Oh hell. Are there ghosts I have to exorcise around here, too? But he didn’t believe in ghosts, even of the metaphorical kind. The problems of here and now were enough.
And, he suddenly realized, his most immediate problem was hunger.
The kitchen was so unchanged that he felt, uncomfortably, as though time had folded him back to his early youth. He heated a can of mushroom Soup-for-One and ate it with a few stale crackers and a hunk of Cheddar cheese he found wrapped in plastic at the back of the refrigerator, and drank coffee made in his grandfather’s small glass percolator.
Then he washed the dishes and left them drying in the rack he’d found under the sink and went back to work.
First, the garage. He took the key ring from the desk and went outside in a lull in the rain. One of the keys unlocked the garage door — for obviously the first time in an age. The garage was empty.
Back indoors, he checked the closet at the foot of the stairs, once home to hats and coats, rain gear, umbrellas. No lockbox. No checkbook. Under the old man’s bed in the downstairs bedroom were storage boxes containing spare sheets and blankets, packed tight. In the walk-in closet he first went through the pockets of all the clothes on hangers, then ransacked and repacked the drawers of shirts, socks, and underwear in the cramped built-in chest. The overhead shelf held only outdated philosophy textbooks. Nothing he was looking for.
He drew in a deep breath, blew it at the ceiling, let his mind wander for a few seconds...
When it returned to the here-and-now he found he was looking at a shoetree in a corner of the walk-in, and wondered why. Then he realized that what he was interested in was neither the shoes nor the tree but what they were standing on.
Of course. No wonder they hadn’t found it. They’d been looking for a real lockbox, metal, compact, probably fire resistant, with a good lock — maybe several. What the shoetree was standing on looked like flimsy gray-painted wood, a box about ten by fourteen inches and four inches deep. It had a small hasp and staple held to the wood with little Phillips-head screws. Locked, it might keep a mouse out. But there was no lock in sight.
He moved the shoetree and picked up the box. It was light, not very sturdy. Whatever was in it was packed loosely. He set it down on the old man’s bed — and stood looking at it, suddenly reluctant.
A box, contents unknown. Worth something, or nothing. Either way it might change his life beyond recognition.
The box was the stone unturned.
The page unread.
The old anxiety, unfelt for years, spread through his gut like a poisonous cold liquid.
Come on, for Christs sake! The missing checkbook might be in there.
If it was, it would still be there after he’d checked the rest of the house.
So he undertook a meticulous examination of every room, every cupboard and shelf and possible hiding place in the rest of the house, upstairs and down, even in the basement. He found neither the checkbook nor a more likely lockbox, and by the time he was done his resignation at the prospect of an extended bout of boredom had become a hammering impatience.
He marched into his grandfather’s room and snapped on the overhead light.
The gray box sat where he had left it, smugly unaware of its vulnerability, callously indifferent to his.
He sat down beside it and before he could change his mind flipped up the hasp, threw open the lid.
In the silence of the bedroom, with the rush of his bloodstream in his ears, he went through the disorganized layers of mix-and-match envelopes he found in the box. They ranged from small personal letter-size to regular business-size to nine-by-twelve manila mailers. All were dull with age and wear. No checkbook.
There were a few photographs. One showed a slender middle-aged woman he didn’t recognize. Another was of a smiling adolescent girl, another the same girl a little older holding the hand of a toddler wearing what looked like his first pair of jeans. The girl’s face tugged at his memory. Presumably his mother. He couldn’t remember ever seeing a picture of his mother. A few snapshots were of people he didn’t know. There were a couple of newspaper clippings, a few concert programs from fifty years ago, his own high-school and college graduation programs...
No heirloom gems, no documents locating a hidden bank account or real-estate holdings in downtown San Francisco. Just a few dusty out-of-character memories.
In the whispering silence, the front doorbell chimed.
Who in hell...? He could ignore it, but...
He closed the box, stood up, turned off the light. It was only four o’clock but might as well have been midnight. He marched through the house, turning on lights. At the front door he turned on the porch light, unlatched the door, and pulled it open.
Inches beyond it stood a woman in a raincoat and an incongruous beret. Her straggly gray hair looked self-barbered.
“You the grandson?” Her voice was unmusical. Her face was tired, square, bony except where the jawline sagged. Her eyes were flat brown pebbles, her mouth oddly childlike, stubborn.
“I’m Professor McLaren’s grandson, yes,” Dave said. “You must be Virg and Kathy’s mom. Keep those two under control, lady. The cops can’t wait to drop something heavy on them.”
The childlike mouth tightened.
She said, “You beat up on my son, you fondle my girl’s tits, you talking cop is a joke.”
“Who dreamed that one up? I wouldn’t have thought either of them had that much imagination. Did you know Professor McLaren?”
The question seemed to derail her aggressive momentum. She stared blankly into his face.
Then she said stolidly, “Sure. We were neighbors.”
“He ever invite you or the kids into the house?”
“Naah. Not like we were friends or anything.”
“You never worked for him?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Look, Mrs. Howard. I asked because Virg and Kathy were very interested in this house this morning. As to whether you ever worked for him, normally we’d look at his checkbook register to see if he wrote you any checks. But the checkbook is missing. So we have to wait till we close out his bank account and get access to the last few weeks of canceled checks. No big deal, unless you want to make it one.”
She shrugged. “Sure. Some housework one afternoon less’n two weeks ago.”
“Didn’t he have a housekeeping team come in every two weeks?”
“Yeah, but they weren’t contracted to do the basement. He said he could use me for half a day to clean up and put the basement in order.”
“Pay you by check?”
“Stuck in an envelope and taped to the front door.”
“Why not give it to you in person?”
“Did the work on Wednesday.” Her lip curled. She was explaining an eccentric to a half-wit. She pointed past him to the chess set on the coffee table.
“Wednesdays he went to his chess club. Some guy came and took him. I was still working. Enough questions. I gotta go fix dinner for my kids.”
“How come they’re so interested in the old man’s lockbox?”
Under the beret and the chopped-off gray hair poking out around it, the tired square face congealed.
“It was on the news, and in the paper, the last thing the old guy talked about. People are interested. You’re interested.”
“Maybe the news got it wrong. His lawyer couldn’t find any lockbox.”