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white. She told him about Phil’s habits, and about the sudden departures: the missing money, not telling her where he was late at night. Gruenthal dutifully took notes, a constant illegible scribbling into a notebook that seemed smaller than his thick hand, then told her that the first avenue to pursue was the money.
    Because one signatory was dead, Emily was not permitted to open the safe-deposit box that she and Phil rented. She had to meet Detective Gruenthal and a woman named Zia Mondani who represented the state of California at the bank, where the manager was waiting. Emily and the bank manager entered the vault to retrieve the box. Emily carried the box, and they went into a little room instead of the cubicle that Emily and Phil had always used before.
    They all sat down at an empty table and she opened the long, narrow gray metal box. As she took things out she set them on the table in front of Detective Gruenthal. There was the deed to the house. There were Phil’s, Emily’s, and Pete’s birth certificates and Social Security cards.
    Gruenthal immediately picked up Pete’s papers. “What’s this?”
    “They’re our son Pete’s. He died five years ago in a car crash. Neither of us ever thought to take them out, I guess.” She noticed a copy of Pete’s death certificate and set that in front of Gruenthal, too.
    There was their marriage license, and she had to fight to keep from crying in front of these strangers at the sight of it. To distract herself, she quickly picked out the insurance policy for the house and the policy for the two cars, then the pink slips for the cars. There was Phil’s Honorable Discharge from the Marine Corps, a few photographs of the house for insurance purposes, a copy of Phil’s private-investigator’s license in case something happened to the original that hung in the office. She came to the end.
    Gruenthal said, “Is that it?”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Anything missing?”
    “I don’t think so. No.”
    Ms. Mondani, the woman from the state, stood up, said, “Thank you, Mrs. Kramer,” and left the room.
    Emily began to put the papers back in the box. She tried to remember the things that should have been here, but weren’t. Phil had taken his mother’s diamond pin, the necklace of real pearls that Emily’s grandmother had given her, and the savings bonds. She wasn’t even certain how much any of the items had been worth. The jewelry had never been appraised because Phil had said there was no point in insuring anything that was sitting in a bank. The bonds had been a gift from Phil’s parents when Pete was born, the beginning of a fund for Pete’s college tuition.
    As she and the manager returned the box to its slot in the vault, she berated herself. She should have told Detective Gruenthal that things were missing, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She had no idea why Phil had taken them. Was there some need that he had been hiding from her? He always hated to worry her. Maybe he had made some investment that she would have considered risky. She couldn’t tell Detective Gruenthal something so private before she even knew the explanation. How could this stranger understand what she was telling him when she didn’t yet understand it herself?
    When the box had been locked away, she could see Gruenthal was feeling impatient. His time had been wasted. “Mrs. Kramer, I’d better be getting back to the station. If there’s anything you remember later, or anything I can do, please call.”
    “Thank you,” she said and watched him leave.
    The bank manager saw his chance, too. “Anything else I can do?”
    When she said, “Yes,” he looked mildly surprised. “I’d like a printout of all the checks that were written against our account in the past year.”
    “Certainly. Why don’t you come to my office where you can be comfortable while I get that information for you?”
    When she had the copies in a neat file inside a big envelope, she took them home