“Brooke, I’m so glad you’re here.” Shari motioned to me from behind the counter of the post office. It was Monday, and I’d stopped by to get my mail. And, yes, to get some baked goods.
“I have something I have to show you,” she said, her voice low, her eyes darting around. She almost seemed nervous, but why on earth would she be nervous? Maybe she had some particularly naughty pasties to show me, but judging from her demeanor it was something more significant than that.
I’d spent the morning in my office going over budget spreadsheets. My eyes were sore, and so was my brain. No one had warned me that being the mayor would involve so much math. I was good at math, but I didn’t love doing it, and this wasn’t really math so much as it was accounting. Sudsy was supposed to check in with me later this week. Maybe I’d make him do the crunching.
“Come in the back here with me,” Shari said, gesturing for me to follow as she walked toward the back. I’d never been in the back room of the post office before. Was I even allowed back there? Did my new status as mayor give me security clearance? I glanced around furtively, as if federal postal agents were going to pop out and arrest me. Maybe that’s why she seemed nervous. My curiosity doubled.
“What are you hiding back here? Is it chocolate chip cookies, because I hope it is.”
She led me over to the corner, where tall unvarnished pine shelves sat full of old, dusty banker’s boxes. Around the room were various post office items. A copy machine, a package scale, rolls of bubble wrap, and wide packing tape. Posters on the wall advertised collector stamps with pictures of bald eagles, the Liberty Bell, fish, flowers, bridges. Typical stamp stuff. In the center of the room was a white Formica worktable. Going to the corner, Shari rearranged a few of the boxes and pulled one from the back. She set it on the table and solemnly placed her hands on the top.
“I have been debating what to do about this for days, Brooke. I discovered something. Something big, and I just didn’t know who to tell.”
My curiosity tripled.
She lifted the lid and took out a stack of a dozen or so letters held together with a rubber band. They were yellowed with age and tattered at the corners.
“You’ve got my full attention, Shari.” My heart was starting to skitter about just from her behavior.
“Every once in a while,” she said, “we get a letter addressed to someone I don’t know. Usually it’s for somebody working here for the summer who never bothered to set up a post office box, so I just keep it in here, figuring eventually someone will come and claim it. The other day, I got to thinking about what that private investigator said, and it niggled at me until I finally figured out why. He said the jewel thief went by the name of James Novak, remember?”
I nodded, feeling my breath grow shallow. Shari tilted the letters in my direction, and ho-ho-holy shit. They were addressed to Jimmy Novak, Wenniway Island.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, taking the letters gingerly into my hands. “They’re letters to the frickin’ jewel thief? He was here?”
“Sort of,” Shari answered. “I know it’s a federal offense to open someone else’s mail, and I could certainly lose my job over this, but if you look at the postmarks, you’ll see they’re all from the 1980s. With them being so old and everything, I just couldn’t help myself. I opened them, and read the letters, and now I wish I hadn’t.”
I looked up at her. “Why?”
“Because of what I learned. Will you promise me you won’t tell anyone about these until you and I can agree on what to do about them?”
“Geez, Shari. You’re kind of freaking me out right now.”
“I’m a little freaked out myself. Do you promise?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Okay, then. Here, let me show you.”
She took the envelopes back and pulled off the rubber band. She flipped through until she found the one she wanted. She pulled out a sheet of yellowed notebook paper covered with big loopy writing, just like the handwriting on the envelopes. Then she pulled out a handful of photos and handed one to me. Sure enough, it looked like the same guy that Bill Smith of Skeevy Guy Investigations had been looking for. His hair was bushy in this picture, and his mustache went across his upper lip and down both sides of his chin—although I can’t imagine why. The woman in the photo was the same, too. Just like in the Polaroid from the PI, only this time she looked younger, with her hair hanging down in two thick braids. Shari handed me another photo. Same woman, same guy, but his hair was cut short and he was clean-shaven. She was kissing his cheek and he was smiling. Big. Exposing a significant gap between his two front teeth.
A gasp escaped me, and my eyes darted back to her. “What the fuck, Shari? That looks just like Dmitri.”
She nodded slowly, her ever-present smile nowhere in sight. “That’s what I thought, and there’s more.” She pulled out a few more pictures: various shots of the couple posing near a flower garden, in front of a brick building, and at a bar. The resemblance was too strong to ignore. It was Dmitri’s smile, and his eyes, and his nose, and his forehead. But that just made no sense. My brain was virtually crackling, overloaded by a sense of doom. I suddenly understood how an insect felt the moment it flew into a bug zapper.
