However Many More

by Bo Thunboe

  “You think he’s the guy?”

  “My gut says he’s a possibility.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Grady pulled away, his white Jetta smooth and quiet.

  * * *

  Everson’s was the oldest funeral home in Weston and did a lot of business. Jake had attended dozens of wakes there, and they’d done a great job when his mom passed away. He parked on the street a block away, then walked to the funeral home, joining a thin stream converging on the entrance. An after-work crowd dressed in dark business attire, some alone, but most in twos and threes. Two viewings were in process. Jake checked the lobby board and recognized the name of former city council member Drew Hampton. Jake’s dad had always spoken well of Hampton, calling him the one reasonable man in a corral of ninnies.

  Jake was early for the appointment and stood against the wall, scanning the crowd of politicians and businessmen coming in to be seen and pay their respects. He exchanged greetings with people he knew until the man he was looking for—Drake Lambert, the funeral home director—eased into the room. When their eyes met, Jake raised his eyebrows and snaked through the crowd to his side.

  “Mr. Houser.” Drake shook Jake’s hand. “I’m so sorry about your friend, Mr. Fox.”

  “Thank you, Drake.” Lambert knew everyone and how they were connected. “April Fox asked me to join them for your meeting.”

  “That would be very nice, Mr. Houser.”

  “Please call me Jake.”

  Lambert smiled.

  “Drake… I want to pay for Henry’s funeral.” Saying it filled Jake with an odd swell of emotion that felt like happiness but brought a tear to his eye.

  “That’s very generous, Mr. Houser.” Lambert paused, then lowered his voice. “As long as it’s okay with his family. People often want to pay for it themselves as a kind of remembrance. A last connection.”

  Jake realized that was exactly why he wanted to pay for it. “How about I offer and we see what they want to do?”

  “Very good, Mr. Houser.”

  They stood together in the lobby as they waited. Jake’s thoughts turned back to the thousand-ounce bars; he wanted to ask both women what they knew about them, but not here. He was here as a friend and April’s godfather, not as a cop.

  A few minutes later the Fox women walked in. Lynn’s hair was brushed and her makeup done. She wore dark slacks and a cream-colored shirt, with a wool coat cinched around her waist. April wore jeans and a sweater and a snug leather jacket.

  As Lynn’s gaze swung past Jake, he read a silent shit on her lips.

  She hadn’t expected to see him.

  * * *

  Lynn tried for a smile but knew it failed.

  “Mr. Houser!” April hugged Jake. “Mom, I hope it’s okay I asked Mr. Houser to come along.”

  “Of course, honey,” Lynn lied. It wasn’t at all okay. She worried Jake might question her about the affair with Bowen—and if he did, she knew she couldn’t fool him for long. Everything she knew about the man came from April and gossip at the club.

  She turned to Jake. “Thanks for coming.”

  Jake introduced them to the funeral home director, Drake Lambert, who expressed his condolences, then led them all upstairs to a small room at the front of the old house. It was dominated by a high-gloss conference table that smelled of old wood and lemony furniture polish.

  Lambert stood behind the chair at the head of the table, where a portfolio and a stack of brochures were already laid out. Jake ushered April into the seat to Lambert’s right and waved Lynn toward the chair next to her. But Lynn wasn’t going to sit there. Jake would take the chair at the other end of the table, and she’d be stuck next to him for however long this took. She slipped behind Lambert instead, forcing him to belly up to the table, and sat across from April, as far away from Jake as she could get in the little room. Jake smiled and sat next to April.

  Lambert talked them through the different parts of the process, explaining the options available. His voice was kind and comforting, but for Lynn, it was all too much. She hadn’t eaten anything after throwing up the toast, and the room felt oppressively warm. She struggled out of her coat and tried to focus, with little luck.

  Fortunately, April took charge. She answered all Lambert’s questions and picked from long lists of options for every little detail. She was the right person to make those decisions anyway. She was Henry’s only blood relation. Lynn probably shouldn’t even be here. April didn’t need her—and probably didn’t even want her here. She’d called Jake to help with this, hadn’t she?

  Suddenly everyone was getting up, and Lynn followed along as Lambert led them to a huge room set up like a museum, showcasing caskets and vaults.

  Lambert was saying something about… decorative medallions. For the casket’s corners? She wasn’t sure. But whatever they were, she was certain she’d heard him say they were three hundred dollars each. She looked at the casket April had just selected… and saw its price tag. Her empty stomach clutched and released, and she swallowed back down the sour bubble threatening to come up.

  “Mr. Lambert.” A tear rolled down her cheek and she rubbed it away with her hand. “I’m sorry but… the prices on these. We don’t have that kind of money. Unless you have really long payment plans, we can’t…”

  Jake cut in. “Lynn. April. If you’ll allow me to, I’d like to cover the funeral expenses. I’d be honored to do it.” He spoke softly, looking back and forth between them.

  “Christ, Jake.” Lynn’s face reddened and she shook her head. “I can’t… I’m sorry, Mr. Lambert, but—”

  “Mom!” April said. “Let him. Dad would be okay with his best friend helping us. Plus, Mr. Houser can afford it.”

