This time it had been a woman in the uniform of a diner waitress on her midmorning break. She said she had finally had enough of her husband’s “fooling around,” but Carter saw that what she really resented was his reluctance to pull his weight. It wasn’t that her husband was fucking around, it was that he was doing it on her nickel. She wanted a divorce, and she wanted everything. Carter thought she had a good chance of getting it, too. He explained the legalities of what he did, and what sort of evidence would be necessary to get the day in court she wanted. He took her details and those of her husband, talked through what sort of plan he would use to gather evidence and how much it would come to. She didn’t balk when he mentioned money, which was good. She’d made some inquiries of her own, and had made sure she had the money available for his services. He understood he was being paid in better than a year’s tips; she had been planning this for a while.
He saw her out, and crossed to the window to watch her leave the small office block’s side exit and walk to her car. He liked to do this; people skimmed his life at a tangent and then were gone again. It was easy to believe that they puffed into smoke when they walked out of his office. Watching them cross the parking lot kept them vital just a little bit longer.
He watched her drive away in an old white Honda, turned, and found Henry Weston sitting quietly in the chair on the “client” side of the desk.
* * *
He didn’t know the man was Henry Weston at that point. He had no idea who Henry Weston was, nor had he ever heard of him. But now there was a man of about five feet six who couldn’t have been an ounce over 120 pounds, with neat dark hair parted on the left side, wearing a three-piece suit that wasn’t flashy, nor was it cheap.
Carter hadn’t heard a thing. The spring in the door handle creaked when compressed. The upper hinge squeaked slightly. These were both noises to which he had grown very familiar over the last eighteen months.
The man who would presently turn out to be Henry Weston smiled at Carter. It was a very open, disarming smile. Nothing smug or supercilious about it; it was the smile of a man who’d heard a good joke and wished to share it.
“I’m sorry,” said Carter. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I came in,” said the man, as if to reassure him.
Carter didn’t need reassurance on that point, but it was kind of the man to offer it, all the same.
“Can I help you, Mr.…?” Carter held out his hand.
The man regarded it for a moment, then remembered his manners. He rose to his feet (the chair clicked a little when he rose, Carter thought. Why had it been silent when he sat?) and shook Carter’s hand. It was a firm, dry handshake. Possibly too firm; he didn’t try to crush Carter’s bones, but the flesh itself was quite unyielding, more like shaking a neoprene hand than one of flesh and blood.
“My name is Henry Weston,” said the man. “I have a card.” This he carefully extracted from his jacket’s breast pocket and passed to Carter for examination.
Carter took it and sat down, gesturing to Weston that he should retake his own seat. He did so, and it clicked as it took his weight.
Carter examined the card. Henry Weston, it read. Lawyer. There was the address of the law firm, Weston Edmunds, in Providence.
“Weston,” said Carter. He tapped the card. “Of Weston Edmunds?”
“Yes,” said Weston, still delighted with the world. “Yes, indeed. That is me.”
“Joint owner.”
“Sole owner. Mr. Edmunds is no longer with us, alas. But we’d just had the stationery printed, so it seemed a shame to change the name of the law firm.”
Carter didn’t find that funny, but Weston was amused enough for both of them. Carter opened the browser on his laptop and carried out a brief search. “Founded 1925,” he said, keeping the surprise out of his voice.
“Indeed so. Mr. Edmunds died some considerable time ago. The firm has remained a family concern of the Westons ever since. And here I am.”
And here he was. This wasn’t sitting well with Carter; the Weston Edmunds website showed he was not some provincial lawyer sitting in his office and just handling small local business, like some sort of Jimmy Stewart character. Weston Edmunds handled complex litigations, intellectual property and communications rights, patents, and venture capital. It had a staff of more than a hundred, and they worked in a very nice office building, if the website was being honest. Weston must be a very rich man.
And here he was.
“Is this a … personal matter?” asked Carter.
“Yes!” Weston seemed even more delighted. “Yes, it is. There is good news!” His smile vanished and he looked aghast, as if he’d insulted Carter unintentionally. “Oh, but there is bad news, too. May I see some identification before we go any further?”
“You’re in my office,” said Carter. “You know who I am.”
“I know I am in the right place, but it would be infelicitous if it turned out I was talking to the wrong man. It is a legal nicety, but I must insist on seeing some item of photographic identification.”
Carter took out his wallet with ill grace, and passed Weston his investigator’s license. He had already found a picture of Weston on his website, so didn’t necessarily require some ID in reciprocation, although it was tempting to ask for it in retaliation. After all, the site could be bogus. But no, he didn’t really believe that, and he himself was not the retaliatory type, in any case.
Weston looked at it for barely a moment before passing it back. “As I say, a nicety, but a necessity.” His smile deepened, a man continually delighted with everything. Carter wondered how much of his vast fortune was going into medications. Few men are that pleased with the world and their fellow humans, and not one of that few is a lawyer.
Carter accepted his license back and returned it to his wallet. “You said there was bad news.”
