“Miss Symmons is a hopeless twit,” Joshua said grumpily. “If she were the only witness, I would be lost.”
Preston blinked in surprise.
“However,” Joshua continued, “your Mrs. Willis is keenly observant. And damned smart. And self-confident without being smug. If I were you, I’d make more of her than just a teller.”
Preston cleared his throat. “Well … uh, what now?”
“I want to see the contents of that safe-deposit box.”
“I don’t suppose you have Mr. Frye’s key?”
“No. He hasn’t yet returned from the dead to give it to me.”
“I thought perhaps it had turned up among his things since I talked to you yesterday.”
“No. If the imposter used the key, I suppose he still has it.”
“How did he get it in the first place?” Preston wondered. “If it was given to him by Mr. Frye, then that casts a different light on things. That would alter the bank’s position. If Mr. Frye conspired with a look-alike to remove funds–”
“Mr. Frye could not have conspired. He was dead. Now shall we see what’s in the box?”
“Without both keys, it’ll have to be broken open.”
“Please have that done,” Joshua said.
Thirty-five minutes later, Joshua and Preston stood in the bank’s secondary vault as the building engineer pulled the ruined lock out of the safe-deposit box and, a moment after that, slid the entire box out of the vault wall. He handed it to Ronald Preston, and Preston presented it to Joshua.
“Ordinarily,” Preston said somewhat stiffly, “you would be escorted to one of our private cubicles, so that you could look through the contents without being observed. However, because there’s a strong possibility you’ll claim that some valuables were illegally removed, and because the bank might face a law suit on those charges, I must insist that you open the box in my presence.”
“You haven’t any legal right to insist on any such thing,” Joshua said sourly. “But I have no intention of hitting your bank with a phony law suit, so I’ll satisfy your curiosity right now.”
Joshua lifted the lid of the safe-deposit box. A white envelope lay inside, nothing else, and he plucked it out. He handed the empty metal box to Preston and tore open the envelope. There was a single sheet of white paper bearing a dated, signed, typewritten note.
It was the strangest thing Joshua had ever read. It appeared to have been written by a man in a fever delirium.
Thursday, September 25
To whom it may concern:
My mother, Katherine Anne Frye, died five years ago, but she keeps coming back to life in new bodies. She has found a way to return from the grave, and she is trying to get me. She is currently living in Los Angeles, under the name Hilary Thomas.
This morning, she stabbed me, and I died in Los Angeles. I intend to go back down there and kill her before she kills me again. Because if she kills me twice, I’ll stay dead. I don’t have her magic. I can’t return from the grave. Not if she kills me twice.
I feel so empty, so incomplete. She killed me, and I’m not whole any more.
I’m leaving this note in case she wins again. Until I’m dead twice, this is my own little war, mine and no one else’s. I can’t come out in the open and ask for police protection. If I do that, everyone will know what I am, who I am. Everyone will know what I’ve been hiding all my life, and then they’ll stone me to death. But if she gets me again, then it won’t matter if everyone finds out what I am, because I’ll already be dead twice. If she gets me again, then whoever finds this letter must take the responsibility for stopping her.
You must cut off her head and stuff her mouth full of garlic. Cut out her heart and pound a stake through it. Bury her head and her heart in different church graveyards. She’s not a vampire. But I think these things may work. If she is killed this way, she might stay dead.
She comes back from the grave.