Chapter 12
Elise sounded troubled when she called to ask if I would accompany her to the bank where she and Jim had a safety deposit box. Of course she had good reason to sound that way even if no new concerns had surfaced in the past few days. But knowing her as well as I did, I detected a different timbre in her voice as if she was struggling to keep her wits about her. Had I been expecting a horde of magick-starved customers to arrive, I still would have closed the shop to go with her.
“Name the time and I’ll be there,” I said without hesitation.
“I don’t want to disrupt your workday. Do you take a lunch break?”
“Sorcerers can’t live on magick alone,” I replied, although I usually brought lunch from home or grabbed something nearby so I could keep the shop open.
“Great, thanks. After the bank, I’ll pick up lunch for us.” We settled on noon.
After searching for fifteen minutes, I found the sign we’d bought years ago for those times we had to close the shop during the workday. It was hand-painted in an overwrought Victorian style with a picture of a clock whose hands could be moved to show the time we’d be back. Between Bronwen, Morgana, Tilly, and me, there’d always been someone around to cover if one of us had to leave. Now that Tilly’s shop was closed, and she was wizard-sitting Merlin, there remained a grand total of me.
I set the hands at one o’clock and locked up. There was no point in taking my car, which was still back at the house. A brisk walk would bring me to the bank in less than five minutes. The Schuyler Community was the oldest bank in the area and the only one located in the center of town. Two others were in strip malls several miles away to the north and east. The best part about the Schuyler was that everyone who worked there knew all of their depositors as well as their families. The worst part about the Schuyler was exactly the same thing. Familiarity of that nature was often a breeding ground for gossip. Over the years, the Schuyler had lost business to the other banks, simply because some people preferred to conduct their banking matters in a less homey, more clinical environment. My family had debated moving to another bank a couple of times, but in the end, convenience had kept us in town.
I found Elise waiting for me outside the bank. “I want to catch you up before we go in,” she said after a hello hug. “When I called the bank after the funeral, I spoke to Debbie about having our safety deposit box unsealed and inventoried. She told me I’d have to get myself appointed administrator of the estate in order to do that, which I took care of yesterday.” Elise paused to take a breath. “There’s so much red tape to go through when a spouse dies, there’s no time to grieve properly. You’re expected to pick up and carry on as if everything is back to normal again. But it isn’t. And at times I don’t think it will ever be.” She heaved a tremulous sigh. “Sorry.” I nodded in understanding and let her continue. “I called Debbie this morning to make an appointment to take care of the box.”
“She corrected me and said “boxes.”
“Did you have more than one?” I asked.
“Not to my knowledge.”
Now I understood the cause of her agitation.
“When I questioned Debbie about it, she said there were definitely two in both our names. At that point I pretended the second one had slipped my mind in all the turmoil. After I got off the phone with her, I immediately called Scott.” I must have had a blank look on my face, because she went on to explain that Scott was a colleague of Jim’s, his go-to attorney if he needed outside help. “He knew about the second box, but not why it existed or what it contained. He seemed totally surprised to learn that I had no knowledge of it. He said Jim would have had to forge my signature and photocopy my driver’s license to open it in both our names.”
“So Jim rented the second box without ever mentioning it to you,” I repeated, trying to make sense of it. If I was surprised, I could imagine how the unexpected news had hit her. “Can you think of any reason why he would do that?”
“Maybe he didn’t want me to know about what was in it. But then why put it in both our names? I’m completely at a loss. That’s why I wanted you to come along. By the time I got off the phone with Scott my thoughts were in a muddle.”
“Don’t worry,” I linked my arm through hers, “We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
We marched in and headed straight for Debbie’s desk. She popped right up when she saw us coming and met us halfway across the carpeted area where the bank officers had their desks. She was a slim woman in her forties, with basic brown hair in a bouncy wedge. Her clothes were bank conservative, with the exception of big hoop earrings. She pressed Elise’s hand between her own two. “How are you?” Her grim smile reminded me of a funeral director.
“I’m okay,” Elise replied, which was far from true. But answering any other way would have started a pointless exchange that would have wasted time and made everyone more uncomfortable.
