figure out just what exactly is going on.”
“I have no idea what’s going on.”
“But you have the genealogy to find out.”
“I didn’t ask to be dragged into this!”
“Of course not, but you’re key. Which is why you’re in danger. And it was dumb luck I learned enough to warn you. And there is an inheritance, apparently. You can thank me later.”
“After my knees heal.” She felt truculent about being caught up in something without being asked first. It wasn’t fair.
“That wasn’t planned. Before we could be properly introduced, ‘boom’! And, well, here we are.”
“Here we are where ?”
“Concrete.” Once more he turned the pickup off the main highway, driving them past some gigantic dull-gray concrete silos that, in faded red letters, indeed announced Concrete. “Guess what they made in this place? It built some big dams upriver.”
“Benjamin Hood lived in Concrete?”
“Nah, he’s up on the Cascade River, which is where we have to go. But he did his banking here, and that’s where you come in.”
Rominy looked out at a rain-stained, pocket-sized town punched into more of the valley’s lush forest. She’d heard of it but never been here.
Barrow turned onto Main Street. “This burg is actually modestly famous, because De Niro and DiCaprio made This Boy’s Life here. The Tobias Wolff memoir? Wolff lived up in the Seattle City Light company towns, Newhalem and Diablo, but he came down here for high school. Hollywood, baby.”
They parked. Downtown was a block-long clump of architecturally uninspired buildings about as charming as a gas station and as typically American as baseball and Barbie. Tavern, hardware store, Laundromat, food bank—unsurprising, since there was no sign of money—and, more heartening, a surviving movie theater. Many of the time-warp buildings were built (as she should have guessed) of painted concrete. There were old lodge halls for the American Legion and Eagles and an eight-foot carved wooden bear, incongruously rearing under a gazebo built to keep the rain off. Summit Bank had a reader board displaying the temperature (67 degrees) and a sign, SINCE 1914 . Inside was utilitarian as a post office. Paneling painted white, forest green carpet, and the kind of fluorescent lighting that gives off the warmth of Greenland’s ice cap. The clerks, however, smiled. A vault door gave a peek toward safety deposit boxes.
“When Hood lived up here, this was the State Bank of Concrete,” Barrow explained. “He left a will and a safety deposit box for his heirs, but guess what? No heirs. Until you. And a mystery seventy-plus years unsolved. Until now.” He grinned and went up to a teller. “Mr. Dunnigan, please.”
“I’ll see if he’s available.”
“Tell him Mr. Barrow and Ms. Pickett-Hood are here to see him. He’s expecting us.” Jake stood tall like it was his birthday, glancing around impatiently. Rominy studied him again. Her companion, she admitted, was intriguing, smart, and a bit of a stud. He was built like a fitness freak, and his eyes seemed lit with blue fire. Certainly more interesting than another evening home with Netflix and Häagen-Dazs. Instead of savior or kidnapper, Jake was making himself, she realized, a partner.
Curiosity kept her with him. And it was reassuring he’d taken her somewhere dull, like a bank.
“I still don’t get what I’m supposed to do here,” she whispered.
“Inherit, remember?” he whispered back.
Mr. Dunnigan was a balding, portly bank vice president in a white no-iron synthetic shirt and JCPenney sport coat, who reigned behind a Formica desk of faux oak. He picked up a stack of manila folders and took them into an adjacent small conference room with wooden table and hard chairs, looking at Rominy as if she were a ghost. Which she supposed she was in a way, if what Barrow claimed was true. The missing heir of Benjamin Hood! Who?
“Congratulations, Mr. Barrow,” the banker began, dropping the
“I have no idea what’s going on.”
“But you have the genealogy to find out.”
“I didn’t ask to be dragged into this!”
“Of course not, but you’re key. Which is why you’re in danger. And it was dumb luck I learned enough to warn you. And there is an inheritance, apparently. You can thank me later.”
“After my knees heal.” She felt truculent about being caught up in something without being asked first. It wasn’t fair.
“That wasn’t planned. Before we could be properly introduced, ‘boom’! And, well, here we are.”
“Here we are where ?”
“Concrete.” Once more he turned the pickup off the main highway, driving them past some gigantic dull-gray concrete silos that, in faded red letters, indeed announced Concrete. “Guess what they made in this place? It built some big dams upriver.”
“Benjamin Hood lived in Concrete?”
“Nah, he’s up on the Cascade River, which is where we have to go. But he did his banking here, and that’s where you come in.”
Rominy looked out at a rain-stained, pocket-sized town punched into more of the valley’s lush forest. She’d heard of it but never been here.
Barrow turned onto Main Street. “This burg is actually modestly famous, because De Niro and DiCaprio made This Boy’s Life here. The Tobias Wolff memoir? Wolff lived up in the Seattle City Light company towns, Newhalem and Diablo, but he came down here for high school. Hollywood, baby.”
They parked. Downtown was a block-long clump of architecturally uninspired buildings about as charming as a gas station and as typically American as baseball and Barbie. Tavern, hardware store, Laundromat, food bank—unsurprising, since there was no sign of money—and, more heartening, a surviving movie theater. Many of the time-warp buildings were built (as she should have guessed) of painted concrete. There were old lodge halls for the American Legion and Eagles and an eight-foot carved wooden bear, incongruously rearing under a gazebo built to keep the rain off. Summit Bank had a reader board displaying the temperature (67 degrees) and a sign, SINCE 1914 . Inside was utilitarian as a post office. Paneling painted white, forest green carpet, and the kind of fluorescent lighting that gives off the warmth of Greenland’s ice cap. The clerks, however, smiled. A vault door gave a peek toward safety deposit boxes.
“When Hood lived up here, this was the State Bank of Concrete,” Barrow explained. “He left a will and a safety deposit box for his heirs, but guess what? No heirs. Until you. And a mystery seventy-plus years unsolved. Until now.” He grinned and went up to a teller. “Mr. Dunnigan, please.”
“I’ll see if he’s available.”
“Tell him Mr. Barrow and Ms. Pickett-Hood are here to see him. He’s expecting us.” Jake stood tall like it was his birthday, glancing around impatiently. Rominy studied him again. Her companion, she admitted, was intriguing, smart, and a bit of a stud. He was built like a fitness freak, and his eyes seemed lit with blue fire. Certainly more interesting than another evening home with Netflix and Häagen-Dazs. Instead of savior or kidnapper, Jake was making himself, she realized, a partner.
Curiosity kept her with him. And it was reassuring he’d taken her somewhere dull, like a bank.
“I still don’t get what I’m supposed to do here,” she whispered.
“Inherit, remember?” he whispered back.
Mr. Dunnigan was a balding, portly bank vice president in a white no-iron synthetic shirt and JCPenney sport coat, who reigned behind a Formica desk of faux oak. He picked up a stack of manila folders and took them into an adjacent small conference room with wooden table and hard chairs, looking at Rominy as if she were a ghost. Which she supposed she was in a way, if what Barrow claimed was true. The missing heir of Benjamin Hood! Who?
“Congratulations, Mr. Barrow,” the banker began, dropping the
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