Laura Lippman - The Last Place

“What was Hazel like?”

“Oh, she was a good worker. Quiet. Put in long hours. Whenever I had jobs that meant overtime, I always gave Hazel first crack. After all-” The supervisor blushed.

“What, Mrs. Crane? What were you going to say?”

“Hazel didn’t usually have plans in the evenings. You could kind of count on that. She… kept to herself.”

But Tess had known that. Hazel’s landlord had told her the same thing, with bland cruelness. At least Hazel had a nice boss.

“Didn’t she have any friends here in the office? Or photographs on her desk? Did anyone ever visit her here?”

Mrs. Crane shook her head. “I boxed up her desk myself after the fire. There were just a few things. She had a vase of silk flowers. And a paperweight, I think. She didn’t leave a will and, boy, was that a mess. Set me straight about what you have to do, even if you’re a single woman. Would you believe we had to put her personal effects in storage, wait to see if anyone came forward to make a claim? In a way, it was almost a godsend the house burned to the ground-” She caught herself, put her hands to her mouth in horror. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“I know,” Tess assured her. “What happened to Hazel’s things?”

“We were allowed to get rid of them after a year went by, so we did.

Except for some silk flowers-I have those on my desk. But if no one came forward for the money, I can’t see how anyone would want some flowers.“

“Money? I thought it took all Hazel’s life insurance just to bury her.”

“Her life insurance? Oh, yes, the little state policy we all have. That’s about all it would cover, for sure. But we have a good 401(k) plan through the state, and Hazel was a saver. Someone must have told her the value of compound interest because she started putting those dollars away early. There was over a hundred thousand dollars in her account when she died, and it’s still drawing interest. They advertise every year, but the beneficiary never comes forward.”

“Beneficiary?”

Carl straightened up, like a hound dog catching a scent, while Tess found herself reaching for the edge of the table, to still a suddenly shaking hand.

“Well, she wrote down someone’s name on the form, but there’s no address and she didn’t put down his Social Security number. Sometimes, I wonder if she just picked the name out of the phone book. Hazel told me one time the only time she felt lonely was filling out forms. She had no kin, but she didn’t think of herself as solitary unless she had to fill out a form.”

“But there was a name-”

“Oh, yes. Not that it did any good. As I said, they put it in the legal notices in Hagerstown and Baltimore and even DC. But that money just sits and sits. I guess the state will get it, which seems a shame to me. It’s not as if the state needs Hazel’s money-”

“The name, Mrs. Crane. Do you remember it?”

“I wrote it down someplace, in case he ever calls or comes to look for her.” She flipped lazily through the Rolodex on her desk and then through the pages of a date book. It was all Tess could do not to grab her hand and make it go faster. Carl caught her eye and mouthed “Eric Shivers.” She nodded, worried about the same thing. If the killer had come to Hazel already disguised, they wouldn’t know anything more than they did now.

“Here it is-William Windsor. I’d love to know what he was to Hazel. Imagine, leaving over a hundred thousand dollars to a stranger. He must have done something really nice for her.”

Tess managed a mouth-only smile. “Something memorable, at least.”

She had Carl call the name in to Dorie Starnes as they drove back to the city. Even from the driver’s seat, Tess could hear her mercenary friend’s voice booming over the cell phone’s unsteady line.

“Remind Tess that I charge extra-”

“I know what she charges for a rush job. Just tell her to do it. Pull out all the stops.”

They were ten miles outside Baltimore before the phone rang. Tess grabbed it from the well beneath the radio, forgetting again her principles about using a phone while driving.

“There’s a bunch of William Windsors in the MVA records,” Dorie said. “You go nationwide, you’re looking at hundreds.”

“Start with Maryland and worry about the rest of the nation later. And narrow the search to someone who’s in his early thirties. Also, this would be a license that’s dormant, hasn’t been renewed for a while, but is still in the system.”

“Dormant licenses aren’t in the system.”

“Yes, they are, Dorie. I know someone who moved out of state and came back twelve years later, and there was still a record. Had to take the written test again, but her records were still there. Look again.”

Silence, then more costly little clicks as Dorie strolled and scrolled through her computer records.

“Here’s a William Windsor, thirty-one. No, thirty-two-he just had a birthday. Got his license a few months after his sixteenth birthday but never renewed it.”

“What’s his address?”

“It’s kind of screwy. I’ve never seen one like this. There’s no street- well, there’s no street number. In fact, I think it’s a typo.”

“They don’t make typos on driver’s licenses.”

“Oh, yeah? Then how come I once had a license with an expiration date that predated the issue date? Caused me all kinds of trouble when I tried to renew. This one, I think they just left the number off, or maybe it’s a real little street or in one of those gated communities where you don’t need a number-”

“What does it say, Dorie?”

“Yelling like that is going to cost you,” Dorie said. “It says Hackberry Street, Harkness.”

“Harkness? Where’s that?”

“I don’t do geography,” Dorie said.

Carl was already looking for the Maryland map in Tess’s crowded glove compartment, unfolding it with what seemed to be almost elaborate care, turning it around and around, searching the index, finding the grid on the map, turning it again. It seemed an eternity before he looked up.

“Harkness is in the Crisfield zip code,” he said quietly, “but it’s on Notting Island. There are two towns there, Harkness and Tyndall Point. We visited Tyndall when we went looking for Becca Harrison. Harkness is on the north side of the island.”

Tess glanced at Carl, then turned her attention back to the road just in time to brake for a tractor-trailer that was merging into the right lane, heedless of her little Toyota. Carl’s stubby index finger was stabbing at the map, punching it again and again. As if this map were to blame, as if the place were to blame.

Perhaps it was. Perhaps if the bay had succeeded in breaking up Notting Island years ago, this native son, this monster, would never have made his way into the world.

On their second approach to Notting Island, Tess imagined the residents watching them, waiting for them, laughing at them. It was a gray day, rain threatening, the bay choppy and rough. May had never been as moody as it was this year. Their old friend, the semi-ancient mariner, had been reluctant to rent them his boat, even at double the price. He quizzed them about tides, asked if Carl knew where the shallows were. But in the end he allowed them to go.

“Don’t know why anyone wants to go to Notting Island on a day like this,” he said, pocketing Carl’s driver’s license and credit card as insurance against their return. “Don’t know why anyone wants to go to Not-ting Island at all.”

The trip out seemed to take forever, now that they knew what they hoped to find. It couldn’t be more than fifteen miles, Tess calculated. But fifteen miles in a boat that vibrated if it went above 30 mph was a thirty-minute journey. Despite the overcast skies, the day was muggy and warm. She shrugged off her denim jacket, but she was still warm in her T-shirt and jeans.