typed in “unclaimed bank balance account canada” and got it on the very first citation:
Frequently Asked Questions and Answers
…an unclaimed balance back from the Bank of Canada? …
ucbswww.bank-banque-canada.ca/faq_english.htm
The Unclaimed Bank Accounts page was straightforward. All you had to do was type in the name, and it returned:
Unclaimed Balance
Information Name: DESROCHERS, LEONIE
| Payee: Address: MONTREAL (QUE) Savings Account: 8135402 | Transferred to Bank of Canada: $54,133.72 |
| Last Transaction Date: 1973/8/17 | Transfer Date: 1983/12/31 |
| Status: Unclaimed | Outstanding Balance: $54,133.72 |
Originating Bank: NATIONAL TRUST, 1535, RUE STE-CATHERINE, MONTREAL, QC, H3N 040
To my way of thinking, the only way a woman who taped over the flashing 12:00 of her VCR would know about a web page for unclaimed bank balances was if someone told her. And my guess was, that someone was Frank. So when he’d walked in on me, what he’d been after was evidence that he’d told her—the Bank of Canada’s phone number, or claim forms—something showing that she’d begun procedures to claim her money. Because he had killed her, and the way to avoid another jail sentence was to remove any evidence of the obvious motive.
And he was going to come back—real soon, if he hadn’t already—to do a more thorough search, which meant somebody should be watching the place.
“I found the money,” I told Bernie over Mrs. D.’s phone.
He put me on hold while he told someone to check it out. I used the time to finish wiping fingerprint dust off the coffee table. I’d been cleaning for an hour; it was something to do while waiting for him to call me back.
“What if he does know about it?” Bernie finally said. “He can’t inherit it anyway.”
“But he doesn’t know that,” I argued. “That’s what he’s been looking for: her will. He tells her about the money, asks for it, she says no and he kills her.”
“But Annie, if she found out about it from him, when’d she have time to write the will?”
I look forward to the day Bernie can follow my thinking without my having to lay it before him step by step. “He sees her some time before Tuesday night, because Tuesday night’s when she gave me the envelope. He’d found out about the money and asks her for it. She says, ‘I’ll think about it,’ or something. She writes the will, gives it to me. He comes back Wednesday night, she says no, he gets mad--” I heard a key in the front door. “He’s here,” I whispered, hanging up and grabbing one of Mrs. D.’s novels to look like I was reading.
“Hello,” I beamed when Frank walked in.
“You move in or something?”
“Just keeping Bijou company.” The phone started ringing. “Somebody has to look after him.”
His eyes narrowed, darting from me to the phone and back again. “I told you, I got no place to put a bird.”
“Pity,” I said, shriller than you should say a word like that, but the phone was pretty loud, “your mother really loved him.”
We stared at each other a moment, waiting for the next ring, but it didn’t come. “Look,” he said, “I got stuff to do here.”
“I understand,” I said, standing up. His face took on a self-satisfied look, like a teacher who’d just ordered a rotten kid to do something, and the kid obeys. He even stepped aside to clear my path to the door, so he had to turn around to follow me when I headed for the kitchen.
He found me rinsing the dustcloth. “Leave it,” he said. “You can go now.”
“Thanks, but I’d like to finish cleaning up.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I do. I have to do it because I cared about your mother, and she cared about her things.”
“Well, they’re my things now, so you can go.” “Are you sure?”
He stood there for at least half a minute before he finally gave me one piss-poor imitation of a skeptical laugh, and said, “She leave a will or something?”
“As a matter of fact, she did.” I brushed by him as I strolled back to the living room.
“No, she didn’t,” he insisted, following so hot on my heels that he almost bumped into me when I stopped.
“Is that what you’ve been looking for?” I asked, turning to face him. “Because you won’t find it here.”
“Where then.” More of an order than a question.
“Safe and sound.” I started to head for the wing chair, but he snatched my arm.
“Is this what happened on Wednesday? Did she refuse to give you the money, and you got angry and grabbed her?” He looked worried but didn’t let go. “And then maybe she said something to you, and you got even madder, and pushed her too hard? Is that what happened?”
“You’re crazy.” But he let go of me.
My arm hurt like hell, but I refused to rub it as I moved away from him. “You pushed her too hard and she fell, that’s all. An accident.” If there was any justice, manslaughter.
“I wasn’t even here.”
“They found your fingerprints. You didn’t wipe them all away.” I could practically see the smoke coming out his ears as his mental machinery ground. “How could your fingerprints get into this apartment when you haven’t seen your mother in twenty years?”
His lips started to twitch, and he blinked in what I mistook for confusion. Then he lunged.
He moved about as fast as he thought. Aiming for my neck, he caught my shoulder, knocking me onto the sofa while he continued on momentum, right into Bijou’s cage. They both hit the floor at the same time, and I caught a glimpse of him, wet and chaffy, wiping birdseed and gravel from his eyes as I ran for the door.
Which whacked me right on the side of the head.
I wish I could have seen it, Bernie kicking the door in, gun in two hands yelling “Freeze!” like you see on TV. But I was out cold.
It took three days for the headache to clear. Bernie called on the first to ask how I was. I don’t remember what I answered, but it took him two more days to call back.
“You wouldn’t think he had the brains to find something like that,” he said in reference to the Bank of Canada web page.
Six-year-old kids can find web pages, but like my thought processes, I considered it wiser not to disabuse
