The Dark Room(72)

“Inspector Cain and I thought you’d want to have some things from Harry’s office,” Fischer said.

“What things?”

“You knew about his safe?” Fischer asked.

“I don’t know what he had in his office,” Mona said. “I never went there.”

“Not once, the whole time he was mayor?”

“I said I never went,” Mona said. She used her hands against the couch cushions, pushing until she was sitting up.

Fischer sat in the chair nearest Mona’s head. She pushed the bourbon bottle out of the way and set her briefcase on the coffee table but didn’t open it. Mona sat looking at it, her eyes puffy, half focused.

Cain checked behind him.

Alexa stood by the door. She had her bourbon glass in one hand and a cell phone in the other. She was typing a text message with her left thumb. She finished her message and darkened the phone’s screen. When she saw Cain watching her, she finished her drink in one long, easy swallow. Cain wondered who she’d be texting right now. There was Patricia, her nightshade-eyed friend. And there was the kid from the paintings, the one who occasionally slept over, though not often enough for Alexa to call him a boyfriend.

“What things?” Alexa asked. She crossed the room and sat opposite Fischer. “I went to his office. I saw the safe but never inside it.”

“There were insurance policies and a will,” Fischer said. “Also, some cash.”

Before either of the Castellis could answer, Cain reached into his jacket and brought out a thick envelope. He set it on the coffee table. Alexa looked inside it, then pushed it across to her mother.

“Those are the originals,” Cain said. “You’ll want to give them to Mr. Lum. He’ll know what to do with them.”

He’d already made copies of the will and the insurance policies. He wasn’t a lawyer, but he understood the gist. Both policies had two-year suicide riders, but Castelli had bought them ten years ago. Even if he’d put the gun in his mouth and willingly pulled the trigger, there was no bar to a payout. The riders were expired, and the companies would have to get out their checkbooks. The entire estate went to Mona, but she was only the trustee. Alexa was the true beneficiary and would come into everything when Mona died.

Mona looked in the envelope and thumbed weakly through the pages. She looked at Fischer.

“You said something about cash,” she said. “The safe had cash?”

“I’ll get to that,” Fischer said. She put her hand on the briefcase. “But I wanted to ask you—”

“He never said anything about the safe.”

“—if you’ve heard the name Lester Fennimore.”

“Lester,” Mona said. She looked at Alexa, who shook her head. “Lester Fennimore.”

“You’ve heard the name?”

“He was someone Harry knew?” Mona asked.

“Are you saying that, or asking us?”

She combed her fingers through her hair, then rubbed at her eyes. Drunk, hungover, and no makeup on, but it didn’t matter. She looked young. She had a nineteen-year-old daughter, but she was under forty, and she’d had unlimited cash since she was eighteen.

“Asking—saying. I don’t know,” Mona said. “The name sounds familiar.”

“Someone Harry knew?”

“I don’t know—yes. I think.”

On the table, Alexa’s phone lit up with an incoming text. She took it and put it in her lap, screen down. Cain watched her and watched the phone. He waited to see if she’d give some sign. A rise of color in her cheeks, a downward turn of her eyes. But she was too much like her father to reveal anything so easily. She reached across the table and took the bourbon bottle by its neck, then refilled her glass.

“You met him?” Fischer asked.

“Lester Fennimore?” Mona asked. “I don’t think I ever met him. I think Harry might have talked about him.”

“When?”

“That would’ve been years ago—before Alexa was born.”

The way Mona had told it before, Alexa was born more or less nine months after she’d first gone to work for Harry Castelli. Their house—the house she’d moved into after dropping out of Stanford—had been twenty miles from the trailhead at Castle Rock State Park.

“Alexa was born when?” Cain asked.

“December 12, 1998,” Alexa said.

Cain looked at her. She was still holding the phone on her lap, one hand on top of it like it might slip away. He turned back to Mona.

“And after she was born, you never heard about Lester Fennimore again?”

“Not that I remember,” Mona said. “He might’ve said something, but I don’t know. I was busy with a baby.”

“Okay.”

“What’s this have to do with?” Mona asked. “Was it Lester who sent Harry the letter?”

“No,” Fischer said. “It wasn’t Lester. I think we can be pretty sure about that.”

Cain’s phone began to vibrate in his pocket. He slipped it out and looked at the screen. There wasn’t anything Lieutenant Nagata needed from him right now that couldn’t wait. He dropped the phone back into his pocket and let it go on silently ringing.