The Valentine's Day Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

February second. Prior to that, the last deposit, a thousand dollars, had been made at the end of January. I opened the first book again and checked the last few entries. Sure enough, a thousand dollars had been withdrawn from book number one on the same day a deposit had been made in book number two, and for the same amount. It seemed that Val put his overflow from the first account into the second account, or something like that.
    I took the last book out of its case and opened it to the last page. Like the other two it had a large balance, over ninety thousand dollars. All told, the three books had nearly three hundred thousand dollars all together, a princely sum from my point of view. Like the second book, this one had frequent withdrawals in even amounts and more occasional deposits. I worked backwards, noting that the balance was always held over ninety thousand. When I came to the first page, I saw the name ofthe passbook owner for the first time, Valentine Krassky. Val and Carlotta had different last names.
    A red light on the phone caught my eye. In another part of the house, Carlotta was using the line. I turned back to my task. There seemed to be no address book in the desk, but a large Rolodex sat on the top at arm’s length from where I sat. I flipped through it for a few minutes, finding Carlotta’s number at work, Clark’s and Matty’s work and home numbers, Matty’s work number crossed out and changed several times since the card had first been written. If this reflected his work history, he had held a number of jobs.
    Most of the names and addresses appeared to be work-related—I didn’t see anything that looked like a plumber or electrician, so that was probably Carlotta’s domain—and I left the Rolodex and turned to the papers on his desk. There were letters that Val had stamped with “Received Date,” and which I assumed he had yet to answer. He seemed to be a neat, well-organized man. All the unanswered letters had arrived within a week of his disappearance. Probably all the earlier ones had already been answered and filed away. From what I could see, these were not personal correspondence, but those having to do with business and with the kinds of things computer people have fun with. None of it made much sense to me.
    I was replacing the unanswered letters in their neat pile when Carlotta came in. She had changed into jeans and a pale blue cashmere turtleneck that gave her a look of casual sophistication. A long string of blue beads interspersed with silver added a note of eye-catching luxury.
    “How’re you doing?”
    “I discovered you and Val have different last names.”
    “I forgot to mention that. You and your husband do, too, don’t you?”
    “A little inconsistently,” I admitted. “I answer to almost anything.”
    “So do I. I’d been at my job several years when we married, and I have no brothers to carry on the family name. I decided to be the one.”
    “I’ve been looking at names and addresses and bank balances,” I said. “Val kept a lot of cash in his accounts.”
    “I think he needed to, psychologically I mean. He came from a family that had very little, and it made him feel secure to know that there was plenty of cash around. Even this—” she held up the beautiful ruby heart on her right hand—“made him feel good. He wanted to be able to do rash things with money if he chose to. It gave him a high.”
    “But you don’t think walking across Lake Erie gave him that kind of a high.”
    “It didn’t. Val was rational. He wouldn’t put his life in jeopardy to be able to say, ‘I skated over to Canada.’ ”
    “Well, there’s plenty of money in these three bank accounts if he wanted it.”
    “He hasn’t tried to take it out. I called the detective on the case when I went upstairs. He’s checked all three banks. I gave him the account numbers last week.”
    “So Val kept all this cash in case he needed it, and he hasn’t taken any out.” I