Eugene gives his statement on Thursday afternoon while I sit in the public lobby of the field office in Tillamook. There is no observation window, no transcript waiting for me, and nothing useful to do except remain available to drive him home.
I call my former butter supplier.
It is an odd choice of moment, but I have been carrying the cooperative’s application in my bag all week. The supplier still has my customer number. He also has an unpaid invoice for two hundred and nineteen dollars.
“I thought Ryan paid that,” I say.
“He said he would.”
I close my eyes. There it is again: a sentence in which someone else’s assurance became my fact.
“Send me the statement. I need to see it.”
He asks whether I am reopening. I tell him I am considering options, and he says the dairy would be glad to quote for me again if we settle the old balance first. No grand betrayal. No dramatic forgiveness. A bill and a condition I can understand.
I write them down.
When Eugene comes out, he looks tired. He has given the same observations he gave me: a car he recognized by its general appearance and usual association, no plate number, no driver; a moving light, no identifiable person holding it. He has agreed to answer further questions if needed.
“Was it difficult?” I ask.
“The not knowing was.”
Davenport joins us long enough to confirm she has his account. She does not tell us whether an arrest will follow. I no longer ask her to make that promise.
In the car, Eugene looks at the application on the seat.
“Going somewhere?”
“Maybe. Not now.”
“Good to have a maybe.”
On the way back he asks me to stop at Lily’s gallery. The painting is ready to send to Patricia, and he wants to include the photographs with it. I park near the loading bay and carry the parcel while he climbs the two steps.
Lily has the box open on the work table. Layers of padding, reinforced corners, the care of someone who cannot repair what happened but can prevent one more thing from arriving broken.
“Will she like the frame?” she asks.
Eugene looks at the painting. “She’ll like that you chose it.”
He gives her the photographs. She puts them in a rigid envelope and writes Photos—please open carefully across the front. Her handwriting wavers on carefully.
“I thought he loved that painting,” she says. “Then I thought he bought it to get close to me. I keep trying to work out which one is true.”
“Could be both,” Eugene says.
“I know. That makes it harder.”
He nods. Nobody tells her to concentrate on the good memories. The bad ones belonged to the same man.
While she finishes packing, Eugene sits on the couch and calls Patricia. He puts the phone on speaker only after asking whether she wants to speak to us. Her voice is thinner than I expected, amused at first because Eugene has positioned the camera at his own chin.
“Up, Gene. I know what your beard looks like.”
He adjusts it. Lily holds up the painting. Patricia puts a hand over her mouth, then thanks her. I introduce myself, though she remembers the photographs of the shirts.
“The pale blue one,” she says. “He wore it to my birthday.”
I tell her it is packed separately.
She asks whether Victor seemed frightened. The room stills. It is a question I cannot answer with a neat kindness.
“He seemed determined,” I say. “He was careful about some things. I didn’t know enough about what he was doing.”
“He said he had someone helping him. A cousin.”
“Marina,” Eugene says.
“I haven’t met her. He was excited when he told me. Another piece of Thomas.” Patricia looks away from her screen. “I wish I had called her sooner.”
Lily puts the painting down so her hands are free.
“He wanted to show me your garden,” she says.
Patricia looks back. “Did he?”
“He said you would ask what I painted and then make me paint the roses.”
“I would have.”
There is a pause in which they consider the visit that will not happen. I stand beside the table holding a roll of tape, grateful that no one expects me to fill it.
Before the call ends, Patricia asks Eugene whether the company has sent the old papers yet. He says he doesn’t know.
“Victor was waiting for them,” she says. “He called me Thursday. Said someone at the company had finally found the file. He was cross that it had taken so long.”
“Did he tell you what was in it?” I ask.
“No. He said he’d read it and call me after his meeting. He didn’t.”
I feel the old rush: the urge to turn a grieving mother’s sentence into evidence. I make myself ask only whether she has told the detective. She has, she says; she is not sure which day, but they have spoken several times.
“Then they’ll have it,” I say.
Eugene ends the call after promising to ring tomorrow. Lily tapes the box closed. The rasp of the tape is startling in the quiet gallery.
“What meeting?” she asks.
“Dale, probably,” I say, then stop. “I don’t know.”
She looks at me. “Victor said Marina was bringing an original. That’s what he was angry about when I left the conservatory. I told the detective.”
“You told me too.”
It was in the middle of the story about the affair. I heard original and thought old evidence. Now I picture a new scan arriving on a laptop on the afternoon of the murder, and someone needing to explain why two papers do not agree.
I do not say any of this aloud. I call Davenport from outside after we have left the parcel with the courier. I repeat Patricia’s comment and Lily’s reminder, identifying which parts I heard for the first time and which I had forgotten.
“We have the mother’s account,” she says. “And the request for the company file is active. Thank you for distinguishing them.”
“Is the old letter the original he wanted?”
“We’re checking that.”
I look through the gallery window. Eugene is helping Lily move a painting into the front display. A carpenter’s brother and a painter lifting something together. Neither of them needs to become a clue for this moment to matter.
At Hawthorn House, Agnes has the first payment from Dina entered in the ledger. It does not solve the empty weekends. It does buy next week’s butter.
I show her the old supplier bill. She reads it and waits.
“I want to pay it,” I say. “But I need to check the account history first. I don’t know which debts are mine and which Ryan left in my name.”
“Then get advice before you promise.”
“I hate not knowing.”
“So do I.” She gives the statement back. “Knowing you need to ask is better than calling it settled.”
We put the papers in separate folders: the supplier account, the cooperative application, the B&B orders. I do not mix them with the murder notes. For tonight, I would like one part of my life to remain on its own page.
Before bed I look at the photograph of the two letters Marina gave me weeks ago. A deed. A copied withdrawal notice. One can be obtained from public records; the other came through an archive donation whose history I have never checked.
I turn off the screen. Davenport is waiting for the company’s file. I have given her what I know. There is nothing I can add by staring at the date until it becomes the answer I want.
Downstairs, Agnes locks the front door. I hear her test it once and walk away.