“Good, good,” Debbie said, releasing her hand. “We’ll try to take care of this annoying business as quickly as possible. Do you have the papers naming you administrator of the estate?” she asked as she led us back to her desk. Elise produced them and Debbie took a minute to glance over them. Satisfied, she handed them back, then walked us over to the vault at the rear of the bank where we were met by a more senior bank officer. George Augales was a compact man who had to be flirting with fifty. He thanked Debbie and said he’d take over from there. It seemed like they’d choreographed this visit ahead of time to keep the bereaved from having to wait. I wondered if they’d synchronized their watches too. I berated myself for being cynical. They were probably trying to be considerate. Nope, the reasons notwithstanding, their studied compassion irritated me. I’d been spared this particular aspect of what I’d come to think of as “death chores.” Morgana and Bronwen had never kept a safety deposit box. Instead they’d cast wards around the shop and house to keep anyone with malice in their heart from entering. Of course I now had the security system, so I didn’t have to rely on the protection spells. But maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to renew them anyway.
George was a by-the-numbers kind of guy. He asked Elise to sign both signature cards, which he’d already plucked from the files in anticipation of her arrival. The card for the secret box bore one supposed signature by Elise and three others by Jim. Elise spent a few seconds studying the signature that wasn’t hers, before signing on the line below with a shaky hand. She handed George the one key she had, and he used it, along with the master key, to access the first box. Since Elise didn’t have a key to the other one, George had to break the lock. I was surprised by the size of the secret box. It was one of the largest in the vault. Elise had to be wondering what on Earth Jim was keeping in there. I sure was.
George carried both boxes out of the vault and led us into one of the two small rooms where the bank’s patrons could look though the contents of their boxes in private. George placed Elise’s boxes on the table. Since he hadn’t known I was coming, he excused himself to bring in a third chair.
When we were settled, Elise opened the small box first. In her place, I would have started with the secret one. Maybe she was putting it off, afraid what she might find out about the man she’d married, the father of her children. The first box held mostly papers, the deed to the house and titles to the two cars, her marriage license, the family’s social security cards and birth certificates, plus a number of federal savings bonds in the children’s names. George noted each item on a legal pad. The last thing was a black velvet jewelry pouch containing three gold bracelets, a sapphire and diamond cocktail ring and a pair of small diamond stud earrings. Judging by Elise’s face, no surprises there. Before lifting the lid of the secret box, she turned to me. I nodded to let her know I was there for her no matter what she was about to discover. George was clicking and unclicking his pen, probably wishing we’d wrap things up so he could go for lunch. I looked pointedly at his hand holding the pen, and he was astute enough to realize his impatience was showing. He set the pen down and gave me a sour smile.
Elise lifted the lid of the box as gingerly as if she thought a rubber snake might pop out. Then her forehead bunched in a frown. The box was filled with bulging manila envelopes that seemed barely able to contain their contents. She withdrew one of them, opened the little aluminum clasp and peered inside. Her mouth fell open. It was the first time I’d ever seen someone actually look dumbstruck, but there was no better word to describe her expression at that moment.
“What is it?” I couldn’t keep myself from asking. She upended the envelope, letting its contents fall onto the table. Ten neat stacks of hundred-dollar bills. George sat up straighter and retrieved his pen, while Elise counted the bills in one of the packs—one hundred. Easy math. The envelope contained one hundred thousand dollars. She pulled the other envelopes out of the box. There were five in all—a cool half million. She fell back against the chair shaking her head. George excused himself again and returned a minute later with a cash counter. The accounting had to be accurate, because the government was going to want its share.
Elise hardly spoke a word until we were back in her car. George had supplied her with a canvas tote in which to carry home the contents of both boxes. I’d taken care of the necessary thank yous, because she seemed to be operating on autopilot, minus the speech option. When we reached her car, she handed me the keys, acknowledging that she was too distracted to drive safely.
“Where to?” I asked, sliding into the driver’s seat.
She took so long to answer that I was starting to repeat the question when she finally murmured, “Anywhere to get takeout—you choose.” Less than fifteen minutes later, we pulled to the curb in front of Abracadabra with two turkey sandwiches, Russian dressing, pickles, bottled iced tea, and a small bag of potato chips.
From his window seat, Sashkatu greeted us with a disinterested yawn. I hiked myself onto the counter and started to unpack our lunch, while Elise stowed the tote under my desk, away from potential prying eyes. Then she joined me on the counter. The smell of turkey had caught Sashkatu’s attention. He stepped down from the windowsill onto my desk chair to better view the proceedings and possibly wheedle a bite.
