If I had bothered to look at the return address, I would have seen right away that the package had been sent to me by Mrs. Flynn. There was a note inside:
Dear Miss Caruso,
I’m leaving this in your care. I don’t think it’s safe to keep here. I’ve been hearing noises. I think you may be right about everything. You will know what to do.
Best,
Theresa Flynn
The stationery had a row of teacups on it, with a fluffy kitten right in the middle. This was a horror show. What had I done? How could I be right about everything when I obviously knew nothing? Mrs. Flynn had been hearing noises. That had to have been the killer. But how did he know she’d had that lockbox in her possession? She hadn’t claimed it for forty-odd years. He must’ve known she’d gone to that insurance office. He must’ve been watching her. He must have followed her there. But why? What had triggered his interest? My stomach gave a sudden lurch. It wasn’t her he’d been watching. It was me. Was he watching me right now?
I leapt up and yanked the living room curtains closed. The sound of the iron rings skittering across the rod was worse than nails on a chalkboard. I picked up the knife I’d dropped on the floor and ran to the phone table in the hallway. I got my hammer out of the drawer. Holding one weapon in each hand like a lunatic, I ran around the house, searching every corner and throwing open every closet door until I was satisfied there was no one hiding anywhere. Only after turning on the burglar alarm was I ready to retrieve the keys I’d scammed out of the locksmith. They were hidden in the butter dish.
I sat down on the floor of the entry hall and tried them, half expecting the lock not to turn. But it did. Slowly, I lifted the lid of Jean Albacco’s lockbox. It felt heavy, like your limbs as you’re falling asleep.
Then the doorbell rang. It was Javier. He wanted to talk about my black mondo grass, which I already knew was failing. I told him I had laryngitis and we’d work it out on Thursday. I slammed the peephole shut.
I sat back down on the floor and closed the box. Did I really want to do this? Wasn’t I taking this method-acting thing a little too far? I was no Erle Stanley Gardner, much less Perry Mason. Wouldn’t it be better to get out of these people’s lives and hand the whole thing over to the police, who knew what they were doing? Well, yes, that would’ve been fine in principle. But the police didn’t know what they were doing, and even if they did, they didn’t care—about any of it. Joseph Albacco was being punished for a crime he didn’t commit, and Mrs. Flynn had gotten in the way. I’d put her there. Looking inside that box was the least I could do. I lifted the lid again. It smelled like the past, like ashes.
There were pictures on the very top. Jean and her sister as children, at the beach in 1947. Jean’s parents at their wedding, the bride and groom looking terrified. Joe in high school, handsome in his football jersey. A stained photo of a small child wearing a frilly white dress. There was Jean’s social security card, and Joe’s life insurance policy, which would pay out five thousand dollars to his survivors. Then some receipts, one for a watch purchased in New York City at Promenade Jewelers in 1933, another for a stove, dating from 1956. A warranty for a camera. A letter from Joe to Jean, written while he was working on an oil rig the summer after high school. Sweet.
Underneath the photos I found two slim bankbooks held together by a rubber band. I peeled off the rubber band and put it around my wrist. Then I studied the book on top. It was navy blue, with embossed gold letters that read “Ventura Savings and Loan.” I turned to the first page. The Albaccos’ joint checking account. They’d opened it in 1956, the year they were married. I scanned the pages, a little surprised at how easily snooping came to me. But then again, I’m the sort of person who looks inside people’s medicine cabinets at parties. It’s horrible, I know.
Jean, or Joe, one of them, was frighteningly organized. Every entry was annotated with a red pencil. There were regular deposits made every two weeks. One set was marked “JLA,” the other “JA.” Jean Logan Albacco and Joseph Albacco. Paychecks, I assumed, from Gilbert, Finster, and Johnson, the insurance company where Jean had worked, and the Ventura Press, where Joe had been employed. Jean earned more than Joe did. He would’ve hated that. He seemed the type. Had she rubbed his nose in it? Probably. The withdrawals were all for small amounts—twenty-five, thirty, one hundred dollars. Household expenses, rent maybe. Nothing unusual. The second bankbook was more curious.
It was for a savings account at the Bank of Santa Barbara. And it was held in the name of Jean Logan. It seemed to have been opened while Jean was still in high school. I didn’t have a bank account of my own until I got divorced. I guess I lacked Jean’s ambition.
There were no withdrawals made. None whatsoever. I looked over the deposits. There were a hell of a lot of those. There was a series in the amount of $35 that were made every two weeks for a year starting in July of 1953. These were marked “LP.” Then a series of deposits of $150 that were marked “BW.” They came every three weeks for six months in 1955, then stopped. There was a group from 1956 marked “DG,” and these were in the amount of $200. They appeared at irregular intervals, a couple a month, nothing for two months, then deposits for three days in a row. The last group was from 1957. Every week like clockwork, in the amount of $400. They were marked “MA,” and the last one was made a week before Jean’s death, on December 6, 1957.
Now my head was swimming.
Any way you did the math, it came out the same. Jean had accumulated a small fortune. The conclusion was inescapable. She was a teenage blackmailer, just like Meredith Allan had said, and making a pretty good go of it up until the moment she went and got herself killed.
Yeah, up until that moment Jean had done everything right. She was a real pro. She’d even stashed her loot out of town, in Santa Barbara, where nobody knew her. Where nobody would’ve paid a lick of attention to a dark-haired girl looking for someplace to hide a whole lot of dollar bills.
But who were these people lining up to make her rich—“LP,” “BW,” “DG,” and “MA”? “BW” had to have been Bill Winters, the infamous gym teacher. Ellie had confirmed that. “LP” was a mystery, as was “DG.” And then there was “MA.” It couldn’t be a coincidence that those were Meredith Allan’s initials. That woman was in this mess up to her eyeballs, I just knew it. But it didn’t make sense. If she had been one of Jean’s victims, why would she have breathed a word about it to me? Even implied anything of the sort? Sheer perversity, maybe. But why would Jean have been blackmailing her husband’s mistress to begin with? Isn’t the cheating husband the one who gets blackmailed? Perhaps Jean had something on Meredith Allan that was entirely unrelated to the woman’s affair with her husband. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit. I’d bet the farm Meredith Allan had skeletons in every one of her overstuffed closets.
At the bottom of the box there was a manila envelope marked PERSONAL. I hesitated for a second, but who was I kidding? I had gone too far already. I opened the envelope carefully and pulled out a sheet of paper with a California State Legislature letterhead. It was dated May 17, 1928. It was a carbon copy, but it was here, in Jean’s lockbox, so clearly it had meant something to someone. I had to read it a couple of times, but it still didn’t exactly make sense. Somebody was advising a Mr. Allan (Meredith’s father?) to dispose of his tidelands holdings immediately. Besides that, there was a lot of mumbo-jumbo, business-type stuff, and I didn’t speak that language. So how come Jean did? Who taught her? What was she doing with this letter? How badly had someone wanted it back?