“Look at these.” She opened another envelope and gently set down a few more photos. Photos of the woman pregnant, and then with a baby girl. But the man wasn’t in those pictures. I glanced at Shari.
“What do the letters say?” I asked quietly, as if whispering might keep this from being such momentous news.
“They’re all letters from someone named Alice Williams to Jimmy Novak. She says she understands why he had to leave but she hopes he’ll come back. She talks about someone named Mick going to prison. She tells him about the baby, who she’s named Amelia, after his mother.” Shari sighed, and a tear ran down her cheek. “And then in the last letter, she says she has to move on with her life. She says she’s met someone wonderful who wants to be a father to Amelia, and they’re going to get married. It’s obvious that Jimmy . . . or Dmitri . . . it’s obvious he never responded to her, but how could he? He never got these.”
The pressure inside the tiny back room nearly gave me the bends, and I doubled over, bracing one hand on the table to keep from toppling over completely. “This just doesn’t make any sense, Shari. This guy cannot be Dmitri.” I was flummoxed, astounded, dumbfounded, and flabbergasted. I was flabberstounded. I was . . . well, I didn’t really know what I was because these were simply feelings I had never experienced before.
“That’s what I kept telling myself, too,” Shari said, her brow creased with distress. “I’ve been wrestling with it for days. But think about it. Dmitri moved here in the late eighties. The woman talks about a trial and that other guy going to jail. Maybe Dmitri has been hiding from the law.”
“All this time? In Trillium Bay? You think Dmitri is actually a jewel thief? That’s absurd. He might be the man in the photos, and he might be this Jimmy Novak, but that doesn’t make him a criminal.”
“Then why would he move here and change his name? Besides, if you read the letters, you’ll be as convinced as I am.”
Did I want to read the letters? Did I want to find out my dear friend was a liar and a thief? “This is crazy, Shari. Maybe we should just give the letters to my dad.”
Her hand shot over as she grabbed my wrist. “No, we can’t do that. Harlan would be obligated to turn Dmitri in to the authorities, and whatever he might have done in the past, we know him. He’s a good man. He should have a chance to explain.”
The brass bell over the front door jingled, and we both jumped as if someone had fired the cannon right through the post office wall.
“Helloooooo? Share-bear? Are you here?” It was Gloria Persimmons-Kloosterman. Definitely not a person we wanted to draw into this moment of drama.
“I’ll be right there, Gloria!” Shari called out, her voice thin and shaky.
“Take your time. I’ll just help myself to these macaroons out here while I wait. This baby loves macaroons!” Gloria called back.
I leaned toward Shari to whisper. “Can I take the letters with me? So I can read them tonight?”
Shari hesitated for a moment, then nodded and stuffed the pictures back in one of the envelopes. She wrapped the rubber band around the stack, and then grabbed a big manila envelope to shove the whole stack inside. She hugged the bundle to her chest.
“I swear I will not discuss this with anyone. Do you?” she whispered, holding up a manicured pinky.
I wrapped my pinky around hers and we shook on it, and everyone knows a pinky-swear is legally binding. “Of course. I won’t tell a soul. I’ll come back tomorrow, and we can talk about this more.”
We walked together to the front lobby, probably looking guilty. It’s why I never tried to keep secrets. I felt as if there was a big neon arrow pointing at me that said she’s up to something!
“Well, hey, hello, and hi, Brooke,” Gloria said, giving me a quick hug. “What have you got there? You’re holding on to that envelope like it’s trying to get away.”
I loosened my grip. “This? Oh, nothing important. Just some boring government papers. Nothing even remotely interesting. Goodbye.”
“Wait!” she said. “Do you want to have lunch?”
“I’d love to,” I answered, “but I’m late for a meeting. We’ll have to do it another day.”
I left the post office and walked straight to my office, clutching that manila envelope with all my strength and constantly looking behind me to make sure I hadn’t dropped anything. I would rather read these letters at home, but my office was closer and the curiosity was killing me. Gertie was away for the afternoon getting her bangs trimmed, so I locked the door behind me. I didn’t want someone wandering in and finding me with old pictures of Dmitri Krushnic all over my desk with no explanation as to why. I even closed the blinds and turned the bust of Ronald Reagan around. I didn’t want him staring at me while I read.
Then I sat down and rolled my new chair toward the desk, took a big, deep breath, and opened the manila envelope.