A Cold and Lonely Place: A Novel

by Sara J. Henry

  I tried to explain, about Tobin and Jessamyn and Win, but it came out more muddled than I’d have liked. He interrupted me.

  “The sister will verify this?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But she’s not at home; she’s up here now.”

  “Give me the contact info for your editor at the paper.”

  I rattled off George’s name and number, and Win’s as well.

  “I’ll get back to you,” he said abruptly.

  More than a little shaken, I went downstairs.

  Jessamyn was making a sandwich in the kitchen, and looked up. “What’s up?” she asked.

  My face must have been showing how I felt. I tried to readjust it. “Ah, just writing this stuff, and researching it. It’s hard.”

  “I bet. I couldn’t do it. It’s like, well, Tobin’s gone but not gone.”

  “Is it bothering you, the articles, all this stuff?” I realized I hadn’t given a lot of thought to how this was affecting her.

  “It’s hard to say. It’s a little weird, but it feels like it needs to be done—it’s sort of a way to say goodbye. Maybe it’ll help Win. She seems pretty down lately.”

  I took some yogurt out of the fridge. “Well, it’s all hard on her, plus it’s frustrating trying to track down Tobin’s will and stuff.”

  “What about his lock box? Did she look in there?” Jessamyn asked, unpeeling a banana. I don’t think I’d actually ever seen her eat fruit before. Brent was being a good influence.

  “A lock box? You mean one of those fireproof boxes?” If there’d been one at Tobin’s cabin, it was long gone or so well hidden we hadn’t seen it.

  “No, like at a bank, a box where you keep things.”

  “Tobin had a safe deposit box at a bank?” I said slowly.

  Jessamyn looked at me as if I were stupid. “Yes, that’s what I said. He said he had all his important stuff locked away in a bank, once when I said something about having the key there under the flowerpot.”

  I looked at her. I don’t know why it had never occurred to us to ask Jessamyn things like this. Maybe we’d assumed that Tobin wouldn’t have shared these things; maybe we’d just been idiots. “Do you know what bank?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think he had a checking account, because I went with him once to the post office to buy a money order for something.”

  But when I called Win, she wasn’t as elated as I’d expected. “I don’t think that would help,” she said. “Even if we locate the box, without a court order, I couldn’t get into it without a key.”

  And she was right. Back to square one. Before I hung up I told her there was a chance she might hear from a policeman named Moreno. I didn’t tell her any details.

  What I did next was think about keys. I tried to picture Tobin’s key ring, to recall if there had been a small key on it. But no one I knew carried a safe deposit box key around with them—they kept it stashed somewhere in their house. Maybe that’s what someone had been looking for in Tobin’s cabin, and maybe, just maybe, in the clumsiness of slashing couch cushion linings and emptying kitchen cabinets, they’d overlooked the small places a bank key might be stashed. Unless that key had been fastened to the bottom of a certain coffee maker that was now missing.

  I called Win back, and told her what I’d been thinking.

  “It’s worth looking around the cabin,” she said. “You want to come over? Maybe grab us a pizza from Mr. Mike’s? I can call and order it. Bring Jessamyn if she’s home, but I think she has to work.”

  I took Tiger for a quick walk, and when I went across the street to pick up the pizza found out Win had already paid for it. It didn’t really bother me, but it wouldn’t have killed me to spring for a pizza, even a supreme one.

  At the cabin, Win and I ate pizza; she had a soda from her small fridge and I had water. To me beverages with taste interfere with the taste of the food—except cookies and milk, of course.

  And then we set to searching.

  We looked for more than an hour, in every tiny spot we thought someone might put a key: dark corners of cabinets, the toilet tank, along ledges, in the bottom of the container of coffee beans. I emptied the ice-cube trays and peered at each cube. I didn’t let myself think of the irony if the key to Tobin’s secrets had been frozen into a piece of ice.

  Finally we sat back. It had seemed a good idea, but good ideas don’t always pan out. It had started getting colder. I opened the stove door to shove a new log in and then stopped, chunk of wood in my hand.