  Lynn chewed her lip, embarrassed and ashamed. But what the hell was she being so proud about? She was broke, and everyone knew it.

  She shrugged and nodded.

  Lambert stepped forward and ushered them on to the next display.

  * * *

  Jake was glad Lynn had accepted his offer to pay for Henry’s funeral, but had been surprised by April’s comment that he could afford it. Henry must have told her that Jake owned the real estate trust that Coogan managed, and for which Henry handled the maintenance. That truth was available to anyone willing to spend some dusty hours in the probate and real estate records at the county archives, but as far as Jake knew, no one but Henry had ever bothered to look.

  April looped her arms around one of his and held tight as Lynn wandered away with Drake.

  “Thanks for helping with all of this, Mr. Houser.”

  “I’m happy to do it.”

  “Have you figured out who killed my dad?”

  Jake frowned. “Not yet, but I will.”

  “Promise?”

  Jake could make that promise. What he couldn’t promise was a conviction. There were too many cracks in the criminal justice system where politics and influence and prejudice seeped in and corrupted the process. “I promise I will find your dad’s killer.”

  “Do you have a suspect, at least? I mean, I know about Mom and Mr. Bowen, so…”

  Jake didn’t answer questions like that during an investigation. Then again, this wasn’t a normal investigation. Henry had been one of his best friends, and April was his own goddaughter. And, he realized suddenly, it was an opportunity to see if April knew about the bigger silver bars. It was a definite asshole move to do that here at the funeral home—but he could do it very gently, just floating the idea of more silver to see if she questioned it.

  “The silver still hidden out there has brought some bad men to town,” he said. “When it’s over I’ll tell you the whole story.”

  “Thank you,” she said, then hugged his arm as they continued along behind Lynn and Drake.

  She hadn’t even blinked at his statement that there was more
silver hidden in town—which meant she already knew about the big bars. And if April knew, so did Lynn. Yet neither had shared it with him. They probably wanted to go after it themselves. Everyone who knew about the silver was hoping for a piece of it, despite what had happened to Henry.

  Jake needed to hurry up and find this silver and get it the hell out of town.

  After April picked a vault, they went back to the conference room and finished up. April powered through the rest of the decisions: flowers and music and newspaper notices and the guest book and on and on. Lynn kept out of it, sitting quietly, her head down. Jake caught her looking at him several times, and he smiled, but each time she turned away without acknowledging it.

  When they got to the obituary he was able to flesh it out with some things Lynn had forgotten and April had never known. Like the perfect game Henry pitched when he was nine years old and how he’d held two Redhawk basketball records—season highs for assists and for steals—for over twenty years. By the time they had finished with everything it was after eight and both women looked exhausted, their faces wan and eyes bagged with dark circles. As they paused in the lobby to pull on their coats, he invited them out for dinner so they wouldn’t have to cook, but Lynn declined. She said she needed to rest.

  “Godfather?”

  Jake smiled. It sounded corny, but he liked it.

  “Thanks for helping us out with all this.” April looked up at him. “Can I ask you for one more favor?”

  “Of course.”

  “Will you do a eulogy for my dad? For the service?”

  Jake felt his face light up. “I’d love to.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  As Jake walked back to his car, the smell of fallen leaves and a faint pall of wood smoke drew him into the season and away from the case. He loved fall. He couldn’t imagine living in a place that didn’t experience real fall: football games and bonfires and leafy smells.

  The fresh air helped release the tension that had built up during the meeting at Everson’s. It was a tough way to spend three hours. April had been a trooper, and he was glad Lynn had deferred to her on the arrangements.

  He fired up the car and considered his next stop. He needed to talk with the storage facility about the bill of sale Henry used to prove he owned the silver bar when he sold it to Griffin. Jake doubted Henry had actually found the silver in a storage unit, but he had to investigate the possibility.

  He flipped through his notebook until he found the facility’s address. It was short drive, but the office had closed for the evening. He would have to go by the next day.

  As he drove home, he wondered where Henry had found the silver. The answer was important, because of the implications about ownership. If Henry had found the silver in the storage unit, then the silver belonged to the partnership—Henry and Bowen. But the unit’s renter—the silver’s original owner—could want it back. If Henry had found the silver in an outhouse pit, then—

  Wait.

  Found. The word fluttered around Jake’s memory and alit on what Trane had said. Finding and owning are two different things. Henry had found the bars, but finding them didn’t automatically make Henry the legal owner of the bars. Even in cases less complex than Trane’s warship loaded with gold bullion, ownership wasn’t as simple as finders-keepers. The law focused not only on who had found an item, but on who had owned it, and whether it had been lost, abandoned, or mislaid.

  Of course, Jake wasn’t litigating ownership; he was looking for a murderer. The murderer would likely be someone who didn’t have legal title to the silver—but wanted it anyway.

  Even if he had to kill to get it.

  Jake parked and went inside his house. He needed to set the case aside, at least for a little while, to think about his eulogy for Henry. He’d been glad when April asked him to do it, but his perception of Henry had blurred—his friend was a liar and possibly a thief. And that was just with reference to the little bars. Jake still had no idea where the big bars had come from or what Henry had done to get them.

