“Caroline.” I set my hand against the wood just hard enough to stop her from sealing me out quite yet. “Your father told me something before he died.”
The door stops. I take that as an encouraging sign and keep talking.
“In the woods at the Crispin, the morning of the pheasant hunt. He told me Raymond Snyder was not a good man. He started to tell me something else. And then he was dead by sundown.”
Through the two-inch gap, her eyebrows arrow downward. “Who are you, again?”
“Matvei Satyrin. I work at your father’s firm.”
She sighs. But then the chain rattles and the door swings inward. “Wipe your shoes.”
Inside, the kitchen table is piled high with a precariously balanced stack of condolence cards. A wool coat hangs on a hook by the door, too big for Caroline, but just the right size for Bill. Caroline doesn’t look at it as she walks past, but her posture stiffens, and that subtle little twinge is sadder than if she’d stopped and sobbed into the sleeve.
She leads me into a small library off the foyer. She sits, gestures at the other chair, and pulls her cardigan tighter at the throat like she’s cold from the inside out.
“You have ten minutes,” she tells me. “I have a man from the funeral home coming soon. He wants to talk about the urn.” She laughs and wipes her nose with a tissue. “Do you know there are catalogs for urns? Like they’re just oh-so fun to shop for. Mattefinishes and pebbled leather options. There’s aTiffanyone. Can you imagine?”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I say robotically.
“Everyone’s sorry. I’m so fucking sick of sorries.” She folds her arms over her chest and settles back in her seat. “I’d rather have some goddamn answers. Is that what you’ve come to give me, Mr. Satyrin?”
I nod. “I’m looking for the same thing.”
“Then talk,” she says.
I give her a bare-bones rundown. Most of my story is spent detailing what Bill told me about the files that Raymond kept on his partners. Things they’d signed. Things they’d looked away from. Things they’d swept under the rug.
“That’s funny,” she says softly. “Daddy was the same way. He kept files on everything. The man wouldn’t throw out a parking stub.”
I lean forward eagerly. “Do you know if he had anything concerning Raymond?”
She gets up and paces to the window. Her socks don’t match, I notice. One is the heather gray of a Bonpoint cashmere set; the other is a tube sock with three blue stripes at the cuff, the kind men get six to a package at Duane Reade. Bill’s, almost certainly. It must make her feel better to keep little pieces of her father close by.
“I haven’t had time to go through all of Daddy’s things yet,” she says. “But I doubt he’d keep something like that here anyway.”
“At the firm then?” I ask. That’s been my leading theory. If she has keys to his office, I can go hunting in there. I have backup plans if Caroline won’t cooperate, but this is by far the easiest way in.
But she’s shaking her head. “Definitely not. He didn’t even keep his will at the firm. He used to say that the only people you should never trust with your secrets are the people you pay to keep them.”
I suppress a wry chuckle. Bill was funnier than I gave him credit for. “Where, then?”
She looks back at me. Her eyes are red but shrewd. “If I had to bet, I’d say it’s in a safe deposit box.”
That crushes me. Stealing that will be nigh-on impossible, and without a key, it might as well be in fucking Siberia. Looks like Bill took his secrets with him to the grave then. Or, at the very least, until his executor handles all the last will and testament stuff, which could take months. Months I definitely can’t afford to spare.
Fuck me. Looks like this was a useless visit after all.
I start to rise. “I see. Well, thank you for your time. If you do ever get access and you find something that seems relevant, then please reach out.”
If I’m even alive then,I add in my head.
I turn toward the door, searching my brain for options. I don’t know where I’ll go next, but I’m going to have to figure out some other way to get past the veil of secrecy behind which Vainakh operates. Maybe if...
“Mr. Satyrin.”
I stop and turn around. To my surprise, she’s holding out an envelope.
It’s a nine-by-twelve manila with a metal clasp, the corners softened from handling.Oglethorpe, William P.is written across the front in someone else’s handwriting—a clerk’s, probably, at the funeral home.
