Keep Her Safe(11)

I can’t see myself living there again. Ever.

“Make sure someone is checking in at the house regularly. You don’t want it looking abandoned. That’s when places get robbed.”

“Yes, sir. We have a security system.”

“Are your mother’s guns there?”

“Yes, sir.” My born-and-bred Southern manners have crept back into my daily life. I lost them for a time, living in Seattle, where people just don’t say “sir” and “ma’am.”

“They’re in a safe?”

“Yes, sir.” It took two days of searching, but Silas finally found the combination in one of her files.

“I can help transfer ownership over to you. May as well add them to your collection. You don’t want to be selling those.”

“Right.” I scan the wall behind him, at the array of mounted animal trophies quietly gazing down over us with their glass eyes. The thought that I don’t actually have a gun collection wouldn’t even have crossed Hal’s mind. Had I not moved to Seattle with my father during my impressionable teenage years, maybe I would. Mom had insisted I start carrying four years ago, during a rash of muggings, so I do have a Glock locked away in a gun box under my passenger seat whenever I’m driving. I don’t need or want more.

I guess I should keep the Colt Python, though. More out of nostalgia than anything else. That’s the one Mom taught me to fire with when I was eight.

“And let me know what you decide about the house. You can sell it as part of the estate, or we can transfer the title over to you and you can do what you want with it down the road.” He puts his pen down. “Aside from that, we’re in good shape to get this all settled quickly. You’re going to be set for a few years.”

“Is that all?” I move to stand. Sitting in this office, talking about my financial windfall because my mom committed suicide, is the last thing I want to be doing.

Hal holds a finger up. “There’s one more thing.” Clearing his throat, he reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a white letter envelope. “She asked me to give this to you.”

The air in the room has suddenly grown thick.

I stare at the envelope, my heart hammering in my chest as all kinds of questions crowd my mind. I manage to force out the most important one. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. She dropped it off the afternoon before she passed.”

The afternoon before she passed.

I glare at it with renewed understanding, the sight of my name printed across the front in Mom’s tidy handwriting weakening my knees.

This is why she mentioned Hal Fulcher’s name the night she killed herself. Not because she had been getting her affairs in order.

The hell if Hal doesn’t know what that letter is. Or at least suspect. And the somber look on his face says he strongly suspects.

He holds it out for me, but I’m frozen. There’s only one thing that envelope could hold.

Answers.

“I don’t want it,” I mutter, even though I do want it. I need it. I just don’t know if I can handle it. “What does it say?”

“She didn’t tell me to open it; she told me to hand it directly to you and to make sure you were alone when I did it.” His outstretched arm falls to rest on his desk. “Listen, I don’t hold envelopes for clients unless it’s a documented part of the will. This was a personal favor.”

“Why’d you do it, then?”

“Because your mom was the chief of police,” he says matter-of-factly, but adds in a softer tone, “and a friend.”

I shouldn’t be surprised that she’d leave this with Hal Fulcher. Mom was convinced that he was the only honest lawyer in existence—aside from Silas, of course. Plus, she’d never want such a private letter entered into evidence for all of her subordinates and colleagues—and God knows who else—to see. “Do I have to report it?”

“I’m not a criminal lawyer, so I can’t advise you on that. But . . . if this were me and my mother was the chief, and what’s in that envelope is what I think it is, then I’d consider if anyone else needs to see it. That’s not legal advice, though.”

The APD and the insurance company are convinced of suicide. The DA’s office reviewed the police report and are comfortable with the findings. The media sure as hell is. They’ve had a field day with this, everything from the somber albeit lean accounting from the respectable papers to the crude, almost barbaric retelling from the Texas Inquirer, a tabloid paper who must have stellar contacts in the department because it released details the police were trying to suppress. “Blown brains” made it into their piece. So did mention of Abe.

Would I want to submit this letter to the police, so it could end up on the front page of a newspaper? Hell no.

And it’s not like I’d be hiding crime scene evidence.

I eye the envelope, my name and the words Confidential. Open this in private scrawled across it. “What exactly did she say when she dropped it off?”

“That you’d be by to pick it up soon, and that it was important I give it directly to you. It was important that you opened it.” He stares at me for a long moment, like he can hear what I’m really asking. “There were no signs that I could see, Noah. She was her usual self. I did not see this coming.”