“I have no idea,” Elise said in answer to a question I hadn’t asked. Now that we were in the seclusion of my shop, she’d given up any pretext of composure, her shoulders slumped as if this were the final straw she could carry. “I mean, where could he have gotten all that money? And why keep it a secret? What did he intend to do with it?”
I’d been going over the same litany of questions myself. “One thing is clear,” I said, addressing the most positive aspect I could find, “although Jim didn’t want you to know about the money yet, he wasn’t trying to keep it from you in the long run. It wasn’t like he was squirreling it away because he was planning to leave you. If that were the case, he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of forging your signature and all to add you as a signatory.” I unwrapped my sandwich and took a bite to make my stomach stop grumbling.
Elise perked up a bit. “You’re right. I didn’t think of it that way. But it still doesn’t explain why he was keeping it a secret. He knew how worried I’ve been about having enough money for the boys’ education. So why not tell me? Give me some peace of mind?”
“I’m afraid that part’s got me stumped too,” I said, which wasn’t entirely true. But the one reason I’d come up with, pointed to criminal activity and I didn’t want to go there. Once Elise had a chance to process everything, she’d figure that out for herself. Most people would have invested the money or, at the very least, secured it in a government-insured savings account. The fact that Jim had hidden the money away supported my fear that it was ill-gotten gains. Maybe he’d planned to keep it a secret until the statute of limitations ran out on whatever crime he may have committed. It was hard for me to think of Jim in that light, but based on the facts I had at the moment, there was no other light on the horizon. “You should try to eat something,” I said to Elise. She was staring off into space, her sandwich on the counter still neatly wrapped up.
She unfolded the paper, took a bite, and chewed listlessly. “What am I supposed to do with all that cash now?” she mumbled around a mouthful. “I’m nervous just carrying it around.”
I’d been so focused on the provenance of the money that I hadn’t considered the more immediate concern of safeguarding it. “I guess you could rent a new box to keep it in, until you have a chance to talk to someone like a financial planner.” I opened the chips and offered them to Elise, who dug in with more enthusiasm than she had the sandwich. Together we polished them off in no time, their salty, fried goodness as comforting in their own way as chicken soup.
“I don’t think I’ll rent the new box at the Schuyler,” Elise said, after washing down the chips with her iced tea. “Now that they know how much money is involved . . .”
“Given the circumstances, you’re entitled to a certain amount of paranoia.” I assured her.
She tore a bit of turkey from her sandwich and held it out to Sashkatu, who considered it for a moment before deigning to take it. “Do you think the money has something to do with Jim’s murder?” she asked.
That possibility had been running around in my head from the moment the first packet of bills hit the table. “We can’t discount it, but until we know for sure, why not think of it as a windfall that will put your kids through college? Maybe that will help you sleep better.”
Her mouth twisted into a wry smile. “A sledge hammer is about the only thing that might help me sleep better at this point.”
“Do you remember the spell I gave you a couple of years ago to help calm and center you?” I asked.
“The one that’s more like meditation than magick?”
“That’s the one. Give it a try tonight.”
“Thanks, I think I—oh no,” she interrupted herself, “do I have to tell the police about the money?”
That question had also eluded me until that moment. “I think you need to ask Scott about that.”
Elise nodded. “I’ll call him when I get home. I’m afraid the money would give the police a motive to pin on me.”
“Let me play the devil’s advocate for a minute. What if they find out about it on their own? Won’t you look guiltier for trying to hide it?”
“You’re right,” she said miserably. “It’s a no-win situation. I can see the headlines in the tabloids—GREEDY WIFE KILLS HUSBAND FOR SECRET STASH OF CASH.”
“It does have a certain ring to it,” I said, eliciting a little laugh from her.
“You are bad,” she said, glancing at her watch. “I’d better get going.” She hopped down from the counter and stuffed her sandwich back into the bag to take home. “Thanks for holding my hand today.”
“Anytime,” I said, cleaning up the remnants of my lunch. She retrieved the tote from under the desk and was heading to the door when the phone rang. She mouthed a “goodbye” as I picked up the receiver.
Tilly was on the other end. “Kailyn, dear, we’re having a bit of a problem.” Although my aunt was given to hyperbole when things were going well, she tended to minimize when it came to trouble. Other itty bitty problems over the years had included a fire in her toaster oven that nearly roasted her shop and ours along with it, a large, rabid raccoon who’d gained entrance to her house through the fireplace flue, and an allergic reaction to peanuts that had landed her in the ICU. Given that history, I really wished I didn’t have to ask her what was wrong.