The Blackridge Scandal
By: Josh Gonzalez
Tags: Short Story, Nautical Bright, Fiction Writing, Serial Fiction, Short Fiction

Part One

The front-page article, printed August 15th, 2000, in the local paper of Blackridge, California began like this:

Butterfield Arcade Set To Close This Fall After Owner Passes Away at Fifty-Six

Underneath the heading was a wide copy of an old photo. In it stood a thirty-one year old Charles Butterfield with wide dark rimmed glasses and a shaggy moptop haircut. He was dressed in flared brown trousers with a mustard colored button up shirt. Behind him stood the newly opened Butterfield Arcade. His daughter Eliza had picked the photo because in the picture he still had all his hair.

The people of Blackridge were uncouthly curious. With a man like Mr. Butterfield, there must be some secrets. The Blackridge Review sold out in a matter of minutes, breaking the record of the murder of Suzanne Hersberg printed twenty-five years earlier.

“Quite a strange man that Mr. Butterfield was,” Dale Trenton was saying that morning in his corner convenience store to Mrs. Miller. Across the street was Butterfield Arcade. Dale looked at it through the windows of his shop inquisitively.

Dale Trenton was a wide man with a large round belly that protruded over his belt. He had wide thighs, but his legs grew narrower as they went down to his tiny feet. He always wore bright colors, such as yellows and greens, but his favorite color was white. Dale had pasty pale skin, except on his face, which was beet red and plump. However, his face only added to his boisterous disposition.

Mrs. Miller wasn’t listening.

She had the paper open in front of her; her eyes moved rapidly down the second page of the article. Mrs. Miller was a thin hawk like woman with a long pointed nose and narrow eyes. She waited to finish her paragraph before taking notice of Dale again.

“They make him sound like a saint,” She said with a sharp rustle of her paper as she closed it. “There had to have been something amiss with him, always hanging around all those kids.”

Dale, who quite liked Mr. Butterfield, mistook her meaning. “I told him many times, he always came in here to buy a pack of cigarettes, and I told him you need to watch out for those kids; I just had a whole gang of them steal twelve bags of chips just last week! He never listened, only smiled that strange smile.”

Mrs. Miller showed her contempt for Dale by pursing her lips. She didn’t like being misunderstood.

“I never let Dan in that arcade,” Mrs. Miller snapped. She began to speak slower so he would understand. “All his friends went, but I told him, no I don’t trust that Mr. Butterfield!”

Dale now understood. “Oh Ma’am, I wouldn’t say that those kids were unsafe around him, he might have been a little odd, but I wouldn’t say he was a creep or nothing.”

“He was more than a little odd,” Mrs. Miller said, firmly. “Why I heard he completely disappeared at one point. His entire family couldn’t find him.”

This was indeed true and Mrs. Miller wasn’t the only one talking about that incident the morning the news was released.

A few blocks away from Dale’s convenience store, in the upper-class neighborhood of Princeton Road, Mary Freeman was eagerly talking about it to her friend Kate O’Neil on the phone. Mary was a tall blonde lady with high cheekbones and bright blue eyes. It was just after her morning yoga DVD, and she was still dressed in her black yoga pants with a black tank top. The Blackridge Review lay upon her dining room table at arm’s length. She had her vacuum in her right hand, her phone resting on her shoulder, and with her left hand she kept picking up the paper looking at the front picture.

“Yes, it was on his twenty-fifth birthday,” She shouted into the phone above the sound of the vacuum. “And you know how kind the Butterfield’s are. They lived just around the corner from my mother’s house. Yes, on the corner of Princeton Road. My mother would go over to their house for coffee so she could talk to Mariam, and you know how my mother is, she nitpicks everything about a person’s house. She never once, not once, complained about the Butterfield’s. She told me that John was also very kind, not like the idiots our parents married.”

Mary removed the phone quickly from her ear. Kate’s voice could be heard even over the roar of the vacuum.

“Oh come on, Kate, you’ve complained to me plenty of times about your father. Anyway, that’s not the point, there was absolutely nothing strange about that family, but out of nowhere he just stood up, said he was done living a normal life and left.”

Mary turned off the vacuum, but continued to shout into the receiver.

“A normal life! Yes, can you believe that? Oh he had everything Kate. Both of his parents were well to do, and he was an only child. Then to just abandon your family like that, unbelievable! I know, they mentioned nothing about it in the article. Yep, then he came back and opened up that arcade.”

This was how the community talked of Charles Butterfield that morning. The news had circulated all over the city. It was a though people who knew him were drawing a path through the history of his life, and most of it wasn’t good. Nevertheless, there were those who had cared about Charles Butterfield.

