Part 3 — Letter From The Coroner
Agnes opened the envelope with a hand that did not shake. She had buried a daughter and held on to a house full of unread letters, and she was not a woman to be hurried by a courthouse crowd. She unfolded one page of county letterhead and read it aloud in the same thin, clear voice that had said “$42,001.”
“Dear Mrs. Reinholt. In response to the request of your grandson Jace to reopen the inquiry into the death of Beverly Szymanski in 2022, this office has completed its review.” She paused. “Cause of death, a sudden failure of the rhythm of the heart. Manner of death, natural. The call to emergency services was logged at 11:52 p.m. by Rudolph Szymanski. An ambulance arrived in nine minutes. Mr. Szymanski performed chest compressions until the paramedics took over.”
I had not known that. I had been so busy holding Bev that I never learned how long the ambulance took, and for two years a quiet voice in my head had asked whether I was fast enough. The letter said I was. It said it in plain county language, on county paper, with a signature at the bottom, and I had to look at the courthouse steps for a moment before I could look back.
Agnes read on. “This office further notes that Mr. Jace made two requests, in June and in September, asking that the finding be amended to read neglect. In a sworn statement he said that he was in the house and watched his stepfather delay calling for help. The telephone records show that at 11:52 p.m. that night he was at the Downstream Casino, and the records of the casino show that he arrived there at 10:30.”
The steps had gone silent. Destiny, who had been holding the sleeve of Jace, let go of it and moved to one side. “You told me Rudy let your mother die by waiting,” she said to him. “You told me that is why the house should be yours.” Jace did not look at her. He looked at his grandmother, and for the first time that morning I saw a boy of nine who had been caught with a hand in the cookie jar, and I could not entirely hate him for it.
The trustee, a practical man in a windbreaker, explained the legal side on the spot. A knowingly false statement under oath is perjury in Missouri, and an attempt to use it to take a house is fraud. He told Jace he would be asked to come to the sheriff office with his lawyer, and that every word he had given the county would be reviewed. He also mentioned, mildly, that a man who takes fourteen months of the savings of a plumber is not usually remembered kindly by a judge.
Agnes took my arm again. “Rudy, I am going to sign this house back to you today. The sale was valid, and the papers are in order, so it is mine to give.” I told her no, I would not take it as a gift. She looked at me for a long moment, and then she smiled, the first time I had seen her do so in three years. “Then you will pay me back the way you paid the bank. In envelopes. With a receipt.” We shook hands on the steps.
That is exactly what I did. On the first of every month for five years I walked to her little house on Illinois Avenue with an envelope, and Agnes wrote me a receipt in blue ink and set the tea to boil. By the third year we had stopped talking about the house at all. We talked about Bev, about the way she hummed over the dishes, and about the long walks she took on Moffet Avenue in the evening.
The county court was no less plain. Jace pleaded guilty to making a false statement and to theft from an older person. The judge ordered him to repay $15,960 to me and to cover the costs of the sale to Agnes, with supervision for four years. The truck he bought with the money of Destiny was sold, and she received her settlement back, minus the legal fees. She left him on the courthouse steps, kindly and without a scene.
Charlene came to my door in October with a pie. She stood on the porch holding it in both hands like a hymnal. “Rudy, I said you were not blood,” she said. “I was wrong, and I was frightened, and I was wrong.” I told her that I had once spent thirty minutes under a sink while a woman explained how to fix it, and that I knew how a person can be certain and mistaken at the same moment. We ate the pie on the steps.
A plumber knows that a small leak, copied faithfully every month, will eventually tell the whole truth about a pipe. My copies of the money, rolled up in the length of PVC, went into the record of the county as exhibits, and a clerk gave them back to me afterward, rolled, with a little paper clip.
The house on Moffet Avenue is mine again, the title clean and the deed in a drawer. In the evening I sit on the back step with a cup of coffee and listen to the water heater hum, which is a sound I have always liked. Somewhere in the kitchen the radio plays the kind of music Bev preferred. I sit there until the light goes, and I do not check the pipes, because for once nothing is leaking.