Regarding Anna (27 page)

“What on earth happened?”

“Someone broke in while I was out running errands.” I filled him in on what I knew and how the police had handled it, leaving out a possible tie-in to the money.

I continued cleaning up the kitchen while Tymon worked his magic on the back door.

“I never did like the way this door was constructed. By the time I’m through with it though, it will be completely burglar-proof. What do you think they were looking for?”

“I’m not sure. It doesn’t look like anything is missing, at least as far as I can tell.”

“You’re not safe here. You know that.”

“Can you go with me upstairs? I haven’t been up there yet.”

“Did you hear me, Gracie?”

“The police went up there, but—”

“You’re not telling me everything.”

“I’ve told you everything I know. I don’t think it’s a big deal. Neither did the police. Will you go upstairs with me?”

He gave me one of those
I’m not through with this subject
looks and followed me to the staircase. I gestured for him to go ahead of me since it took me a while to maneuver myself up the stairs.

In my room, things that had still been in boxes from when I’d moved in were strewn about as was everything from the dresser drawers and closet. Even the mattress from the rollaway bed I slept on had been thrown to the side.

A cigarette butt next to a crumpled-up photograph on the floor caught my eye. I carefully picked the photo up by one corner. It was the one of Anna holding me in the rocking chair. The cigarette butt could have belonged to whoever did this or even one of the policemen, but my suspicion immediately went to Elmer.

“Tymon, can you do me a favor?”

“Anything.”

“Try to find a box of Baggies in the kitchen and bring it up here.”

Photographs are wonderful for capturing fingerprints. I wasn’t sure what would be gained by having the cigarette butt, but it could do no harm collecting that as well.

I walked over to the edge of the room and looked up at the ceiling trapdoor that led to the attic. It was in perfect position. I didn’t think whoever had rampaged through the house would have put it back so perfectly if they had gone up there, nor would they have put the ladders back in the basement. I suspected the trunk was safe.

Tymon returned, and as I turned toward him, the tip of my right crutch slid between two of the floorboards. In order to catch my balance, I was forced to throw all my weight onto my left leg, the one with the bad knee. I screeched in pain loud enough to be heard in the next county.

“Gracie! Are you all right?”

“I’m okay. I just landed on my bad knee.”

Tymon took my arm and led me over to the bed, where I completely disregarded the missing mattress and sat down too fast and too hard, hurting my tailbone.

“Damn it all!” I snapped.

“What’s the matter?”

Suddenly, I felt like I was in a pressure cooker and someone had just opened the relief valve—there was no controlling the flood of tears that came streaming down my face.

“What’s the matter? I’ll tell you what’s the matter!” And then, through sobs and tears, I blurted out the litany of issues both large and small that had been building up inside of me for the past few months, ending with the fact that Minnie’s passing had left me sad and alone. I was sure Tymon didn’t understand half of what I was saying through all my blubbering. When I was finished, I was so embarrassed about my loss of control, I didn’t know how I would ever be able to look that man in the eye again.

He sat down on the bed, put his arm around me, and said in a soft, calm voice, “You’re wrong about one thing, Gracie. You’re not alone.”

TWENTY-SIX

A Loud Knock

Knowing someone had broken into my home—well, the home in which I was staying—and touched all my things was unsettling. I wanted to wash everything that could be washed and throw away everything else. My body was so tense most of the time that I had to keep reminding myself to relax. If Elmer and Henry were responsible for the break-in—and I was sure at least one of them was—they would pay for it one way or another.

I didn’t know what I would have done without Tymon. He insisted on sleeping on the sofa that night just in case the intruder returned, and he said he planned to stay around for a little while the next day. Still, I needed to be careful around him. Maybe that wasn’t fair of me, but at that point, I didn’t trust anyone. And if Tymon had in fact had a romantic relationship with Anna and hadn’t told me about it, I couldn’t trust him either. For all I knew, he could have had some covert reason for hanging around me or been in cahoots with Elmer or Henry.

In the morning, I hobbled down the stairs to the kitchen, where I found Tymon drinking coffee.

“I hope you don’t mind. I helped myself.”

“Of course not.”

“Can I pour you a cup?”

“No, thanks.”

“Feeling better today?”

“Much.”

“I want to fix that floorboard so you don’t get your crutch caught in it again,” he said as he got up from the table.

“Okay.”

I started the tea kettle. Five minutes later, Tymon was back in the kitchen with a shoebox.

“What’s that?” I asked.

He sat down and slowly shoved the box across the table toward me without saying anything.

I laughed. “Nothing is going to jump out at me, is it?”

He maintained a sober face.

I lifted off the lid. The box was filled with 100-pound Irish notes.

I glanced up at Tymon, and we stared at each other for several seconds.

“Where did you find this?”

“Under the loose floorboard.”

“So that’s where she hid it.”

“Who?”

“Minnie.”

He didn’t say anything.

“It’s a long story.”

He stood up. “So you know about this?”

I nodded.

“Well, I don’t need to know. I’m going to fix that floorboard now.”

I did a quick count of the bills to make sure all were there. Four hundred. Four hundred? I had counted three hundred and seventy-two of them with Minnie. Where had the other twenty-eight come from? I recounted. Exactly four hundred. I counted a third time. Same thing. Could I have miscounted the first time? The damn bills couldn’t have multiplied on their own.

