I assumed the columnist was a woman. In every case, her voice was respectful. To the fourteen-year-old, she wrote, “Honestly, Dearest, this will pass. You will love again, and again after that, and twenty years from now…” To the midforties man, “Honestly, Dearest, perhaps you might begin by talking, really talking, about how things are going for her. You’ve said she’s a terrific mother…” To the young woman beginning her married life with a man who wouldn’t address thank-you notes: “Honestly, Dearest, surely some compromise over such a minor, first disagreement can be reached? Perhaps you could suggest you’d be happy to address those to your side of the family, but for those to his side… well, perhaps that’s when you put on your sexiest smile, and…wake him up!”
Honestly Dearest wrote ordinary advice to ordinary people, but she had fun with it. She did it with a clever business touch, too. From the Honestly Dearest column heading, through the Honestly, Dearest salutation beginning each response, to signing off with yet another Honestly Dearest, she was drumming the column’s identity into her readers’ brains. She was building Honestly Dearest into a brand name.
I finished the last onion ring and folded up the newspaper sheets. The waitress handed me my untouched salad in a box, and I walked out into the cold wondering whether, on one of the newspaper sheets I’d stuffed into a garbage bag, there was printed a letter from Louise Thomas, because she’d had no one else to talk to.
Aggert was in. Today’s checked shirt was blue, the suspenders and tie green. Joining the rectangular red and white tin of Altoids on his desk was a prim little stack of white sheets of paper. The additional clutter must have been driving him crazy. I parked myself in his guest chair.
“I’ve made two lists of banks and post offices,” he said, pushing the sheets to my edge of the desk. “The first is those within a half hour’s drive of her cottage. The second lists towns an hour away. I didn’t go farther, thinking that would have made it too long a drive. I didn’t figure she’d want to spend the gasoline.”
I picked up the sheets. There weren’t very many towns with banks and post offices, and a couple of big ones were missing.
“Kalamazoo? Grand Rapids?”
“I skipped them. Too much city congestion and hubbub.”
“You’ve got a sharp eye, counselor. All that from her one visit.”
He opened the tin of Altoids and popped a little white tablet into his mouth. Instantly, the scent of spring touched the air. “You ought to be able to check out a couple of others besides West Haven yet today,” he said in the fresh breeze.
I shook my head. “If I have no luck here, I’ll do them tomorrow. The rest of the afternoon, I’ll be at her cottage, finishing up.”
He ground the Altoid with his back teeth. “I told you: That’s a waste of time. Let Mrs. Sturrow get rid of the stuff.”
“What’s the rush?”
Aggert pointed at his desktop, blessedly bare now except for the tin of Altoids. “I like things neat and tidy.”
“I met Mrs. Sturrow,” I said, standing up. “For seven hundred bucks, Louise Thomas gets the full-respect treatment. That includes privacy from Mrs. Sturrow’s pawing little hands. I’ll dispose of Louise’s things myself.”
“Waste of time,” Aggert said again.
“I like things nice and tidy,” I said, reaching for the doorknob.
The assistant branch manager of the bank next to the shuttered beachwear shop shook his head. “Not one of ours,” he said, handing back Louise’s will.
“You’re the closest bank to Rambling?”
“Us and First National, one block over.”
The customer service manager at First National said Louise didn’t bank there either.
Down the street, the postmaster scrutinized Louise’s will, then went to the back. He returned in five minutes. “We have no mail holds for anyone in Rambling. Most of the people there have moved away.”
“How about mail being held general delivery for Louise Thomas?”
He shook his head. “I checked that, too.”
“You are the nearest post office to Rambling?”
“Your Miss Thomas could have rented a post office box anywhere.”
“There would be no reason for that, would there?”
“People are funny,” he said.
Leo called as I was driving back to Rambling. “Want to have dinner tonight? Endora’s working late, and Ma’s having her friends over for late-night cable. Even listening to you blather about executing a will would be preferable to a blow-by-blow-you’ll pardon the pun-running commentary about cable sex, in Polish, by septuagenarians.”
Two years before, Leo had bought his mother a big-screen television. It hadn’t taken her but a day to discover late-night soft porn on the premium channels, and only one more day to tell her friends. They’d flocked to her, in the late evenings, like lemmings.
“You don’t speak Polish,” I said.
“Even through the floor, I get the gist from the giggles, the sharp intakes of breath, and then the long silences. Mrs. Roshiska bounces her walker when the action gets really interesting.”
“I’m still in Michigan.”
“The estate is that complicated?”
“Do you want the short answer or the long answer?”
“Give me both; I’m desperate for diversion.”
“Here’s the short: Louise Thomas was killed during a home invasion.”
“Random burglary?”
“So it would appear, though burglars who kill are rare.”
“What’s the long answer?”
“Nobody’s interested, except a security guy who works for some fruit growers. Louise Thomas’s lawyer just wants to be rid of the matter.”
“She wasn’t wealthy enough for real attention?”
“For sure.”
“And?” Since we were kids, Leo’s been able to read my mind as if my thoughts were playing on a movie screen. He knew there was more.
“She lived in a shingled cottage the size of a small house trailer, drove an old Dodge, had very few clothes, no friends, and read advice columns just for the human contact.”
“At least now you know why there was no named beneficiary: There was nothing of value to leave.” He said it like a question. He was still prompting.
“Why hire an executor?” I said, before he could.
“Exactly. You’ve got yourself a riddle.”
“Nobody even knows when she died, except that it was in the last couple of weeks. Apparently, the house was too cold for them to accurately determine time of death.”
“Nobody missed her, reported her missing from work?”
“Her lawyer doesn’t even know if she worked. I still have to talk to the cops.”
“You need to do that?”
“Do you want the short answer or the long answer?”
He laughed. “I told you: both.”
“The short answer is, I pack up her things, drop whatever she has in clothes in the Goodwill box, toss the rest. Stamp ‘paid’ on an unfortunate life, try to forget why she needed me as her executor.”
“What’s the long answer?” he asked.
“I’m not sure when I’ll be back,” I said.
Six
The sun was two feet off the horizon when I got back to Louise’s cottage. That meant maybe an hour and a half before it got dark, enough time to finish up.
As I carried out the three bags of crumpled newspaper pages to leave by the garage, I thought of Louise’s nimble-fingered landlady. The Honestly Dearest columns were the only traces I’d found of any contact Louise Thomas had sought with her world. Maybe those columns were all that had touched her heart. I turned around on the drive and put the bags into the back of the Jeep. Tossing them in the Dumpster behind the motel would be a minor gesture, but one that would guarantee they’d never be touched by Mrs. Sturrow.