Part 4 (2/2)

The snow had begun to fall again when I left her an hour later. It lay in a crisp white layer over the sidewalk and outlined the bare limbs of each tree and shrub. I remembered how often Billy had taken his sled up the high hill behind our house, then hurtled down it, colliding with the huge drifts that lay at its bottom, then leaping to his feet, rapturous, covered in snow, laughing, dared me to join him on his next plunge. I heard his voice again, You miss all the good stuff, Cal.

It was only a short walk from the house to Fisherman's Bank. Joe Fletcher, the bank president, sat behind his desk, a few papers neatly arranged on his blotter, others impaled on a thin metal stake.

I took the chair in front of his desk, asked my first question.

”Miss March came in every Monday morning, as I recall,” Fletcher answered. ”She'd make a cash withdrawal of twenty dollars.” He was a broad-chested man, dressed in a dark double-breasted suit. Overall he had the look of a man long used to holding others in suspension, das.h.i.+ng or fulfilling thousands of small dreams. I could tell that he was treating my request for information about Dora as if it were a loan, trying to determine how I might use whatever he gave me, gauge its profit or its loss.

”Did you ever learn much about her?” I asked him. ”Not really, no.”

”Did she open an account of her own?”

”You're thinking she may have tried to pull one over on Ed Dillard?” The suggestion amused Fletcher. ”Old men are easily taken in, of course. And Miss March was quite lovely, as you know, but...”

The phone rang.

”Excuse me,” Fletcher said as he picked up the receiver.

While he spoke, I looked out the window into the narrow street that ran through Port Alma, shops on either side, a piece of the bay snagged between the hard ware store and the bakery, frozen and opaque, dull as a dead man's eye. The snow was falling relentlessly now, lacing the power lines in white, gathering windswept mounds along the curb. Those few people who were still on the street trudged through it determinedly, the snow merely something added to their burden.

Fletcher had put down the phone when I looked back at him. He was watching me worriedly, observing my wintry features, I thought, the leafless tree I had become.

”You took it hard, didn't you, Cal? What happened to William, I mean.” He leaned forward, an older man, offering advice. ”It's a shame, a real tragedy. But a man has to go on, don't you think?”

It wasn't a question I could answer.

”As to what I might know about Miss March,” he said when I gave no response, ”I saw her only once. Outside the bank, I mean.”

”When was that?”

”About two weeks before Ed died,” Fletcher replied. ”He was sitting in that little room off his parlor. Miss March brought him in there when I told her I had some papers for him to sign.”

I remembered the room. I'd seen it when Ruth Potter had taken me to the house. It had a polished wooden floor and there were terra-cotta pots hanging here and there. The pots were empty when I saw them, and according to Ruth they'd remained empty during the time she'd worked at the house. It was Dora, she said, who'd ”spruced the room up” with flowers and greenery, then removed it all after Mr. Dillard's death.

”Ed was fully dressed,” Fletcher continued. ”Not in pajamas and that old bathrobe he'd been wearing when I'd dropped by at other times. But pants and a s.h.i.+rt. And his hair was combed too. Looking at him, you'd have thought he was back to normal.”

”The papers you brought. What were they?”

”Business papers. Evaluations of what his real estate holdings were worth, that sort of thing. Ed had asked me to gather it all together. He wanted to look over it all. Check out the books, you might say.”

In my mind, I saw my brother's eyes drift up from the ledger book, heard his stricken, unbelieving voice, afraid to admit what he knew she'd done, Something's wrong.

”Did Dora look at the papers?”

Everything Joe Fletcher had ever learned of human venality during his forty-three years as a banker in Port Alma flickered behind his eyes. ”I usually know when something like that's going on, Cal. Some kind of fraud, I mean.”

”Why would Ed Dillard have wanted all this financial information about himself?”

”He was intending to make a will.”

”He'd never made one before?”

”He'd never had anyone he wanted to name before. As a beneficiary, that is.”

”But suddenly he did have someone?”

”Yes.”

”Who?”

I could see a dark wind blow through Fletcher's mind. ”I don't know,” he answered, then stared at me silently, so I said the name myself.

”Dora March?”

”I wouldn't know that, Cal.”

”Who would?”

”Art Brady was Ed's attorney.”

I realized that something in my eyes, or in the tone of my voice, had suddenly warned Fletcher not to tell me anything else about Dora or Mr. Dillard. ”If you found Miss March, you'd turn her over to the authorities, wouldn't you, Cal?” he asked.

By then my heart had told so many lies, my mouth had no trouble with another.

”Yes.”

The snow was ankle-high as I left the bank. The wind howled through the trees, whipped along the seawall, rattled signs and awnings, fierce and snarling, like a cornered dog.

Art Brady was in his office, standing before a wall of books, all with uniformly black spines. They towered above him, a dark obelisk, the grave, unbending laws of unimpa.s.sioned Maine.

”What can I do for you, Cal?” he asked as he turned toward me. He was a short man, wiry as a jockey, with gleaming white hair swept back over his head and parted in the middle. He had a close-cropped beard, also white, which made him look like a figure from a distant century, someone who'd put his ornate signature on a famous doc.u.ment no one read anymore.

”I talked to Joe Fletcher down at the bank. About Ed Dillard.”

Brady shoved a book into its a.s.signed place on the shelf. ”What about Ed?”

”Joe said Mr. Dillard intended to make out a will.”

”And?”

”Well, you were Ed's lawyer.”

Brady sat down at his desk. He didn't invite me to take the chair opposite it. ”This is about Dora March, isn't it? You've decided that Miss March had a bad character. You suspect her of being involved in William's death. You think she may have had a reason to murder Ed Dillard too.” He didn't wait for a reply. ”Well, you couldn't be more wrong, Cal.”

He rose, walked to a file cabinet on the far side of the room, rifled through a line of folders, and returned to his seat carrying a single sheet of paper. ”This is the 'will' Ed made,” he said as he handed it to me.

I took the paper and read the five words written on it. The letters were thick and awkwardly formed, but I could easily make out what it said: Draw will. Everything to Dora.

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