Deadly Declarations (The Indie Retirement Mystery Series Book 1) Read online

  CONTENTS

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part II

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part III

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Part IV

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Reading Group Guide

  Acknowledgments

  Books By Landis Wade

  Connect With Landis

  About the Author

  For Gus and Lori

  COPYRIGHT

  Deadly Declarations

  By Landis Wade

  Copyright © 2022 Landis Wade

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN paperback: 978-1-7363055-8-4

  ISBN ebook: 978-1-7363055-9-1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021919856

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means–electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other–except by brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author. Requests may be directed to the author through his website: www.landiswade.com.

  This is a work of fiction. With the exception of verified historical events and persons, all incidents, descriptions, dialogue, and opinions expressed are the products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Cover design: Dissect Designs

  Book design: Jennipher Tripp

  Published: Lystra Books & Literary Services, LLC

  391 Lystra Estates Drive, Chapel Hill, NC 27517

  Printed in the United States of America

  DEADLY DECLARATIONS

  AN INDIE RETIREMENT MYSTERY

  LANDIS WADE

  "We must hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

  -Benjamin Franklin, at the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence has been an enigma for close to two hundred fifty years. According to oral history, the Meck Dec was signed in the turbulent wake of British hostilities at Lexington and Concord, when prominent Mecklenburg County citizens and militia leaders met in the North Carolina backwoods of Charlotte, the town George Washington called a “trifling place.” There, at a log courthouse, they debated their future allegiance to King George, and with their passions high and their principles firm, they declared their independence on May 20, 1775, from the most powerful nation in the world, assuming all risks attendant to their lives and property earned by such a treasonable act.

  Historians have treated the Meck Dec with disdain, running the gamut from contempt to indifference. Many called it fake. Others borrowed the words of Thomas Jefferson and called it “spurious.” Unlike Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence signed one year later, there is no surviving Meck Dec document. And yet, locals continue to celebrate the day and the date May 20, 1775, remains on the North Carolina state flag and on the Mecklenburg County seal. Were the North Carolinians first in freedom, as one North Carolina state license plate says? Or was the Meck Dec nothing more than a fabrication to gain favor in the nation’s revolutionary history?

  There is no dispute that a meeting was held at the log courthouse in Charlotte on May 20, 1775, and that a tavern owner named Captain Jack rode his horse five hundred miles to deliver documents from that meeting to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. And there is no doubt that controversies followed. Burned documents. Missing documents. Stolen documents. Falsified documents. And, yet, curiously, virtually identical phrases appeared in the Meck Dec and the Declaration of Independence, raising the question: If the Meck Dec did exist, who copied from whom?

  PART I

  AT DEATH’S DOORSTEP

  CHAPTER 1

  CONCEALMENT

  June 22, 1819,

  John Adams’s Letter to Thomas Jefferson

  Dear Sir:

  May I enclose to you one of the greatest curiosities and one of the deepest mysteries that ever occurred to me? It is in the Essex Register of June 5, 1819. It is entitled the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.

  How is it possible that this paper should have been concealed from me to this day?

  Had it been communicated to me in the time of it, I know, if you do not know, that it would have been printed in every Whig newspaper upon the continent. You know, that if I had possessed it, I would have made the hall of Congress echo and reecho with it fifteen months before your Declaration of Independence. What a poor, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass is Tom Paine’s Common Sense, in comparison with this paper.

  I am and always shall be affectionately and respectfully yours,

  J. Adams

  CHAPTER 2

  WAKING UP DEAD

  Yeager Alexander’s motto for retirement living was, “Ain’t dead, yet,” but when he heard a siren and saw an ambulance, lights flashing, heading for one of the residential buildings at the Independence Retirement Community, he said aloud, “Waking up dead is rarely a good thing.” The red and white swirling lights came into view as he finished his pre-dawn walk. This was not the first time he’d seen this vehicle at the Indie. He was sure it wouldn’t be the last.

  Yeager stood on the crushed gravel path that fronted his cottage and bordered Lost Cove Lake, the smaller of the two Indie lakes. He liked to get up early and walk the land. Around the community center. Past the five-story residence buildings. Between the cottages that fronted Freedom Lake. And across the property line to admire the Hezekiah Alexander Rock House, the jewel of the Queen City History Museum. The house was built in 1774 and had stone siding with strange carvings (if you knew where to look, and Yeager did). It had been home to one of the signers of Mecklenburg County’s controversial and long-vanished declaration of independence from Britain, signed on May 20, 1775.

