Read Online The Nature of My Inheritance by Bradford Morrow - Free Book Online

the
house.
    “I hope you don’t mind me bringing it up
again, hope I’m not opening old wounds.”
    “I guess not,” I said, looking away from him
toward the window of our neighbor’s house
next door. Why was it their curtains were always
drawn, no matter what the weather?
    “Well, I didn’t want to get your mom’s hopes
up but I think we may have a possible break in
his case. After all this time, it doesn’t happen that
often. I mean, for a cold case to suddenly get
warm again.”
    That same strange feeling of guilt, like I had
killed him myself, came over me then. It wasn’t
a feeling I liked one bit, a ridiculous sensation
since I was sitting right there with my little
brother and mom when the accident happened.
But I felt it anyway. I just hoped that Reynolds,
who was sharp as ever and curiously intimidating,
couldn’t feel it, too.
    “How so? What happened?”
    “There’s a man, his name doesn’t matter, who
passed away a few months ago, died of natural
causes. Lived with his wife on the Upper East
Side of New York. An advertising exec, did well
in his career, made good money.”
    “Doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who
would push a minister down some stairs.”
    Reynolds paused, took in a deep breath, exhaled.
“Well, you’re right. At least partly right.
You see, this man was a collector. Collected all
sorts of things from coins and stamps to paintings
and books. He had great taste, to say the
least, and as it’s beginning to come clear to those
who were tasked with probating his estate, it
looks like his taste went way beyond his income,
which was already pretty hefty.”
    I naturally had already made the possible
connection, but said, doorknob dumb, or trying
to be, “I’m not seeing what this has to do with
my dad yet.”
    “Well, I’ll get to that now. You see, it looks like
he was working with some dealers, suppliers of
fine art stuff, not all of them totally legit. For instance,
turns out one of his best paintings, a portrait
of some girl by Degas—”
    Reynolds mispronounced the name so it
rhymed with Vegas, but I kept my tongue glued
to the roof of my mouth. I didn’t like the direction
any of this was going.
    “—was stolen from a museum in Austria.
And there were other items, not by any means
all of them, by the way, that seem to have come
from institutions here and there. So, here’s the
bit that bothers me regarding your father. His
address and phone number, both at the church
and your house, were in a little book this collector
kept in a wall safe.”
    “That’s nuts,” I said.
    “It is nuts, you’re right. Especially since, so far
as the authorities working on all this have been
able to determine, a number of the other names
and contact info listed in his book could be
traced to dealers in coins, stamps, art, and various
collectibles like that. Now some of them
have checked out, but others are under investigation.
And as you can imagine, all the assets of
the estate are frozen until his collections can be
gone through with a fine-toothed comb to see
what’s what.”
    I made my first mistake ever with Reynolds
when I said, “I’m lost here.”
    “Well, I have to doubt that, Liam,” glancing
over at me as the heavy mist turned to light drizzle.
“I can imagine you wouldn’t want to think
your father, being a preacher and all, could be
caught up in anything even slightly illegal. But
there are some questions about why he was in
this man’s address book that will have to be answered
at some point. Whether your dad found
himself involved in any of this, which I seriously
doubt, by the way, isn’t really my ballywick. But
his death was and is.”
    I said nothing, not wanting to say something
wrong. Tongue glued, tongue glued.
    “Did you ever know your father to be interested
in collectibles at all?”
    “No, sir,” now finally lying.
    “People used to like stamp collecting a lot.
My grandfather had a humongous collection of
stamps and when he passed away, we had