“What do you mean?”
“I mean there’s no mortgage,” she said. “I own the apart-ment free and clear. There was never a mortgage. Glenn bought it outright for cash.”
“Maybe that’s what he was saying, that there was no lien against the property.”
“No, he was very specific. He explained exactly what the policy was and how it worked. It was reducing term insur-ance, with the amount of coverage decreasing each year as the mortgage was amortized. It was all very clear, and it was all a complete fabrication. He did have insurance coverage, as a matter of fact, a group policy at work and a whole-life policy he took out on his own, both with me as sole benefici-ary. But he didn’t have any reducing term insurance, and there was never any mortgage.”
“I gather he handled the family finances.”
“Of course. If I had been paying the bills each month—”
“You would have noticed there was no mortgage payment to make.”
“He took care of everything,” she said. She started to say something else, then stopped and got to her feet. She went over to the window. It was fully dark now, and you could see stars. You can’t always see them over New York, even on clear nights, because of the pollution. But they sparkled now, thanks to the clean Canadian air.
She said, “I don’t know if I should tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“I wonder if I can trust you.” She turned around and fas-tened those big blue eyes on me. They looked trusting enough. There was precious little calculation in their gaze. “I wish I could hire you,” she said. “But you’ve already got a client.”
“Do you think your interests are opposed to his?”
“I don’t know what my interests are.”
I waited for more. When she didn’t say anything I asked her how her husband had been able to buy the apartment for cash.
“I don’t know,” she said. “He had money he’d inherited on the death of his parents, that’s how he’d been able to afford the down payment. He said.”
“Maybe there was enough family money so that he didn’t need a mortgage.”
“Maybe.”
“And maybe he was secretive about it because he didn’t want to let you know that you were married to a wealthy man. Some rich people are like that, afraid they’ll be loved for their money alone. And if there was a great discrepancy between your net worth and his—”
“Mine was about a dollar ninety-eight.”
“Well, that might explain it.”
“Then where’s the money?” she demanded. “If he was rich, shouldn’t there be bank accounts, CDs, stocks and bonds? I can’t find any of that. There are the insurance poli-cies, I told you about them, and there’s a few thousand dol-lars in a checking account, and that’s it.”
“There may be other resources you aren’t aware of yet. He could have had a safe-deposit box you don’t know about, or brokerage accounts, or any number of things. If no money turns up in the next few months I’ll grant it’s a strange situa-tion, but it’ll take that long to tell what’s out there.”
“Some money did turn up,” she said.
“Oh?”
She took a deep breath, let it out, and made her decision. She went into another room and came back a moment later with a metal strongbox about the size of a shoe box.
“I found this in the closet,” she said, “just a couple of days ago. I was thinking that I ought to go through his things and give his clothes to the Goodwill. And I found this on the top shelf. I didn’t know the combination and I was going to try to break it open with a hammer and screwdriver, and then I realized it was just a three-number dial so there could only be a thousand combinations, and if I started with three ze-roes and ran the numbers in turn up to nine ninety-nine, well, how long could it take? And what else did I have to do? Then when I hit the number I started to cry, because it was five-one-one, and that’s our anniversary, May eleventh, five-eleven. I looked at the dial and I started to cry, and I was still crying as I lifted the lid.”
“What did you find?”
For answer she worked the dial and opened the box and showed it to me half-filled with banded stacks of bills. The ones I could see were all hundreds.
“I was expecting stock certificates and personal papers,” she said. “But after all that buildup you must have known what I was going to show you.”
“Not necessarily.”
“What else could it have been?”
Dozens of things, I thought. A secret diary. A drug stash, for sale or for personal use. Pornography. A gun. Audio tapes. Company secrets. Love letters, old or new. Heirloom jewelry. Anything.
“I figured it was probably money,” I said.
“I counted it,” she said. “There’s close to three hundred thousand dollars here.”
“And nothing to indicate where it came from.”
“No.”
“I don’t suppose it’s what’s left of his inheritance.”
“I don’t know if there was any inheritance. For all I know his parents are still alive. Matt, I’m frightened.”
“Has anybody tried to throw a scare into you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Any strange phone calls?”
“Just reporters, and not many of those this past week. Who else would call?”
“Somebody who wants his money back.”
“You think Glenn stole this?”
“I don’t know how he got it,” I said, “or where it came from, or how long he’s had it. I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to keep it around the house.”
“That occurred to me, but I’m not sure where I can put it, either.”
“Don’t you have a safe-deposit box?”
“No, because I never had anything valuable enough to keep in one.”
“You do now.”