I, Richard

though.

Doyle said this was sensible and he told her he'd wait outside with the dog for the crime scene team to show up. Which they did in an hour, pulling up in a white sedan with Crime Scene Investigation printed in subtle gray on the doors.

While they went through the motions of looking for evidence in the debris that was Charlie's house, Charlie herself sat in the backyard, staring numbly at the picturesque fountain that she and her husband had two years ago debated removing “once the babies come.” It all seemed so much a part of another life now, a life that not only bore no resemblance to her present one but also had been a fabrication.

“Wow, this guy's too good to be true,” her sister Emily had murmured the first time she'd met Eric.

And that had apparently been the case.

When the crime scene people were done with their work, they left Charlie with the name and phone number of someone who specialized in “fixing up after this kind of thing,” they said. “You can get her to help you clean up. She's reasonable.”

Charlie didn't know if they meant her personality or her expense.

In either case, it didn't matter. She wanted no other professionals traipsing through the wreckage of her world.

So she forced herself to deal with the wreckage alone, and she began where she knew, without wanting to admit it to herself, that the intruder had begun: in Eric's study.

This was owing to Sharon Pasternak, Charlie thought as she stood in the doorway, slumped against its jamb. She would have to be every which way a complete fool not to put together this break-in with Sharon Pasternak's visit “to find some papers.” Failing to find whatever she'd been looking for, she'd called in someone with a little more imagination in the searching arena. And here before Charlie was the result.

She stepped over a pile of file folders and went to Eric's desk. She began with the easiest task: putting the drawers back in and reassembling their contents. And it was in the midst of doing this that she found an indication of where-if not what-the “papers” were that Sharon Pasternak and the intruder who followed her had wanted. For dumped alongside 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.

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 their windows. The branch manager's office door was closed. Otherwise, the bank was experiencing the typical midday languor that preceded the final rush of the afternoon.

“I've got to…” Linda twisted a ring on her hand. It was a diamond. Engagement or something else? Charlie wondered.

“I don't imagine you're supposed to spy on customers in the vault,” Charlie said. “I'd hate to have to report you to the manager. Do you want to come back here with me, or should I knock on his door?”

Linda swallowed. She shoved a lock of hair behind her ear. She followed Charlie.

The deposit box sat on the counter where Charlie had left it. Linda's glance went to it compulsively. She gripped her hands in front of her and waited for whatever Charlie would say.

“You knew my husband. You recognized his name. You as much as said he was in here often.”

“I didn't mean you to think-”

“Tell me what you know about this.” Charlie opened the deposit box. “Because you knew it was here. You were watching me. You were waiting to see what my reaction was going to be.”

Linda said in a rush, “I shouldn't have watched. I'm sorry. I don't want to lose my job. It's been hard. I've got a little girl, see.”

Eric's child? Charlie braced herself.

“She's only eighteen months old,” Linda continued. “Her dad won't give us anything and my dad won't let us move in with him. I've been here a year and I'm doing pretty good and if I get fired…”

“How long had you and my husband… How did you know each other?”

“Know…?” Linda looked appalled as she made the connection. “He's nice, is all. He… Well, he likes to flirt, but that's it. I didn't even know he was married till I saw your name on the card one time. And… really, it was nothing. He's just sort of cute and he comes and goes and I got curious about him, is all.”

“So you watched him in the vault.”

“Only once. I swear it. Once. The rest of the time…Well, when he first came in to make his deposits-for the checking account, you know?-he'd just wait for me. He'd let other people go past him till I was available. He saw