Eric's desk, as if they'd been contained in one of its lower drawers, was a set of documents that were out of place: the deed to the house, the pink slips to the cars, insurance papers, birth certificates, and passports. All of this belonged in their safe-deposit box at the bank, not here at home. Which made Charlie wonder what, if anything, had replaced these documents in that protected vault.
She didn't go until the following day. In the afternoon, following a morning in which she lay in bed fighting against an inertia that threatened to keep her there permanently, she fumbled her way to the bathroom, shuffled through the debris, and ran the water in the tub. She soaked until the water was cool, when she refilled the tub and languidly washed. She tried to remember another time when everything - even the slightest movement - had been such an effort. She couldn't.
It was two o'clock when she finally walked into the bank with her key to the safe-deposit box in her hand. She tapped the bell for assistance and a clerk came to help her, a girl who couldn't have been much older than college age, with jet-black hair, jet-black eyeliner, and a name tag identifying her as Linda.
Charlie filled out the appropriate card. Linda read her name and the number of her deposit box and then looked back up from the card to Charlie's face. She said, "Oh! You're... I mean, you've never - " She stopped herself as if remembering her place. "It's this way, Mrs. Lawton," she settled on saying.
The deposit box was one of the large ones on the bottom row. Charlie inserted her key in its right lock as Linda inserted her key in its left. A twist and the box slid out of its compartment. Linda heaved it up and onto the counter. She said, "Is there anything else I can do for you, Mrs. Lawton?" And she watched Charlie so intently when she asked the question that Charlie wondered if the girl was part of Eric's secret life.
"Why do you ask?" Charlie said.
"What?"
"Why do you ask if there's anything else you can do for me?"
Linda backed away, as if suddenly aware that she was in the presence of a crazy woman. "We always ask that. We're supposed to ask. Would you like some coffee? Or tea?"
Charlie felt her anxiety dissipate. She said, "No. Sorry. I haven't been well. I didn't mean..."
"I'll leave you then," Linda said and seemed glad to be doing so.
Alone in the vault, Charlie took a deep breath. It was an airless space, overheated and silent. She felt watched inside, and she looked around for cameras, but there was nothing. She had all the privacy she needed.
Chapter 17
It was time to know what Sharon Pasternak had wanted in Eric's study. It was time to know why an intruder had broken into her house and torn it apart.
She eased the top of the deposit box open, and she drew in a sharp breath when she saw its contents: Neatly stacked in rows and bound in their centers by rubber bands, thick packets of one-hundred-dollar bills shot the odor of age, use, and malefaction into the air.
Charlie whispered, "Oh my God," and slammed the lid of the deposit box home. She leaned over the counter, breathing like a runner and trying to account for what she'd just seen. The packets looked to be fifty bills thick. There were... what?... fifty, seventy, one hundred packets in the deposit box? Which meant... ? What? It was more money than she'd ever seen outside of a motion picture. God in heaven, who was her husband? What had he done?
A movement at the edge of her vision prompted Charlie to turn her head. In the crack that existed between the side of the vault and its door, the girl Linda was watching. She moved away quickly - back-to-business personified - when she saw Charlie's gaze fall upon her.
Charlie hustled out of the vault and called the girl's name. Linda turned, her expression striving for professional indifference. She failed at this, a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look in her eyes. She said quietly, "Yes, Mrs. Lawton? Is there something else?"
Charlie indicated with a motion of her head that she wanted Linda to accompany her back into the vault. The girl looked around as if for rescue but apparently found none. A couple sat at a far desk opening an account with the accounts manager. The tellers were occupied at