by Kate Wilhelm
She drew in a long breath before continuing. “We—my brothers, Stuart, and I—got together and made our own plans. We hired a detective agency from New York, the Slocum Agency, to come in and search the house. The appraisals had indicated that there were no antiques, no fine art, nothing of that sort to consider. Howard was not a sophisticated man; we didn’t believe he would have bought gems or rare stamps and hidden them away. And there was the matter of time. He simply hadn’t taken enough time to find and make a purchase like that without leaving a trace. We told the detectives there were missing papers, some checks that might be in separate envelopes, or all in one fairly large one. That’s what they were looking for. At least two of us remained with them throughout their search. They found nothing. We had an architect in to compare the structure with the original plans to see if there was a hidden safe or niche of some kind. There isn’t. We talked to the landscapers Howard had hired, asked if plantings had been disturbed, ground dug up, anything unusual had gone on. And we had his car detailed by a professional group. All that was during week one, last week. This past week we were doing little more than wandering about, or re-searching what’s already been searched.”
“And running up bills,” Pamela said.
When no one responded to her, Charlie asked, “Who’s ponying up for the expenses as you go?”
“Jesperson said the law firm would cover any expenses as they incur,” Tricia said in a strained voice. “It’s been quite expensive to date, of course. There’s about three hundred twenty thousand dollars in Howard’s account. I’m to receive two hundred thousand, and our expenses will be taken from the remainder before it’s distributed to all of us equally. The law firm’s expenses will be paid the same way. Our living expenses are not to be considered when the accounting is done. For that we’re on our own. Mr. Meiklejohn, none of us has any money to spare. I’m married to a country doctor who’s still paying off his student loans. We have two teenage daughters; one wants to be a surgeon, the other a biologist. We’re trying to save for their education. Ted has a heavily mortgaged farm in upstate New York, little money to spare. Lawrence calls himself a consultant, again no money. William’s business collapsed when the economy plummeted, and then he had a serious work injury… ”
She paused, looked first at Constance, then at Charlie. “If you’ll agree to take this on, your fees would be paid through the law firm now, charged to the estate later. And if you find the checks, we will split the money four ways, and we will pay you a bonus of fifty thousand dollars on top of your regular fees.”
Constance sipped her tea, put the glass down, and asked, “Ms. Corning, you’ve had experts do everything possible to find the checks, to no avail. Why do you think we could do more than what has been done?”
“My husband asked our attorney if we could contest the will,” Tricia said after a moment. “He said no, Jesperson’s firm is too thorough, too careful to have left a loophole. And he also recommended that we consult with you two. Maybe we need to look at this from a different angle, with different expertise. He said your combined talents might prove effective. A renowned psychologist and a superbly trained detective, both of whom often appear to think outside the box. You might come up with an approach that no one else thought of, see something that we’ve all overlooked. Reveal the purloined letter, something like that. Dr. Leidl, we know those checks are there! We, my brothers, Stuart, and I talked it over early this morning and we agree, the checks are somewhere to be found. We agreed that we’d cooperate in any and all ways with whatever you and your husband do, how you do it, when. Our full cooperation. And we agreed to split the money equally among us if you find it.”
“I didn’t agree to diddly,” Pamela said. “I told you before, and I’m telling you here and now, that if I find that money it’s ours, mine and William’s. And don’t you forget it!” She turned her furious gaze toward Dr. Rasmussen and said to the group, “If that money’s still there when she gets the house, how long do you think it’ll take her to pull it down board by board with her bare hands?”
Constance watched her until she subsided. Then, as if Pamela had not spoken, she said to Tricia, “You realize that what you’re asking of us will involve personal questions, perhaps deeply personal questions. In order to try to understand your brother, those who knew him are the only source we’ll have to work with.”
Tricia nodded. “We know that. We’ll all talk to you, but privately.” Her glance toward Pamela was no more than a flash of her eyes in that direction.
