“Be there at noon,” I said and hung up.
I took a bite of donut, a sip of coffee, and picked up the Out list. There were some surprises on it, though none of them seemed like a clue, and by 11:30, with the coffee a dim memory, and the donuts a faint aftertaste, I put the list down and headed for my car. All I could think of was to talk with each of the people on the list. This, coupled with trying to find out who else Louis Vincent had been hustling, meant a great deal of boring legwork that made me think about becoming a poet.
I parked illegally near Mrs. Lamont’s three decker and rang her doorbell at noon. Prudish but punctual. We sat at her thick wooden kitchen table with the high sun shining in through the upper panes of the window over her sink. There was a big white envelope on the table in front of her. It had been mailed and opened.
“Would you like some coffee?” she said. “I have instant.”
“No thank you.”
“Tea?”
“No ma’am.”
“I’m going to have some tea.”
“By all means,” I said.
I sat at the table with my hands folded on it, like an attentive grammar school student, and looked around. It was a kitchen out of my early childhood: painted yellow, with Iuan mahogany plywood wainscoting all around, yellow, gray, and maroon stone patterned linoleum on the floor, white porcelain sink, an off-white gas stove with storage drawers along one side. The kitchen table top was covered with the same linoleum that covered the floor. The hot water kettle whistled that it was ready, and Mrs. Lamont poured hot water into a bright flowered teacup. She plopped in a tea bag and brought the teacup in a matching saucer to the table. She took a spoon from a drawer in the table and prodded the tea bag gently until the tea got to be the right shade of amber. Then she took the tea bag out and put it in the saucer. She picked up the teacup with both hands and held it under her nose for a moment as if she were inhaling the vapors. Then she sipped and put the cup back down.
“I barely know you,” she said.
“That’s true,” I said.
“And yet here you are,” she said.
“Here I am.”
“My husband took care of all the financial things,” she said.
I nodded.
“When he left I didn’t even know how to write a check.”
I nodded again. You find something that works, you go with it.
“I don’t know any lawyers or people like that.”
I nodded. She had some tea. I waited.
“So when this stuff came in the mail, I didn’t know who to ask.”
“This stuff?” I said and patted the big envelope.
“Yes. Now that he’s… gone, his mail comes to me.”
I knew who he was. I knew that parents tended to think of their children as
“Would you like me to look at it?” I said.
“Yes, please.”
She handed me the envelope. It was a financial statement from Hall, Peary. Home of that great romantic, Louis Vincent. Boston isn’t all that big, sooner or later cases tended to overlap. The statement showed that Prentice Lamont and Patsy Lamont JTWROS had $256,248.29 in a management account consisting mostly of common stocks and options. I copied down the name and phone number of his financial consultant which was listed at the top. It wasn’t Louis Vincent. It was someone named Maxwell Morgan.
“What is it?” she said.
“It’s a financial statement from a stockbroker.”
“What does it say?”
“It says that your son and you had two hundred fifty-six thousand and change invested in stocks and bonds, which the stockbroker managed for him.”
“You mean Prentice’s money?”
“Yes. Now yours I assume.”
“Mine?”
“Yes, see this, JTWROS? Joint tenants with right of survivorship. It means that now that your son has passed away the money is yours.”
“Mine?”
“Yes.”
“Where would Prentice get two hundred thousand dollars?”
