They must have been an odd sight to the neighbors. Henry, who knew every name behind every address, saw the Larrimores eyeing them from the breakfast nook, peeping out between the crape myrtles. The town mailman, Sarris, out on his early rounds, nodded gravely as he motored slowly past them in his van. By noon everyone in town would know that he and Anna were up to something, or at least had become a duo of sorts—the prodigal daughter of the murdered family teamed with the hermited newcomer. He didn’t like feeling this exposed and scrutinized, but for better or worse he would be out in the open from here on out.
The Shoat house was a one-story rancher. Red brick with white trim. Door near the middle, two windows to the left, three to the right. Gray shingle roof in need of repair, eaves still dripping from a thunderstorm the night before. Two dogwoods on the lawn, one of them blighted, plus a pin oak that had probably been planted around the time Anna was born.
Anna tore off the crime scene tape from the wrought iron railing of the front steps and wadded it into a black-and-yellow ball that she threw to the ground before getting out her keys. Henry picked it up as she unlocked the door.
“All that land out back, it’s your family’s?” he asked, although he already knew the answer.
“Forty acres. Corn, soybeans, a barn, and a patch of woods. Plus two big-ass chicken houses, way at the back ’cause Mom hated the smell.”
“Who’s looking after the chickens?”
“The feeding and watering are automated, so that’s taken care of unless something breaks or the power goes out. You don’t really own the birds. Washam Poultry is coming out around midday to pick ’em up, says they’re as big as they’re gonna grow. So that will be the last of it except for cleaning out the shit, which of course we do own. Or I own. God knows who I’ll hire to do it, or to harvest the corn and beans in the fall. Can you grab the mail?”
Henry reached inside the mailbox. An electric bill, two ad circulars, and a catalog for L.L. Bean. Nothing that would interest Mitch, although he supposed other items would keep rolling in. Like fingernails and hair, your mail kept growing after you died.
They stopped just inside the door, as if both of them needed a moment to acclimate. The air was damp and stale with a sharp overlay of disinfectant. A sunken living room was to the right, its walls almost as bare as in his house. There was a gallery of family photos atop an upright piano in one corner. A younger version of Willard smiled back at him from a frame on the left. At the far end of the living room, two steps led up to a small dining room with a glass-fronted cupboard showing off the good china.
The entryway opened just ahead onto a hallway, and that’s where they headed. To the left were the bedrooms. They turned right into a family room with a brick fireplace and a big screen TV, and crossed the carpeted floor to an eat-in kitchen. Anna, as if sleepwalking, went all the way to the stove, which smelled faintly of bacon grease, before doubling back toward the family room. Henry dropped the wadded ball of tape into a trash bin beneath the sink and followed silently. A shaft of sunlight peeped through an opening in the curtains, filled with dust motes, probably the same ones that had been tumbling through the air on the night of the murders.
They went down the hallway toward the bedrooms, Anna’s shoes echoing on the hardwood floor. There were three doorways. The two on the left were open, the one on the right was closed. Anna stopped, as if unwilling to take him farther.
“Have you been staying here?” he asked, belatedly realizing how harsh the question sounded.
“Only the night before the funeral. I got in too late for a motel, and I’d been too zapped to make any plans. Either way I was going to have to confront it. All or nothing, that’s me.” Her voice was a monotone. “The next day I checked into a B&B, the one Mrs. Hollis runs across town. This is the first time I’ve been back since then.”
Henry nodded, trying to imagine what that one night must have been like for her.
“I slept pretty soundly, believe it or not. Exhaustion, probably.”
Henry stopped by the door to Willard’s room.
“Okay if I have a look?”
“That’s why we’re here.”
The bed was made, the floor swept, and almost everything was in its place. The only anomalies were scraps of paper here and there, marked with lines and slashes—the numerical tallies that Anna had told him about. Three were on the bedside table. One was labeled, BOOKS, another MILK, and the third had a drawing of something dotted and circular.
Here and there were plastic model airplanes and cars that Willard had built, or tried to build. Most were half finished. A few that he’d completed were hanging by fishing line from the ceiling, including the Millennium Falcon. Anna gave it a tap, which made it swing back and forth.
“I don’t suppose they’d let me take this to him in jail.”
“Probably not.”
