She died on August 19th. I sat in her recliner until the room went dark.
A man with a gold ring. I took Conrad Vale’s business card out of my wallet.
Where it had been sitting since the funeral, and I laid it on the arm of the chair next to the receipt. My hands started to shake so badly I had to sit on them.
On Monday morning, I called in sick for the first time in 4 years, put on my good navy blazer, and drove downtown to Lakeshore Fidelity Bank. I went to the first teller window.
The teller was a young woman, maybe 25, with a name tag that said Kayla. I slid the receipt across the counter and told her I was here about my late mother’s account and that I needed to speak to Mr. Iverson.
Kayla smiled and picked up the receipt. She looked at the account number.
She typed something into her computer and then her smile disappeared. I watched the color leave her face from the forehead down like water draining from a sink.
She looked at her screen. She looked at me and then without a word her right hand moved under the counter and I heard a very small click.
“Ma’am,” she said and her voice was trembling. “Would you mind waiting in our lobby for just a few minutes?”
I didn’t understand. I sat down in a leather chair by the window and waited.
Four minutes later, two Duluth police officers walked through the brass doors and came straight to me. They were very polite while they asked me to stand up, asked for my identification, and asked me to come with them to a conference room in the back.
I sat at a long wooden table with my purse on my lap, holding it exactly the way my mother used to hold hers, and I realized that I was being detained. Me, a school bus driver who had never gotten so much as a parking ticket.
20 minutes later, the door opened and a man came in carrying a thick manila folder. He was in his late 40s, broad-shouldered in a gray suit and a Minnesota Vikings tie with close-cropped hair going white at the temples and the calmest eyes I have ever seen.
He sat down across from me and set the folder on the table without opening it. Ms. Mercer, he said.
I’m Detective Sergeant Wendell Lasani, Duluth Police Financial Crimes. I’ve been waiting for someone to walk into this bank with that receipt for about 6 weeks.
I have to be honest with you. I did not expect it to be you.
I asked him what was going on. He didn’t answer.
Instead, he asked me where I had gotten the receipt. I told him the purse, the lining, the black thread.
He asked me whether I had ever been to a law office in St. Paul called Faron and Lee. He asked me whether I knew a notary public named Harold Dempsey.
He asked me whether I had ever heard of something called the Ammonson Heart Foundation. I answered no and no and no, and every no sounded weaker than the one before it.
Then he opened the folder and slid a document across the table. It was a will, the last will and testament of Dolores M. Mercer, dated June 3rd of this year.
It left everything my mother owned, including all funds held at Lakeshore Fidelity Bank to the Ammonson Heart Foundation of Minneapolis. My name wasn’t in it.
Ray’s name wasn’t in it. It was signed with my mother’s name, witnessed by two strangers, and stamped by a notary named Harold Dempsey.
Somebody presented this will to the bank in September, Detective Assandi said, along with a request to transfer the full balance to the foundation’s account. The bank’s private client manager refused.
He thought something was wrong with it. So did I.
But I have to consider every possibility, Ms. Mercer, including the possibility that someone in your mother’s family wrote this and then got cold feet and is now trying something else. I didn’t write that, I said.
I didn’t know there was any money. I drive a school bus.
He looked at me for a long, long moment. Then he said, “I believe you, but belief isn’t evidence.
Do you have a lawyer?” I didn’t.
I had never needed one. And then I remembered a business card I had found that morning in the zippered pocket of my mother’s purse.
Augustus Vanderwarf, attorney at law. Estates and probate.
Duluth. On the back in my mother’s handwriting, it said, “Gus, July 11th, 2:00 p.m.”
I asked the detective if I could make a call. He nodded and slid his phone across the table.