“Of course, privately.” Constance looked at Charlie as if to say, your show, I’m done.
“All right,” he said. “You’re on. Now, for what I’ll want. Full addresses, phone numbers of everyone involved.… ”
Tricia leaned down and reached into her oversized bag. “Let me show you what all I’ve brought along. No doubt you’ll want more, but it’s a start.” She brought out a large thick envelope and he moved his chair closer to hers and cleared a space on the table.
Moving stiffly, Pamela rose. Her jaw was clenched, and she looked as if she was biting her tongue to maintain control. It was not an altogether successful attempt. Her anger was manifest in her posture, her strident voice. “Now, you’ll give them copies of everything, won’t you? I can’t even have a copy of that damn will, but they get it all. Well, I’m leaving. I’ve seen enough, more than enough. You two, remember this. I’ll be watching you like a hawk.”
Constance went to the door with her and neither spoke a word. Pamela backed out of the driveway and drove away as if she had glimpsed a monster in pursuit.
The consultation lasted another hour, and Charlie suspected he was the only one not surprised when Constance asked for a list of the women who had died, full names, addresses, police reports, whatever was available.
Finally, when they all stood up, Dr. Rasmussen said, “Of course, I’ll cooperate in any way that I can. For now, I can recommend a bed-and-breakfast in Stillwater if you’d prefer that to a hotel or motel.” She reached into her handbag and brought out a card, jotted something on it, and handed it to Charlie. “My address and number and the name of the B and B. Please give me a call when you’re settled in town. And just one more thing for you to consider. The housekeeper, the one who will be there every afternoon, is Alice Knudsen, and she is a notorious gossip. She has always lived in Stillwater and knows everyone there. I would advise everyone to be careful of what they say within her hearing range.”
“Does she repeat only what she actually hears?” Constance asked.
A faint smile came and went on Dr. Rasmussen’s face as if she fully understood the implication. “Alice has a vivid imagination,” she said.
As they rose and collected their possessions, Charlie asked, “What’s the weather like down there in Stillwater?”
Their three guests exchanged puzzled looks and Stuart said, “Great. Ten degrees or more cooler than up here. Why?”
“Just curious,” Charlie said.
After seeing them all out, Constance and Charlie returned to the porch and started to gather glasses. The sun was very low in the sky and not a leaf stirred. As long as he had been seated with the breeze from the floor fan on him, Charlie had thought little of the continuing heat; but standing, watching Tricia retrieve her purse from the table, just moving about, actually doing something, he had started to sweat again.
“Why did you decide to take them on?” Constance asked, adding the plate of lemon wedges to the tray.
“Cooler there than here.”
She smiled. “Really, why?”
“Fifty grand.”
She laughed. “But since you don’t think we’ll find the checks, that bonus is an illusion.”
“You think we might find them?” he asked.
“What I think is that a frosted pitcher of margaritas, guacamole and chips, and a nice quiet booth where we can look
over some of those reports in comfort would be a good plan. Eventually to be followed by real food.”
He had merely glanced at the reports when Tricia unloaded her big envelope and identified the many papers. “That’s a real plan,” he said.
She picked up the tray, went to the door and paused there. “You haven’t answered the question. Why did you?”
He scowled. “You told me to,” he said in an aggrieved tone. And she had the grace not to deny it, he thought, as her smile deepened and she entered the house.
2
EVE PARISH STOOD IN THE CENTER of a large empty room trying to imagine a metal desk anywhere in it. A futile attempt, she decided, and tried with an equally ugly army-issue desk from half a century earlier. She had looked at them both earlier that morning, along with a third desk meant for a six-year-old. But she had to have a desk. Working on the kitchen table signified a disaster sooner or later. Spilled coffee on her laptop, or hot soup, bread crumbs… It was a toss-up about which would go first, her laptop or her back. The table was too high for work.
