In some ways, after only four words, it reminded the detective of Darth Vader.
“Yeah, this is Duckworth. Who’s this?”
“I just wanted you to know I’m proud of you.”
“Proud of me?”
“I wasn’t sure anyone would put it together. See the links. I was afraid I was making it too hard.”
“Who is this?” A demand this time, not a request. “Tell me who the hell this is!”
But there was no one to talk to. The line had gone dead.
Sixty-seven
I spent a couple of hours thinking. Just thinking. Finally, I phoned Lucy.
“Did you get Crystal’s lunch to her?” she asked.
“I did.”
“No problems with the office?”
“None.”
“Thank you for that. I really appreciate it. I was on the phone for ages today with an estate lawyer and the funeral home and it’s just been more than I can take.”
“I need to see you. Can I come by?”
“Of course.” She paused. “I can open a bottle of wine.”
“Maybe just coffee.”
“Right,” she said. “I’ll do that.”
It wasn’t like the last time when I arrived at her house. This time, instead of inviting me in and offering me a seat in the living room, Lucy slipped her arms around my neck, pulled my body into hers, and kissed me.
I had some involuntary responses, and I was sure she noticed. Which was why, when I gently pulled her arms from around me, she looked surprised.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “It’s just been... it’s been quite a morning.”
“There was something on the news, about shots being fired at a Laundromat. And then I thought about what you said, that all your clothes were damaged in the fire, and there aren’t that many Laundromats in Promise Falls, and—”
“I was there.”
“Oh my God.”
I told her, as briefly as I could, what had happened.
“You need something stronger than coffee,” she said, leading me into the kitchen.
“No, coffee is perfect,” I said.
She had already made a pot, filled two mugs and set them on the kitchen table. We both sat.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she said imploringly. “Sometimes, when you’ve been through something like that, it helps to talk it out. To ease the stress.”
“That’s not why I’m here,” I said.
Concern washed over her face. “What is it, Cal?”
“Tell me about the letter,” I said.
“I’m sorry, what?” she said.
“There’s something you’ve been holding back from me from the beginning. About what you thought had been taken from your father’s house.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lucy said slowly.
“I think the discovery of the room downstairs was a genuine surprise. And I think when you heard someone running from the house, it was the person who’d taken those discs. But I don’t think you’ve ever really been worried about those DVDs. It was something else. A letter.”
“How do you know this?” she asked.
“So I’m right.”
She nodded slowly. “Maybe you are. But it was very personal.”
“Your father told you that if something were to ever happen to you, that he’d left something for you. Something from his earlier days. Money. That he wanted you to have. For you, and for Crystal.”
“I don’t understand how you can know this.”
“Level with me, Lucy. Tell me about the letter, what you’re expecting it to say if and when you find it.”
Her eyes glistened. She wrapped both hands around her mug, as though using it to stay warm.
“Dad always said he would look out for me. I mean, he said it all the time, that he’d be there for me, and he’d do just enough so that he wasn’t actually lying. But one day, he said, he’d make everything up to me. He said there was money... a lot of money. Several hundred thousand. All cash. It dated back to those days when he was still with the bikers, before he got out. Dad... did bad things back then. He ripped off his own people. Left them for dead. The money was... well, it was dirty. It wasn’t the kind of thing he could put in the bank, at least not in an account. A safe-deposit box, maybe. He had it tucked away. Didn’t even tell Miriam about it. At least, that was what he’d said. For years, since he’d written those books, he’d lived this aboveboard life. Well, not counting the sex stuff. But I mean, he left that biker life behind. All the time, though, there was that money. And he wanted me to have it.”
“Go on.”
“He said if anything ever happened to him, to look in his desk. That there was a letter. Taped to the bottom of one of the drawers. That it would tell me how to get the money.”
“You went to the house, after you learned your father had died in the accident, to get that envelope. You heard someone leaving out the back door, and when you didn’t find the envelope, you thought it was that person who’d taken it.”
Lucy nodded.
“I thought my father must have confided in someone else. Told someone about the letter. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I just needed to know who’d broken into the house. Once I knew that, I’d approach them on my own. In fact, I did try to reach this Mr. Duncomb you found out about. I called his home last night, and got his wife, and she was very unpleasant. I was going to try again today, but now that you know about it, maybe you could do it for me?” She forced a smile, but it seemed no more genuine than a politician’s handshake.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this at the outset?”
“Before I got to know you, for all I knew, you’d want to find the money and keep it for yourself. And then there’s the whole moral issue of where the money came from in the first place. But I don’t care. I’m a single mother. I have a daughter who needs help. I’m going to do what’s right for her and I don’t care about anything else.”
A tear ran down her cheek.
“Where do you think the money is?” I asked her.
She bit her lip. “I don’t know. Like I said, maybe a safe-deposit box somewhere. Or maybe it’s like in that movie The Shawshank Redemption. It’s hidden under a rock in a field someplace. Wherever it is, I want to find it. But I have to get my hands on the letter first.”
I reached into my pocket for the page that had been photocopied from Crystal’s book.
Lucy’s entire body went rigid. She sat up straight in her chair. One trembling hand went to her mouth.
“What is that?” she asked.
“This is the letter,” I told her.
“Where did you get it?”
“Crystal had it,” I said. “She’s had it for some time. Once, when she was at your father’s house, she went into his desk looking for paper when she’d used up everything in the printer tray. It was one of the pages in her graphic novel.”
“Crystal?” she said.
I nodded.
“So she... she could have had it for weeks?”
I nodded again.
Lucy pushed back her chair, stood, turned, and took three steps over to the counter, braced herself against it, her back to me.
“Oh God,” she whispered. “I never... I can’t believe...”
“Lucy,” I said.
“I should have thought... it should have occurred to me it could have been her, but... I didn’t think my father would let Crystal into his office.”
“Evidently he did.”
Still with her back to me. “But he had hidden it. He said he taped it—”
“Crystal felt the tape on the back of her hand when she reached into the drawer for paper.”
She turned, her eyes red. “You talked to her.”
“Yes. When I found it, and read it, I needed to know where she’d gotten it. She remembered, although she claims she never even read the letter. She didn’t care. All she cared about was that I not tear the page out of her book, so what I’m holding here isn’t the original, but a photocopy.”