14

they were crisp, new fifties, and I emptied both envelopes and spread the money out on the desk next to my computer. I counted out the bills in stacks of twenty, for $1,000 each. It took about five minutes, and when I was done I had twenty piles, for a total of $20,000.

That would buy a lot of low-fat cookies.

I'd never seen this much cash in one place before. I wasn't even sure I'd ever seen so much as a thousand dollars in cold, hard cash before. When I went to the grocery store, I was lucky to find six bucks in my wallet. Evidently, when Stefanie Knight went to pick up some bread and milk, it was a major event. She didn't want to take any chances on running short.

In her wallet she'd had only $25 in bills. No fifties. But these two envelopes of cash were something else again. What was she doing with this kind of money? What would anyone be doing with this kind of cash? Normal, upstanding, regular law-abiding people did not walk around with $20,000 on them. Even people for whom $20,000 was lunch money. I doubted even Bill Gates walked around with $20,000 in his wallet. (You'd throw your back out, for one thing, when you sat on it.)

When you walked around with $20,000 in your purse, the chances were pretty good that you had done something bad. Even if the money had come from a legitimate source, a down payment in a real estate deal, for example, why wouldn't Stefanie have deposited it someplace? Was she like Janet Leigh in Psycho, walking out of the office at the end of the day, deciding to start a new life with money from some eccentric home buyer who only dealt in cash?

It seemed time for a review.

I was a thief, possessed information about a murder that I had not passed on to the police, and now had $20,000 in possibly stolen money on my desk. And if that weren't enough, my wife was under the impression that (a) two days from now, she was going to get the best birthday present ever, and (b) her husband was impotent.

But I could not bring myself to call the police. Now, a lawyer, that might be a good idea. I could tell him everything, let him advise me on the best course of action. The only problem was, the only lawyer I knew was the one who handled our house deal. A specialist in land-transfer taxes was not what I needed right now.

As I considered my options, I gathered up the stacks of bills and started stuffing them back into the two envelopes.

“Dad?”

I whirled around in my chair, and as I did, three of the fifties were swept off the desk and onto the carpet. Angie poked her head into my study.

“I'm going to the mall and I need some mo—”

Her eyes landed on the fifties as they fluttered to the floor. “Money,” she said. “It looks like my timing couldn't have been better.”

I would have scooped up the three bills, but it seemed more important to cover up the hundreds of bills, and purse, and the rest of its contents that were spread across my desk. There was an instruction sheet for the Seaview submarine kit on the workbench end of my desk, big, like an unfolded highway map. I grabbed it with one hand, trying not to be so fast as to be obvious, and casually dragged it over the stuff I didn't want Angie to see.

She was into the room and diving for the money like an owl on a mouse. She grabbed the three fifties and smiled.

“This is just what you owe me,” she said triumphantly.

“You can't have that,” I said. “And besides, you already said we only owe you, what, $127?”

“Okay, so, like, this is a little more, but I also paid for my lunch all this week, and you usually help out with that, so you probably owe me more than $150, so you give me this and we'll call it even. These are nice. You just print these up?”

“I need that money,” I said. “You can't have that.”

“I'm going to the mall, Mom's already leaving to go back to work and she doesn't have any money, so why can't I have this? You always do this to me. You owe me money and then you find all these excuses not to give it to me and that's not fair.” She was already folding the bills and sliding them into the front pocket of her jeans.

“You don't understand,” I said. “I got that from the money machine today and need it tomorrow and—”

“What's that on your desk?” She had her head cocked at an angle, trying to peek under the instruction sheet.

“Nothing, just some stuff for my book,” I said.

“Is that a purse? Did you get Mom a purse for her birthday?”

This was not good. “Fine,” I said. “Take the money.”

She spun on her heel. “See ya.” She was out the door and I could hear her thick-soled shoes stomping toward the front door.

“Goodbye!” someone shouted. I thought it was Angie at first, then realized it was Sarah.

“Yeah!” I shouted. “Try to stay awake!”

“I'll drop Angie off at the mall!” Sarah shouted. “I'll take the Camry!”

“Okay!” I shouted back. If Sarah took the Toyota, I'd still be left with the Civic if I needed to take Paul someplace, pick Angie up at the mall later if she didn't have a ride back with one of her friends, or meander over to another crime scene.

What I really wanted to do was go nowhere, to hide out in this bunker of a study, even though I knew I wasn't safe here. I wasn't safe anywhere as long as this purse and its contents were in my possession. I should just get rid of it. Put it in a garbage bag, drive to the far side of town, and toss it in a Dumpster behind an industrial complex. Money and all. Get rid of everything.

Take the credit cards and license and anything else that had Stefanie Knight's name on it and chop them up, run them through the food processor, dump them in the sink and grind them up again in the garbage disposal. Take her house and car keys and drive downtown to the harbor district and throw them off the longest dock. I'd made a mistake, I'd done a stupid thing, but I hadn't killed anyone. I'd never intended to hurt anyone, and I didn't know, with any certainty, that I was in any way responsible for Stefanie Knight's death. Maybe whoever killed her did so for reasons totally unrelated to her losing a purse filled with $20,000.

Sure. And the bombing of Pearl Harbor had nothing to do with America going to war with Japan.

I weighed the risks of coming forward, of calling the police, of turning this purse over to them. I had a wife, two children, a house, a so-so writing career. Wouldn't doing the right thing—if it even was the right thing—put everything I'd worked for, our lives as we'd come to know them, in jeopardy? I couldn't do anything now to save Stefanie Knight, but I could pull myself together, start thinking rationally, and at least save myself and my family from untold horrors and embarrassment.

Get a grip.

I had a book to finish. It was time to focus, to put these last couple of hours aside. Isn't that what Clinton used to do? Hadn't I read about how the former President compartmentalized his problems? How he could meet with the lawyers about the Monica Lewinsky problem, discuss testimony he'd have to give before the Starr inquiry that could potentially see him removed from office, then get up and walk down the hall and give his full attention to a discussion of the Mideast situation?

Sure. That was me. Clintonesque.

I took another deep breath. I shoveled everything of Stefanie Knight's back into the purse, zipped it up, and put it back in the shoe bag. Maybe, with Angie gone to the mall, and Paul no doubt down in the basement with his friends playing video games, I would have a moment to start destroying evidence.

And maybe once I'd finished doing that, I could turn my attention to work.

Out of habit, I fired up the computer. Before I brought up the word-processing program where I stored the chapters of my novel, I thought I'd check and see whether I had any mail.

I clicked on the mailbox icon.

I had two messages. The first was from Tom Darling.

“Nd 2 tlk abt cvr art. Cll me tmrrw so we cn set up mtng wth art dpt.”

The business of books and editing and cover designs seemed awfully distant right about now. Like news from a past life. How long would it take to stop being haunted by what I'd seen tonight? Days? Weeks? Would I ever be able to forget the sight of Stefanie Knight's head smashed in, a bloody shovel at her side?

I didn't recognize the name of the sender of the second e-mail. It would have been pretty hard to. It was a string of numbers, followed by @hotmail.com. Every once in a while I got fan mail. Readers could find my address by doing an Internet search and linking up with the writers' union website.

I opened it. It was a short note, with no name at the end, and it didn't appear to be a fan letter. It read:

“Dear Mr. Walker: I'm looking for something I think you got. Don't do something stupid and give it to some body else.”