W Is for Wasted

smelled of mice and dust.
    “Is this everything?” Dietz asked, not quite masking the plaintiveness in his tone.
    “I’m afraid not. I haven’t been able to face his office, so the furniture and any remaining files will be there. I know his rent was in arrears and I don’t have the nerve to contact his landlady for fear I’ll be forced to pay up. I’ll give you the key if you want to go through his desk and his file cabinets.”
    I said, “We stopped by Pete’s office earlier. The place has been cleaned out.”
    She seemed surprised and then recovered herself. “Well, that’s one more tiresome chore I don’t have to bother with. I’m still emptying closets and drawers here. I can’t tell you how many trips I’ve made to Goodwill. Some of the items I’ve dropped off are an embarrassment, but I didn’t want to throw them in the trash.”
    “What about his business records? You’ll have the IRS to deal with eventually,” I said.
    “They’ll just have to come after me,” she said. “I don’t have any idea what he paid in the way of state or federal taxes. I took care of property taxes and he did the rest.”
    “You filed jointly?”
    “We did,” she said. “I made sure he had my W-2s and any relevant receipts. He’d have me sign the forms, but I really never looked at them.”
    I didn’t press the point. I wondered why she’d trust him with filing state and federal tax returns when he was so irresponsible, but she had problems enough and her relationship with the government wasn’t any business of mine.
    I said, “We’ll probably be out here for a while. You want us to let you know when we’re done?”
    “No need. We leave the garages unlocked. If I’m lucky someone will come along and steal everything.”
    She handed over the car keys and left us to our task. Judging from surface dust and the ribbons of ratty tape coming loose here and there, the majority of the boxes had sat untouched for years. We left those alone and focused on the ones that were clean, intact, and closest to the door. As far as I could tell, Pete had no system. His approach was to dump cartons willy-nilly wherever he found room. Dietz hauled a couple of lawn chairs from the assortment of old furniture, which allowed us to sit in reasonable comfort while we searched.
    “She’s a beautiful woman,” Dietz said. “She had more faith in the guy than he deserved.”
    “Pete was a piece of work,” I said. “Homeliest man you ever laid eyes on. I have no idea what she saw in him.”
    “What’s your take on the story about his putting money aside for a cruise?”
    “Pete’s belief was if you expressed your desires, they’d manifest themselves. His phrase was ‘putting it out to the Universe.’ I’m not sure that entailed actual savings.”
    We settled down to work. Most of Pete’s files were unmarked. Where folders were labeled, the tag might be scratched through with a subsequent name written over it in ink. Sometimes the label was gone or had nothing to do with the contents. There was no visible order to the folders he’d shoved into a particular box. Catalogs, old letters, unpaid bills, and unopened mail would be dumped unceremoniously into the same container. This forced us to sort page by page, doing a quick read as we went along. Dietz’s method was to put a stack of folders upright on his lap, pick his way through, and then return them to the box. I left the files where they were and hunched over each box, pulling out one folder at a time. Most were junk, but we didn’t dare toss anything because it wasn’t our job. Who knew what Ruthie might consider worth keeping?
    After we’d labored an hour, I sat back. “This is pointless. We’re being optimistic thinking he’d even bother with anything so organized as ‘accounts receivable.’ More likely, he kept his cash in an old coffee can.”
    “Sounds about right.”
    For a moment, we sat and contemplated the disorder. Dietz said, “Let’s try his car. He might not have unloaded all of the boxes he’d brought.”
    “Like the idea,” I said.
    We restacked the boxes we’d searched and then angled our way across the garage, stepping over and around the jumble until we reached the door. A gate in the fence opened into the alley. Pete’s Ford Fairlane was parked in a wide place probably meant to accommodate trash cans. Those were now lined up against the shrubs, lids sitting like little caps on top of bulging black trash bags. There were no