What Happens in Paradise Read online

  “Ed,” Irene says. “I called you to find out what legal steps I need to take.”

  There’s an audible breath from Ed. He’s flustered. Irene imagines going through this ninety or a hundred more times with every single one of their friends and neighbors. Maybe she should publish an obituary. But what would she say? Two hours after the papers landed on people’s doorsteps, she would have well-intentioned hordes arriving with casseroles and questions. She can’t bear the thought.

  “When I called you before, Ed, you said Russ signed a new will in September.” Irene had shoved this piece of information to a remote corner of her mind, but now it’s front and center. Why the hell did Russ sign a new will without Irene and, more saliently, without telling Irene? There could be only one reason. “You said he included a new life insurance policy? For three million dollars?” She swallows. “The life insurance policy…who’s the beneficiary?” Here is the moment when the god-awful truth is revealed, she thinks. Russ must have made Rosie the beneficiary. Or maybe, if he was too skittish to do that, he made a trust the beneficiary, a trust that would lead back to Rosie and Maia.

  “You, of course,” Ed says. “The beneficiary is you.”

  “Me?” Irene says. She feels…she feels…

  Ed says, “Who else would it be? The boys? I think Russ was concerned about Cash’s ability to manage money.” Ed coughs. “Russ did make one other change. After you called me last week, I checked my notes.”

  “What was the other change?”

  “Well, you’ll remember that back when you and Russ signed your wills in 2012, you made Russ the executor of your will and Russ made his boss, Todd Croft, the executor of his. In my notes, I wrote that Russ said his finances were becoming too complex for, as he put it, a ‘mere mortal’ to deal with and he didn’t want to burden you with that responsibility. He said Todd would be better able to deal with the fine print. Do you remember that?”

  Does Irene remember that? She closes her eyes and tries to put herself in Ed Sorley’s office with Russ. She definitely remembers the meeting about the real estate closing—she had been so excited—but the day that they signed their wills is lost. It had probably seemed like an onerous chore, akin to getting the oil changed in her Lexus. She knew it had to be done but she paid little attention to it because she and Russ were in perfect health. They were finally hitting their stride—a new job for Russ, a new house, money.

  No, she does not remember. She doubts she would have objected to Russ making Todd Croft the executor of his will. Back then, Todd had seemed like a savior. Todd the God.

  “So Todd was the executor,” Irene says.

  “And when Russ came in to sign the new will this past September, he changed it,” Ed says. “He made you the executor.”

  “He did?” Irene says.

  “Didn’t he tell you?” Ed says.

  “No,” Irene says. Then she wonders if that’s right. “You know what, Ed, he might have told me and I just forgot.” Or I wasn’t listening, she thinks. It’s entirely possible that back in September, Russ said one night at dinner, I saw Ed Sorley today, signed a new will with extra life insurance protection, and I made you executor. And it’s entirely possible that Irene said, Okay, great. Back in September, this information would have seemed unremarkable, even dull. Life insurance; executor. Who cared! It was all preparation for an event, Russ’s death, that was, if not exactly inconceivable, then very, very far in the future.

  Now, of course, the will has red-hot urgency. Irene is the beneficiary of the life insurance policy and she’s the executor of the will. This is good news, right?

  “I have something else in my notes,” Ed says, and he sounds on the verge of getting choked up again. “When I asked Russ if he was concerned that being executor might be a burden for you, considering the complicated nature of his finances, he said, ‘Irene is the only person I trust to do the right thing.’” Ed pauses. “Those were his exact words. I wrote them down.”

  Irene is the only person I trust to do the right thing. That seemingly simple sentence has a lot to unpack. Russ didn’t trust Todd Croft to do the right thing—no surprise there. Had Russ assumed that Irene would find out about Rosie, Maia, the villa in St. John? And if the answer was yes, did he expect that Irene would have enough forgiveness in her heart to make sure that Rosie and Maia were taken care of financially? If again the answer was yes, he had given her a lot of credit.

  Irene sighed. Russ was right. Rosie is no longer an issue, but Irene most certainly plans on providing for Maia.

  “What do I do from here, Ed?” Irene asks.

