“You’ll be the first person I call,” I promised her.
The deputies followed us back across the island to my house.Chowder had been shut up inside since church and met us at the door with the wounded dignity of a dog who’d missed an entire outing, and he made his feelings known by pouting on his daybed in the living room where he could see the back-and-forth traffic of the boxes coming in.
By the time the last box was finished it was near four o’clock.The living room looked like the back of a moving truck had thrown up in it.Twenty-three boxes, I counted, stacked two and three high against every wall.
“I guess it’s a good thing I don’t use this room that often,” I said.
“Not true,” Dash said.“We sat on that couch and kissed.”
I felt the heat sting my cheeks.“We were watching a movie.”
“That’s funny.I don’t remember the movie.But I do remember the kissing.”
Chowder made a low noise from his daybed that was either disgust or solidarity.It was hard to tell with him.
“Since I’m guessing we’re not going to be kissing anytime soon, where do you want to start?”he asked.
“I want to start with a glass of iced tea and the Sunday crossword puzzle.”
“What’s your second choice?”
I was still thinking about kissing on the couch, but knew better than to suggest it.Dash took kissing very seriously.
“I’ll be right back,” I said and hurried off to the kitchen before my face could give me away.
“Coward,” he called out, and I could hear him laughing.
I got us both glasses of tea and a plate of lemon bars, and when I came back I was composed and had my hormones under control.I toed off my Mary Janes and sat down on the floor with my tea, resigning myself to spending the rest of my Sunday cross-legged and hip deep in a dead man’s paperwork.
“It’s a shame,” Dash said, looking up at the golden cedar beams on the ceiling and the exposed brick fireplace.Then he looked out the bank of windows toward the water.“This really is a nice room.Very cozy.You should use it more.”
I loved my house.I really did.But it was hard filling up all the rooms with just me and Chowder padding around.This was a house that was meant for family and children.It would have been if Patrick had lived.But he hadn’t, and this room sat pristine and untouched with its white couches and neutral throws and rugs.
“We’ll have to watch more movies,” I said as a concession.“Now, it’s time to get serious.We’ll sort first and read second.Otherwise we’ll lose three hours on box one and never get to box twenty.”
“So wise for someone so young,” he said.
I snorted.“I’m thirty-four.That’s not exactly young anymore.”
“Settle down, Betty White,” he said.“You’ve still got some good years left.”
He sat across from me with his back against the sofa and pulled the nearest box toward him.“All right.Money goes by the window.Personal and correspondence by the fireplace.Practice and patient files in the middle.Photographs and household odds and ends against the far wall unless we get a reason to care.”
“What about tax returns?”
“Tax returns go in their own.I can’t imagine there’s anything in his tax returns that will lead us to his killer.”
I opened the first box and started sorting.And then I started singing “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” because I couldn’t think of anything else that would be appropriate for organizing.
“Where’d you learn to sing?”Dash asked.
“My grandmother,” I said.“She loved all the standards.She had this old radio in her house where you could turn the dials and hear the crackle before the music came on.We’d make scones and sing, and then when we were done baking we’d eat them hot out of the oven with a cup of tea and listen to old vaudeville recordings.”
“It sounds like the two of you were close,” he said.
“Very.Closer than I ever was to my own mother.”I paused because I wasn’t sure that came out right.“It was no fault of her own.I love her.We just don’t have anything in common.Are you close with your family?”
He was quiet for a moment as he shuffled through papers.“My parents are both gone.I don’t have any family left.”
