Key in hand, Jonas looked at her. “He was part of me. If we were in the same room, I could have told you what he was thinking. Writing his name is as easy as writing my own.”

“And was it the same for him?”

It could still hurt, quickly and unexpectedly. “Yes, it was the same for him.”

But Liz remembered Jerry’s good-natured description of his brother as a stuffed shirt. The man Liz was beginning to know didn’t fit. “I wonder if you understood each other as well as both of you thought.” She looked down at the box again. None of her business, she thought, and wished it were as true as she’d once believed. “I guess you’d better open it.”

He slipped the key into the lock, then turned it soundlessly. When he drew back the lid, Liz could only stare. She’d never seen so much money in her life. It sat in neat stacks, tidily banded, crisply American. Unable to resist, Liz reached out to touch.

“God, it looks like thousands.” She swallowed. “Hundreds of thousands.”

His face expressionless, Jonas flipped through the stacks. The booth became as quiet as a tomb. “Roughly three hundred thousand, in twenties and fifties.”

“Do you think he stole it?” she murmured, too overwhelmed to notice Jonas’s hands tighten on the money. “This must be the money the man who broke into my house wanted.”

“I’m sure it is.” Jonas set down a stack of bills and picked up a small bag. “But he didn’t steal it.” He forced his emotions to freeze. “I’m afraid he earned it.”

“How?” she demanded. “No one earns this kind of money in a matter of days, and I’d swear Jerry was nearly broke when I hired him. I know Luis lent him ten thousand pesos before his first paycheck.”

“I’m sure he was.” He didn’t bother to add that he’d wired his brother two hundred before Jerry had left New Orleans. Carefully, Jonas reached under the stack of money and pulled out a small plastic bag, dipped in a finger and tasted. But he’d already known.

“What is that?”

His face expressionless, Jonas sealed the bag. He couldn’t allow himself any more grief. “Cocaine.”

Horrified, Liz stared at the bag. “I don’t understand. He lived in my house. I’d have known if he were using drugs.”

Jonas wondered if she realized just how innocent she was of the darker side of humanity. Until that moment, he hadn’t fully realized just how intimate he was with it. “Maybe, maybe not. In any case, Jerry wasn’t into this sort of thing. At least not for himself.”

Liz sat down slowly. “You mean he sold it?”