up a post office box, so I just keep it in here, figuring eventually someone will come and claim it. The other day, I got to thinking about what that private investigator said, and it niggled at me until I finally figured out why. He said the jewel thief went by the name of James Novak, remember?”
I nodded, feeling my breath grow shallow. Shari tilted the letters in my direction, and ho-ho-holy shit. They were addressed to Jimmy Novak, Wenniway Island.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, taking the letters gingerly into my hands. “They’re letters to the frickin’ jewel thief? He was here?”
“Sort of,” Shari answered. “I know it’s a federal offense to open someone else’s mail, and I could certainly lose my job over this, but if you look at the postmarks, you’ll see they’re all from the 1980s. With them being so old and everything, I just couldn’t help myself. I opened them, and read the letters, and now I wish I hadn’t.”
I looked up at her. “Why?”
“Because of what I learned. Will you promise me you won’t tell anyone about these until you and I can agree on what to do about them?”
“Geez, Shari. You’re kind of freaking me out right now.”
“I’m a little freaked out myself. Do you promise?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Okay, then. Here, let me show you.”
She took the envelopes back and pulled off the rubber band. She flipped through until she found the one she wanted. She pulled out a sheet of yellowed notebook paper covered with big loopy writing, just like the handwriting on the envelopes. Then she pulled out a handful of photos and handed one to me. Sure enough, it looked like the same guy that Bill Smith of Skeevy Guy Investigations had been looking for. His hair was bushy in this picture, and his mustache went across his upper lip and down both sides of his chin—although I can’t imagine why. The woman in the photo was the same, too. Just like in the Polaroid from the PI, only this time she looked younger, with her hair hanging down in two thick braids. Shari handed me another photo. Same woman, same guy, but his hair was cut short and he was clean-shaven. She was kissing his cheek and he was smiling. Big. Exposing a significant gap between his two front teeth.
A gasp escaped me, and my eyes darted back to her. “What the fuck, Shari? That looks just like Dmitri.”
She nodded slowly, her ever-present smile nowhere in sight. “That’s what I thought, and there’s more.” She pulled out a few more pictures: various shots of the couple posing near a flower garden, in front of a brick building, and at a bar. The resemblance was too strong to ignore. It was Dmitri’s smile, and his eyes, and his nose, and his forehead. But that just made no sense. My brain was virtually crackling, overloaded by a sense of doom. I suddenly understood how an insect felt the moment it flew into a bug zapper.
“Look at these.” She opened another envelope and gently set down a few more photos. Photos of the woman pregnant, and then with a baby girl. But the man wasn’t in those pictures. I glanced at Shari.
“What do the letters say?” I asked quietly, as if whispering might keep this from being such momentous news.
“They’re all letters from someone named Alice Williams to Jimmy Novak. She says she understands why he had to leave but she hopes he’ll come back. She talks about someone named Mick going to prison. She tells him about the baby, who she’s named Amelia, after his mother.” Shari sighed, and a tear ran down her cheek. “And then in the last letter, she says she has to move on with her life. She says she’s met someone wonderful who wants to be a father to Amelia, and they’re going to get married. It’s obvious that Jimmy . . . or Dmitri . . . it’s obvious he never responded to her, but how could he? He never got these.”
The pressure inside the tiny back room nearly gave me the bends, and I doubled over, bracing one hand on the table to keep from toppling over completely. “This just doesn’t make any sense, Shari. This guy cannot be Dmitri.” I was flummoxed, astounded, dumbfounded, and flabbergasted. I was flabberstounded. I was . . . well, I didn’t really know what I was because these were simply feelings I had never experienced before.