She heard a noise in the house.
It sounded as though it had come from the kitchen.
She froze, held her breath.
Someone was running water into the sink. There was the sound of a clinking glass.
Then someone called out, “Honey? That you?”
Belinda felt a weight being lifted off her chest, but only briefly. It was George. What the hell was he doing home?
“Yes,” she gasped. “It’s me.”
He rounded the corner and saw her collapsed on the stairs. He was in the same suit he wore the day before to the funeral. A different shirt, but still with French cuffs, bands of brilliant white between his hands and sleeves.
“You scared me half to death,” she scolded him. “What are you doing here? Your car’s not in the driveway.”
“When I got to work, I wasn’t feeling all that well,” he said. “I think it might be that fish you made last night. So I decided to come home, work from here today. I’m not going back to the office, so I put the car in the garage.” George ran his management consulting business out of New Haven, but it was just as easy for him to work from home. “And what about you? I thought you had a showing?”
“I… it was canceled.”
“What are you doing on the stairs? You look like you’ve been crying.”
“I’m… I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” George asked, reaching into his suit jacket and pulling out a brown envelope. “Is it possible it has something to do with not finding this?”
Belinda was on her feet. She recognized the envelope immediately. By its thickness, and her own handwriting on the outside. “Give me that.”
She went to grab for it but he pulled it away, slipping it back into his jacket.
“I said give it to me,” she said.
George shook his head sadly, as though Belinda were a child who’d just come home with an F. “So you were expecting this,” he said.
“Yes.”
“There’s sixty-two thousand dollars here. I counted it. It was dropped through the mail slot. You knew this was coming?”
“It’s business. It’s a down payment on a property down on East Broadway.”
“What’s this phone number on it? And who makes a down payment with cash, and doesn’t even get a proper receipt? And is it just a coincidence I saw Glen Garber’s truck driving away from the house when I turned down the street? Is Glen the one putting a down payment on a property? Would you mind if I asked him about it?”
“Don’t meddle in my affairs, George. You’ve done enough already, making me talk to those lawyers about Sheila. Do you know how much that hurt Glen? Do you have any idea what that may do? It could wipe him out. It could bankrupt him.”
George was unruffled. “People need to be accountable, Belinda. They need to be held to a certain standard. And if Glen wasn’t cognizant of problems Sheila was having, when he should have been, then there’s a price to pay for that. And envelopes stuffed with cash, dropped through a mail slot, do not meet those standards. Don’t you realize the sort of risks that exposes us to, to have that kind of cash around the house?”
Cognizant. She wanted to kill him. All the years she’d put up with this. Thirteen years of his sanctimonious bullshit. The fool had no idea what he was talking about. No idea how deep she was in. And no sense that this money, this envelope stuffed with cash, was her ticket to digging herself out.
“What I’m going to do,” George continued, “is I’m going to put this money away someplace safe for you, and when you can show me what exactly it relates to, and assure me it’s going to be handled in a responsible manner, then I’ll be happy to hand it over.”
“George, no. You can’t do this!”
But he was already walking away, heading to his ground-floor study. By the time she caught up, he was already across the room, swinging out the hinged portrait of his equally sanctimonious, judgmental, ramrod-stiff, son-of-a-bitch father-dead, thank God-to reveal a wall safe.
“I need that money,” Belinda pleaded.
“Well, then you better explain where it came from and what it’s for.” George turned the dial on the safe and opened it in seconds. He tossed the envelope in, closed the door, and gave the combination a spin. “I hope this doesn’t have anything to do with those illegitimate women’s accessories Ann used to sell. Those dreadful parties.”
She glared at him.
“You know how I feel about the sanctity of trademarks and copyright. Selling bags that are not what they purport to be, that are not authentic, that’s just not right. The fact is, I don’t even know why a woman would want a bag that said it was a Fendi or whatever when in fact it was not. You know why? Because you’d always know. What pleasure is there in carrying around something you know to be fake?”
She looked at his comb-over attempt.
“For example,” he continued, “if I could get a car that looked like a Ferrari for a fraction of the price, but underneath it was a Ford-well, that’s not a car I would want.”
George in a Ferrari, Belinda thought. She could no more picture a donkey piloting an airplane.
“What’s happening to you?” she asked. “You’ve always been a self-righteous, pretentious asshole, but these last few days there’s something else going on. You’re sleeping on the couch, saying you’re sick but you don’t have the flu or anything, and you freaked out when I tried to join you in the shower, you-”
“You’re not the only one who has stresses.”
“And now you’re adding to them. You have to give me that money.”
“It’s up to you. Tell me what’s going on.”
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Belinda said to him.
“Oh, I know,” he said. “I’m doing the responsible thing.”
She wondered if he’d still be saying that after a visit from Sommer.
THIRTY-FIVE
I found my way to the Bridgeport Business College and parked in a visitor’s spot. It didn’t look all that much like a college. It was a long, flat, industrial-looking building without an ounce of academic charm. But it reportedly had good courses, and that was what had led Sheila to come here for her night classes.
I didn’t know whether Allan Butterfield was part of the regular faculty, or merely taught an evening course here on the side. I went through the entrance doors and approached a man sitting at the information desk in the drab foyer.
“I’m looking for a teacher, his name’s Butterfield.”
He didn’t need to consult anything. He pointed. “Take that hall to the end, go right, office is on the left. Just look for the signs.”
I was standing outside Allan Butterfield’s door a minute later, and rapped on it.
“Hello?” said a muffled voice from inside.
I turned the knob and opened the door on a small, cluttered office space. There was just enough room for a desk and a couple of chairs. Papers and books were stacked helter-skelter.
Butterfield wasn’t alone. A redheaded woman in her early twenties sat on the other side of the desk from Butterfield. An open laptop was balanced on her knees.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“Oh, hi,” Butterfield said. “Glen, Glen Garber.” He remembered me from our meeting after Sheila’s death, when I’d been attempting to trace Sheila’s final hours.
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
