I rubbed the back of my neck and my shoulders with my filthy fingers. I felt hollow and depressed. I wasn’t finding evidence of Mrs. Frizell’s vibrant mental state. And certainly not of a cache of assets worth inveigling her estate for.
I went to the kitchen to rinse myself off under the tap. Even though the weather had broken with last night’s storm, I was stiff and sweaty from my work in the landfill. The sink was dirty enough that I didn’t want to drink from the tap, and I was pretty thirsty. I should have thought to bring a Thermos from home. One half hour more and I’d pack it in.
When I got to the living room and surveyed the mess with fresher eyes, I was tempted to quit on the spot, but a nagging sense that I’d invested too much time to go away empty-handed pushed me forward. Of course, that’s the classic mistake that drives businesses into bankruptcy: “We’ve put five years and fifty billion into this worthless product, we can’t abandon it now.” But the impulse pushes you deeper into the quag.
The room faced west. The setting sun gave a lot more light than the forty-watt bulb in the lone lamp Mrs. Frizell kept there. I opened the curtains and continued the search. So far I’d only looked at the middle section and the glassed-in bookshelves. For my last surge I pried the three bottom drawers open. Squatting on my heels, I started removing envelopes. It must have been close to seven when I found the letter from the Bank of Lake View.
Dear Mrs. Frizell,-
15 March
Acting on your instructions we have sold your Certificates of Deposit and closed your account, sending the balance to your new account at the U.S. Metropolitan Bank and Trust. It has been our pleasure to serve your financial needs for the last sixty years and we are sorry you no longer find the relationship desirable. Should you change your mind in the future please do not hesitate to call. We will be happy to reopen your account at no charge to you.
The letter had been personally signed by one of the bank officers.
The Bank of Lake View is a small, neighborhood institution—they handle my mortgage with the concern and attention most banks reserve for big corporate customers. They must be about the only place in the city that still handles small passbook accounts. It was typical of their character to write a personal note to Mrs. Frizell.
What was strange was her transferring her money to U.S. Metropolitan. I hadn’t found a passbook or any other documents from them. Either those had slipped down to the Jurassic stratum or she’d kept them someplace else. But that was a detail compared to the bigger question: Why had she moved accounts to a downtown bank? And not just any old bank, but one that was in the news every other week because of the political ties its directors had in the area. The Du Page County Board was only the most recent group to raise journalistic eyebrows for keeping demand deposits in U.S. Met’s noninterest-bearing accounts.
I was grasping at straws and I knew it. Probably U.S. Met had had some marketing campaign that Mrs. Frizell had found irresistible. I got to my feet, my hamstrings stiff from sitting so long. I didn’t know what to do with the mess I’d created on the floor. The secretary was still overflowing with papers—I couldn’t imagine stuffing all these back inside. At the same time I could scarcely leave them lying around as evidence of my labor. Although maybe Chrissie would assume it had been Mrs. Hellstrom’s work; presumably the Picheas knew she’d done some laundry.
A key turning in the front door solved the problem for me. I folded the letter from the bank into my back pocket a second before Chrissie and Todd bounced in. They looked radiant with health, Chrissie in a mattress-ticking romper suit, Todd in tan shorts and a Polo T-shirt. I didn’t even want to imagine how I appeared—the smell coming from my armpits was discomforting enough.
“What are you doing here, Warshawski?”
“Cleaning the Augean stables, Todd. You can call me Hercules. Although I think he had help. In a way I’ve outperformed him.”
“Don’t try to turn this into a joke, because it isn’t funny. When Mrs. Hellstrom told us you were in here looking at financial records, my first impulse was to call the cops. I could have you arrested, you know. This place is private property.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “But not, I think, belonging to you. Unless you’ve used your guardianship powers to sign over the title?”
It dawned on me suddenly that that was the one valuable document Mrs. Frizell had. Maybe it was at the bottom of one of the drawers. Or maybe Todd and Chrissie had already absconded with it. I didn’t feel up to burglarizing their house to see, at least not tonight.
“Why don’t you just get out of here,” Todd snapped. “Since we found the old lady you’ve been determined to undermine my care of her, even calling her son—”