The smile fled again. “There is. I am so very sorry. I bring bad tidings. Alfred Hill is dead.”
Carter shook his head. “I don’t know any Alfred Hill.”
Weston seemed curious rather than surprised by this. “You are sure?”
Carter racked his memory, but nothing emerged. “I don’t think so.”
“No family by that name?”
Here Carter was on firmer ground. “Definitely no Hills in my family. That, I would have remembered. No, I’m sorry, Mr. Weston, you’ve made a wasted trip.”
“Splendid.” The smile returned as if at the flick of a switch. “If you do not know Alfred Hill, then you will not feel any grief at his passing. That leaves only good news.” He lifted a slim aged-leather briefcase from the floor beside his chair. Carter looked at the old-style satchel case with some envy for what it implied; that Weston was so rich, he could use things that were comfortable for him rather than having to project an image all the time.
Weston undid the case’s clasp and removed a handful of documents, apparently its only contents. “You are the sole beneficiary of his estate. It does not comprise a great deal, but one is grateful to be remembered at all, hmmm?”
“I don’t understand this. I’ve never heard of the man.”
“He had heard of you, obviously. The identification in his last will and testament is quite specific.” Weston did not stop smiling. “There is no mistake. Somehow, you have touched upon this man’s life, and he decided to reward you for that at the time of his passing.”
“There’s nothing in the will to say why?”
“Nothing.” Weston removed a piece of folded cream paper from an onionskin envelope and passed it over. “The will is brief, but exact.”
Carter read it carefully, then again. “Can I make a copy of this?”
Weston spread his hands. “You may keep that copy, Mr. Carter.”
“Isn’t this the original?” It certainly seemed like it; the paper was heavy—at least thirty-two-pound bond, probably more—and felt expensive. The signatures seemed to have a different sheen from the printed text of the will wh
en he angled them in the light, as if they were handwritten and not scanned and copied.
Weston was unconcerned. “I don’t believe so, but even if it is, what of it? You are the sole beneficiary, after all.”
Carter read the will through carefully, paying special attention to the details of Alfred Hill, and then to the nature of the bequest itself. The former told him nothing except Hill’s home address, and the latter turned out to be the same thing.
“He’s left me his house?”
Through the two or three minutes that Carter had been reading, Weston had simply sat there and watched him, the genial smile never leaving his face. “Indeed.”
“I don’t have any use for a house in Providence.”
“Hardly my concern, Mr. Carter. I have executed Alfred Hill’s last will and testament, and my role in this is complete. Do what you will with the Hill residence.”
Carter skimmed through the document again. “How did he die?”
“How did Mr. Hill die? I thought you didn’t know him?”
“I don’t. I’m just interested.”
“The cause of Mr. Hill’s death is unknown. Indeed, even its occurrence is uncertain.”
Carter looked at him. “You’re saying there’s no body?”
“Mr. Hill is missing, presumed dead. The court has ruled him so in absentia.”
“He’s been missing for seven years?”
“Seven years with sight of neither hide nor hair, Mr. Carter. Without communication with friends or family, without a trace at any and all of his known haunts, and our diligent inquiries have revealed no banking or tax activity. We hired private investigators to find what they could, which was nothing. A tiny bit ironic that the trail ultimately ended in the office of another private investigator, isn’t it, Mr. Carter?” Weston was still smiling. Carter wondered if it would start to hurt after a while. “I enjoy irony. There’s so little to surprise one in life anymore. Such coincidences are small delights.”
Carter didn’t care about just how much Weston gloried in the rich tapestry of life. “Then this property has been unoccupied for seven years? What condition is it in?”
“I’m sure that I have no idea, Mr. Carter. I am no Realtor, only a humble lawyer.” Strangely, Carter didn’t find the word “humble” coming from the mouth of the senior partner of a large law firm as disgusting as he might have. Weston was a rich man, of that there was no doubt, but the money truly seemed to be just a side effect of his job to him.
“So I might go there and find it ruined, or burned out, or gone altogether?”
“Well, I doubt that, as it was searched pursuant to the claim of death in absentia. It was still there then. Nothing untoward was drawn to my attention, so I suppose it still has its roof on, at the very least.”
Carter considered; the drive up to Providence would take the best part of four hours. He couldn’t start on the surveillance for the divorce job until the following week because the subject was currently out of town, and he only had a couple of searches left to do on a background check he’d taken on the previous day. Those could wait.
“Okay, I’ll have a look at it,” he said.
“Excellent,” said Weston. “Even if it isn’t a luxury condominium with gold-plated taps, Mr. Carter, I’m sure the simple pleasure of a windfall will go some way toward compensating you for your time.” He gestured to the will. “You have the address there. Here”—he produced a pristine white envelope from those he had taken from the briefcase—“are the deeds, here is a local map with the location marked—”
“My car has GPS.”
“Of course it does. And here are the keys.” He produced a key ring holding two Yales and a mortise key. “My people tell me the latter is for the rear door, which was double bolted on the inside, so I shouldn’t bother with that if I were you.”