  “What’s the matter, Troy?” Win asked.

  I sat back on my heels and put the log down on the hearth. “Where’s maybe the perfect place to hide a small piece of metal?”

  She looked where I was looking, into the stove.

  “No-o-o-o,” she said.

  “It’s a little crazy. But think about it: you could stash a key under the ashes and no one would know it’s there. And there’s no risk of losing it if you don’t let anyone else clean out your stove.”

  “It wouldn’t melt?”

  “I don’t think the fire would get hot enough, and the ashes would insulate it.”

  Win looked at the stove and looked at me. “Well, why not?” she said.

  She knelt beside me as I pushed apart the fire, setting pieces of partly burnt log on the hearth, then moving embers and ash into the metal ash bucket. When I got within half an inch or so from the bottom of the stove, I asked Win if she could find a big metal spoon or spatula, and she brought one from the kitchen. Scoop by scoop, I shook ashes into the bucket. Win pulled on her jacket; with the fire out the room was getting chillier by the minute.

  I’d just about concluded this had been nothing but a messy exercise—because of course I hadn’t been able to avoid spilling some ash—when something dropped into the bucket: something heavier and denser than a piece of wood. I poked through the ashes with the spoon, stirring them up enough to make me cough, and then I had it. Win reached toward it and I shook my head—it could still be hot. She went to the kitchen and filled a bowl with water, and I dropped the contents of the spoon into the bowl. The ashes sizzled slightly as they hit the water, and you could hear something clink on the bottom. I waited a moment and then reached in and pulled it out: a key, a small one. A safe deposit box key.

  Win was nearly twitching with excitement.

  “You did it,” she said. “You found it.”

  “Yeah, but I almost didn’t. If I hadn’t been about to put wood in the stove …”

  Now I was getting cold. Heat seeped out of these cabins pretty fast. I crumpled newspaper, put some twigs on top and lit it, then fed back in the bits of half-burnt wood and a bigger log as the fire began to catch.

  Win had pulled out a phone book and was looking up banks in Lake Placid and Saranac Lake. “Tobin must have had a savings account,” she said. “He got those quarterly checks from the trust fund, and he’d need somewhere to deposit or cash them.”

  “So you call the banks and ask if Tobin had a box there, and Bob’s your uncle. If it’s there, you go in and open it.”

  “Wouldn’t I need to know the box number?”

  I thought for a moment. “Not sure. But remember that card Tobin had in his wallet, the one with the lawyer’s phone number on one side? The number on the other side could be his box number.”

  She pulled out her copy and looked at the number, and agreed it was worth a try. If she couldn’t locate the box locally, she could try Keene or Tupper Lake, but it would make more sense for Tobin to have a box closer to home. Unless he hadn’t wanted anyone seeing him go into the bank.

  To celebrate, we finished off the pizza.

  CHAPTER 34

  Back home, back at my computer, I looked up information on bank safe deposit boxes, and found that getting into Tobin’s box might not be as easy as we’d hoped.

  I sent Philippe a note, telling him I’d been swamped with work and would call soon, and to give Paul a big hug. And an e-mail had arrived from Jameson. Wh
ich said only: Good article. I’d wondered why I hadn’t heard from him, but I supposed he’d been busy. I e-mailed back THANK YOU. In all caps.

  The next morning, I was at work early, sorting notes, roughing out the second article, waiting to hear from Win. Finally she called.

  “I found part of an old envelope from a bank in Tobin’s things and called, and that was it—it’s the bank on the far end of Main Street, heading out of town,” she said. “I’m going there now. It opens at nine. Should I stop and pick you up?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But listen, I looked this up. In New York State, unless you’ve been added as someone who can access a box or are a cosigner, you can’t get into it. Not without a will or a court order.”

  Silence on the other end of the phone.

