Honestly Dearest, You're Dead

Forty-two

I can see the First Bank of Rivertown from the roof of the turret. It is a squat, triangular-shaped stucco building, set on an oblique plot where two crooked roads meet just off Thompson Avenue.

Its name, First Bank, is unnecessarily distinguishing, for there has never been, and probably never will be, a second bank in Rivertown. The lizards who run the town have no need for another. The First Bank has never advertised for new customers, never given away toasters or coasters or calendars. It serves as an appliance of city hall, that municipal black hole, to suds away any such fingerprints and palm grease as might have stuck to cash payments for zoning changes, building permits, and business licenses.

I was up on the roof at six that morning, sipping coffee, looking at that bank. It was later in April, and it was good to be on the roof, riding the webbed lawn chair that I keep up there for nights when I cannot sleep. The roof is where I think best, when everything is closed and the only sounds come from the trucks and the trains hurrying past Rivertown.

That morning, though, I wasn’t up there thinking. I was done thinking, done wondering. It was time.

Lieutenant Dillard had called four days before. “I’ve got Sergeant Patterson conferenced in with us, Elstrom.”

Dillard went on before I could ask what he’d been doing. Or not. “There was a little shootout this morning, in the northern part of our wonderful state. Seems one of the local constables up there came across two boys named Kovacs, digging holes on a hobby farm. Being neighborly, and knowing that the owner of that hobby farm was a lawyer named Aggert, the officer inquired as to why they were digging holes on Mr. Aggert’s land. Neither of the Kovacs brothers thought to respond verbally. Instead, they drew handguns. The constable, himself a hunter and marksman, shot them both, several times. Since the brothers are no longer able to answer questions, the constable called the state lab team. After some digging, they discovered Mr. Aggert, buried in a field of recently dug holes.”

“The brothers were looking for the bank proceeds,” I said, because it was reasonable to say.

“No doubt,” Dillard said. “It’s a fair guess that Aggert was not forthcoming about whatever he knew, so the brothers killed him and began digging up the property.”

“What did Aggert know?” Again, I was being reasonable.

“We’re not completely sure, but we have uncovered some tantalizing leads.”

“Wonderful,” I said.

“You hear that, Sergeant Patterson? I told you he’d be ecstatic.”

Dillard paused, to let Patterson express his own delight. When Patterson didn’t, Dillard went on. “The Kovacs brothers had been living in their automobile for some time. First off, we learned they discovered that Severs was living in an inexpensive motel in Benton Harbor.”

“How did they learn that?”

“We’re guessing through some mutual contact back in Iowa, but we’ll never know. Anyway, we got to that motel too late; the manager said he’d thrown away all of Severs’s stuff. We think it likely that the Kovacs brothers, from information they either beat out of Severs or found in his motel room, traced his activities backward, to Florida.”

“Florida,” I said.

“The very same Florida you mentioned, Elstrom, just days ago. Remember when you called to say the Kovacs brothers were on their way up from there, and asked my help in alerting your local county sheriff, to be ready to come save your sorry ass?”

“I do recall that, Lieutenant.”

“You were vague as to how the Kovacs brothers knew to come after you.”

“I told you I’d gone down there, looking for Carolina’s trail. I handed out my cards to several people who’d known her. One of them called me, to say someone else had come looking for Carolina.”

“That woman, Dina, who worked with Carolina?”

“Yes. She was trying to be helpful, so she gave the man my card. I began to worry that it might have been a Kovacs brother and called you for help.”

“But you canceled the alert.”

“I got to thinking that I was in no danger. I knew nothing. And I was right. No one came to Rivertown, Lieutenant.”

“Except that person who beat up your friend, at your residence, the very same night you were expecting a visitor from Florida.”

Dillard had talked to the Rivertown cops. “Coincidence. My local police think that was a random home invasion.”

“This whole thing is a puzzle, Elstrom,” Dillard continued. “Especially the lockbox.”

I moved the phone away from my cheek, afraid he might hear my breathing quicken. I was almost certain that I had never mentioned the existence of Maris’s flat key to either Patterson or Dillard-but the meanings of “almost” and “certain” are miles apart. It was one of the things I’d been rethinking, mornings up on the roof.

“Lockbox?” I asked, after too long.

“The Kovacs brothers had bank documents that show the movement of a considerable amount of money up from Florida through Georgia and Ohio and into Michigan. That money appears to have ended up in a lockbox in East Chicago, Indiana.”

“I know nothing of that.”

“We went to East Chicago,” Dillard said. “The lady that runs the safety box vault is quite elderly. She wears thick glasses. She’s not sure she’d be able to identify the man who rented the box, but she is positive that he wore a checkered shirt and suspenders. And she is certain that he never came back after renting it.”

“Aggert,” I said.

“So it would appear.” Dillard said. “That would explain all the holes on his farm. The Kovacs brothers were digging for the key to that lockbox.”

“The insurance people will want to see if they can drill that lockbox,” Patterson said, speaking for the first time. “Unless, of course, Mr. Elstrom, you can think of something else?”

“There is one thing,” I said. “Since both Kovacs brothers survived Iowa, whose body was torched in Severs’s car? Another robber?”

“Or some itinerant,” Patterson said quickly. “We’ll never know.”

I’d touched a nerve. “Damned shame, not knowing,” I said.

“Like the fact that, without a positive identification that it was Aggert who rented that lockbox, it might take years to get at what’s inside, and then only if the annual rental goes unpaid.” Patterson was indeed having a foul day.

“Damned shame, not knowing that as well,” I said.

“There’s another thing, Elstrom,” Dillard said.

“Yes?”

“The Kovacs brothers had a copy of Louise Thomas’s will. It names Aggert as her executor, not you.”

When I didn’t respond, he said, “Elstrom?”

I’d showed the Louise Thomas will to too many bankers and post office employees to lie. “I can only guess that the Kovacs copy was a forgery, to get Aggert involved.” Word for word, it was true enough.

“Damned shame, not knowing,” Dillard mimicked. Then he told me I could come up to claim Maris’s remains.

The safety deposit vault was in the basement. I fingered the flat key in my pocket as I walked down the short corridor.

“I believe I have to sign an access card,” I said to the middle-aged woman, “for a box rented a few weeks ago.”

“Name?”

“Elstrom. Vlodek Elstrom.” I showed her my driver’s license.

She opened a drawer beneath the counter and began thumbing through a row of cards.

“Most unusual.” She frowned as she extracted a card with a yellow Post-it stuck to it.” ‘Course, there’s no law says somebody can’t pay for a box, then not name themselves to have access to it.” She peeled off the Post-it and set the card down next to a ballpoint pen on a chain.

Nothing had been written on the card except the box number and the date it was rented, December 30.

It had snowed, that day before New Year’s Eve. I remembered, because Amanda had surprised me by showing up at the turret early that afternoon, her white Toyota a blur in the blizzard outside the door. “Bad day to be driving,” I’d said as she stepped inside. “Great day to watch wood scraps burn.” She grinned. “Would that be in the third-floor fireplace, across from our big bed?” I asked, after but the merest palpitation. “That would be the one,” she said, laughing. And so we had, into the evening.

The image that my mind had started to sketch the day I found the second heart on Kutz’s trailer came back fully drawn now. I saw Maris among the trees on the spit of land, looking through the snow at the turret, smelling the wood smoke, agonizing over whether someone from so long ago would still care enough to help. Or worse, arriving earlier, in time to see Amanda, beautiful Amanda, hurrying into the turret. Whatever had touched her mind, Maris had turned from it and left. It would have taken only a few seconds for the blizzard to erase any trace of her being there at all.

The middle-aged woman said something.

“Pardon me?”

“Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I said.

“Would you like to access your lockbox now?”

I’d brought a large backpack. I said yes.

It had not taken the Bohemian long, but he was used to acting quickly upon the requests of his wealthy clients. I was not one of those. I was merely an acquaintance, dating back to something we’d worked together on the year before. He liked me though, and because he was a Bohemian, he always called me Vlodek. The only other person who had regularly called me that was Maris.

He swung by late, two days later, as I was beading in the last bit of caulk around one of the first-floor windows. Silver-haired, Caribbean-vacation-tanned, he was immaculately dressed as always. That day, he wore a soft blue shirt, a burgundy patterned tie, and a cashmere overcoat that must have cost as much as my roof. He held out an envelope.

I wiped the caulking compound onto my sweatshirt and took it from him. Inside were copies of four cashier’s checks. Together, they totaled one million two hundred and seventy-six thousand dollars, exactly the amount of money that had been stolen from a bank in Iowa.

“Four of the premier child abuse centers in America, specializing in teenaged girls,” the Bohemian said. “Each was quite happy to accept such a large anonymous donation.”

“There’s no way they can be traced?”

“Highly doubtful. As you can see, I varied the amounts slightly. Those institutions are quite good at blocking demands for their records.”

“Thank you.” I handed back the envelope.

He glanced at the old splotches of paint on my sweatshirt, the bits of caulk stuck to my jeans. “You will always be an enigma to me, Vlodek,” he said, holding up the envelope. “A small deduction from these, a modest and well-deserved commission, could have gone a long way toward improving your…ah…” He let the thought trail away as he looked up at the turret.

“Not necessary.”

He smiled, slipped the envelope into his suit jacket, and walked to his black Mercedes.

I pulled out my cell phone and called Leo. “I have to run up to Michigan.”

“I’d like to go instead,” he said. “And I’d like to go alone.”

I said that would be fine.

Leo and I stood on the narrow band of grass between the footpath and the Willahock. The river was calm; the afternoon was bright. Leo wore one of his Armani suits with a black tie. I wore khakis and my blue blazer and a floral tie I’d gone looking for that morning in a resale shop.

“Do you want to say anything?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

I opened the box he’d brought back from Michigan, took out the canister, and unscrewed the flat lid. I leaned over the river and let the strange gray mix of dust and chips fall until nothing more came out. Then I bent to the water and held the canister under, so that the river could take all of her.

We spoke silently then, each of us alone, to the river and to the past, until she was gone. Then we turned and walked up the hill, to where Amanda was standing.