  Yeager’s best friend, Matthew Collins, was taking him on a road trip in a few hours that had something to do with the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. The ninety-six-year-old Collins was known to everyone as the professor because of his love of history. The professor did not believe the Meck Dec had ever existed, but he’d promised Yeager a surprise on their outing, one he said Yeager would like.

  What Yeager didn’t like was the ambulance being parked in front of the professor’s building. He walked the fifty yards up the hill and stopped in the shadows, not twenty feet away from a woman dressed in a medic uniform who was talking on a radio. The early morning air was cool and smelled of pine and rain. Clouds gathered. The quiet before the coming storm allowed the seriousness in her voice to carry on the freshening breeze.


  “He’s dead. Collecting the body now.”

  Yeager followed the paramedic into the building and onto the elevator for a ride to the third floor. He let her step out first, held the door until she was out of sight, and slid into the elevator lobby. He peeked around the corner of the narrow hallway and saw her enter room 312, the residence of his best friend. Yeager felt unsteady, like the floor had pitched. He squeezed his eyes shut and reached out to the wall for balance. He bit his lip to suppress the tears he felt coming, but it didn’t do much good. He thought of Lori, the professor’s granddaughter. She would be heartbroken too.

  Minutes later, the paramedic and her partner came out the door of 312, rolling a stretcher that held a covered body.

  A woman in a pink silk nightgown and robe walked beside the stretcher. She had her right hand resting on the body’s chest. Yeager knew who the woman was, and it was a shock to see her there. He leaned back against the faded green wall. He had nowhere to hide.

  The woman’s eyes widened when she saw him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I saw the ambulance.”

  Sue Ellen Parker turned away and watched the paramedics load the professor on the elevator.

  “Anything I can do?” Yeager said.

  She stepped past Yeager onto the elevator and turned around. “People will talk. You should keep your mouth shut.” And then for emphasis, as the doors closed, she said, “For once.”

  Yeager was alone in the quiet of the dim hallway. He wiped his eyes and ran the fingers on his right hand through his thick, tangled beard like a comb. What would people talk about, and what did she want him to keep quiet about?

  The professor hadn’t mentioned any spend-the-night parties with Sue Ellen, and Yeager hadn’t heard any rumors about them. But rumors grew faster than weeds at the Indie and were harder to kill. Still, Yeager didn’t believe cohabitation was the issue. He owed it to the professor to find out what secret Sue Ellen really wanted to keep. Yeager took out his key, the one the professor had given him, and let himself in the professor’s place.

  Yeager wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but since the motivation for his unauthorized inspection was the sight of Sue Ellen Parker coming from the professor’s unit in the early morning and in her night clothes at that, he started in the master bedroom. The double bed was not the answer. Covers and sheets were pulled back on one side only. The bedside table held a clock, a lamp, and a pill bottle turned on its side, with the cap on the floor and pills spilled on the table and the floor. Yeager inspected the bottle. It was the professor’s prescription medication for insomnia.

  Yeager opened the closet and found it full of men’s slacks, shirts, and sport coats. No woman’s clothes in sight. The bathroom was next. Just one toothbrush and cup next to the sink. No blow dryer. Nothing under the sink but a man’s Dopp kit and extra shaving lotion.

  After his brief search, Yeager surmised the professor bedded down without Sue Ellen Parker at his side. It didn’t mean she’d never slept with him. Anything was possible when it came to old-people sex at the Indie, but other than a few pillows and a blanket strewn on the sofa in the great room—the only clue she or somebody else might have spent the night there—Yeager found no other evidence to explain her presence.

  Raindrops streaked the large window in the great room. Normally, Yeager liked early morning rain, but this was no mist. Droplets pelted against the pane as limbs on trees swayed. He saw lightning streak and heard thunder boom. It sounded like God was angry. As she should be.

  Yeager reached over to the side table and picked up Trout magazine. The professor had dog-eared the page with the latest in rod and reel technology. The pictures reminded Yeager of the conversation he’d had with the professor by Freedom Lake three weeks ago, the last time they fished together.

  “My fly rod,” the professor said, “may not be as efficient as your .22, but it gives the fish a fighting chance.” Yeager smiled at the memory.

