A Widow's Curse by Phillip Depoy Page B

that lawyer Taylor is hiding something from us.”
    â€œWhat?” Andrews sat up at that.
    â€œTake a look at the outside of the folders. Line them up: ‘C.D.’ first, then ‘Correspondence,’ then ‘Misc.’ Lay them out side by side in that order.”
    â€œI’ll bite.”
    He arranged the files in alphabetical order from left to right in front of him.
    â€œNow look at the front of each folder.”
    He did.
    It took him a moment, but he finally saw what I had already noticed.
    â€œThey don’t—how would I say this?” He stared down at them. “They don’t line up.”
    â€œRight.”
    The front of each of the old manila folders was faded and indented in the exact shape of the folder that had been in front of it, and the tab part of each folder was located at a slightly different place than on the other folders, so they could be placed in a cabinet in such a way as to have no tab hidden by any other tab.
    Andrews had realized, after his brief examination of the three folders in front of him, that there had been at least one other folder, maybe more—something between “Correspondence” and “Misc.” It was obvious.
    â€œI thought you just meant that the information in the folders was shoddy on purpose, to hide something,” Andrews said, still wondering at the clear evidence in front of him on the table. “Because they certainly are a mess. But it looks very much like they’re keeping another folder from us. What the hell ?”
    I could hear irritation growing in his voice.
    I waxed somewhat more philosophical.
    â€œI often have this problem in my folk research,” I told him. “You think you’ve asked the perfect question and all you need to complete your work is that one answer. But one answer, even a great one, can lead to a dozen more questions, issues that confuse the path beyond all recognition, and the work has just begun, because I often also discover that the person I’m talking with is hiding something—sometimes deliberately; just as often without their even realizing it. Maybe the missing file has nothing to do with Conner Devilin; maybe the files got shuffled—it could be an innocent mistake. You haven’t learned an important academic axiom: ‘Never impart malice to what is more likely incompetence’?”
    â€œI don’t know.” He pulled on his earlobe.
    The short musing silence that followed our comments was blasted quite suddenly.
    â€œGentlemen!”
    Andrews and I both jumped.
    Taylor stood in the doorway of the meeting room, a mask of gloom clouding his face.
    â€œI’m afraid I have a bit of odd news.” Taylor took a step into the room. “Something has occurred at your home, Dr. Devilin, in your absence.”
    I stood.
    â€œWhat’s happened?”
    â€œYou’ve just had a phone call.” Taylor paused. “Something about bringing a coin back home. Are you entertaining houseguests?”

Seven
    The drive home was a tense affair. Shultz had called the law offices in something of a panic, according to Taylor. Apparently, a man had broken into my house or gotten in somehow; Shultz had fallen asleep on the sofa, and so the intruder startled him. After a moment, Shultz determined that the man must be an acquaintance of mine. He seemed quite distraught; said he urgently needed to speak with me, even more desperately wanted to see the coin. So Shultz called.
    The problem was, when I went to the phone in Taylor’s office, it was dead. When I called Shultz back, no one answered.
    The road home seemed longer than it had ever been.
    â€œAnd Shultz didn’t say who it was.” Andrews kept going over the minuscule information we had, mumbling to himself. “Only that the man—”
    â€œYou can repeat what Taylor told us a hundred times, but you won’t wring anything out of it. Just have a little patience and