Darned if You Do by Monica Ferris Read Free Book Online Page B

the
authority
to go into Tommy’s house and clean it out. But I don’t want to make Tommy mad by throwing away some things he’s really attached to—though I think he thinks he’s attached to everything in the house.”
    â€œHow much does it matter to you, since eventually you will be returning to your home in Indiana?”
    Valentina sighed. “Do you know he plans to sue his neighbor over that tree that fell on his house? He wants her to pay for fixing his roof. And he’s not mad at her. I’m not sure what he’d do to me if I made him mad. So I really don’t want to give him a legal reason to be mad at me.”
    â€œIf you get that conservatorship, there’s no legal way he can stop you doing what needs to be done. And, let me tell you this: If Hennepin County condemns the house, it will be cleared out by county employees. They will be far less motivated to be careful with Mr. Riordan’s possessions, and far more likely to enrage him by their actions. And he can tie things up in the courts for a long time. On the other hand, he will have no grounds to sue you. You can go back home with a clear conscience and no legal vulnerability.”
    Valentina sat silent for a full minute. Then she said, “All right, tell me what I need to do.”
    *   *   *
    T HIS guy Penberthy wasn’t a bad man, not really. He was just trying to get something fixed that never should have needed to be fixed in the first place, and it was partly his fault that things had come to such a pass. Valentina wasn’t the sort of person who bad-mouthed people in the legal profession (or, for that matter, the police)—at least, not out loud—but she generally avoided them whenever possible. In her never humble opinion, they tended to be nosy and uppity.
    However, Penberthy had kindly—and patiently—explained to her the path to an emergency conservatorship and said he would help her fill out the paperwork and represent her in court when she sought one. He was sure there would be no problem getting one but insisted they should begin the process as soon as possible.
    So they spent half an hour filling out the form—which wasn’t complicated—and Valentina gave him the name of the motel where she was staying so he could contact her when he’d made an appointment for the hearing. He’d expressed surprise that she didn’t have a cell phone, to which she’d responded, “I never felt the need to have a leash on me.” To her surprise, that made him laugh.
    Then he had given her some good advice. First, and right away, she should find out who Tommy’s friends were in Excelsior and talk with them. Second, she should recruit—a cool word,
recruit
—a working party from among them. Third, as soon as the conservatorship was approved, she should go into the house and start sorting things into three piles: valuables (to be sold or kept), good but useless stuff (to be donated to charity), and worthless (to be thrown away). There was going to be a series of quarrels if Valentina were to ask Tommy about the disposition of valuable or good stuff, so Penberthy’s advice, to present Tommy with a fait accompli on her way out of town, was probably sound. She smiled to herself in the car; he had been ready to define the term, and she surprised him by knowing what it meant.
    Judging by her first trip into the house, Valentina thought that Penberthy might have given her a fourth piece of good advice: to rent a Dumpster to hold that third bunch of things.
    But Mr. Penberthy hadn’t told her how to connect with Tommy’s friends in town. Perhaps, since he was such a good thinker, she would call him and ask. Meanwhile, it was lunchtime.
    There were some nice upscale restaurants on Water Street, but her purse was slender and her tastes plebeian, so she drove a few blocks farther and found a bar-restaurant called the Barleywine. The