she was the one who needed to do all the work about putting the house up for sale, checking to see if any bills were owed, things of that nature.

  Maybe what she should do was engage the services of a lawyer and let him handle it all. That way, she could simply pack up her parents’ things and put them in storage or take them back to New Jersey. She could pack a lot in her father’s Range Rover in the garage and drive back instead of flying. Maybe she could sell the house furnished. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about donating or selling off the furnishings, since they were new and looked new. The Mercedes her parents had been driving at the time of the accident was, of course, totaled. That meant she’d have to deal with the insurance company as soon as she figured out who that company was. Best-case scenario, three more days before she could leave. Worst-case scenario, at least a week to tidy up all the loose ends and be on her way.

  Lucy almost jumped off her chair when she heard a boom of thunder. She finished her coffee and made her way to the second floor, stopping just long enough to pick up her shoes in the foyer. It took her just ten minutes to pack up her dress and shoes and put on a pair of faded, comfortable shorts and a T-shirt. She tied the laces of her sneakers and headed back to the first floor. Start at the bottom and work your way to the top, a niggling voice said. That meant the garage first.

  No one has a garage like this, Lucy thought as she turned on the overhead light. There wasn’t so much as an oil stain on the off-white concrete. Her father’s Range Rover sat silent, its doors locked. There was nothing on any of the shelves, no jars of nails or screws, no tools, no gas can, no boxes of anything. No lawn equipment. There wasn’t even a trash can. She frowned as she tried to remember if there was one outside. Didn’t people here recycle? Well, if they did, her parents weren’t among those who did their duty for the environment. She made a mental note to check the Rover later, although it was doubtful anything of any importance would be in the truck.

  It took Lucy two full hours to check all the rooms on the first floor. All she could do was shake her head at what she didn’t find. The drawers in the hutch and buffet server were empty. Every single drawer on the first floor was empty. The kitchen drawers held nothing but one notepad, one pen, a screwdriver, a small hammer, and eight slim candles still in the box they came in, along with a pack of matches tucked inside the box. The candles must have been her parents’ idea of a hurricane package.

  Back in the kitchen, Lucy washed her hands and poured a second cup of coffee. Her hands hadn’t even been dusty, which meant someone had cleaned this house at some point. That someone definitely was not her mother. Not only didn’t her mother cook; she didn’t clean, either. Maybe the house cleaner came only once a week and didn’t even know about her parents’ death, and she’d show up on her assigned day. Anything was possible, she thought fretfully.

  Lucy watched the rain slashing at the windows. Off in the distance, she could see lightning as it danced and zipped across the sky to the tune of the wild thunder. She did take a moment to wonder if a rainstorm like this was normal for the time of year. In the end, however, she didn’t really care, so she finished her coffee and headed back up to the second floor.

  Lucy started with her parents’ bedroom. It was lovely, she thought, white wicker with bright accents of color. It made her think of sunny days and lush gardens. She couldn’t imagine her father sleeping in such a room, but she had to admit that she really knew virtually nothing about his likes and dislikes. The monstrous walk-in closet was a puzzle, though. It was screamingly neat. Everything, and there wasn’t much of everything, was neatly arranged. For some reason it all seemed staged, and that was the only word that came to mind. Seven suits, seven pairs of shoes on her father’s side. Dress shirts, all white and seven in number; a heavy parka in a clear dry cleaner’s bag; two casual jackets with leather patches on the elbows; a Windbreaker; and three zippered heavy sweat jackets with hoods, seven in number again. A pair of stout cold-weather boots. Seven sweaters in the gray and beige line. A rack with seven ties and seven belts. That completed her father’s side of the closet.

  Her mother’s side of the enormous walk-in closet held seven pantsuits, seven dresses, seven skirts, seven blouses, and seven pastel cashmere sweaters. A heavy outdoor jacket and two long coats were hanging side by side next to two raincoats, one gray, one black, and two evening wraps, one black velvet and one a champagne color. Again, seven in number. She counted sixteen pairs of shoes, from flats to mid-heel to spike heels. Jimmy Choo and Ferragamo. A lone pair of snow boots sat in the corner. Two pegs held seven scarves, seven belts, and one umbrella with a jewel-encrusted handle. The top shelf assigned to her mother held designer handbags: Chanel, Prada, Gucci, Fendi, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, and Bottega Veneta. All of them were empty and appeared to be new. And even if not new, then barely used.

  A frown built between Lucy’s brows when she realized that there were no suitcases or even duffel bags anywhere to be seen. And yet her parents traveled constantly. Scratch that thought: They used to travel constantly, before they retired five years ago. She had no idea what they had done these past years.

  Lucy continued with her search and walked next to the room that had been used as an office. The desk was a custom rosewood affair, extra long, with two beautiful burgundy ergonomic chairs side b
y side. Two laptop computers, a fax machine, a copy machine, and a printer. All separate units. An eighty-six-inch plasma TV hung on one wall. The other walls were bare. Did her parents sit in the ergonomic chairs to watch TV? She tried clicking on the laptops, but everything was password protected. She’d need a hacker to get into either one of them.

  Lucy looked around. Every office had filing cabinets. This home office did not. The desk drawers were empty, with the exception of a box of paper clips, several gel pens, sticky notepads, a calculator with big numbers, a large box of staples, and a stapler. The closet was just that, a closet. But instead of a rod to hang clothes, there were shelves, which held boxes of copy paper, file folders, and mailing envelopes. The phone was black and was just an ordinary landline. The fax machine was also black.

  “Well, this is a bust,” Lucy muttered out loud. As if her outburst needed an exclamation point, a roar of thunder shook the house. Lightning must have struck something close by, she thought, as the lights flickered once, then again, but remained on. Lucy walked from room to room on the second floor. She’d already checked out the bedroom she had slept in, and it was just a room, with nothing hidden or stuck anywhere. The other bedrooms and connecting baths were just as bare. All were furnished, but that was as far as it went. No clues, no scraps of paper, no hidden messages. Neat and tidy.