The person holding the flashlight in the video was Denny Pruzinski. I had known him for twenty years. He had been the store manager of Kowalski Hardware since 2003, a short broad man with a gray crew cut who called me Mrs. K and brought donuts every Friday. He had sat at my table on Easter. He had carried my husband to the ambulance in September, weeping openly, and I had put my hand on his arm and thanked him. On the screen of the laptop of Jake, he held the beam on a stack of papers while Lenny counted something into a canvas bag.
Mr. Dombrowski watched the video three times with his glasses pushed up on his forehead. He said it was a clear case of burglary and fraud, and that the sound was good, and that every word could be heard. Lenny spoke of the will. He said, “Rick has a cardiologist visit on the fifteenth. If it goes badly, we are all set. If not, we have to move faster.” Denny said, “And Kathy?” Lenny laughed softly. “Kathy will be fine. She will have the insurance. She will not even notice.” I put my hand flat on the dining room table.
The envelope taped inside the lid held the true will of Rick. It was dated the ninth of May, 2019, two pages, signed and witnessed by Mr. Dombrowski and a notary named Mrs. Gladys Ferrante, who was still alive and still working in downtown Erie. The hardware store, the building, the apartment above it, and the accounts all passed to me, and after me to Jake. To his brother Lenny, Rick left a gold watch and the sum of ten thousand dollars, with a note, I wish you had been a better brother. I hope this reaches you in good time.
What a father plans in quiet may look like a small hiding place, but to his family it will feel like the whole foundation of a home.
I called the Erie police on Sunday. The detective who came was a heavy, patient man named Obrien, who looked at the false will and then at the true one, side by side on my table, with a magnifying glass. “The notary on this one,” he said, tapping the copy of Lenny, “died in the spring of 2021. It is a forged instrument, Mrs. Kowalski. Dated after the death of the man who stamped it.” He called a colleague. In an hour two patrol cars were parked on Peach Street, and an officer was sitting in the office of the store.
They took Lenny from the store at nine the next morning, in his new suit, with a coffee in his hand. I was standing at the counter, in the apron of Rick, behind the register. Lenny saw me and began to speak, then stopped. I dont think I have ever seen a man look so small. The officer read him his rights. When he reached the part about the right to counsel, Lenny turned to the store, to the long shelves of paint and nails and washers that Rick had built, and he said, in a thin voice, “I only wanted a piece of it.”
Denny was arrested an hour later. He had gone out for a coffee, and he came back to find a squad car at the door. He did not run. He put his hands against the wall of the loading dock and bent his head. In the interview, he told the detective that Lenny had promised him a third of the store. He said that he had resented my husband for fifteen years, passed over for partner, always the manager and never the owner. He did not look at me. I wrote on a piece of paper, as the detective asked, that I wanted no contact, ever, and I signed it with a steady hand.
Both men pleaded guilty. Lenny received three years and a long probation, with restitution to the estate. Denny received eighteen months. The hardware regulars, the old men who came in for coffee and bolts, attended the sentencing in a row, in their flannel shirts, and when it was over, one of them, a retired fireman named Gus, put an arm around my shoulders. He said, “Rick was the best man on Peach Street. And you are not going anywhere.” I could not answer him. I nodded and wiped my eyes.
Jake, at seventeen, moved into the office. He spoke at first only to the delivery drivers, then to the customers, and by Christmas he was running the register on Saturdays. He knew every part number. He knew which of the old men needed a ride home and which wanted to be left alone. He learned the books from Mr. Dombrowski, who came in on Tuesdays in his overcoat, and who began to look, with pride, like a grandfather. In January, Jake laid the neckwear of his father out on the counter and wore the navy one to the bank.
In April, we held a small ceremony. The city had renamed the corner of Peach and Twelfth Rick Kowalski Way, and a sign went up on a pole in front of the store. The whole street came out. Father Pete said a short blessing. A young woman from the paper took photographs. Jake cut a ribbon with a pair of tin snips from the store, and a cheer went up. I stood on the sidewalk and looked at the sign, and I could not believe I had ever believed that the end of a life was the end of a man.
That evening, after closing, Jake and I sat in the back office, with the lights low, and ate sandwiches from the deli across the street. The box of neckwear was on the desk. He took out the ugly one with the reindeer and held it against his chest. He said, “Dad made me wear this to Christmas Eve mass when I was nine.” I laughed. I said I had begged him not to. Jake grinned, and I saw his father in the corner of his mouth, and for a moment the whole office felt full of the warmth of a man who was not gone.