  “Or,” I added, “you can just show them the key and Tobin’s ID and the article on his death, and hope they let it slide.” This was a small town—sometimes you didn’t have to jump through the hoops you did in larger places.

  Win sighed. “I didn’t sign the card, that I know, and I have no idea if Tobin would have listed me on the box. So we’ll have to go with option C.”

  We didn’t talk much in the car. When we entered the bank, I could tell Win was nervous only because she held herself more erectly than usual. She told the pleasant woman in the front lobby she was there to get into a safe deposit box, and showed the key. Of course the woman asked, Is the box in your name? And Win, with a smile that didn’t even hint at how crucial this was, said, “My brother Tobin opened the box, but I believe I’m listed on it,” and pulled out her driver’s license and a copy of Tobin’s.

  The next moment would determine a lot—I knew it, and Win knew it. She kept her smile steady as the woman glanced at the driver’s licenses and then looked up something on her computer. I think we were both ready for her to say, “I’m so sorry, your name doesn’t appear to be on this,” followed by a regretful spiel about court orders and wills and death certificates. But the woman just stood up and said, “Yes, your name is on the box. Follow me, please,” and we numbly followed her, through the vault doors and into the room with the boxes. The woman unlocked the drawer the box was in, took the box out and set it on the table, and left.

  Win looked at me. We were both so tense I think if someone had said boo we’d have leapt a foot into the air. She sat and pulled the box toward her, and opened it with fingers that shook a little.

  I imagine odd things are found in safe deposit boxes. I thought of the shoebox I’d kept in my room as a kid and what it had held: a diary, a piece of sassafras, a photo of my dog, a smooth piece of whittled wood, a birthday card, a little man on a parachute you tossed up in the air and watch flutter to the ground. Trash to my mother; treasures to me.

  This was Tobin’s treasure box. Win pulled the items out, one by one. On top was an old watch on a chain. “Our grandfather’s,” she said. Then a passport. A lone hundred-dollar bill. A newspaper clipping of the obituary of Bertram Martin Winslow III. A photo of three well-dressed children, a carefully spaced two years apart, wide grins, a puppy at their feet. One of Trey, in a football uniform, helmet in hand. One of an elderly man with his arm around a teenage Tobin, and another of a young girl, head half turned, caught in motion, slightly blurred in an artistic way. Their grandfather, I assumed, and maybe a girlfriend from high school. And one last photo, of Win and Tobin, on a sofa, wrapping their arms around each other, grinning at the camera.

  Win stopped at that one and looked at it a long time. “We took that in my place, with a timer, the last time he came to see me.”

  Next was a thick batch of pages, folded, in a dense envelope. Win lifted it out, opened the envelope, and pulled out the pages. Then she turned it so I could read the top: LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF TOBIN WALTER WINSLOW. She skimmed the pages—“It’s from two years ago,” she said. “Power of attorney and everything to me.” She refolded it and put it back in the envelope, eyes glistening.

  The last thing in the box was a sheet of paper, folded, filled with neat handwriting and numbers. Win blinked as she looked down at it, and tears ran down her cheeks. She showed me the page, a white lined piece of paper from a pad, filled with information, line after line: a credit card account number, bank account number, post office box number, Win’s name, address, and phone number, e-mail account password. At the bottom it said, in scrawled handwriting: Jess, you are a great sister and I love you always—Tobin.

  It was what you put together for someone who would find your things after you died. Who in their twenties does this? Someone whose own brother had died way too young? Or someone who may be considering suicide?

  She sat there a moment, then brushed tears from her face. At a glance the box looked empty, but I could see something glinting in the corner. Win reached in and pulled out a key, one with a distinctive shape.

  “A post office box key,” I said, recognizing it. “They give you two here when you open a box.”

  Win nodded. She put the passport and obituary and watch back in the box, slid everything else into her bag, closed the box, and stood. After the bank woman came in and locked the box back in its compartment, I followed Win out.

  In the sunshine we blinked at the brightness. Win looked toward the coffee shop down the street, and I nodded. Inside, we ordered giant mugs of steaming coffee.

