Chapter 18: The Fourth Term

Colt asked me first, by text, and I said yes before I could talk myself out of it.

He came to the dock at ten on Sunday night with a steel lockbox the size of a bread loaf under his good arm.

"It was in the safe," he said. "She had a key to the safe, but the box was locked, and I never gave her the box key."

"Where was it?"

"Dean gave it to me six years ago. He said, don't open this unless something happens to me."

"And you put it in a drawer."

"I knew it was there," Colt said. "I buried my friend and couldn't make myself open it."

We took it down to the Second Wind, because it felt like his, and nobody had sat in that cabin at night since the funeral.

I lit the lantern over the little table.

The boat rocked under us at its lines, and the water slapped the hull in the dark.

Colt set the box between us and put the key in the lock with his left hand, the bandaged one, and it took him three tries.

"Let me," I said.

"I've got it."

"You have not got it."

I took the key out of his fingers, and for a moment my fingers rested against his palm.

The lock turned.

Inside were three things, laid neatly in a row.

A manila folder, a spiral notebook with a water-warped cover, and a small yellow card with two signature lines on it.

I took the card out first.

It was a signature card from the bank where Heron Point Partners kept its account.

It had two names on it, one above the other.

The top one said Dean Gadsden.

The one below it said Camille Gadsden, and under that, in a bank clerk's hand, the date.

"Eight days after the funeral," Colt said.

"She went down to the bank in her black dress and put her name on it."

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