“Me? Why?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you. It will be a good conversation, I think.”
7
I gathered up Radar’s food, dish, and meds. There was no way I was going to leave her in that house, where she’d wait for her master to come back from wherever he’d gone. I clipped her leash to her collar and walked her down the hill. She went slowly but steadily and mounted our porch steps with no trouble. She knew the place now and went immediately to her water dish. Then she lay down on her rug and went to sleep.
Dad came home shortly after noon. I don’t know what he saw on my face, but he took one look and pulled me into a strong hug. I started crying again, this time a real flood. He cupped the back of my head and rocked me as if I were still a little boy, and that made me cry even harder.
When the waterworks finally stopped, he asked if I was hungry. I said I was, and he scrambled half a dozen eggs, throwing in handfuls of onions and peppers. We ate, and I told him what had happened, but there was plenty I didn’t tell him about—the pistol, the noises in the shed, the bucket of gold in the safe. I didn’t show him the keyring, either. I thought I might come clean soon, and he’d probably give me hell for holding back, but I was going to keep the crazy stuff to myself until I listened to that cassette tape.
I did show him the wallet. In the billfold were five dollar bills of a sort I’d never seen before. Dad said they were silver certificates, not all that rare, but as retro as Mr. Bowditch’s TV and Hotpoint stove. There were also three items of identification: a Social Security card made out to Howard A. Bowditch, a laminated card declaring Howard A. Bowditch was a member of the American Woodsman’s Association, and a driver’s license.
I looked at the photo on the Woodsman’s Association card with fascination. In it Mr. Bowditch looked about thirty-five, surely no older than forty. He had a full head of blazing red hair, combed back from his unlined forehead in neat waves, and he was wearing a cocky grin I’d never seen. Smiles, yes, and even a grin or two, but nothing this carefree. He was wearing a plaid flannel shirt and he certainly looked like a woodsy-type guy.
A simple woodcutter, he’d said to me not all that long ago. The fairy tales are full of them.
“This is really, really good,” my dad said.
I looked up from the card I was holding. “What is?”
“This.”
He passed me the driver’s license, which showed Mr. Bowditch at sixty or so. He still had plenty of red hair, but it was thinning and fighting a losing battle against the white. The license had been good until 1996, according to what was printed below his name, but we knew better. Dad had checked online. Mr. Bowditch had a car （somewhere） but had never held a valid Illinois driver’s license… which was what this purported to be. I guessed Mr. Heinrich might have known someone who could create fake DLs.
“Why?” I asked. “Why would he?”
“Maybe lots of reasons, but I think he must have known a valid death certificate couldn’t be issued without at least some identification.” Dad shook his head, not with irritation but admiration. “This, Charlie, was burial insurance.”
“What should we do about it?”
“Roll with it. He had secrets, I’m sure, but I don’t think he ever robbed banks in Arkansas or shot up a bar in Nashville. He was good to you and good to his dog and that’s good enough for me. I believe he should be buried with his little secrets, unless his lawyer knows them. Or do you think differently?”
“I don’t.” What I was thinking was that he’d had secrets, all right, but not little. Unless you considered a fortune in gold little, that was. And there was something in his shed. Or had been, until he shot it.
8
Howard Adrian Bowditch was laid to rest just two days later, on Thursday the twenty-sixth of September, 2013. The service took place at the Crosland Funeral Home, and he was buried at Sentry’s Rest Cemetery, my mother’s final resting place. Reverend Alice Parker conducted a non-sectarian service at my father’s request—she had also officiated at my mother’s service. Reverend Alice kept it short, but even so, I had plenty of time to think. Some of it was about the gold, but more of it was about the shed. He had shot something in there, and the excitement killed him. It took a little while, but I was sure that had done it.
Present at the funeral parlor service, and at the cemetery, were George Reade, Charles Reade, Melissa Wilcox, Mrs. Althea Richland, a lawyer named Leon Braddock, and Radar, who slept through the funeral service and spoke up just once, at graveside: a howl as the coffin was lowered into the ground. I’m sure that sounds both sentimental and unbelievable. All I can say is it happened.