“She wrote you letters.” Dr. Statler pulls something from between the pages of his notebook: one of her pale-yellow envelopes, a letter inside, written in handwriting I’ve come to adore.
“Two hundred and three of them,” I say. “She was determined that I’d know her someday, as well as the family I came from. They were complicated people.” I keep my eyes on the ground. “So was she.”
An alarm beeps twice. Dr. Statler shifts in his chair. “Looks like we’re out of time.”
“We are?” I ask.
“Yes, it’s time for me to get some sleep.”
As he reaches to silence the alarm, I see the time. It’s nearly one in the morning. “I’m sorry,” I say, mortified that I’ve kept him up this late. “I lost track of time.” I stand and hurry to the door.
“Come back tomorrow morning, Albert,” Dr. Statler says as I open the door. “Ten a.m. We’ll pick up where we left off. Would you like me to write that down?”
“No,” I say. “Ten a.m. I’ll remember.” I step into the hall. “Good night, Dr. Statler.”
He smiles at me, the warmest smile I think I’ve ever seen. “Good night, beautiful.”
Chapter 50
Franklin Sheehy sighs dramatically on the other end of the phone. “I don’t know,” he says. “But I’m not convinced that volunteering at an old folks’ home qualifies as suspicious, Annie. And if it is, well, you’ll have to excuse me, as I need to get down to Catholic Charities to arrest my seventy-nine-year-old mother.”
Annie closes her eyes, envisioning pinning him to the wall by his neck. “I’m not suggesting that volunteering, as a concept, is suspicious, Franklin,” she says, measured. “But it’s not just that.”
“What else is it?” he asks.
“The office space,” she says. “It was awfully generous, what he did for Sam. Like, to a fault.”
“Generous to a fault?” Sheehy says. “You’ve been in the city too long, Ms. Potter. You’ve forgotten that people are nice.”
That’s the same thing Sam said, when she first expressed her skepticism about Albert Bitterman and his “generous” offer. Annie was up most of the night, digging out the lease again and combing through her texts with Sam, trying to piece together what she knew about him. Albert Bitterman Jr., new owner of the historic Lawrence House.
Quirky. That’s the word Sam used to describe him, guilting Sam into staying for a drink every once in a while, asking him to help with tasks around the property—taking out the garbage and sweeping the path. Sam felt indebted, couldn’t get over his good luck.
“He let Sam design the space himself,” Annie says to Franklin. “Sam being Sam, this meant everything cost a fortune. That’s quite a few steps up from small-town ‘nice.’ And now I find out that he’s also been visiting Sam’s mother?”
Annie got the girl at the desk to show her his file. Albert Bitterman, fifty-one years old, started volunteering at Rushing Waters last month. Assignment: bingo night, every Wednesday and Friday. She asked around. Nobody knew him other than as the volunteer who left a lot of comments in the suggestion box. She googled his name when she got home, finding the author of a children’s book and a professor of urban planning, neither of which she guessed was a match.
“What are you suggesting, Annie?” Franklin says. “That your husband’s landlord . . . what? Killed him and disposed of his car? Let me guess. You listen to those true-crime podcasts.”
She sighs wearily.
“Ms. Potter—” Franklin heaves a sigh of his own. “I didn’t want to be the one to have to tell you this, but your husband wasn’t the man you thought he was. He hid a hundred grand in debt from you. He wasn’t visiting his mother, or paying her bills. And, oh yeah, he got power of attorney over her finances two weeks before he disappeared.” Annie’s breath catches. “Yeah, that’s right. We poked around, talked to people down at Rushing Waters, and we know that part too. You may like to paint us as the bumbling cops who can’t tie their own shoes, but we know what we’re doing. Bottom line, Annie: he’s a pathological liar, and you’re the wife, left behind, grasping at straws.” She can hear his chair squeaking. “And remember, Annie. You’re an attractive woman with a lot of good years ahead of you. Like I tell my daughters, don’t waste your time on the wrong guy.”