All That I Have by Castle Freeman Page B

can’t help you there. What was in the box he took?”
    “Records, the fellow said. Business records.”
    “Right,” said Addison. He sipped his coffee — if any of what he had left in his cup was coffee.
    “Cossacks,” said Addison.
    “Who?”
    “Cossacks. You’d better catch up with this boy, don’t you know, Lucian? You’d better catch up with him before the Cossacks do. God damned Cossacks.”

    I found Morgan Endor on the back road in Mount Zion that comes down from the ski resort on Stratton Mountain. It wasn’t a fancy place: no Russians’ house. She was in the kind of house the builders used to call a chalet, back when the ski promoters wanted you to believe you were getting, I guess, Switzerland in Vermont for your money instead of Las Vegas in Vermont, like today.
    She opened the door to my knock and stood there in the doorway, looking at me as though she didn’t know who I was, or maybe I was the fellow pumped out the septic tank but she hadn’t called the fellow pumped out the septic tank.
    “Sheriff,” she said.
    “That’s right, Ms. Endor,” I said. “Can I come in? I won’t be long. I’m still looking for Sean.”
    “He’s not here.”
    “I know.”
    She stood back so I could walk in.
    Inside was a long room with a stone fireplace at one end and windows looking south over the mountains. The sun was in the windows, and a big tabby cat was asleep in the sun on the carpet. The cat didn’t offer to move when we walked in. We had to step around it.
    “That’s a calm cat,” I said.
    Morgan Endor looked down at the cat as though she hadn’t noticed it till now.
    “Is it?” she said. “I suppose it is. It belongs to my parents, actually.”
    She sat on a couch facing the windows. In that strong light she looked older than I’d thought she was when she came to the office — nearer forty-five than thirty-five. She was starting to have lines at the corners of her eyes, and her neck was getting lean. Sean wasn’t exactly robbing the cradle this time, it didn’t look like.
    “I won’t lie to you, Sheriff,” said Morgan Endor. “Sean’s been here. He was here last night. I told him you wanted to see him. I told him you thought he was in some kind of trouble. He laughed.”
    “What time did he leave?” I asked her.
    “About eight.”
    “That’s eight last night?”
    “Eight this morning, Sheriff.”
    “Where was he going when he left?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Ms. Endor,” I said, “here’s what we’re up to in this thing. Sean’s been working at a big house over in Grenada. It’s a vacation place. Nobody’s there, mostly. We think Sean broke into the house looking for valuables.”
    Morgan Endor was looking at me. She raised her eyebrows a little. “Go on, Sheriff,” she said.
    “We know Sean,” I said. “We know he ain’t the Young Republicans. We know he was working at the place. He knew the setup there: nobody home, no neighbors, rich people with lots of goods. We know he knew the house was burglar alarmed, but we also know he knew it’s so far out in the woods that he’d have all kinds of time to go through it between when the alarm went off and any law could get there. He wouldn’t have to worry about getting around the alarm: he could just bust his way in, which is what he did.”
    “Suppose he did. Why tell me?”
    “You’re his friend.”
    “I didn’t say that. I said he was an acquaintance.”
    “So you did. And I said I needed to talk to him, that he was in trouble. I still do. He still is.”
    “Is he?” she asked. “I wonder. Can you prove any of the things you’ve told me?”
    “No,” I said. “I can’t. That’s the thing. Sean ain’t in trouble from me, not really, because I can’t go after him without proof. But there are other people in this thing, too, and they can do whatever they want.”
    “What other people?”
    “People who own the house Sean busted into.”
    “Who are they?”
    “I don’t know for sure. I’ve