“Your people.”
“My investigators.” The thin wad of documents was now in Carter’s possession, and Weston made a small spread of his hands, like a magician demonstrating that he had made them vanish. “I think that concludes our business.” He stood, and Carter rose, too. “It has been a pleasure to meet you, and I hope your inheritance gives you cause for happiness. Enjoy it in good health, Mr. Carter.”
They shook hands once again, and Carter accompanied Weston out into the hall. When the lawyer was out of sight on the stairs, Carter closed his door and walked to the window. More than usual, he wanted to watch the man out in the real world beyond his office. He had suffered a hard enough time believing in Weston while he had been in the same room as him, never mind now that he was out of sight.
Carter waited five minutes, but Weston did not appear in the parking lot. Carter went out into the hallway and looked over the banister, but there was no one down there at all. Finally, he descended the stairs himself and walked out the entrance. There was no sign of Weston.
Carter concluded there was no mystery; he had left by the rear service entrance. An eccentric choice, but Weston seemed to enjoy doing things differently. The world whirled on, and everything made sense.
Chapter 4
PROVIDENCE
Carter had been to Providence a handful of times in his life, and never by choice. It was always something to do with a case, or to help somebody out, but he had never willingly been to the place. He didn’t like the city at all, but he couldn’t have told you why. He knew the dislike was irrational; that didn’t mitigate it in the slightest. The small flurry of optimism he had felt that this unexpected inheritance might be worth something was dampened long before the lawyer Weston had belittled it by implication; the discovery that it was in Providence, of all places, had already killed his buzz magnificently.
It was an old city, but he didn’t feel that when he went there. It felt artificial to him, as if it was procedurally generated by some video game. There was never a sense of place he could feel comfortable with, just the nagging idea that they were constructing the city as he traveled into it, and struck it like a stage set when he left. He had once read a book by William S. Burroughs called The Place of Dead Roads. In it, there was an artificial town run by a conspiracy. It looked like any other place, but if you hung around long enough, you’d realize the old-timers were always having the same conversation in the same words, that the same things happened in the street again and again, that the existence of the town as a town was nothing more than a mechanical tableau, designed to encourage the casual visitor in the belief that all was normal, and that the casual visitor should move on.
Providence felt like that to Carter, except he could swear he could hear the clockwork whirring behind the bland facades of the buildings, the flutter of script pages when he turned away. He did not like Providence at all, and he didn’t care what Providence thought of him in return.
The address was in an area to the northeast of the city he had not heard of before—Hastings. Carter’s dislike of Providence grew calcified and unforgiving as he navigated the streets of Hastings. Everything seemed to be of white clapboard construction, every house looking like every other house. It was like driving through Stepford.
Carter felt a headache starting to nag. The GPS said he was close, so he pulled into the parking lot of a small strip mall next to a row of stores in older buildings. He bought himself some aspirin and a bottle of water, swallowed a couple of tablets, and went to find the golden castle he’d inherited.
* * *
He walked down the row of stores—hairdressers, sandwich shop, vacuum cleaner repairs, car parts, a couple boarded up—and was surprised to realize that the numbers were closer than he’d gauged to the address. He wasn’t sure what to think when he reached 1117 Havilland Street, and found it was a store, too. To be exact, a bookstore. To be perfectly exact, a functioning bookstore.
Hill’s Books he read on the sign. Antiquarian & Secondhand. The store window was lined with an amber-colored plastic film, to protect the books from sunlight, he guessed. Beyond it, he could see sets of encyclopedias, Dickens, Hen
ry James, Shakespeare, and examples of prints like maps and stiffly engraved soldiers of the Continental Army. Everything looked yellowed and old, not entirely due to the colored light.
Inside, he could see electric lights were on, and the sign hanging in the door said Open. With misgivings, Carter entered.
A bell, an actual bell with a coiled brass striker mounted by it, struck a bright note as he swung the door open. The shop smelled just like every old bookshop he had ever been in. Not a huge number, but the smell was distinctive and not unpleasant. Everything other than the books seemed varnished and polished—the floorboards, the shelves, and the fancy paneling that rose up to hip height on the walls. It didn’t look new. Nothing in the shop looked new.
No, that wasn’t quite correct. Behind the counter, an African American woman was watching him, an open book on her lap. She was, he guessed, somewhere around her mid-twenties, not conventionally pretty, with broad cheekbones that would have given her the look of a lazy cat but for the very intelligent dark eyes that were currently looking at him. Not conventionally pretty, perhaps, but he found her attractive all the same. She wasn’t simply looking at him, he realized; she was assessing him.
Seeing that he was studying her in return, she smiled. “Hi,” she said, rising from her stool. She closed the book and put it on the counter by her. He unconsciously noted the title: Diableries: Stereoscopic Adventures in Hell. It took her a long time to get from “H” to the last “i” in “Hi.” She had a voice that made Katharine Hepburn sound like Phyllis Diller. “Can I help you?”
Carter couldn’t decide whether the smile was fake, flirtatious, or just patronizing.
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