  “I’ll need at least ten copies of the death certificate,” Ed says. “I’d like one as soon as possible so I can start the probate process.”

  “Where do I get a death certificate?” Irene asks.

  “Um… no one provided one for you? You should have been issued one from the state where Russ died.”

  “He died in the British Virgin Islands,” Irene reminds him. “Between Virgin Gorda and Anegada.”

  There’s silence from Ed. She might as well have named two moons of Jupiter.

  “Baker was in charge of figuring out exactly who claimed the body,” she tells Ed. “And who performed the cremation. He had some trouble. It’s apparently very hard to get a body back from another country, and it was over the holidays. The regular people were on vacation.”

  “I’m not going to lie to you, Irene,” Ed says. “My experience with this is limited. But you’re saying you didn’t get a death certificate while you were down there?”

  “We didn’t,” Irene says. “Baker called the Brits, who directed him to the Americans, who sent him back to the Brits. Todd Croft had someone go down and identify the body—that was before we arrived—and he ordered the cremation without even asking me.”

  “What?” Ed says.

  Irene has opened the proverbial can of worms now; she may as well keep going. “Todd Croft has, essentially, vanished. I can’t reach him or his secretary, and the Ascension web page is down.”

  “Jeez, Irene,” Ed says. “This is like something out of a movie.”

  “Ed,” Irene says. “You didn’t know anything about Russ’s owning property in the Caribbean, did you?”

  “In the Caribbean?” Ed says. “Heck no!”

  “How much did you understand about his job?” Irene asks. “Did the two of you ever discuss it?”

  “He worked for Croft’s hedge fund, right?” Ed says. “He was the front man?”

  “Right,” Irene says. She relaxes a little. The way Russ had described it to her, the Ascension clients were investing such large amounts of money in such a high-risk environment, they needed a dedicated person just to put them at ease, and that person was Russ. Up until this very second, Irene wondered if maybe Ed Sorley was in on the whole mess, but now it’s clear from his earnest tone that he’s just as bewildered as she is. Ed wears sweater-vests. He handles wills, trusts, real estate closings, and the occasional dispute over property lines for the farmers of Johnson County. Russ and Irene hired him for their legal matters because he’s their longtime friend. Irene realizes Russ must have had a second lawyer, one provided for him by Ascension.

  Real estate, though.

  “I’ll call our bank, obviously,” Irene says. They used to keep a checking and savings account at First Iowa Savings and Loan, where their friend Jerry Kinsey was the president. But shortly after Russ started working at Ascension, they switched to the behemoth Federal Republic Bank because Russ insisted that that bank was better equipped to handle Russ and Irene’s “change of circumstance.” Irene recalls pushing back on this. Just because Russ had a shiny new job didn’t mean they had to change their small-town ways, did it?

  Russ had looked at her like she was naive and Irene had capitulated. They opened a joint brokerage account at Federal Republic, although Irene defiantly kept a smaller account at First Iowa in her own name; that was where her paychecks from the magazine were deposited.


  Now that Irene thinks about it, she realizes she never saw a balance of more than fifty thousand dollars in the Federal Republic account. They have several million invested, or so Irene has been led to believe, and the amount in the Federal Republic account was obviously replenished by Russ’s paychecks and bonuses. So there should be a money trail that leads to Todd Croft and Ascension. Irene never delved into the particulars of their new financial situation because, quite frankly, she had done her share of worrying—creating budgets, stretching their meager resources—for a long time, and it was a relief just to know that there was money now, so much money that Irene could take a bath in French champagne every night if she wanted.

  Back when Irene was renovating the house, Russ had transferred money into an account dedicated solely to paying the contractors and estate-sale managers and rug dealers. But that account had been closed for a while now. “We bought the house and the lot here on Church Street outright,” Irene says. “That money was wired to our Federal Republic account from somewhere else. Would you look into it?”

  “I can certainly do that,” Ed says. “It was seven years ago? We’ve gotten a whole new computer system since then, but we must still have the paperwork in a box in the attic. I’ll go upstairs and check.”

  “Thank you, Ed,” Irene says.

  “Aw, Irene,” Ed says. “It’s the least I can do.”

