someone stole some of my mail, and the problem is, they might have grabbed a few bills along with it. The phone company, the electric—I’m getting second notices and stuff.” I kept it something he might be able to relate to. “Are you sure you haven’t seen anyone?”
“Like I said. I didn’t see anyone.” He seemed much more confident now.
“Okay. Just checking.” I took a sip of my coffee, not tasting it, trying to feign casualness. “Hey, last week and a half or so? You didn’t happen to leave the house when I went out to run some errands, did you?”
He took a big swallow of coffee. “Why would I do that?”
Aha! “Maybe to get some more supplies,” I said, trying to hide my impatience and my growing excitement. “It could happen to anyone as busy as you are. There’s a hardware store, not five minutes away. It wouldn’t have taken you long to run out, run back.” Grab a cruller. Grab a dozen.
“Well. Let me think.” He glanced away, drank noisily.
I gave him a few moments, smiling, wishing I could shake him.
“You know, now that you mention it, I might have needed some outlet plates. I might have run out and picked up a few of those. And—”
“What?” He’d stopped so suddenly, I knew he’d thought of something.
He proceeded nervously. “I thought it was nothing. I figured it was a neighbor, maybe. Leaving something in your box. I didn’t see him take anything.”
I felt my pulse speed up. “What did he look like?”
“I dunno. A guy. Medium height, medium build. Older, I guess, but not too old. I didn’t see him take anything. He waved at me,” he finished, as if that was significant.
“Oh. Well, that helps. It sounds like my neighbor,” I lied. “I’ll check with him, see if he’s had any problems.”
“And I wasn’t gone all that long,” Artie said.
“Well, you see, it helps. If you’d been working, you wouldn’t have seen him, and then I wouldn’t know to ask him.”
It was weak, but more than enough of an excuse for Artie, who set about finishing his coffee and bustling about his work with a focus and efficiency that I hadn’t seen before.
I went down to the post office and let them know about the mailbox being rifled. I hadn’t noticed anything else was missing, no, I explained as patiently as I could, but then, I hadn’t known about Sophia’s picture coming either, so I didn’t know what else might have gone missing. I was concerned about recurrences.
They gave me the appropriate form to fill out, told me that the supervisor would be notified, and if anything else happened, it would go to the Post Master, then the Postal Inspector, if necessary, for investigation. Until then, I had a choice of doing nothing, renting a post office box, or getting a lock for the mailbox we had.
I figured since Tony had never really hit the same place more than once, he wouldn’t be back, but wasn’t going to take the chance and promised them I’d get a lock and give a key to my letter carrier. I’d wait until he started blowing up the mailboxes to apply for a post office box.
The next evening, I came down from my office to answer the doorbell: it was the overnight guy with the original letter and picture back from Michael. He must have had someone else—an assistant, an adoring undergraduate intern—do the label, because it was legible. I opened the envelope, and found another envelope, and a note.
I recalled that Michael’s scrawl was nearly impossible to read, and I had to wonder what his friend had made of his writing, but perhaps out of courtesy to me, he’d typed his note. It read: “Auntie, here’s the pic and the letter. My friend handled it carefully, with gloves (she’s used to working with me), and as little as possible, so the cops shouldn’t get anything else but my fingerprints on it. Sorry about that. Let me know when you catch this freak; I’m worried about me now. Michael.” The signature was barely recognizable as such.
The graphologist was used to working with Michael? Was that some kind of euphemism? Or was she merely used to handling historical documents?
I found a pair of disposable latex gloves in the kitchen and opened the interior envelope carefully. When I pulled the image out, I turned away out of habit, but the thing’s fascination and my own need to know what was going on overtook