Both the senior center and Captain Altschuler had set them free to take as much time as they needed. There were times, she thought, when playing the sympathy card made good sense.
And now she and Fred were pulling into Pontiac. She was glad he hadn’t insisted on visiting his parents up in Bishop Hill afterward. Much as she liked both Oscar and Helga, coping with Helga’s problems was more than she felt up to.
They found Pete’s small shop on Main Street without difficulty, and a short, balding man met them at the door.
“I’m Pete. I’ve been watching for you,” he said and swallowed both Joan’s hands in his surprisingly large ones. “What can I say? I’m sorry for your loss doesn’t come close. Dave was my good friend. But he was your brother.”
“Thank you, Pete. He was lucky to have a friend like you. This is my husband, Fred Lundquist.”
“Peter Vance.” Ah, that was his full name. He released Joan’s hands to shake the one Fred offered. Then he waved at the machines spewing photocopies behind him. “I miss him here already.”
“How did you and Dave first know each other?” She’d been wondering, ever since she knew Pete was in the same town as the prison, whether he, too, had been a prisoner.
“In school, didn’t you know?” She was spared saying how little Dave had told her about his life when Pete went on. “We were in high school together in Ann Arbor. We kept in touch, and when he moved to Illinois, we renewed our old friendship. Then when . . .” He looked at her. “When he ended up in Pontiac, I did what I could for him.”
“You took our mail to him in prison.” She could imagine him carrying it to Dave. What inspection would it have had to pass? She didn’t ask.
“He didn’t want you to know he was there.”
“He told me himself, after he came to Oliver.”
“Come in if you want.” He stood back. “Trouble is, I can’t leave the shop, and there’s no good place to sit down.”
“Fred and I could go over to Dave’s till you’re finished here,” Joan said. “That’s what we need to do anyway.”
“Sure, let me find his key. Come on in.”
They followed him into the shop, where he went behind the counter and fumbled in a desk drawer before handing her a key. “I think this is it. Dave was the one who kept my desk in order. It’s already a mess.” Pulling a piece of scrap paper out of the recycling, he quickly drew a map and held it out to Fred. “You cross the river there.”
Fred took it, but didn’t show it to her. “Looks clear enough.”
He was my brother, not yours! Joan wanted to say, but she kept her mouth shut. This was no time to get on her high horse. “Thanks, Pete,” she said instead.
“I’ll be done here about five. I can give you a call at Dave’s.”
On the way back to the car, Fred said, “Lots of time between now and then. Anything else you’d like to do here?”
Joan immediately felt less put upon. And there was something, but she wasn’t sure she could face it.
“You all right?”
She looked up at his serious face. “Most of the time. You know.”
“I know.”
“You think . . . you think we could go past the prison?”
“Sure.” He made a U-turn.
“You know where it is?”
“Yeah.”
He probably looked it up before we left home, she thought. Or maybe not. He’d been a cop in Illinois before he came to Oliver. Maybe he’d been to this prison. Delivered someone there, or questioned a prisoner. Or–did they execute people in Illinois? Did he have to witness that? She didn’t really want to know. He turned onto a pleasant street of well-kept houses and yards.
“You sure you’re in the right place?”
“Look up there.” He pointed down the street.
And there it was, smack in the middle of a residential neighborhood. There was no mistaking it for anything else, but she saw people who didn’t look like law enforcement out walking nearby. Could Dave have seen such ordinary folks out his cell window? Did cells in that place even have windows? Probably not, but it cheered her to imagine him watching a little boy like that one with a dog almost bigger than he was.
“Okay, that’s enough.”
Fred found his way back to Main Street without difficulty and then to a street with houses that had seen better days. He slowed down. “We want 176,” he said.
Joan watched the house numbers and spotted it, an older frame house that obviously had been divided up. The house, its dirty white paint peeling off, was distinctly grubby, but mature shade trees in the front yard softened it and would make living without air conditioning bearable in summer, she thought.
None of the mailboxes hanging beside the door was marked Zimmerman. He must still have been using his post office box. They could deal with that later. Fred took out the key Pete had given him. “The map says Apartment Two,” he said, and the key fit the door with a 2 from which most of the brass was worn off.
Joan hung back when Fred stood aside, but of course there was no smell of death in this place, only the mustiness of a house closed up while Dave had been in Oliver. The door opened into a room with a sagging sofa, an overstuffed chair, and a small table and straight chair. No place for a dinner guest to sit. An old television on a cheap stand with plastic wheels. Through a door she could see an even older sink and refrigerator, both on legs.
She shivered, and Fred found the thermostat and turned it up. Of course. Why would Dave heat the place while he was gone?
“We could find a bite to eat somewhere,” Fred said. “It’ll warm up by the time we come back.”
It made sense, but Joan was reluctant to leave. “In a minute,” she said, and he stood back and let her do what she had to do.
So she poked her nose into the kitchen. The fridge was almost bare, but then, he’d been planning to be away for a week or more. In a corner, cans of beans and vegetables and soup, and boxes of noodles and cereal stood on shelves. Above them, a cupboard held a few mismatched dishes, pots, and pans. The old gas stove had a box of matches beside it, but it looked clean enough.
