Now and Then

53.

The senior vice president and chief lending officer for Workingman’s Trust was a man named Norbert Coombs, who looked like he’d been recruited from a bank commercial. He was tall with thinning gray hair. His suit was a dark pinstripe. His shirt was a blue Oxford. His tie was a small blue bow tie with polka dots. His black shoes had wingtips. He wore half-glasses, which he peered over with his head tilted as he talked with me and looked at his computer screen.

“The Turners’ last mortgage payment to us was on August twenty-sixth, 1994,” he said.

“And you foreclosed when?”

“March 1995,” he said.

“You sent them dunning notices?”

“Every month,” he said, “and according to the notations here, we called them, fi rst monthly, then weekly.”

He read off his screen some more.

“My predecessor went up to the home with the branch manager to speak to them personally. There was no one there and no sign that anyone lived there at all. The lawn wasn’t mowed, mail had accumulated in the mailbox and on the front steps.”

“Call the cops?” I said.

“Apparently,” Coombs said, “they did. The Laurel Heights police reported the house was empty. That there was food, badly spoiled by then, in the refrigerator. Unwashed dishes in the sink. The phone had been shut off, but power and heat remained on. They cannot be denied a homeowner during winter months so that at least the pipes don’t freeze.”

“How much was the mortgage?” I said.

“A hundred and fi fty thousand,” he said.

“What was the house worth?”

“Maybe two hundred and fi fty thousand.”

“So they walked away from a hundred thousand,” I said.

“Minus a broker’s commission and a few fees.”

“When you foreclosed on the house,” I said, “what did you do with the contents?”

“It is bank policy to hold the contents in storage for a year, and then dispose of it.”

“Sell it to a jobber?”

“Normally, or in some cases donate to charity, or”—he smiled and shrugged—“in some cases simply discard it.”

“So the contents of the house from Turner’s time are gone,”

I said.

“Yes, long ago.”

“Do you keep an inventory?” I said.

“Normally we keep one for seven years before we purge it from the system.”

“And are you faithful in your purging?”

He smiled.

“Probably not,” he said. “It’s not something I supervise closely.”

“Could you see if you’ve still got an inventory?”

“Yes, excuse me for a moment.”

He went out of his office, leaving the door open, and walked through the railed-off desk area, and talked to a skinny grayhaired woman at a desk near the railing. My guess was that status ran downhill as it got closer to the railing, and Skinny Gray Head was about as far down as you could get and be inside the railing. She diddled with her computer for a moment while Coombs watched over her shoulder and, after a time reached across the desk and took a printout from her printer and patted her thin shoulder and walked back up the status ladder to his offi ce.

“Fortunately for your needs, Mr. Spenser,” he said, “we have been neglectful in our purging.”

He handed me a printout. I glanced at it and folded it in thirds and put it in my inside pocket.

“They have any savings, checking accounts here?”

Coombs consulted his computer.

“Yes. An interest-bearing checking account and a money market account.”

“Do you have transaction records on those?”

More consultation.

“Both were emptied and have remained inactive.”

“When were they emptied?”

“September seventeenth, 1994,” he said. “Both. Same day.”

“Can you tell who did the cleanout?”

“In a moment,” he said.

He tapped some keys and waited.

“Both by check for ten dollars short of the balance,” he said, and tapped again.

“So they wouldn’t overdraw and call attention,” I said.

“I presume so,” Coombs said.

Tap, tap.

“We photograph the checks,” he said.

Tap, tap.

“Both checks are signed Bradley Turner,” he said. I nodded.

“And you’ve heard from neither of them since?” I said.

“Not a word.”

“Did he take the proceeds of his two accounts in cash?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Seventy-seven hundred from his money market account. Eight thousand and fi fty dollars from checking.”

“Would you just hand him the cash at the counter.”

Coombs smiled.

“No, we’re not that big a bank. I’m sure he gave us a couple days’ notice.”

“You didn’t work here then?”

“No,” he said. “I was living in Omaha at the time.”

I stood and shook hands and slipped into my topcoat. Outside would be cold. Coombs’s office had a fireplace. With a wood fi re burning.

That’s status.