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to study. The checking account was linked to the savings account, and both accounts had been gutted in a quiet, orderly way. Money had been deposited in the checking account from time to time, but the withdrawals were all bigger than the deposits, and the excess came out of the savings account. Phil had written one or two big checks a month for the whole year. All of them were made out to “Cash.” As she looked at them, tears of frustration welled in her eyes so she had to keep wiping them away to see. She whispered over and over, “Jesus, Phil. What were you doing? What the hell were you thinking?”
    She went to the computer and ordered credit checks from the three credit bureaus. What she was really trying to do was establish the extent of the financial disaster. Were there credit cards she had not seen, or had Phil borrowed money she didn’t know about? The credit reports were transmitted, and she read them with a chill in her spine, but there seemed to be nothing in them that she had not already discovered. Nothing told her anything about Phil’s state of mind, or what he had been doing the night he was killed.
    Emily became more frantic. She began to search the house. She hunted through the office for credit-card slips or receipts, then through stacks of bills that had been paid and filed. She read the last two tax returns, which she had signed when Phil had asked her to, but never bothered to examine. The figures looked normal, but there was no way for her to tell whether they were accurate. At three A.M. she fell asleep on the couch in the den.
    The garbage trucks grumbling up the street and lifting cans with their hydraulic claws woke her at six thirty. She put the papers away and assessed the damage. Phil had taken all of their money and either spent it or put it somewhere out of her reach. He didn’t seem to have pushed them farther into debt than they already had been with the mortgage on the house and the payments on Phil’s car. But why would he deplete their savings? Phil had never been a gambler.
    It occurred to her that he might have been sick and not told her. That might explain his mysterious absences from work. He could have been seeing doctors. She called Dr. Kalamian, the family internist, told him what had happened, and asked if Phil had been sick.
    Dr. Kalamian said, “I don’t think so,” then got his records. “I saw him April 27 for his physical. He was fine. His numbers were all normal, actually quite good for a man his age. There’s very little chance anything was wrong, or it would have shown up in his tests. And if he’d had anything serious, he would have asked me to refer him to a specialist, and he didn’t. Look, Emily, this is probably the most stressful time of your life. Would you like me to prescribe something to help you sleep? Maybe an antidepressant?”
    “No, thanks.”
    “Don’t convince yourself you’re above it,” Dr. Kalamian said. “Just keep in mind that I might be able to make some of this more bearable. When I’m not in, one of my group is always on call.”
    “I’m fine.”
    She wasn’t fine. She wasn’t able to sleep more than three hours at a time, and she was depressed and anxious. But the anxiety kept her moving, thinking, alert.
    On the third day, Detective Gruenthal called her and said, “The autopsy is complete and the coroner has signed off. We’re releasing Mr. Kramer’s body.”
    Emily went to work on the funeral. She began by driving to Greenleaf Mortuary to make the arrangements. Phil had done a job for the owner once. There was a suspicion that one of the funeral directors or morticians was removing rings and bracelets from people just before their burials. Phil had found that they were all honest, a conclusion that he seldom reached in employee investigations. He had looked into every unappetizing aspect of their business, and said, “If I were dead, that’s where I’d go.” The owner recognized Phil’s name and gave her a break