Bob said, above the barking, “It’s okay. My sister used to have a dog who barked all the time, no problem.”
“You sure? Well, come in.” Matt Beach was a small man, short and thin, with graying hair. He wore black glasses that appeared too big for his face, and he was wearing jeans that looked filthy and a T-shirt that had a rip from the neckband partly down one side.
Inside, the house was dark from all the trees surrounding it and the shrubs that pressed against the windows and from the fact that there was no sun. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink. “Sorry about the mess, not used to having company,” Matt said, his hand fluttering through the air.
The guy was killing Bob. He saw immediately an innocent face, but he knew from experience that this was not a legal term. Without guile is what went through Bob’s mind. But the man was tired, Bob saw this, he had gray circles beneath his eyes, and he was stifling a yawn.
—
With the dog still barking outside, Bob sat at the man’s dining room table, which was covered with papers and unopened envelopes, and Bob quickly understood: This was a fellow who could not remotely organize himself.
In the dim light, Bob said, “Matt. What did you tell the state policemen who came here?” The house held a weariness within it, and Bob felt a shudder go through him; he did not want to be here.
Matt said that he had told them about the last time he’d seen his mother. Which was on November fourth. Matt had gone to the grocery store; it was a Friday—he often went early in the evening on Fridays to get groceries for the following week. He was at the grocery store maybe forty-five minutes, he wasn’t sure—and when he came home his mother was not there.
“What did you do then?” Bob asked.
“I freaked. I mean, I kind of couldn’t believe it.” Matt’s face looked really surprised as he recalled this. “I went outside, I went out and kept calling to her, but I knew she couldn’t walk far, at that point she really couldn’t walk much at all. So I called the police.”
The police had come over and looked around with their big flashlights and filed a report, and then Matt had called his sister, who didn’t answer, but when she finally called him back, she sounded very upset.
Bob asked, “What about the cops who came over after her body was discovered? When did they come here?”
“Yeah, two days ago. They came and told me they’d found my mother. They were super nice to me. And then as they were about to leave, one of them pulled out this piece of paper. Hold on, let me find it.” Matt looked around the table and then pushed a piece of paper toward Bob. Bob saw that it was a search warrant. Matt said, “They said something about taking my computer. And they took it.”
Bob glanced over the search warrant. “They took your computer?” Bob thought: Fuck.
“Yeah.” Matt looked at Bob with bewilderment on his face.
“What’s on your computer, Matt?”
“Nothing,” Matt said. “I mean, I have an account with Amazon to get things, but I never bought much from them. I don’t have a Facebook page or any of that stuff. I never email. Truthfully? Mostly what I did on my computer was to play Solitaire.”
Bob sat, considering this.
Outside, the wind was picking up, and against the window of the dining room a bare shrub squeaked. Matt said, “But sometimes I would write a letter to myself or something like that. Because my mother would be annoying me and so I would write about that on my computer.”
“Did you ever write that you wanted her dead?” Bob asked quietly.
“No. I don’t think so. I just wrote that she was making me a little crazy. But just sometimes.”
Bob stood up and went to a lamp in the corner of the room; he switched it on and nothing happened. “Turn it again,” Matt said. So Bob turned it two more times and the lamp went on. He seated himself once more at the table, his shoulders thrust forward. “Did they take your cellphone too?”
“I don’t have a cellphone,” Matt said.
“You don’t have a cellphone?” Bob asked.
“No.” Matt looked down at his lap and then back up at Bob, and he said tiredly, “Look, I don’t really have any friends or anything at this point. And I don’t have a cellphone. Is that really that weird?” His question seemed to be an honest one.
“Well, for a guy your age not to have a cellphone might be strange, but it’s certainly no crime.” Bob noticed the water-stained wallpaper behind Matt; it was dark green with birds on it.
“When I told them I didn’t have one, I saw one of the cops look over at the other. And then I realized they were probably just trained to be nice to me.”
“They are. Exactly.” Bob sat back.
—
They sat in silence for a moment and then Matt said, “One of the cops asked if my mother had a will.”
“Did she?”
Matt’s eyebrows went up. “I said I didn’t know, because I didn’t. It never occurred to me that she might have a will.” And then Matt said, “But she did. I haven’t told the cops that I found it. I mean, I just found it last night, because after they asked, I got to thinking, and after looking around I discovered it tucked far back in a drawer in her room.”
“Can I see it?”
Matt got up and went into his bedroom, and he came back and handed Bob a will; it had been signed ten years earlier. The will had not been prepared by a lawyer; Bob recognized the standard form of a will that people could do by themselves, and this was the case with Gloria Beach’s will. But it looked legitimate to Bob; it had the witnesses’ signatures and so forth. The will left Matt one hundred thousand dollars from his father’s life insurance policy; Gloria had been the beneficiary of her ex-husband’s life insurance, and now it was Matt’s. The will also named the bank she had put the money into and left Matt the house and an additional fifty thousand dollars from his mother; that was what she had.
“Oy,” said Bob. He put the will onto the table in front of him. “Did you know she had that much money? That your father’s life insurance money was coming to you?”
“Why did you say ‘Oy’?” Matt asked, and Bob looked up at him.
“It’s Yiddish. Years ago I worked at the Legal Aid Society in New York, and there were many people who worked there who were Jewish and the phrase just stuck in my head. So I say it.”
“Okay,” said Matt.
“Did you know this money was coming to you?” Bob asked.
Matt said, “Not in a million years. But I did know that my father had a life insurance policy and that when he died my mother got the money. I sort of remembered her telling me that, but I never, ever thought it was so much. Or that it would be coming to me.”