Her apartment was twice as big as the one she had lived in while attending NYU, and it was half the price, but one of the three rooms was bare. Her landlady, Mrs. Hammond, had explained: the two previous renters, both professors, had put two desks in there, bookcases, file cabinets, boxes of papers. They had filled it to overflowing and when they left, they took it all with them.
“I decided to leave it alone,” Mrs. Hammond had said apologetically. “I mean, new tenants would probably have their own things.”
Eve left the empty room and considered the living room. A nice sofa, easy chair, tables and lamps, plenty of furniture, and room for a good desk if she decided to go that way, but she wanted a separate room, a study, even if all she put in it was a desk. The boxes of books stacked against a wall would go in there, and while she had her sister’s car, she planned to buy some cement blocks and boards for shelves. For the study, she told herself. A desk and books on shelving of some sort equaled a separate study.
She glanced at her watch, consulted her map of Stillwater again, and left to go inspect the only remaining secondhand desk on her list. She had been in town for one week, long enough to decide she loved it. The first two nights she had come wide awake repeatedly, listening. Her two years of living in New York while getting a masters degree at NYU had conditioned her to hear and disregard the never-ending sounds of night. Here, when they didn’t come, she had roused again and again anyway, tense and anxious, waiting for the other shoe to drop, she had said lightly to her sister Jenna. It just doesn’t happen here: no sirens, no traffic noises, no voices in the hall, no airplanes overhead, alarms… nothing at all to hear. It was spooky, she had thought uneasily. The third night she had slept for ten hours. She had forgotten how much she had craved quiet sleep. Her kind of town, she thought, driving on Adams Street, almost devoid of traffic. She was watching for Crest Drive. It came unexpectedly soon. She turned and started up a hill that made one boundary of the town of twenty-five thousand. With woods on one side, skirting Stillwater Lake, Crest Drive made a sweeping curve away from the lake to a residential area of large and imposing houses with beautifully landscaped grounds.
“Where the elite dwell,” she said under her breath, “up above the turmoil.” She smiled broadly at the idea and slowed down, looking at house numbers.
The house she sought was dove gray, tall, with bay windows on both sides of a covered front entrance. As soon as Eve saw the expensive houses on Crest Drive, she had accepted that this was not the sort of neighborhood where she might buy a cheap desk. At least she would look, she decided, pulling into the driveway.
#
“Hello,” she said to the woman who opened the door at her ring. “I’m Eve Parish. I called about the desk.”
“Oh, of course. Come in. Dorothy Dumond. The desk is upstairs.”
Eve’s suspicion that this was not the right kind of neighborhood was confirmed in the foyer she entered. On one wall a narrow, marble-topped table with curved, heavily carved legs was under a massive ornate mirror. Antiques, Eve assumed, and no doubt very valuable. Car keys were on the table, along with a silver vase with a few red roses.
A red Persian rug carpeted the foyer, and a similar runner carpeted stairs that Dorothy Dumond started up. She was slender and appeared sinewy, as if she ran marathons perhaps. Strawberry blonde, discreet makeup, dressed in tan silk pants with an ecru overblouse belted with a bright-green sash, sandals, she looked as if she were ready to pose for a photographer. Fifty, Eve guessed, possibly mid fifties—but a very well-preserved fifty-something, a very careful fifty-something.
They walked through an upper hallway to a closed door that Dorothy Dumond opened, and then stood aside for Eve to enter. “I won’t go in,” she said. “The room’s been closed up for ages and it’s musty. Cigarette smoke still clings to things, I’m afraid. But you can see the desk yourself.”
The desk was exactly what she had been looking for. Eve knew instantly. An extension the right height for a computer, plenty of space for papers, drawers. And not an antique. Just an ordinary desk.
“May I open the drawers?” she asked.
“Of course. Help yourself.”
The drawers had an assortment of paper clips, a stapler, box of staples, some pencils and pens, and one drawer had regular copy paper and envelopes, another held a full ream of paper that had not been opened.
“It still has some office supplies,” Eve said to Dorothy Dumond.