In a quiet little neighborhood, only a few blocks away from where Mr. Butterfield had lived on Rose Court, Mr. Davenport was quite distressed. Richard Davenport had been a good friend of Charles. He was in his sixties with jet-black hair and tired dark eyes. Richard didn’t look his age, neither did his wife, and that fact made the death of his friend weigh heavier on his heart.

Mr. Davenport was in one of his moods that morning, which meant he needed to collect his thoughts, so he followed his wife around the house in a daze, endlessly talking to her as she kept herself busy cleaning; talking helped him gather his thoughts. He didn’t bother to help his wife; his mind was too preoccupied.

“That man was completely misunderstood,” Mr. Davenport said, for the twentieth time that morning. “Just misunderstood. You know he told me many times, when I went over to his house for our weekly chats, that he was working on something revolutionary. That man, when he got into a project, he never gave up,” Mr. Davenport gave a sad chuckle.

“Mhm,” Mrs. Davenport muttered under her breath as she began to wash the dishes.

“He said that it would change the way we live our lives. He said it was something to do with the arcade, but he never told me what it was.” Mr. Davenport laughed again, “He said he wanted to wait to tell me until it was complete. It was a surprise.”

Mr. Davenport sat down at the kitchen table. “Now I’ll never know,” he sighed. “I never told you this Nancy, but he confided in me once. He told me he had another kid, other than Eliza.”

Mrs. Davenport paused mid scrub, curiosity getting the better of her. She didn’t turn around though.

“He said he had a son,” Mr. Davenport’s voice quivered and for the first time in twenty years, he started to cry.

Mrs. Davenport turned now gawking at her husband as he began sobbing uncontrollably.

***

A month later, in downtown Blackridge, Eliza Butterfield sat in Mr. Heinz’s office on the fifteenth floor. The building had clearly never been remodeled for it still had the architectural design of a nineteen-fifties office. Mr. Heinz’s taste of modern decor stuck out oddly about the room.

It was a stuffy office with dark wood imitation paneling upon the walls. Large metal shelving racks lined the sides around Mr. Heinz’s grey steel desk. Set upon the shelves were rows and rows of boxes. It was quite evident that Mr. Heinz was in the habit of relocating, for cluttered about the room were even more boxes stacked upon one another. Mr. Heinz moved about these boxes with a practiced ease. Behind him, set upon yet another box, was his framed credentials and a simple black clock that was five minutes behind.

Jeremy Heinz was a tall thin man with gangling limbs. It was as though he were propped up by two sticks with how thin his legs were. He had a head of thin white hair, which he never considered dyeing, and a long droopy face that ended in a sharply pointed chin. Mr. Heinz moved slowly and talked slowly.

“Let’s see here,” he droned, stopping at one of the boxes. Apparently there was some form of organization to the mess. “Charles Butterfield,” he dragged out the name to himself as he began looking through folders of papers.

Eliza sighed and clutched her coat in her lap. The last month had been extremely hard on her.

Eliza Butterfield was twenty-six years old. Her face had a small smooth oval shape that made people think she was delicate. Likewise, her thin figure and long graceful fingers only added to this assumption. Yet, it only took five minutes of being around her to notice that her personality was quite the opposite. Eliza had the burning intensity that her father had, which meant she got what she wanted, and the sharp commanding voice of her mother. If people paid closer attention when they met her they would see this fire in her eyes. Mr. Heniz saw it as he sat back down.

“Sorry, to keep you waiting Miss Butterfield,” he hastily apologized. “I have your father’s will right here.”

“Call me Eliza,” Eliza said, flatly. Her patience had already grown thin, for her mother had called that morning. Anne Caron had never cared about the daughter she had had with the strange Charles Butterfield. She had lived only a year in Blackridge, and it was a mystery to everyone what she had seen in him. The general consensus was: clearly not much, for the relationship had ended as soon as Eliza was born. Anne called only when she needed something, and what she needed this morning was money.

“Sorry, sorry,” Mr. Heniz mumbled. “Now, let’s see here.” He removed the will from the file. “You said you are the only living offspring of Mr. Charles Butterfield correct?”

“I am his only child.”

“Yes, sorry again.”

Mr. Heniz produced from a drawer in his desk a pair of readers. He placed them on with a slow precision, which made Eliza want to scream, then he opened the folder.

“I’ve already made two copies after speaking to you on the phone. I appreciate you coming down to receive the will instead of having me mail it. Your father wanted me to talk to you about the estate, and apparently some important matter he left enclosed in the will itself.” He passed her the second copy. “This should not be that difficult considering you are the only beneficiary.”

Eliza took the will eagerly. She had lived with her father for her entire life, except for two years ago when she had moved out for college. Eliza had loved her father very much, and she knew that he had always saved his money. Her eagerness, however, was not because of the money; once her father’s will was taken care of all the legal matters would be over. Then the weight of responsibility would be off her shoulders, and she could morn her father properly.

