Alex, his wife Aida, and his mom had to wait until there was only one bag left on the rotating baggage pickup cart. Lucille couldn't remember what her bag looked like, and Horace had not thought to label it. Reality was now setting in.
Once home with Alex and his family, Lucille settled in to a quite routine, while Alex tried to settle her affairs. He arranged to have a realtor come to appraise her house, and was handling the piles of her mail that was starting to get forwarded to Alex.
On the day of the appraisal Alex called Horace to remind him that the realtor was coming at noon. Horace answered the phone and told Alex that there will be no appraisal, as he was not going to leave.
Alex was furious, as it was starting to become apparent that Horace was indeed devious as Lucille claimed. It was time to call in an attorney.
For $300 Alex arraigned a one hour telephone meeting for with a Florida attorney local to Lucille. Near the end of their conversation, the attorney called Horace and told him that he had to vacate the premises within 30 days, otherwise he would be served with an eviction notice.
Horace replied that he wasn't going anywhere, that he's been living there for 15 years and he's staying put.
.....
A week later Horace sent Alex an email with the subject line "Good news and bad news", saying that he's moving and that he emptied the house.
"Emptied the house"? What did that mean? Alex quickly got on the phone, only to realize that Horace had already disconnected it. He replied to the email asking why he emptied the house, and what did he do with all her jewelry and other valuables?
There was no reply.
.....
The next day Alex got a call from Ella the bank teller, saying Horace had been to the bank to visit his and Lucille's safe deposit box. On his way out of the bank he dropped the keys and a note saying "Throw away everything that's left in the box" on a teller's desk. The teller chased Horace out of the bank saying "I can't do that", but Horace ignored him.
Luckily Ella mailed the keys, and the note to Alex. There it was, in Horace's shaky handwriting, "Throw away everything that's left in the box".
Somehow Alex felt that this note would someday come in handy as proof of his devious deeds and Horace's not knowing the fate of this note could surely catch him in a lie.
As if this wasn't enough, later that same day Alex got notified that Scottrade's Elder Watch group had frozen both Horace's and Lucille's stock accounts due to suspicious behavior by Horace.
This was just beyond conception for Alex. It was now obvious that Horace was trying to steal everything he could from Lucille and this was confirmed later when one of Horace's daughters contacted Lucille asking if it was truly her intend to give her all of her jewelry.
Lucille cried when she heard that Horace was generously giving her valuables away to his children but luckily Horace's daughter was honest and returned the loot to Lucille. Again she cried as she opened the package containing a camera, gold jewelry, real pearls, and the diamond ring that Alex's dad had given her 60 years earlier.
Generosity was never Horace's strong suit, and Alex always resented that Lucille was living with this cheap selfish man. He had always hoped she would remarry a rich generous man.
But what Alex couldn't comprehend was the irony. In the past Horace, always assuming he would die first, had gone out of his way to draw up a legal document designed to assure that Alex, in no way, would inherit any of his estate.
But this was exactly what he was doing to Lucille, giving her estate away to his kids. How could he justify this to himself? This was a person who went to church every morning and posed as a very religious man.
.....
To be continued.
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