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flaring angrily, “he would have told me.”
    “He didn’t tell you about the money,” I noted.
    She had removed her apron and the towel, and began looking out the window, anything to avoid looking at me. Obviously she was trying to control her anger toward me.
    “Do you want more coffee?” she asked stiffly. I shook my head. It was a very awkward moment. But I had done the right thing. I wasn’t there to be a nursemaid.
    “Look how gloomy it is out,” she exclaimed, and shook her head as if the world was truly deranged.
    “Maybe it’ll clear up,” I said tritely. “Maybe the afternoon will be better.”
    “I want to show you his files,” she said abruptly. Relieved, I stood up. We walked together through the long kitchen and into an adjoining storeroom. Flanked by two small, filthy windows, a door at the far end led out into the yard.
    The room was filled with cardboard cartons piled on top of one another. Between the cartons, in haphazard fashion, lay ropes, old boots, pots and pans, and piles of clothing that obviously hadn’t been worn in years. Jo opened one carton and beckoned me to peer inside. It was filled with letters and correspondence of all kinds. On the side of the box was written in now-fading Magic Marker: “1984.”
    “Everything,” she said, “he kept everything. It’s all here. Harry never threw anything away—not his letters, not his bills . . .”
    I saw that each carton had a year written on the side. There were also many large manila envelopes among the cartons, and these too had dates. But there was no order to them at all. They just lay randomly in that damp, cold room, which was illuminated only by a single overhead light bulb.
    “I can bring it all out to the living room and you can work there when you are ready,” Jo said tentatively. We both realized that we had embarked on a problematic task—it could all be worthless as a key to his death. And even if we found one or two or three pieces of paper mentioning the source of Harry’s newfound wealth, how were we to recognize them when they passed through our hands?
    “Look,” Jo said, pulling a sheaf of photographs from a carton marked “1975.” She flipped through them and held up one for me to see. “That’s Harry and some friends of his in Vermont. Look at the porch of that hotel . . . so lovely . . . do you see the rocking chairs?”
    She didn’t wait for an answer. She pushed the photos back into the carton. She was trembling and trying not to cry.
    “I’ll start on it tomorrow, Jo,” I said, wanting to get her out of this room that was causing her such pain.
    She made a motion with her hand for me to stay put. Then she said, “What if Harry lied to me only once in his life? About the money. And he didn’t tell me only in order to protect me from something terrible. What if the only lie Harry ever told me in his life killed him?”
    There was nothing I could say to her. She was babbling. Husbands lie to wives, wives to husbands, children to parents, everyone to everyone.
    Someone called out from the kitchen. It was the old long-haired handyman—his name was Amos. He was saying something we couldn’t hear. Jo shrugged and walked back into the kitchen. I followed.
    Amos looked as pale as a ghost. His hands were clasped behind his neck as if he were about to try some exotic calisthenics.
    “What’s the matter with you, Amos?” Jo asked, half-angry, half-solicitous.
    “I just came from down the road,” Amos said, his voice scratchy and broken, “and they told me what happened. They murdered Mona Aspen last night, just like Mr. Starobin. They murdered her and hung her on a door.”

6
    All the heaters in the cottage were on, but it was very cold. What a bizarre way to spend New Year’s Eve, I thought. I sat in the rocker, two blankets around me, like an old whaling woman in New Bedford waiting for the fleet to return. Bushy was lying on his back in front of one of the heaters. Pancho was