“I get it.”
“I established that he’s got at least some money, because property taxes are a matter of public record, and the tab on Number 1 Sycamore in 2012 was twenty-two thousand and change.”
“He pays that every year?”
“It varies. The important part is he’s paying it, and he was here when your mom and I moved in—maybe I told you that. He would have been shelling out a lot less back in the day, property taxes have gone up like everything else, but you’re still talking six figures in all. It’s a big lot. What did he do before he retired?”
“I don’t know. I really just met the guy, and he was messed up when I did. We haven’t had what you’d call a real heart-to-heart.” Although that was coming. I just didn’t know it yet.
“I don’t know, either. I looked but didn’t find. Which, it bears repeating, I would have said was impossible in this day and age. I’ve heard of people going off the grid, but usually in the wilds of Alaska with a cult that thinks the world’s going to end, or in Montana, like the Unabomber.”
“Una-who?”
“A domestic terrorist. Real name, Ted Kaczynski. You didn’t happen to see any bomb-making equipment lying around Bowditch’s house, did you?” Dad said this with a humorous lift of his eyebrows, but I wasn’t entirely sure he was joking.
“The most dangerous thing I’ve seen was the scythe. Oh, and a rusty hatchet in that toolbox on the third floor.”
“Any pictures? Like of his father and mother? Or him, when he was young?”
“Nope. The only one I saw was a photo of Radar. It’s on the table beside his easy chair in the living room.”
“Huh.” Dad reached for his pipe, changed his mind. “We don’t know where his money comes from—assuming he still has some—and we don’t know what he did for a living. Something from home, I assume, because he’s an agoraphobe. That means—”
“I know what it means.”
“My guess is he always tended in that direction and it got worse as he got older. He pulled in.”
“The lady across the street told me he used to walk Radar at night.” She pricked up her ears at the sound of her name. “It seemed a little weird to me, most people walk their dogs in the daytime, but—”
“Less people on the streets at night,” Dad said.
“Yeah. He sure doesn’t seem like a hiya-neighbor kind of guy.”
“One other thing,” Dad said. “Kind of weird… but he’s kind of weird, wouldn’t you say?”
I passed on the question and asked about the other thing.
“He’s got a car. I don’t know where it is, but he’s got one. I found the registration online. It’s a 1957 Studebaker. He gets a rate on the excise tax because it’s registered as an antique. Like the property tax, he pays the excise every year, but that’s a lot cheaper. Sixty bucks or so.”
“If he’s got a car, you should be able to find his driver’s license, Dad. That will say how old he is.”
He smiled and shook his head. “Good try, but no Illinois license has ever been issued in the name of Howard Bowditch. And of course you don’t have to have a driver’s license to buy a car. It might not even run.”
“Why pay the yearly tax on a car that doesn’t?”
“Here’s a better one, Chip—why pay the tax when you can’t drive?”
“What about Adrian Bowditch? The father or grandfather? Maybe he had a license.”
“Didn’t think of that. I’ll check.” He paused. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I do.”
“Then ask him about some of this stuff. Because as far as I can find, he’s almost not there.”
I said I would, and that seemed to close the discussion. I thought about mentioning the weird scuttering sound I’d heard in the shed—the shed with a heavy padlock on the door even though there was supposedly nothing in it—but I didn’t. That sound had grown vague in my mind, and I already had enough to think about.
3
I was still thinking about those things as I took the plastic dustcover off the bed in the guestroom where I’d sleep during part of spring vacation, or maybe even all of it. That bed was made up, but the sheets had a stale and musty smell. I took them off and put on fresh from the linen closet. How fresh I didn’t know, but they smelled better, and there was another set for the pull-out couch, along with a comforter.