Near the back door, a tiny bathroom with sink, shower, and toilet opened off the kitchen. A bedroom opened off the other side. Single bed, night stand, small chest of drawers, all with plenty of mars and scars. That was it.
She supposed he might have stored important papers in his chest of drawers. Or in a box or something in the clothes closet. But Fred was right; they might as well eat something and let the heat come up before she did any serious hunting.
They settled on a mom-and-pop place with a clean front window, and Fred aimed for a booth in the back and sat against the back wall, as he always did at Wilma’s. A skinny kid with threadbare jeans and pierced eyebrows plopped menus on their table and would have left, but Fred twinkled up at her. “What’s good here?” he said. “We’re strangers in town.”
She looked doubtful. “I dunno. Burger, maybe?”
“How about a BLT?” Joan asked, not wanting to risk much in this place.
“White, whole wheat, or rye?”
“Whole wheat, and toasted.” Was that even possible?
“Gotcha.” The kid turned to Fred, who was reading the menu.
“Is the soup really homemade, or does it come out of a can?”
“What kind of place do you think this is, mister? We say homemade, we mean homemade.”
“The soup, then, and a piece of pie. What are my choices?”
“Apple, cherry, and pecan. I’d choose the pecan, if I was you. Edna’s no great shakes on piecrust, but she don’t stint on the pecans.”
“Pecan, then, and two coffees.”
She nodded and left without writing it down.
Fred’s shoulders were shaking, but his face was straight when she returned with mugs, spoons, and a pot of steaming coffee.
“Cream?” she asked. They waved it off, and she left.
The coffee burned all the way down, but Joan sipped
it gratefully. She still felt the chill of Dave’s empty place.
When she smelled Fred’s thick, rich-looking beef vegetable soup, she regretted choosing what would probably be a limp sandwich. But the BLT surprised her with crisp bacon, dark green lettuce crinkling at the edges, fresh tomato slices, and three slices of perfect toast.
“I didn’t know how much mayo you like, so I put more on the side,” the kid said. “Edna don’t like to drown you in it.”
Joan thanked her, grateful not to have to scrape it off. But when she saw Fred’s generous slice of pie, all her virtuous impulses disappeared. The pecans crowded together, and Edna’s crust, if not as flaky as Wilma’s, looked all right. “I’ll take a slice of that, too,” she said.
She’d probably waddle back to the car, but once she tasted it, she didn’t care. Comfortably filled, she felt up to facing whatever Dave’s place might be hiding. What if they’d made this whole trip, but Dave had carried all his important paperwork with him to Oliver? Still, how likely was that? He had to have expected to come back.
They ate without talking, but not rushing. From time to time their waitress refilled their coffee.
“Had enough?” Fred asked finally.
“And then some.” Joan watched him tuck some bills under his plate and then followed him to the cash register, where the same girl rang up their lunch and made change wordlessly. The clock behind her showed only one-thirty, and Joan reminded herself that they’d traveled to Central Time. Part of her wanted to slow down, walk off their lunch, but she resisted suggesting it. They’d lose that hour when they drove back to Indiana tonight.
At least Dave’s place had warmed up by the time they opened the door again.
“Whatever he’s left here, it has to be in that bedroom,” she told Fred.
“You want help?”
He was being so careful not to butt in. “Sure, Fred. Let’s go dig.”
Tossing their coats on the sofa this time, they went into the bedroom. “You try the closet first,” Fred said. “I’ll check the dresser. And I can turn the mattress.”
“You don’t think—”
“People do the oddest things, especially people who live alone. No idea what Dave worried about.”
“I suppose.” She opened the closet door. Dave had left a few pairs of trousers and some jackets hanging, and only a couple of pairs of shoes on the floor. No file cabinet. An extra pillow and a big suitcase on the shelf above the clothes. But when she pulled the suitcase down, she nearly beaned herself. In the nick of time, she managed to swing it to the floor.
“What on earth does he have in here?” She squatted down to open it.
“Paper’s heavy,” Fred said, and he heaved the thing up onto the bed.
“It’s locked,” Joan said.
Fred pulled out his Swiss Army knife and jammed a blade under the lock. “Not anymore.”
“Is that legal?” Not that she cared.
“You his only family?”
“Far as I know.”
“Well, then, you probably own the thing. If not, if there’s a will, let’s hope it’s in here, and you’ll be able to tell someone else the good news about this great inheritance.” He waved at the pitiful room.
“But Fred, he owned property.”
“True. Well, then, someone might really get good news. You going to open it?”
Suddenly she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Somehow reading words about what he wanted to happen after his death would make it more real than what she already knew. She pulled back her hands. “You do it.”
He raised his eyebrows but flipped up the lid and stood back.
Right on top was the family picture that had made her weep when she’d seen it in her own box when she was looking for her parents’ wills. There they were again, all four of them, so young. And now she was the only one alive. But this time she was able to smile at her parents and Dave and herself as such a little girl. She leaned the picture against Dave’s pillow. Next came his old passport. Hadn’t he done some kind of overseas travel when he was in school? His passport photo looked to be the right age. She laid it aside, as she did copies of their parents’ wills.