  The professor was a man who never threw away books, even when they were torn and worn. Where there wasn’t enough space on the professor’s shelves, books spilled onto the floor or were stacked in corners. The one concession he’d made to what seemed at first glance like disorder was how he grouped his books by topic.

  The section Yeager liked the best held the Revolutionary War books. Out of habit, he glanced toward his favorite section and was surprised to see empty shelves. Those books were missing, even the books about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.

  Yeager was one of the few people who could ask the professor questions about the Meck Dec without the professor getting riled up. Yeager’s mother told him there were no stupid questions, so he kept asking them, stupid question after stupid question after stupid question. It made the professor laugh. “Chuck Yeager Alexander, you think you’re related to Hezekiah,” the professor would say. “You want the story to be true.”

  The professor was right. Yeager did want to believe that local patriots had declared independence from Britain over one year before they got around to it in Philadelphia. He loved the idea, thanks to his mother who had been a high school social studies teacher. Yeager was an only child, because, she’d said, “After you, I didn’t have the energy to raise another devil.” She was the reason he fell in love with history and the reason he came to the Indie when he was fifty-five years old, to look after her. When she died of cancer, he stayed on and became the youngest resident, despite the hiccup with the business office when they checked his credit. Once they confirmed his mother left him the cottage, the rest of her teacher’s pension, and a nice life insurance pay-out, they reluctantly accepted the likes of a man who never would have lived at the Indie were it not for his mother. That was twenty years ago, the same time he struck up his friendship with the professor and the same time he learned about the Meck Dec.

  The professor had been adamant the Meck Dec never existed. “It’s a fairy tale, nothing more.”

  But a week ago, in a strange twist, things changed. “Yeager, you can’t tell anyone what I am about to tell you. I’m working on a sequel to An American Hoax.”

  An American Hoax was the professor’s bestselling book that debunked the Meck Dec story once and for all. Why did the professor need to write a sequel? What more could he say? It seemed like overkill to say it twice. But Yeager had kept his thoughts to himself when the professor told him about the sequel. Something was different and serious about the professor’s behavior that day.

  Over the next five days, the professor ordered his meals sent to his room. Every time Yeager checked on him, he was hard at work on his laptop. He said he needed to finish the book before it was too late. He didn’t explain the urgency.

  Yesterday, Yeager stopped by at lunchtime and the professor was wearing the same clothes from the day before. He hadn’t slept, and he’d acted nervous, like he’d had too much coffee. Yeager encouraged him to take a break.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  The professor’s nervous energy must have provided a spark. His face lit up. “I found something. Something that changes everything.”

  Yeager wondered what that meant. Would the professor’s sequel reveal the Meck Dec was not a hoax after all? And if so, what had the professor found?

  He asked the professor to explain, but the only answer he got was, “Wait until tomorrow. Meet me at eight in the morning. Pack an overnight bag.”

  Now the professor was dead.

  Yeager swept the great room, looking for the professor’s laptop. Like the Revolutionary War books, it was nowhere to be found. He approached the open rolltop desk, touched the papers on the desk, and pushed them around. The pile was mostly bills, medical records, and letters from insurance companies. The laptop was not under them.

  As he nosed in the pile, he accidentally knocked a piece of paper to the floor. When he picked it up, he saw four words at the top: “Last Will and Testament.” It was dated the previous day, within twenty-four hours of the profe
ssor’s death.

  Why did the professor have a will that fit on one sheet of paper? He could afford the most expensive law firm in the city to give away his assets.

  Curiosity trumped respect for his friend’s privacy as Yeager examined the document under the small lamp on the professor’s desk. All the words appeared to be written in the professor’s hand. They said:

  “I, Matthew Collins, being of sound mind and body, do hereby revoke all prior wills, disinherit my only heir, my grandchild Lori Collins, and bequeath my entire estate to Sue Ellen Parker.”

  Yeager would have laughed aloud if someone had told him this story in a bar. But here he was, staring nonsense in the face.

  The professor said nothing to Yeager about making a new will or anything that would cause him to change the old one. Yeager knew how much the professor loved Lori, and as best Yeager could tell, the professor never loved Sue Ellen Parker. Why would he cut Lori from his will and give his fifty-million-dollar fortune to Sue Ellen? The missing books and laptop bothered Yeager too. They were important to the professor.