She scanned the form now not bothering to wait for Mr. Heinz.

As the two of them expected her name was at the top as the first beneficiary. Yet, the two of them soon realized that Charles Butterfield’s will was more complex. There was not only a second beneficiary — but also a third.

Eliza read the second the instant she saw it.

Dennis Milligan with an inheritance of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Eliza felt her stomach drop. For a moment it felt as though someone had dropped ice water down her back. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars! Suddenly the prospect of money seemed important to her. She read her line: twenty-five thousand. Twenty-five thousand dollars! His only child! The color in her face disappeared, and a look of shock took over.

She read the second line again. The name Milligan sounded familiar, but her mind was all shuffled. Then, she comprehended the most important word on the page. She had missed it when scanning. The second beneficiary: Dennis Milligan — Son.

She was not his only child.

Eliza felt as though the floor had dropped beneath her. It was as though her father’s ghost had risen from the grave and slapped her across the face.

“Mr. Heinz,” she began, her shock turning towards anger. “There must be some mistake. My father doesn’t have a son!” She found that she was almost shouting, but she didn’t care. “This can’t be his will. I don’t even know who this person is! I mean, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars!” Her eyes were scanning the paper again as she talked. They hastily read the third beneficiary.

Henry Milligan with the inheritance of Butterfield Arcade.

Henry Milligan; her father’s assistant! That was why the name was so familiar. Eliza remembered seeing him at the funeral only two weeks ago, an awkward man. He had admired her father. In fact, Charles had talked about him quite a lot. It was not such a surprise now to see his name on the will. She suddenly had a new shock.

Mr. Heinz had apparently seen the same thing, for he was mumbling Henry Milligan’s name when he stopped as though cut off mid-sentence.

Did her father have an affair with Mr. Milligan’s wife? Eliza remembered seeing the woman at the funeral, but they had no children. In fact, she specifically remembered Mr. Milligan telling her they had been planning to have their first child. It had been mindless small talk that she had barely paid attention to, and she was surprised she remembered now. The thought was absolutely insane; even if her father had a son with Mrs. Milligan, he wouldn’t have given him her husband’s name!

Mr. Heinz seemed to have collected himself.

“It seems that your father requested that Mr. Milligan not be notified of his inheritance until 2018, and that Dennis Milligan not be notified until he turns eighteen. Until then, all assets are to be kept in holding.”

Eliza felt her anger rise again upon hearing Mr. Heinz’s voice.

“You can’t actually be implying that these things are going to be honored? Mr. Milligan doesn’t even have a son. On top of that, even if my father had some illegitimate child why in the world would he give him all that money?” She was shouting again. Eliza realized how much she hated her father at that moment. After all the years she had been there for him; she had even left college to come care for him when he had gotten sick. Eliza had been the one to see him die, not this Dennis.

“I’m sorry, Miss Butterfield,” Mr. Heinz said automatically. Eliza flashed him such a hateful look that he began to tremble, stumbling over his words. “Ah, Miss Eliza, your father signed this will in front of me. It is the official one.” He pointed to the signature.

Eliza looked at her copy. It indeed had her father’s signature on it. He had practiced the looping of the b in his name so that it would be remembered. Charles had wanted it tied to the arcade, like an artist’s stamp. Then the date caught her eye: 1991. A vivid memory came back to her brought to the surface by the date.

It had been a Saturday afternoon in 1997. Eliza had been sitting on the porch of her father’s house on Rose CT when Mr. Milligan had driven up in his Volkswagen bug. She remembered he had nearly fallen out of the car he had been in such a hurry.

“Hello, Eliza,” he had said, breathlessly. “Is your father home?”

“He is in his study,” she had replied. Mr. Milligan had barely waited for her response. This had been one of three times she had seen him during the years he had worked for her father.

She had followed him in secretively. He had found her father in the hallway. Mr. Milligan was so excited he stumbled over his words and had to begin again.

“Slow down, Henry,” her father had pleaded. “Now what is it you are trying to tell me.”

“Oregon, do you remember? You told me if I took that trip to Oregon it could change my life. Well, you were right! I met the girl of my dreams. I’ve spent two years studying at the university, Charles. I’m more capable of helping you with the arcade now, and Jennifer — she agreed to marry me!”

Jennifer…Jennifer Milligan, yes that had been her name at the funeral.

Eliza stared down at the will. If this Dennis was related to the Milligan’s, how in the world did her father know about him six years before Mr. Milligan had married his wife? Also, why name your child after the woman’s husband? Eliza was completely confused. Who in the world was Dennis Milligan?