A thick stack of tax returns and records accounted for a fair chunk of what had nearly clobbered her. “You think these are all on the up-and-up?” she asked Fred. “Didn’t you say his conviction was for fraud?”
He shrugged. “Who knows what he got away with? Let’s hope he didn’t want to risk messing with the IRS.”
“Maybe not. He knew to save his records.” She laid them on the bed without reading them. That wasn’t the kind of thing she was hunting. Next came a bank statement for a savings account that held $147.38. Not enough to cremate him, much less bury him. If that was all he had, he’d been cutting it mighty close. She set it by the photograph.
“Here’s the description of the land.” She held it out to Fred. “I know it’s in Alcorn County, but I’d hate to try to find it from this.”
He flipped through the pages. “Here’s a map. You really want to go there, we can.”
“Maybe.” And there at last was what she’d been hunting. “Here’s his will.” Two pages, mostly taken up with legalisms.
Fred leaned over her shoulder. “He’s left it to you or your heirs, if you die first. So he didn’t have any other family tucked away somewhere.”
“You thought he did?”
“Crossed my mind.”
Handsome and flirty as Dave was, it should have crossed hers, but if it had, she’d blocked it out. “Still, if there were any children, would this will disinherit them?”
“I’m no lawyer, but I think so.”
She nodded. Now maybe she was the one who should look into what the timber people wanted to offer for the trees on Dave’s land. “I suppose I can afford to deal with his body now.”
“We can anyway,” Fred said. “Good timber’s worth a lot these days—but are you sure you want to sell it?”
She thought of the tree sitters near Oliver, protesting any tree cutting. “I don’t know. But Dave must have wanted to. He called those people from our house.”
“We can go look at it anyway. What’s the rest of the stuff in there?”
She’d found out what she came for, but the suitcase was a long way from empty. “I don’t know. Looks like letters.” The invitation to Rebecca’s wedding sat on top. No surprise. But she recognized her own handwriting on the letter below it, and the one below that. Quickly, she flipped through the stack. “Fred, he saved all my letters. Look, they go way back. And pictures—the kids’ school pictures, even their baby pictures.” There was Ken, beaming down at his daughter, and there she was with baby Andrew. “Was I ever that skinny?”
“Did he answer them?”
“Not very often. But he kept them. I had no idea.” Poor Dave. Living alone, no family, in prison for years. “He missed out on so much.” Fred hugged her to him. “Yeah.”
“Oh, look, here’s his high school yearbook from Ann Arbor.” The inside front pages were covered with unoriginal sentiments, for the most part, but she wasn’t surprised to see what looked like some heartfelt wishes from girlfriends and would-be girlfriends. She flipped to the pictures and found David Zimmerman on the last page of the juniors. On the page before it was a young Peter Vance. A full head of hair made a big difference, but she could recognize his face, even so. No senior yearbook. Maybe he didn’t connect with Oliver in the same way—except for some of the girls.
The only other things in the suitcase were a few letters from girls, with little hearts dotting some of the i’s. She looked for Patty Chitwood, but whatever Patty might have written to Dave he hadn’t saved. What he had kept were Joan’s own letters.
“I wish I’d written to him more often.”
“You had no idea,” Fred said.
“No.” She sat on the bed and slid almost everything back into the suitcase, keeping out only his will and the information about his land, now hers.
“What
should we do with his stuff?” Not that he had much to mess with.
“We could put it all in the car, if you want,” Fred said.
“I suppose. Those few clothes, that suitcase full of papers. We need an empty one.”
“Or a trash bag for the clothes.”
“I saw some in the kitchen.” She looked around the small apartment. “That’s about it, unless the TV is Dave’s. Or, heaven help us, the furniture is.”
“Pete might know. He’ll know who owns the place.” Fred checked his watch. “Time to ask him about Dave’s post office box, too.”
The phone shrilled, startling her. “That can’t be Pete. It’s too early.”
Chapter 20
But it wasn’t Pete on the phone. The growl that had scared her before challenged her now: “Who’s this? I called Dave.”
“Dave’s sister.” She answered automatically, only then realizing that she hadn’t told him Dave was dead.
“Is he there?”
“No. Can I help you?” She waved Fred over, holding the earpiece out for him to listen. He bent his head toward hers.
“Tell him he better call me.”
“Let me write down your name and number.” She held out her hand to Fred, who pulled Pete’s map and a pen out of his pocket.
“He’ll know.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t very well just say a man called.” She tried to sound as put upon as any poor clerk taking a message.
“Hell, lady, say it’s Elmer Fudd.”
Joan forced a smile into her voice. “That’s funny. You must be an old buddy.”
Fred nodded and held up a thumb.
“He’ll know.” The phone clicked in her ear.
Joan hung up the receiver. “Well, I tried.”
“It’s okay,” Fred said. “You have his number on the phone bill at home.”
“Yes, with a note beside it to remind me not to call him again. I still don’t have any idea who he was to Dave.”
“No. But I don’t think he knew he was dead. Anyway, he can’t hurt him now.”
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