  “Please don’t say anything to Anita,” Irene says again. “I’ll tell people when I’m ready.”

  “You have my word,” Ed says. “Your job is to get a certified copy of the death certificate. Without that, Russ is technically still alive.”

  Still alive, Irene thinks. Just like in her dreams.

  Irene’s next move is a trip to Federal Republic. There’s a branch in Coralville, although she has never set foot in it. She manages to find the most recent statement, which shows a balance of $46,270.32. There was a deposit of $7,500 on Monday, December 10, and another deposit of $7,500 on Monday, December 24, at eleven o’clock in the morning. The withdrawals are automatic payments for the household bills—electricity, cable, heating oil. There’s a $3,200 payment to Citibank—that’s Irene’s credit card—an amount that was a little higher than normal due to Christmas.

  Irene approaches the teller with trepidation, even though she has never seen the young woman before. She’s Asian and far younger than either Cash or Baker, which is good. Irene craves anonymity. The last thing she wants is to deal with someone who knows her family, even slightly. Irene checks the woman’s name plate: JOSEPHINE.

  “Good afternoon, Josephine,” Irene says. She stretches her face into a smile, but she suspects it looks like a grimace. “I have some questions about my account.”

  “Certainly,” Josephine says. She accepts the statement from Irene, then starts tapping at her computer keyboard. “Let me just bring this up on my screen.” She pauses. Her eyes grow wide.

  What? Irene thinks. She’s worried she’s going to be exposed on the spot. She’d have to say, I’m here because my husband died under mysterious circumstances. I’ve just discovered he had a second life but I was never suspicious because, honestly, Josephine, I paid very little attention to him. And I know next to nothing about our current financial situation.

  “You’re a valued and trusted account holder here at Federal Republic,” Josephine says. “With us since 2006?”

  “Yes,” Irene says. She points to the amounts she underlined on the statement. “I was wondering if you could tell me where these two amounts were wired from? I don’t see any other account number or the name of the bank.”

  Josephine checks the amounts on the statement, then blinks at her screen. “You’re referring to the seventy-five-hundred-dollar deposit on Monday, December tenth, and the seventy-five-hundred-dollar deposit on Monday, December twenty-fourth?” Josephine’s voice is very loud, Irene thinks. She seems to be intentionally drawing attention to her teller window. Irene quickly casts a glance around the bank. She lives in mortal fear of seeing someone she knows.

  “Yes,” Irene whispers, trying to telegraph the delicate nature of the situation.

  “Those deposits were made in cash,” Josephine announces brightly.

  “Cash?” Irene says. She nearly adds: You mean to tell me Russ walked in here with seventy-five hundred dollars on his person and then did it again two weeks later?

  “Yes, cash!” Josephine says with such gusto that Irene thinks, Why not just broadcast over the bank’s PA system that Russell Steele was a drug dealer?

  “Okay,” Irene says. “Thank you. One more quick question.” She leans in, locking eyes with Josephine, hoping that Josephine will finally understand the need for discretion. “Are there any other accounts at this bank under my name or my husband’s name?”

  Josephine pulls back a couple of inches. “Do you have the account numbers?”

  “I don’t,” Irene says. She’s trying to choose her words carefully here, though really what she’s tempted to do is tell young Josephine a cautionary tale: I let my husband take over our finances and now I don’t know what I do or don’t have! “I think I may have a second account here, one I haven’t been keeping close tabs on. Would you be able to check using my name or my husband’s name, our address, or our Social Security numbers?” Here, Irene slides Josephine a piece of paper with both Socials clearly labeled. “I can’t find any paperwork on our other accounts but it’s a new year, so one resolution I made was to figure this out.”

  Josephine presses her lips together in a way that lets Irene know she’s growing suspicious. Still, her fingers fly across the keyboard. She slows to punch the Social Security numbers in carefully, then waits for the results. Blood pulses in Irene’s ears, and her shearling coat feels like it’s made of lead.

  “I don’t see another account under either name or Social,” Josephine says. “Nothing’s coming up. Would you like me to call over my branch manager?”