  But he’d said he would prepare a eulogy, and he would. Tonight. While working on the house.

  He changed into his remodeling clothes and was pulling on his steel-toed boots when his phone rattled on the worn oak floor. He scooped it up. A text from Grady: Trane left Lanigans and wandered around the public works yard on Jackson kicking at the leaf cover then walked out through the park. He gave the Fox barn a hard look but stayed away from it. Then he went back to his room and has been inside ever since.

  The kid got long-winded with his texts. Jake responded: Good work. Call it a night and start again in the morning.

  He’d missed an earlier text from Erin and read it now: Patrol officer took Cole to the bank but it was closed. Will return in the morning. First thing.

  A delay, but not a serious one. The bar in the vault wasn’t the murder weapon—if it were, Cole would have fought him on turning it over. Examining it was just a box to check off.

  At that moment the little bubbles appeared, indicating Erin was typing out another text. It popped up: Just heard Braff is looking for you.

  The doorbell rang. He didn’t even know it worked.

  * * *

  Conner searched Google images for pictures of thousand-ounce silver bars, and was surprised to find they were just dull blocks of metal. He’d expected them to be shiny. Not that it mattered. All that mattered was that a single bar was worth over twenty thousand dollars. A few months ago it would have been worth sixteen thousand—and back in 2011 a thousand ounces of silver was worth nearly fifty thousand. He clicked around the Internet and found plenty of people arguing that the price would skyrocket in the near future—and just as many arguing it would soon crash. Nobody really knew.

  But that didn’t matter because he and April weren’t greedy. They were going to use the money to be together and pay for college. They didn’t want to buy an island or a Porsche.

  His phone vibrated against his desk. April.

  “What did you find out?” His words came out in a rude rush. “I’m sorry, how did it go with the funeral part of it?”

  “Good. Mom kept her mouth shut for once. Mostly anyway. I think the funeral will be pretty nice. I picked out the flowers and the casket and a ton of other stuff. You’ll see.”

  “And with your godfather? Houser showed up?”

  “Yeah. I think he knows something about the big bars. He mentioned the silver still hidden here.”

  “Shit.” Conner looked at the big bar on his laptop screen. “What about the other thing?”

  “What? Oh.” She lowered her voice. “I don’t think he’s investigating your dad anymore. He said some dangerous men have come to town looking for the silver. That’s what he’s been doing, I guess. Looking into them.”

  “Then my dad didn’t do it, right? One of these men did it.” Relief flooded through him and almost lifted him from the chair. But when he remembered that meant it wasn’t safe for them to look for the silver, the weight came back. That money could have set them free.

  He looked at the photo of the silver bar one more time, then closed his laptop. “So we’re done.”

  “I… maybe,” April said.

  “You have an idea?”

  “Maybe Mr. Houser investigating these men will scare them out of town. Maybe them running away convinces Mr. Houser they’re guilty, so he leaves the case open like that. Never looking at your dad or my mom again. Never finding out she lied about an affair. And maybe he doesn’t even believe the big bars exist. No one has seen one, right? So the silver is left waiting for us.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “A lot of maybes.”

  * * *

  The microwave hummed, and Lynn watched the bowl of leftover spaghetti through the window in the door. They’d had the spaghetti for dinner on Sunday night.

  Before Henry’s death.


  Is that how she’d think of things from now on? As happening either before Henry died, or after?

  The microwave dinged, and she pulled out the piping hot bowl and set it on the table, the sauce along the edge bubbling. She didn’t think she could eat any of it, but hopefully April could.

  She stirred the spaghetti, let it sit to warm through, then tiptoed over to April’s door and listened for any sound she was awake. Softly, she heard talking. April was probably on the phone with Conner. Then silence. Then words again, but… different. It didn’t sound like she was on the phone anymore.

  Lynn pushed her ear to the door, and the words became clear.

  “Dear God and Jesus, please welcome my dad into heaven with you. I know he doesn’t need me to tell you how great he was. And not just to me but to everyone. Please help my mom do better with talking to the police and please forgive her lies. She’s desperate, I guess, about money and taking care of me. But I’m an adult now and I’ll take care of myself. So, please forgive me my sins and…”

  A sob, then a hard string of them.

  “And forgive me for… not being a better daughter. Amen.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Jake crossed the bare underlayment in the great room, his footsteps echoing hollowly in the empty space, and looked through the small window set into the front door. Callie Diggs stood on his front stoop, swaying to her own internal rhythm, backlit by a distant streetlight.

  A smile broke across his face as he opened the door. “What—”

  Callie held up a hand to stop him, and then Deputy Chief Braff stepped into view from beside the door.

  Braff’s eyes drilled into Jake’s. “What the hell, Houser?”

  “What—” Jake tried again.

  “Save it.” Braff pushed past Jake and headed for the kitchen. “You got anything to drink?”

  Callie walked in behind the DC. “Nice get-up.” Her eyes rode him up and down, taking in his demolition clothing, and a crooked smile spread across her face.