He had his own little flat-screen TV, mounted above a DVR player. A Luke Skywalker poster hung above them. More scraps of marked paper were on his dresser. On one, the tally reached at least a hundred.
“That’s the one for how many times he’s watched Star Wars,” Anna said.
Henry picked up a scrap labeled SOCKS, with the total at sixteen. Two others had drawings that Henry couldn’t decipher.
“I see what you mean about the obsession with counting.”
“Mom used to try to pick up after him. But he’d get so upset that she gave up.”
“You don’t think that maybe…?”
“That he’d kill her over that? No. If you’d ever seen them together, you’d know. She was his Lord and Protector, and he was devoted to her.”
“What about your dad?”
“Oh, they were fine, too, but it wasn’t the same. They’d hunt, go on walks, do chores, but never really said much. But Mom? It was sweet. I used to envy him sometimes. Stupid, huh?”
She turned away from him, like she might be on the verge of tears. Henry pretended not to notice and opened the closet door. Camouflage hunting overalls hung next to flannel shirts, a few button-downs, three pairs of khakis. There was a sport coat for dress-up occasions, along with a single clip-on necktie, which struck Henry as deeply poignant.
Even in the closet, Willard’s tallies were in evidence—pencil scribbles on the door frame and the back of the door. Someone, probably his mom, had tried to scrub them off but had given up. From the words and symbols it was apparent that Willard had kept count of his lifetime supply of belts, shirts, pants, and shoes.
A small footlocker sat at the end of the bed.
“What does he keep in there?” Henry asked.
“Be my guest.”
Henry unbuckled the hasp and pulled open the lid. Anna gasped in surprise. It was practically stuffed with papers—page after page torn from yellow legal pads and spiral notebooks, some of it neat and folded, the rest crumpled or wadded. All of it was marked with Willard’s lines and slashes—probably more than a hundred tallies. Most of the paper looked relatively new, and none of the ink was faded.
“Good God,” Anna said, a little horrified.
“This wasn’t normal?”
“Not to this degree.”
Henry pulled out a few of the folded sheets. They were labeled with strange symbols, indecipherable. He uncrumpled a few more and the story was the same. No one but Willard could have told them what he had tallied, or why.
Anna sighed and put her hands to her face.
“I guess it was getting worse. Maybe if I’d come home more often…” She lowered her head.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“No. But I was avoiding the place. That’s what I think now. I used to visit every few weeks. Lately, nothing. I was telling myself it was because I was so wrapped up in my job, and with my friends. I’d joined a book club, a health spa, a dinner group, anything to keep me busy on weekends. It was almost like I could feel what was happening here and knew I wanted nothing to do with it.”
“Or maybe you were just building a life, like everybody does.”
Henry shut the trunk, stood, and gently steered her back into the hall. Nodding toward the closed door across the hall, he said, “I’m sorry, but do you mind if…?”
“Go ahead. I’ll pass, if you don’t mind. Been there, done that.”
He opened the door, the smell hitting him right away, like a public restroom that has been mopped down with industrial cleaners. He felt like he’d released an unwanted spirit into the rest of the house.
There was no crime scene tape. The sheets and mattress were gone, with only the box spring remaining. Here and there on the headboard were dried brown spatters of bloodstains. The curtains were shut—he wondered if gawkers had tried to peep in from the back lawn—which made it so gloomy that Henry had to resist the urge to throw them open and pull up the sash, let in some fresh air.
The door to one of the closets was open—Anna’s mother’s, judging by the dresses hanging in a neat row, a sparser selection than he would have guessed for a woman of her age. Stacked on a top shelf was a sheaf of papers and a couple of cardboard boxes. Exactly the sort of thing Mitch wanted him to paw through. Maybe later. On the bedside table, next to the telephone, a checkbook was splayed open with unpaid bills underneath. An uncapped pen lay to the side.
“Hate to say it,” he called out over his shoulder, “but you’re going to need to go through some of this stuff.”
“I know.”
He turned, surprised to see her in the doorway.
“I haven’t had the willpower for it yet. There’s so much of it. Those boxes in the closet, four more in the mudroom. Old letters, old photos, all kinds of stuff. Plus the laptop.”
“Your dad’s?”
“Mom’s. Out in the barn, of all places. She had a little office built after I went off to college, a place all to herself with a coffeepot, a space heater, and everything.”
He nodded, already curious about the office. All in good time.
The phone rang, making them jump as it jangled on the bedside table like an alarm, along with the echo from the one in the kitchen.
“You should answer it,” he said. “Probably junk, but you never know.”
“I need to get the line disconnected. Another item for the damn to-do list.”
The bedroom phone was closer, but Anna walked down the hallway to the one in the kitchen. Henry followed at what he hoped was a discreet distance and stopped in the doorway to listen.
“Hello?” A pause while someone spoke, then she put down the receiver.
“Robocall.”
Henry saw the light flashing on the message machine and gestured toward it.
“Probably more of the same, but you never know.”
She frowned and pressed the button.
There were three messages. The first was from Stu Wilgus, whose voice Henry recognized right away. He offered his condolences, then asked whether her parents would have wanted flowers or a memorial donation. Henry guessed that what he’d really wanted was gossip from the scene of the crime. The second message was dead air. The third one got their attention.
“Hi, this is Douglas Hatcher. I’m a claims administrator for the Employee Benefits Security Administration, and I’m calling for Mr. Tarrant Shoat, or for the next of kin of the late Helen Abell Shoat, or any surviving heirs or assigns, with regard to the final settlement of her severance agreement. So if whoever gets this message could please call me back at my office in Silver Spring, I’d greatly appreciate it.”
He left a phone number.
“That’s odd,” Anna said. “Do you think it’s a scam?”
“No idea. Who did your mother used to work for?”
“Nobody. Except years ago, when she was a paralegal for some real estate lawyer in Easton. It’s how she met Dad. She drew up the settlement papers when he bought this property.”
“Well, his title sounded official enough.”
“Unless he was really calling from some phone bank in India.”
“Only one way to find out.”
She grabbed a pencil and pad from a basket on the kitchen counter and played the message back, this time writing down the number. Then she called it while motioning Henry closer, angling the receiver so he could listen in. Douglas Hatcher picked up on the second ring.
“Yes, hi. I’m Anna Shoat, returning your call. My mother was Helen Abell Shoat, and you left a message for my father, but he’s also deceased.”
“Oh. Sorry for your loss.”
“And who do you work for again?”
“The Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Department of Labor. And you’re Helen Shoat’s daughter?”
“I am. Your message said this was about some kind of severance agreement?”
They heard him moving a pile of papers, and he spoke the next words as if reading from a script.
“Yes. Under the terms of your mother’s federal severance package, I have a check to administer to the relevant beneficiary, which seems to be you.”
“Her federal severance package? From what?”
“Her term of federal employment.”
“Are you sure you have the right Helen Shoat?”
“Perhaps you could give me the last four digits of her Social Security number, then we’ll know for sure.”
“Just a second.” She grabbed her handbag from another counter, reached inside for some folded documents, and rifled through them. “Here we go.”
She read the numbers aloud.
“Yes, that’s correct. Full name, Helen Abell Shoat?”
“Correct. And she was employed by the government?”
“For two years only, and it was quite a while ago, from 1977 to 1979. Not long enough to vest for a pension, but apparently there was a severance agreement, and the terms of its fulfillment call for a check to be issued to her closest surviving relative on the event of her death.”
“What department was this?”
“Labor, the Employee Benefits Security Administration.”
“No, I mean my mother. Who did she work for?”
“Oh.” More rustling of papers. “This doesn’t say. But it indicates that her final place of employment was abroad. The United States consular office in Berlin.”
“Berlin as in Germany?”
“Yes. So she was probably working for the Department of State.”
“Probably?”
“Like I said, none of the paperwork says for sure. Is that important?”
“Kind of. It would be nice to know.”
“Well, somewhere in the file is a contact name, probably for whoever sent over the documentation.”
“Do you think you could find it for me?”
A sigh.
“Give me a second.”
The receiver thudded on a desk. They heard some banging around, a file drawer opening and shutting, more shuffling of paper. Telephones were ringing in the background. Then, a muffled sound, followed by:
“Got a name and number for you. Ready?”
“Please.”
“Wallace Barringer.” He spelled the last name and rattled off a phone number with a 703 area code, followed by a four-digit extension. “He’s probably in Human Resources. A benefits administrator, if I had to guess.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, and your check. I’m going to mail you a few forms, which you’ll need to fill out in order to prove your relationship to the deceased. We’ll also need documentation that you’re the closest surviving next of kin, plus a copy of your mother’s death certificate, some proof of your own citizenship, that sort of thing. Once we’ve received everything, you should have the check within four to six weeks.”
