Page 65 of Pro Bono

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“Daniel Rickenger,” May said. “The letter is addressed to him. Not to McKinley Stone or Steven Wallace or some other name, and it doesn’t say ‘or current resident’ or something.”

“When did it come?” Peter said.

“Ten minutes ago. The mailman hasn’t even driven his truck away yet. Do you think I’d sit here with this thing and not tell anybody?”

“It’s weird,” Peter said. “I’ve got to admit that. It must be fifteen years by now, isn’t it?”

“Seventeen, actually,” she said. It cost her no effort to put the subtle combination of false sorrow and forgiveness into her voice as she spoke into the phone, even when she was upset. Her brother Peter had to admire it. May was always the one that their parents had been proudest of for her seemingly natural presentation.

She walked back and forth across her living room for the eighth time, looked back toward the big mirror on the far wall and realized she’d lit two cigarettes at the same time, and set one in an ashtray at each end of the room. She saw that the one on the grand piano was the longer, so the picked that one up, took a long draw on it, and blew the smokeout through her nostrils as she walked back. “Says it’s from the State of Arizona Department of Revenue, Peter. The state.”

“That’s actually good,” Peter said. “Every time you register your car or they send your tax return, the paper says that stuff. This has got to be a computer thing. The name on his birth certificate found its way into their database the way everything does, is all. They probably want to make him vote so they can get reelected. He won’t be the first dead man who voted.”

“It says that the state took possession of money he had abandoned. That must mean he had it in a bank account. You know how you do—take something from your pigeon gradually, convert it to cash, and then deposit it in bank accounts in another state under another name the pigeon doesn’t know. The state wants to know if he’s forgotten about his money or he’s disabled or no longer living or wants to claim it.”

“Does it say how much money we’re talking about?”

“No,” May said. “I think it’s like those lost and found offices. You have to say so they know it’s really yours and you’re not just trying to take it.”

“I assume we are, though, right?”

“Why do you think I bothered to call you? I don’t see how we can pass it up,” May said. “All through that period, maybe the time when he was in his early thirties until he died, he was making piles of money, and I doubt that he got any worse at it.”

“Are we going to bring everybody in on it?”

“Do you want to get killed by one of your own brothers or sisters? I don’t. What if the state sent letters to everybody? Why don’t you talk to Rose? We should probably all get together and decide before we do anything.”

“I guess so.”

May said, “Call her now,” and poked the red circle to end the call.

Peter sat there for a minute on the big wooden porch of his lake house. He could never decide if it was the front porch or the back porch. The official front of the house didn’t live up to the name. A gravel road through tall pine woods ran past a barnlike structure with a few stones leading to a block of concrete and three steps leading up to a door. This place on the opposite side of the house, where he sat, was fifty feet of platform outside of a majestic two-story arching window like a cathedral in the forest. Right now, while he was staring off at the shimmering surface of the lake, he saw a bass he estimated at five pounds leap out of the water a hundred feet offshore to snatch an insect out of the air and flop back in, leaving a splash of growing concentric circles on the glassy water. A tall heron stalking along in the shallows watched the ripples glide to his stilt legs, then dissipate on the sand behind him. How was this not the front of the house?

Peter was satisfied with his world as it was. If the news that May had told him on the phone had seemed to require anything risky or violent, he probably would have let it pass, but it didn’t seem to. He also didn’t want to provide May with an excuse to inject any poison about him into the rest of the family. She was a woman who had never had any reason to complain about anything, but just the fact that she wanted him to call their sister Rose was typical. She and Rose were volatile company. The Rickenger girls had both been born with genetic advantages that were amazing, the diamonds of the gene pool. He had gone to pay a visit to May only a few months ago when she was passing through Reno, and she still had all the attributes at forty—tiny waist, an ass like two bubbles, breasts like ripe fruit, luminescent wrinkle-free skin, and eyes that made men wish for things that they didn’t know about a minute before. Rose was a different type, a couple years younger, an inch shorter, and dark-haired. She looked like a perfect little princess from another century.

He looked in his phone for the number. Mrs. Dale Stansfield these days. He tapped the number. A moment later he heard her voice. He had forgotten about their voices. They were soft and musical enough to put you into a fog when they could be heard by strangers. “Hey, Rose,” he said. “It’s Peter. If this is a bad time, just say wrong number and call when you’re alone.”

“No. Hi, Pete. We’re in Chicago. Dale and his cronies are out now looking at real estate.”

“They didn’t hear Mother’s rule about real estate, I guess.”

“Don’t take anything you can’t carry when you leave?”

“That’s the one,” Peter said.

“It doesn’t matter. Dale’s too dumb and sweet to steal.”

“Look, the reason I’m bothering you is that I got a call from May about five minutes ago.”

“What does her majesty want from poor little us?” she said.

“I’m afraid it brings up a bad memory,” he said, “but it’s necessary. She got a letter today from the Treasurer of the State of Arizona. It says they’re holding some money from an account that belonged to Daniel W. Rickenger. They want to give him a chance to claim his money.”

“Oh, God,” Rose said. “That woman has a talent. Those letters are nothing. Dale gets them all the time. He’s always building something or putting money in accounts to prove he’s got enough to buy something. Now and then he leaves it too long. It’s never been twelve years, or whatever this is.”

“May says it’s seventeen.”

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