“It all goes with the desk,” she said.
“How much do you want for it?”
“I believe my notice mentioned fifty dollars.” Before Eve could say sold, Dorothy Dumond asked, “Can you use anything else in the room? I want to clean it out, have painters redo it.”
Eve looked about quickly. There was a futon, an office chair that went perfectly with the desk, an armoire against the wall, a bookcase. Regretfully she shook her head. “I’m afraid my budget wouldn’t stretch that far.”
Dorothy, still standing at the door, more in the hallway than in the room, pointed to the futon. “They said that… thing has inner springs and that it’s very comfortable. I wouldn’t know about it. One hundred dollars for the whole lot. I just want to get rid of it all.”
Eve caught in her breath. “I’ll take it all,” she said. She had planned to spend about a hundred just for a desk and a good chair, and she had planned to sleep on the couch when her sister came in September. She could have not only a study but also a guest room. It was almost too good to be true. Even the armoire would come in handy for out-of-season clothes, for Jenna’s clothes when she came, for any guest. And no cement blocks and boards, but a real book case! She wanted to whip out her checkbook and write a check instantly before Dorothy Dumond changed her mind, or said she meant one hundred for each piece, or something else.
“Let’s go downstairs,” Dorothy said. “The odor is giving me a headache.”
Eve didn’t dispute her, although, except for the stale air always found in a closed-in space, she had noticed no odor. She followed Dorothy back down the wide stairs, this time to a room on the first floor with its own desk and a file cabinet.
“I can give you a check, or if you prefer I can go to the bank and withdraw cash,” Eve said. “And I’ll have to find someone who can move everything to my apartment.”
“Hank Cranshaw,” Dorothy said. “He does hauling, moving, other odd jobs. Where do you live? He’ll charge according to the distance as much as anything.”
Eve told her the house number on Second Street. “It’s the Hammond house.”
Dorothy looked at her sharply. “I never knew Gladys to take in students.”
“I’m not a student. I’ll be working in the office at the college. I have a one-year appointment. I’ve finished my coursework at NYU, and I’ll be writing my mast
er’s thesis during the coming year.”
“You came out here, instead of doing your research in New York?” Dorothy was still eyeing her with suspicion.
“I saw the position posted at NYU and it seemed like an omen, a sign or something. My thesis will be about a few contemporary writers, and one of them is Earl Marshall. I’d read that he grew up in Stillwater, New Jersey—” She stopped when Dorothy Dumond drew back, her face almost contorted with a furious expression. “What did I say?” Eve asked in confusion.
“You came here, to this house, pretending you just wanted to buy a used desk? I think our business is concluded, Ms. Parish.”
“I don’t understand! What did I do?”
“You’re not the first one to come snooping around, prying into our business, his business. Don’t pretend you didn’t know that Earl is my brother.”
Eve felt her cheeks burn. Helplessly she shook her head. “I didn’t know. The names… I haven’t read about his personal life, his family, just his novel… The book jacket said Stillwater. I’m sorry. I’ll go. I’m sorry.” She would have fled if Dorothy Dumond had not been between her and the door.
Dorothy continued to study her for another moment, then relaxed a little. “You really didn’t know, did you?”
“No.”
“Write your check. Hank will charge twenty-five dollars, and don’t give him a penny more. He’ll want cash. Give me a number where he can reach you. I’ll call him to collect everything and he’ll get in touch with you about when to deliver it. Is that satisfactory?”
Eve nodded. She jotted her phone number on a page she tore out of her notebook and wrote the check. Dorothy went to the door with her, where she paused and said, “Ms. Parish, my brother always comes to visit in August. Perhaps you’ll have an opportunity to meet him.”
Eve couldn’t tell if the woman was still angry with her, still suspicious, if the words meant any more than face value, if there had been sarcasm, skepticism, any hidden meaning behind them. She couldn’t tell a thing about Dorothy Dumond, but she did know she had not made a friend.
