Tapping the two snapshots with her index finger, Mrs. Willis said, "This was the man who came into the bank last Thursday afternoon."
"On Thursday morning," Joshua said, "he was killed in Los Angeles."
"I don't believe it," she said firmly. "There must be some mistake about that."
"I saw his body," Joshua told her. "We buried him up in St. Helena last Sunday."
She shook her head. "Then you must have buried someone else. You must have buried the wrong man."
"I've known Bruno Frye since he was five years old," Joshua said. "I couldn't be mistaken."
"And I know who I saw," Mrs. Willis said politely but stubbornly.
She did not glance at Preston. She had too much pride to tailor her answers to his measurements. She knew she was a good worker, and she had no fear of the boss. Sitting up even straighter than she had been sitting, she said, "Mr. Preston is entitled to his opinion. But, after all, he didn't see the man. I did. It was Mr. Frye. He's been coming in the bank two or three times a month for the past five years. He always makes at least a two-thousand-dollar deposit in checking, sometimes as much as three thousand, and always in cash. Cash. That's unusual. It makes him very memorable. That and the way he looks, all of those muscles and--"
"Surely he didn't always make his deposits at your window."
"Not always," she admitted. "But a lot of the time, he did. And I swear it was him who made those withdrawals last Thursday. If you know him at all, Mr. Rhinehart, you know that I wouldn't even have had to see Mr. Frye to know it was him. I would have recognized him blindfolded because of that strange voice of his."
"A voice can be imitated," Preston said, making his first contribution to the conversation.
"Not this one," Mrs. Willis said.
"It might be imitated," Joshua said, "but not easily."
"And those eyes," Mrs. Willis said. "They were almost as strange as his voice."
Intrigued by that remark, Joshua leaned toward her and said, "What about his eyes?"
"They were cold," she said. "And not just because of the blue-gray color. Very cold, hard eyes. And most of the time he didn't seem to be able to look straight at you. His eyes kept sliding away, as if he was afraid you'd see his thoughts or something. But then, that every great once in a while when he did look straight at you, those eyes gave you the feeling you were looking at ... well ... at somebody who wasn't altogether right in the head."
Ever the diplomatic banker, Preston quickly said, "Mrs. Willis, I'm sure that Mr. Rhinehart wants you to stick to the objective facts of the case. If you interject your personal opinions, that will only cloud the issue and make his job more difficult.
Mrs. Willis shook her head. "All I know is, the man who was here last Thursday had those same eyes."
Joshua was slightly shaken by that observation, for he, too, often thought that Bruno's eyes revealed a soul in torment. There had been a frightened, haunted look in that man's eyes--but also the hard, cold, murderous iciness that Cynthia Willis had noted.
For another thirty minutes, Joshua questioned her about a number of subjects, including: the man who had withdrawn Frye's money, the usual procedures she followed when dispensing large amounts of cash, the procedures she had followed last Thursday, the nature of the ID that the imposter had presented, her home life, her husband, her children, her employment record, her current financial condition, and half a dozen other things. He was tough with her, even gruff when he felt that would help his cause. Unhappy at the prospect of spending extra weeks on the Frye estate because of this new development, anxious to find a quick solution to the mystery, he was searching for a reason to accuse her of complicity in the looting of the Frye accounts, but in the end he found nothing. Indeed, by the time he was finished quizzing her, he had come to like her a great deal and to trust her as well. He even went so far as to apologize to her for his sometimes sharp and quarrelsome manner, and such an apology was extremely rare for him.
After Mrs. Willis returned to her teller's cage, Ronald Preston brought Jane Symmons into the room. She was the woman who had accompanied the Frye look-alike into the vault, to the safe-deposit box. She was a twenty-seven-year-old redhead with green eyes, a pug nose, and a querulous disposition. Her whiny voice and peevish responses brought out the worst in Joshua; but the more curmudgeonly he became, the more querulous she grew. He did not find Jane Symmons to be as articulate as Cynthia Willis, and he did not like her as he did the black woman, and he did not apologize to her; but he was certain that she was as truthful as Mrs. Willis, at least about the matter at hand.
When Jane Symmons left the room, Preston said, "Well, what do you think?"
"It's not likely that either of them was part of any swindle," Joshua said.
Preston was relieved, but tried not to show it. "That's our assessment, too."
"But this man who's posing as Frye must bear an incredible likeness to him."
"Miss Symmons is a most astute young woman," Preston said. "If she said he looked exactly like Frye, the resemblance must, indeed, be remarkable."
"Miss Symmons is a hopeless twit," Joshua said grumpily. "If she were the only witness, I would be lost."
Preston blinked in surprise.
"However," Joshua continued, "your Mrs. Willis is keenly observant. And damned smart. And self-confident without being smug. If I were you, I'd make more of her than just a teller."
Preston cleared his throat. "Well ... uh, what now?"
"I want to see the contents of that safe-deposit box."
"I don't suppose you have Mr. Frye's key?"
"No. He hasn't yet returned from the dead to give it to me."
"I thought perhaps it had turned up among his things since I talked to you yesterday."
"No. If the imposter used the key, I suppose he still has it."
"How did he get it in the first place?" Preston wondered. "If it was given to him by Mr. Frye, then that casts a different light on things. That would alter the bank's position. If Mr. Frye conspired with a look-alike to remove funds--"
"Mr. Frye could not have conspired. He was dead. Now shall we see what's in the box?"
"Without both keys, it'll have to be broken open."
"Please have that done," Joshua said.
Thirty-five minutes later, Joshua and Preston stood in the bank's secondary vault as the building engineer pulled the ruined lock out of the safe-deposit box and, a moment after that, slid the entire box out of the vault wall. He handed it to Ronald Preston, and Preston presented it to Joshua.
"Ordinarily," Preston said somewhat stiffly, "you would be escorted to one of our private cubicles, so that you could look through the contents without being observed. However, because there's a strong possibility you'll claim that some valuables were illegally removed, and because the bank might face a law suit on those charges, I must insist that you open the box in my presence."
"You haven't any legal right to insist on any such thing," Joshua said sourly. "But I have no intention of hitting your bank with a phony law suit, so I'll satisfy your curiosity right now."
Joshua lifted the lid of the safe-deposit box. A white envelope lay inside, nothing else, and he plucked it out. He handed the empty metal box to Preston and tore open the envelope. There was a single sheet of white paper bearing a dated, signed, typewritten note.
It was the strangest thing Joshua had ever read. It appeared to have been written by a man in a fever delirium.
Thursday, September 25
To whom it may concern: