Chapter 22 of 23You Paid For It

By Sunday the letter was the only piece of paper in Seneca Quay that could not be argued with. The bank slip showed ten thousand dollars in cash leaving Elspeth Finch's account. The postal record showed a registered parcel, marked heavy, going out to Arizona on the same date. Genevieve Martel had both, and she had the letter, and she had a mayor who had stood in her front hall the day before and told her what it would cost to keep them.

She read it again at the kitchen table, the other two papers squared beside it.

"Dear Elspeth," it began. What stopped her sat halfway down the second page, and she read it out loud to hear how it landed.

"You gave me a choice, and then you paid for it, and I have never once been able to thank you properly for either one."

She put her finger on the words, then on the October entry in the bank statement: ten thousand dollars in cash, over the counter, the margin beside it left blank.

"Fare," she said to the empty kitchen. "That's the word."

Elspeth Finch had paid a man's way out of Seneca Quay. She had wrapped what went with him, sealed it herself, and paid cash at the post office window so the only record of where it went would sit in her own house for thirty years.

Genna carried the letter into the studio and stood at the frame. The quilt hung where she had left it: the border of knots, the marina block with a gray key stitched into the binding, the small figure at the dock's edge with one red thread on its arm, the boat riding empty.

"You didn't leave me a case," she said to the room. "You left me a confession."

The last panel was still open, reinforced at its edges and waiting.

"You left this one open on purpose," Genna said.

"Why?"

"Because it isn't finished. Because it's still going on."

She put the letter and the two papers into her canvas bag.

Outside, Mabel Henderson was in her yard with a Tops grocery bag, shaking dead leaves over her tomato plants. Frost was coming.

Genna stopped at the end of the walk.

"Morning. Walking down for your breakfast?"

"I am."

"Mm." Mabel shook the bag out. "That car sat at your curb a long while yesterday."

"It did."

"Franklin Croft doesn't park outside a house unless he's inside the house."

Genna shifted her bag strap to her other shoulder.

"He was inside. He stood in my front hall and told me what it would cost to keep quiet."

"And what did you tell him?"

"That I'd think about it."

Mabel folded the grocery bag in half and tucked it under her arm.

"Do you want me to say nothing about it, or do you want me to say something to somebody?"

"Nothing. For now."

"That's what Elspeth used to say." Mabel looked at the studio window. "She said it for a long time, and then she died with a quilt in the back room, and I have wondered about that ever since."

"I'll be careful."

"Frost tonight. You'll want your plants in."

"I don't have plants."

"Then you'll want your door locked."

Genna walked down Elm to Main.

The Quay Diner smelled of coffee, bacon and wet wool. David Chen sat in the back booth with a cup he had stopped drinking and the Gazette folded to the crossword. Della came by with the pot.

"Coffee, hon?"

"Please."

"Hash is on. Corned beef, nine fifty."

"That, too."

Della poured and moved on, and Genna slid into the booth.

"You called me at seven and then you said nothing."

"Franklin Croft pulled into the driveway while the phone was still in my hand."

"I saw the car. I turned around at the light and went home."

"That was the right call."

"Was it."

Genna wrapped both hands around her cup. "There's a second bottom in the drawer of Elspeth's sewing table."

David set his cup down. "Say that again."

"The bottom drawer has a false bottom. I found it yesterday. There was a letter in it, postmarked five years ago, from Oracle, Arizona."

"Signed?"

"J."

David looked out the window instead of at her.

"Ten thousand dollars. Same day as the parcel."

"Same day as what parcel?"

"Cash over the counter, and a registered parcel to a box registered to J. Fisher. She wasn't buying anybody's silence. She was buying him a way out."

"What does the letter say?"

"That she gave him a choice, and then she paid for it."

Della came past and topped them both off.

"Well," David said. "That's a lot of certainty for one piece of paper."

"It's his handwriting. He says he doesn't dream about the water anymore."

"So he's alive."

"He's alive."

David wiped the ring his cup had left on the table.

"And the quilt?"

"The quilt is hers. It's in her own hand, in the one form nobody in this town would ever read as anything but cloth."

David folded the crossword over. "Don't keep that letter in your house."

"I'm going to photograph it this afternoon and leave a copy with Arthur."

"Good. And then think about whether you want to be right about this."

"I don't want to be right," she said. "I want to be finished."

She paid at the register by the toothpick jar and walked home with the strap of her bag across her chest, thinking about a woman sealing a parcel with her own hands. An hour later she came up the walk at 12 Elm Street.

The front door unlocked with her key. Inside, the furnace kicked on as the door shut behind her.

Nothing was broken. She noticed that first.

The boxes along the north wall of the studio were back in their places, but two had been turned so their labels faced the wall, and the estate folder lay open on the worktable, squared to the edge, which she had not done. The bottom drawer of the sewing table was pulled out as far as it would go, and the false bottom sat on the chair, the shallow recess empty.

She opened the folder. The photograph from the locker was gone. So was David's copy of the coroner's report.

Genna stood still and read the room for damage: what had been moved, what had been lifted, what had been put back in the wrong place. The quilt hung on its frame, whole and untouched. Whoever came through here had gone over the paper and left the cloth.

The studio door to the side yard stood closed. The knob turned without the lock catching, and the door swung in on the cold grass.

She called David from the porch.

"Someone's been in the house."

"Are you inside?"

"No. I'm on the porch."

"Stay there. I'm coming."

He arrived before she had finished pacing the porch.

"Front door was locked?"

"Locked. The back one wasn't."

She kept one hand on the porch rail. "Nothing's broken. That's the part I don't like."

David walked the studio with his hands in his pockets.

"Your folder's open."

"The photograph is gone. So is the coroner's report."

"Where's the letter?"

"In my bag."

He looked down into the empty recess in the drawer. "Somebody knew that drawer had two bottoms."

"They knew where to put their hand."

A car went by on Elm and its headlights swung across the quilt and moved on.

"Who else knew?" he asked.

"Only Elspeth. And Elspeth is dead."

Behind her the drawer stood open and empty. Whoever had come through this room looking for paper would come back, and the next thing they would look for was the letter in the canvas bag against her side.