Gus Redux and Sparky: Chapter Five

As may be clear from the elaborate fortification, Gus, the xylaria polymorpha that has taken up residence in our backyard is back after a tough winter that we had feared may have killed him.  

We first noticed Gus the year before we put Molly down and "he" is the closest thing to a pet we'll have for as long as we live downtown.

Gus is still growing - that's what the white tips represent - so there will be future updates for readers who just have to know about the state of the saprobic fungus in our back yard.

Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Chapter Five 

Sparky here. This is Chapter Five of my story about how Gerry Ringbold met his untimely end. The story starts here.

Pea lived another forty years after she established the trust for the Thompson Gardens - more about which in a minute - so the ten million had grown to almost one hundred million by the time she died. In the five years it took to resolve the court challenges against the will, the principle grew to 125 million. Now, according to the Thompson Garden Annual Report, the endowment generates between five and six million dollars a year to spend on the Gardens.

The Thompson Gardens are an inner city remnant of the wealth that had once lined the entire length of the street where Pea and Stuart's mansion stood. But, after they had built their giant homes on broad avenues lined with trees and interspaced with impressive parks like the Thompson Gardens, the rich people felt they needed fresher digs and moved on. Those who followed in their wake did not have the resources to keep the place up, so the mansions were subdivided into apartments, and then rooming houses, and then torn down and replaced with public housing. The trees succumbed to inattention and disease. The parks - especially the Thompson Gardens - lapsed into genteel ruin, the once carefully tended turf transitioning to prostrate knotweed and plantain; the statuary and masonry quietly crumbling into dust. 

After Stuart's death, the mentions of Pea in the newspaper dwindled from about one or two a month to one or two a year to not a single mention in the last ten years of her life. Pea reappeared in the newspapers after her death in the rushing torrent of stories about her good works and her funeral and, almost immediately after that, the contest over her will.   

Pea and Stuart never had any kids. Stuart left her a widow when Pea was in her late sixties and she never remarried. At the time of her death, Pea lived with a small staff including a cook, a groundskeeper and, for the last few years of her life, a nurse. She remembered them all in her will. She also left comfortable sums to her many grand nieces and grand nephews, local hospitals, the art gallery, the museum. All of the last three have wings or galleries named after Pea and Stuart.  

And, like I said, Pea left the endowment to the Thompson Gardens.

I think estates as big as Pea’s are fought over probably just as a matter of principle – if there’s enough money at stake people will concoct any reason at all to try and get some of it. But, even treasure hunting law suits need some kind of pretext. 

An early article in the local paper said this phrase, referring to the trust that had already been established, launched a five-year, multi-million dollar lawsuit:

“The park shall be kept open and free for all people of the city, including and especially the people who use it most: the poor, the dispossessed, the addicted and the aged.”

Pea’s special notice of the “addicted” was presented in court as evidence that she was not of sound mind and under undue influence when she created the will. 

You can read Chapter Six here.