Tips for Living(98)
On the morning of day three, I took a magical walk across the snowy farm field into the glittering, frosted woods. I followed a half-frozen stream, water gurgling beneath the ice floe, and circled back to the top of the road where Crawley had parked to keep tabs on me when I was a person of interest. No police car. Just a snowbank. The hunt really was over.
Only the money worries remained. I still had to pay for Gubbins’s services, my own and Lada’s rents and the clinic bills. I called Gubbins, hoping he’d be amenable to negotiating a payment plan until the police returned the Princess Leia sketchbook.
“Good news. I’ve convinced the DA to accept slides of the sketchbook to use as evidence at the trial,” Gubbins said, clearly pleased with his win. “I warned them that the book was an important source of my client’s financial stability. ‘Your withholding it directly affects the physical well-being of Ms. Glasser and her aunt, a senior citizen,’ I said. They agreed to return the original to you by next week, as long as you can prove ownership.”
“Thank you. That’s fantastic. I have a letter from Hugh saying Loving Nora was a gift. Does that help?”
Gubbins paused, and I worried that the letter wouldn’t do. Finally, he said, “I know a handwriting expert. If he verifies your letter, that should be completely acceptable.”
My brilliant lawyer.
“But they insist on holding the knife until the trial is over.”
“I’ll let Ben know. It belongs to him. Thanks again.”
“One more thing. I took the liberty of calling Sotheby’s and asking an appraiser the approximate value of a sketchbook by Hugh Walker. He wouldn’t give an estimate without seeing it first, but he was extremely eager to have a look. When I told him that the police were holding it for a few days in a criminal investigation, he indicated that would increase its value substantially.”
Just like that, “snap,” my money troubles were over. Like one of Damien Hirst’s flies, I heard Abbas hiss. I shivered and shook off the memory.
“Nora?”
“Wonderful,” I told Gubbins. “Just wonderful.”
I drove to the Courier office in the afternoon on Wednesday, unlocked the door and turned on the lights. We were basically closed through the holiday. Ben had put the Thanksgiving issue to bed the night before, except for the weekend calendar. I’d come in to finish it. Afterward, I planned on joining him and Sam at the Pequod Food Pantry, handing out fresh turkeys to some of the town’s less fortunate residents to take home and cook.
I breathed in the comforting aroma of old wood. Worn pine floors. Creaky oak doors and window frames. Scratched and coffee-stained maple desks and armchairs. This was a newsroom of a bygone era, and I loved it. My eye was drawn to the framed picture of Judy and Sam on Ben’s desk. Instead of worrying about living up to Judy, I appreciated Ben’s devotion to her. For a second, I felt a twinge of concern. What would it be like to work here with Ben now that we were involved? I hoped we’d be able to navigate without too much tension.
A stack of the Courier’s special issue, published after Abbas’s arrest, sat on my desk. The headline emblazed across the front page read:
HUNTER’S ARROW TAKES DOWN POINT KILLER
Courier Reporter Confronts Murderer
I moved the stack of papers onto the filing cabinet. “Chapter closed,” I resolved. “Forever.” I’d already called Jake, the hunter, earlier and thanked him again. “If you’d hesitated, I wouldn’t be here today,” I said. He was humble about it. “I’m just glad I turned up in the right place at the right time, ma’am.”
I sat down to work on the calendar. Glancing through the window, I noticed Lizzie on the other side of the street wearing her army jacket and a boiled wool hat from Afghanistan. She was speaking to a woman bundled up in black in front of Eden’s Coffee Shop. The two of them turned and began to cross directly toward the Courier building. I stood up when I recognized the woman with Lizzie was Helene’s sister.
They reached the building entrance on the left and I couldn’t see them from the window anymore. The outer door creaked. Then the Courier office door opened and Lizzie scurried in from the cold.
“Hey, Nora! You’re back! Great. I didn’t think anyone would be in today.”
“Wasn’t that Margaret Westing who just walked across the street with you?”
“The very one.” Lizzie set her camera bag on her desk and plunked down in her chair. “I went to Eden’s for breakfast and saw this woman I recognized from the funeral having coffee at the counter. I sat next to her and introduced myself. She was here to pick up some of her sister’s belongings. Get this: she’s applying for guardianship of Callie Walker.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh.”
From what I’d heard at the funeral, I didn’t think Margaret wanted Callie for the money. I had the impression Margaret really cared for her niece.
“That’s great. She’d be a whole lot better than Ruth and Tobias. Only, it’s going to be a tough win for a single woman coming up against a family for guardianship. But if she pulls it off, it could save that kid’s life.”
On my darkest days, I’d been saved by the love of an aunt.
“Right,” Lizzie said, getting up and walking over to the Mr. Coffee machine. “Here’s the thing: Tobias Walker is in deep trouble with the IRS. He’s about to be charged with fraud. His ‘nonprofit educational’ Fund for the American Family gave oodles of money illegally to political candidates with religious agendas. So, the court might not look too kindly on him as a responsible, ethical parenting option.”