“Goodness. And all because Mom worked two years for the government?”
“As I said, it was a severance agreement. They aren’t customary, but they’re not unheard of.”
“Can you tell me the amount?”
“Sure. Let’s see. There was an initial payment in 1979 of seventy-five thousand dollars, which, as stipulated by the terms of the agreement, was deposited into an interest-bearing account, compounding annually at a rate of four percent, leaving a current value of $295,956.67.”
Anna’s mouth dropped open in surprise. She looked quickly at Henry, who felt like they’d just moved closer to the heart of something—not the information Anna wanted, but the kind that Mitch was after.
“Wow. Okay, then. Why don’t you send the paperwork to this address, since I’ll be checking by here pretty regularly.”
“Would that be the one on Willow Street in Poston, Maryland?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. This will go out today. I’ll send it by Express Mail, so you might even receive it tomorrow.”
“Great. Thanks.”
She hung up.
“I’m rich,” she said. “By my standards, anyway. Is it wrong to be excited about that?”
“Not at all. And your mom worked in Berlin?”
“So it seems. Isn’t that amazing?”
“She never mentioned it?”
“Not once! I never even knew she worked for the government, much less overseas. The only job she ever talked about was the one in Easton, which she hated. I wonder if Dad even knew. I guess he would’ve had to have known, right?”
Henry shrugged. The ground rules of marriage were a mystery to him.
“I wonder why she was there? She would’ve been, well, let me think…about twenty-three or -four. Six, seven years younger than me. Almost the same age as Willard.”
“You know,” Henry said, “with that kind of money you could afford a pretty good PI, a professional.”
She shook her head.
“Too late. You’re the man now, the way I see it. And the meter’s already running, seventy-five bucks and counting, so let’s keep moving.”
“You should call that number he gave you.”
She punched it into the phone, again angling the receiver so he could listen. Henry leaned closer, heard two rings and then the click of the receiver and a woman’s voice:
“CIA, Human Resources.”
They looked at each other, eyes wide, mouths open. Anna answered in a rush.
“Sorry. Wrong number.”
She practically slammed down the receiver, and then clapped one hand to her heart and the other to her mouth.
“Oh my God. The CIA?” She took a step backward, as if to regain her balance. “No wonder she never talked about it. Do you think my mom was a freaking spy?”
But Henry was already thinking of Mitch, and of whoever in Washington had put him here and was paying his salary, renting the house, reading his dull and news-less reports—some nameless bureaucrat who was still seeking information on this poor woman who was no longer living. Give us all of it, Mitch had said—recent or ancient. And now, having tugged on the first available thread, it had unraveled from a surprising connection deep in Helen Shoat’s past. Surprising to him, anyway, and to Anna. No wonder they’d hired him. He found himself reassessing his own ignorance in this affair, an ignorance which suddenly felt like a foolish liability.
“What’s wrong?” Anna said.
“Nothing. It’s just strange, that’s all. We should leave now if we’re going to make your nine-thirty appointment.”
“Okay. But don’t you think it’s weird? Maybe even a little funny?”
Henry forced a smile on her behalf.
“Absolutely. Let’s come back later. Maybe we’ll find more answers in all those papers of hers.”
“Oh, definitely. After that little bombshell, we’re going through all of Mom’s stuff with a fine-tooth comb.”
“So you truly had no idea? She never said a word, not even about Europe?”
“My mother wasn’t the type to drop hints. She either told you something or she didn’t. And when it came to any kind of information about herself, she mostly didn’t.”
“Do you think your dad knew?”
Anna shrugged.
“Dad never talked about the past, his own or anyone else’s. He was too busy worrying about the weather, or the price of corn, or the latest marching orders from Washam Poultry. When you’re a farmer, that’s how you have to be.”
They walked out to her car in the driveway to set out for the county jail. Turning from Willow onto Highway 53, Henry, for all his misgivings, was now glad she’d hired him. He, too, wanted to know what was going on.
As they drove out of town he reflexively glanced over his shoulder, back toward the scattered homes and storefronts of Poston, where every blank window now looked like a lens, following their progress.