Tymon was back.

“All done, Miss Gracie.” He sat down with me. “So do you suppose that’s what they were after?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“You’re not safe here. They could come back.”

“They won’t come back. Whatever it was they were looking for—
if
they were looking for something in particular—they didn’t find it.”

“You never know. If I were you, I’d put that money in a safe place and stay in a hotel or something until this cools down.”

“I can’t afford to do that.”

He glanced down at the box and then at me. “Are you kidding me?”

“It’s not my money, Tymon.”

“I’ll lend you the money to stay in a hotel. What are you going to do if they come back here and you’re here? Hobble away from them? You’re defenseless on those crutches.” There was certainty in his tone.

“I’ll get an attack dog.”

“You’re taking this much too lightly. Promise me you’ll think about what I’ve said.”

“I promise.”

“I can stay if you want.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“Lock the door behind me.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

I looked at all the money, afraid to admit he might be right.

* * *

I started out sleeping in my bed upstairs, but every creak, gust of wind, and car that went by made me jump. After two hours of lying there with my eyes wide open, I got dressed and went downstairs to sleep, but not before lining up pots and pans, tin cans, and anything else I could find in front of the doors so that if anyone did try to get in I would hear it.

The next morning, every muscle in my body ached from sleeping crumpled up in the living room armchair—the most centrally located piece of furniture. Minnie didn’t have as much as an aspirin in the medicine cabinet, so I added that to the list of things I needed at the store.

The money made me nervous, but I had to keep it in the house until Monday when the banks were open. It was currently inside a flour sack in the freezer, the only place that hadn’t been disturbed during the break-in.

The phone rang, and I didn’t have to answer it to know it was Tymon. He’d called to check on me no less than four times since he’d left. I supposed he was genuinely concerned, but even though I thought I could probably trust him, his attentiveness was making me uncomfortable. He said he was going to come over later in the day to drill holes in all the window frames and then secure them somehow with large nails stuck in the holes. As long as he didn’t nail all the windows shut, I didn’t care what he did.

Savoring the last of Minnie’s chamomile tea, I made a list of what I needed to do on Monday. I was running low on cash and hoped I had enough to buy at least some staples. Naomi had been forwarding my mail to me, and the checks I’d received from clients had carried me so far. I checked my wallet. Twenty-eight dollars. With any luck, when I was done I’d have enough left over to put a few dollars’ worth of gas in my car. I checked the change compartment. Another dollar seventy-five and the key from my mother’s jewelry box that I hoped opened the trunk in the attic.

I stared at the key. That wasn’t her key. That was the key to Minnie’s safe deposit box. Where had I put my mother’s key? Or
was
that my mother’s key? Confused, I went to Minnie’s dresser drawer where I thought I had left her safe deposit box key, and it was there, right where I had left it. I placed both keys side by side on the dresser. Except for the grooves, they were identical.

While examining them, I managed to turn them over enough times that now I didn’t know which was which, but I guessed that didn’t matter. What mattered was that the key I had found in my mother’s jewelry box now looked like it could be for a safe deposit box and not the trunk.

I went upstairs and dumped the contents of the jewelry box onto the bed. Her watch caught my attention. I had never really looked at it very closely before. It was a Rolex. Expensive. I don’t remember ever having seen my mother wear it. I put it back and continued with my original mission.

Initially, I had found the key hiding under the loose felt lining at the bottom of the box. I pulled back the entire lining to reveal a tiny piece of paper with the number 708 written on it. Minnie’s box number at North Community Bank was 351. Did all banks use the same kind of key and numbering system?

I racked my brain for the name of the bank that had taken over my parents’ house after they died, thinking maybe they had a box at that bank. Now that I thought about it, it would have made sense since I hadn’t found any of the documents among their things one might have expected to find after they died, like my parents’ birth certificates or their marriage license.

I supposed that even if I had known at which bank the box was located, I wouldn’t have been able to access it. For Minnie’s box, I had power of attorney, but I didn’t have anything like that for my parents. I would call Minnie’s attorney on Monday and ask him what I could do about it. If they’d had a safe deposit box, my birth certificate could be in there. I didn’t know why I—ace PI that I was—hadn’t thought of that before.

* * *

That night, I slept well, probably because Tymon had burglar-proofed all the windows. But for him to be completely satisfied, I feared I may have still needed a ten-foot barbed-wire fence surrounding the house.

The next morning, I thought about leaving the house, and the idea made me nervous. Or maybe it was the idea of coming back to it that scared me. Or both. But I had errands to do, and I had to face that fear sometime—I refused to be a prisoner in my own home.

When it was time to go, I triple-checked all the windows and double-locked the back door. Somehow I managed to get to the car on my crutches while carrying a shoulder bag across my chest, keys in one hand and in the other a metal nail file that Tymon made me promise I would carry with me whenever I left the house. “The neck and eyes are the best places to jab someone if you really want to hurt them,” he had explained. “That’s if you can’t knee him in the groin.” I was also wearing a whistle around my neck in case I was attacked and needed to get someone’s attention. It was almost not worth going out.