Another Dead Republican Read Online Free PDF Page B

papers quickly began to settle into logical patterns. Bills: we put these in chronological order by company. Receipts: from the local fast food restaurants to exclusive Parisian three star restaurants and a million places in between, again time order by venue. Travel brochures: mostly from hunting lodges around the globe. Coupons: for discounts on anything from pizza to airlines, to the local grocery store. He clipped coupons? Whatever for? He could probably buy the whole restaurant, but coupons he had.
     
    Early in the process of sorting, the computer and the zip drive concluded their successful relationship. I pocketed my zip drive and let the computer rest.
     
    For an instant I thought about hiding the porn receipts, then dismissed it. Fear of porn in the face of death, a nonsensically absurd notion. Besides, Edgar wouldn’t care anymore if someone found out; he was dead. Veronica’s opinion of him might change? That wasn’t my problem. I wasn’t going to alter reality. Who knew what would or would not help?
     
    The desk top was soon filled with receipts set out by category, venue, and year. We began to make piles on the floor. I even used the grizzly bear’s out-stretched arms. Scott placed some of his stuff on the bronze closest to him, the wolf whose head was up, mouth open, howling soundlessly at the moon.
     
    Most of the brochures and the coupons we dumped into a trash can that quickly began to overflow.
     
    A half hour in and Veronica had still not reappeared. I expected her back any moment. Telling your children about such a tragedy must be horrific. I could only imagine what my sister and her kids were going through. I was tempted to find her and see how she was doing. If there were books for what to say and do at a time like this, I didn’t know about them. Even if there were such books, there wasn’t time to read them and get their advice.
     
    I presumed she’d be explaining to them, comforting, reassuring them. Sudden death was bad enough, but murder?
     
    I didn’t want to disturb a moment of such profound intimacy. To make the presumption that any intrusion of mine would be of help was on a level of arrogance I’d never want to display. I was less than thirty feet from where she was. If she needed help, I could get there in seconds.
     
    I wished I knew of a way to make things better for her or them. There wasn’t, really. Just to be here and help, offer assistance, and do things like sort through tons of crap.
     
    I stopped at one point and said to Scott, “Why aren’t the cops doing this?”
     
    “You’re asking me impossible questions. I have no answers.”
     
    “I knew that,” I said.
     
    “Sorry.”
     
    I asked, “Are we just sorting this stuff and the cops come in here and use it to prove someone guilty. We’re doing their work?”
     
    Scott added, “Or we find something that proves he was in some criminal conspiracy that got him killed?”
     
    I could hope.
     
    The fourth box in had insurance information.
     
    I sat in Edgar’s chair and began to read through the stacks of dense prose. A whole lot of them were from businesses who offered accidental death life insurance policies. You paid a minimal fee and got a payout if you died in an accident. Did murder qualify as an accident? I clicked onto the Internet and Googled double indemnity. The site I read claimed that such policies did pay out in the case of murder or accident, as long as the murder was not done by someone who benefited from the policy. Edgar had five of these. Veronica was the beneficiary.
     
    I used manila file folders I’d found in the top right-hand desk drawer. With a fine point marker, I labeled one insurance and stuck those forms inside. I began another for investment companies, a third for bank accounts.
     
    Five minutes later Scott said, “Why are there voter registration rolls in here for Harrison County?”
     
    “Huh?”
     
    He flipped through a stack of print outs that might have come