  “First things first,” she said as we sipped our coffees. “I want to copy all of these—on your scanner if that’s all right. Then I’ll request the death certificates and take the will to the lawyer in town that my lawyer recommended. Once the body is released I can plan everything. We’ll have a service here, after all this is over, not at a church but somewhere informal, with all his friends.”

  It was clear she was planning this all out as she spoke. I figured if she let herself feel all she was feeling right now, she’d crumple into a small ball. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who had trouble processing feelings. Or maybe Win just preferred to fall apart in private.

  “I guess you should let the police know about the will,” I said.

  She nodded.

  We headed to the post office, and I watched her insert the key into the mailbox that had been Tobin’s. It was crammed so full it didn’t open at first. She tried again and forced it open, and pulled out everything. I saw one of the yellow cards that tells you there’s something that won’t fit in your box. When she took it to the counter, the woman handed her a neat stack of mail, tidily rubber-banded. Win put it in her bag without looking.

  At the house I ran the legal papers through my scanner for Win, printing copies and saving digital ones as well.

  “I’ll go call the state police and my lawyer to let them know about the will, and do what needs doing to get a death certificate,” she said. “Then I’ll sort through the mail and everything this afternoon.”

  The house was quiet after she left. And then the phone rang, and it was the policeman, Moreno, from Oregon.

  CHAPTER 35

  “Are you taping this?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “Did you want me to?”

  “Absolutely not. And this is off the record.”

  “Okay.” I probably sounded as dubious as I felt.

  “Write this down: Orville Peterson. He lives in Rye, New York, last I heard. He says he saw the Winslow boat go out that night with three people in it.”

  “Three people,” I repeated.

  “Three men, according to him.”

  “But …”

  “He’s an old man; he’s eccentric, and he likes a scotch or two every evening. He lived in a boathouse down the beach from the Winslows’ summer place—it likely wasn’t legal, but the owners were distant relations and let him stay there. No one took him seriously.”

  “But you believed him.”

  Silence for a long moment. “Yes, I did. He’s eccentric and old, but he’s not stupid and he’s not senile. But the higher-ups didn’t, and the parents didn’t. And no one wanted the surviving son grilled. He was
too traumatized by the accident, and of course there were only two people in the boat. So that was the end of it.”

  “Did … did anyone go missing that night?”

  He gave a bark of a laugh. “I like how your mind works, Miss Chance. No, no one was reported missing from the area that evening. That’s all I can give you. Find Orville, if he’s still alive; talk to him. And find anyone Tobin might have talked to about the accident. And you didn’t hear this from me.”

  “You can’t tell me anything else?”

  He laughed again. It was a harsh laugh, not pleasant. “What?” he said. “I didn’t tell you anything.”

  “Right,” I said. “Of course not.”

  He hung up. I sat there a while. And then I set to tracking down an old man named Orville Peterson, who may or may not have seen the Winslow boat go out with three people on board a half dozen years ago.

  It took some focused computer research and a series of phone calls to find him. He’d moved to a guesthouse of a great-nephew, someone clearly fond of his elderly relative, near the beach. I found the great-nephew at his office, a fellow named Ian, who was ready, willing, and able to talk.

  “He can’t really live alone, and he wants to be near the water, he has to have his long walks on the beach morning and night. So he’s in our little guesthouse; it used to be a playhouse for the kids,” he told me. “We take dinner over to him and have someone come in to keep the place up, but he likes feeling he’s on his own.”

  “Could I call him? Do you think he’d talk to me about this?”

  I could almost hear the man shaking his head. “He doesn’t have a phone. I could get him over to my house, but he hates talking on the phone. You’d be better off trying in person, if you really need to talk to him.”

  I thanked him, and hung up and called George.

  “You think you need to go?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. I didn’t try to explain, didn’t say that this might be chasing a chimera, but I felt I had to do it.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll cover your gas again, and a cheap motel. Can you get down there now?”