  “No, thank you, that’s okay,” Irene says. “For all I know, the account I’m thinking of could be at a different bank altogether.”

  Josephine tilts her head. “A different bank?”

  Irene backs toward the door. She can’t get out of there fast enough. “Well, like I said, it’s my New Year’s resolution to get organized.”

  “All righty!” Josephine says. “Good luck with that.”

  Ayers

  Huck has asked Ayers to help him go through the things in Rosie’s bedroom during the week, while Maia is at school. Ayers doesn’t make it up to the house on Jacob’s Ladder until the Thursday before the Martin Luther King Day weekend.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” Ayers says. “My life just got really busy all of a sudden.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Huck says. “You have two jobs, and now that you’re back with Mick, I’m sure he wants your attention as well.”

  Ayers sighs. She is back with Mick and he does want her attention. He admitted that seeing her with Baker (Mick calls him “Banker”) drove him crazy with jealousy, and he vowed not to let anything—or anyone—get between them again. Since they’ve been back together, Mick has stopped by La Tapa at the end of Ayers’s shift each night and walked her to her truck before heading back to Beach Bar until closing. He’s abandoned his usual ritual of late-night drinks at the Quiet Mon and instead drives straight to Ayers’s apartment in Fish Bay, where he spends the night. When Ayers works on Treasure Island, he meets her at the customs dock at four o’clock with a pineapple-banana smoothie from Our Market. On the one day off they’ve had together so far, Mick borrowed his boss’s boat and they cruised all the way up the north shore to snorkel at Waterlemon Cay. They spotted three basking sharks and two spotted eagle rays. Mick is as much of a snorkel-nerd as Ayers. When they saw the second spotted eagle ray rippling along the sandy bottom, Mick dived down and undulated right along top of it. When he and Ayers surfaced a few moments later, he pulled off his mask and grinned like a kid with a shiny new bike, and Ayers felt a wave of the familiar
adoration. This was her guy.

  They’d left Waterlemon and headed to Gibney for an hour on the beach. When Ayers’s stomach started to rumble, they climbed back into the boat and tied up to the dock at Caneel Bay. They strolled hand in hand, salty and sandy, to the Beach Bar, where Mick ordered a bottle of Moët, the conch fritters, and four sushi rolls.

  Ayers had craned her neck to ogle the hotel rooms that lined the beach, each of them as luxurious and appealing as pearls on a string.

  “I’m dying to stay here,” she said, then instantly regretted it. The champagne had gone right to her head.

  “Guess you’ll have to wait for your banker to come back,” Mick said.

  “Guess so,” she said lightly. Mick dipped a fritter in aioli and let the topic go. Maybe he was consciously avoiding a fight or maybe he wasn’t as jealous as he’d claimed to be. Maybe he was content to let the past be the past. Maybe he thought Baker Steele would never return to St. John. Maybe he thought he and Ayers could just continue their relationship where they’d left off, as though neither Baker nor Brigid had ever existed.

  Ayers wasn’t so sure.

  Huck leads Ayers to Rosie’s room and opens the door. Ayers has been in Rosie’s room only twice before, both times years ago. The first time was when they swung by after work so Rosie could change before they went dancing at Castaways. The other time, Rosie was at work and Ayers was off and Rosie had texted Ayers and begged her to grab her bottle of Percocet—she had just had all four wisdom teeth removed and was crying in pain. But that was it. They were grown women; they hung out in bars, not in each other’s bedrooms.

  Ayers remembers, however, that while the rest of the house looked like it was shared by the protagonist of The Old Man and the Sea and the Little Mermaid (Huck and Maia), Rosie’s room was a sanctuary, cool and elegant, and it still is. The wallpaper is printed with pink hibiscus blossoms, and the hibiscus theme is echoed by a bush outside the open window. The queen-size bed has at least a dozen pillows artfully arranged against the rattan headboard. Rosie was a fastidious bed-maker, whereas Ayers sleeps in a tangle of sheets every night and sees absolutely no point in making a bed that she’s only going to climb right back into the next night. (Ayers gets a sudden vision of Rosie folding napkins at La Tapa. She was careful and precise in the task, like she was doing origami.)