Cold Hard Cache

by Amy Isaman

  Which was clearly the wrong thing to say to her. It was like adding gasoline to a fire.

  “You lied to me. Again. Your father has lied to me. And my sister accused you of murder. It’s like my whole family has betrayed me. I do nothing but try to help you, support you, and I find out you’ve stolen from us and lied to everyone. For years.” Tears spilled down my sister’s face, and for a moment, I felt sorry for her.

  Until she turned on me.

  “And this is all your fault,” she yelled as she stormed across the room toward me.

  “What’s my fault?” I stood up before she got here, refusing to be stuck sitting on my mother’s couch while she yelled above me like Brian had.

  “Everything. You found Frank. You started hanging out with that woman. You’ve been making wild accusations about Logan.”

  Her eyes were wild as she pulled her hand back and slapped me. I heard the crack of her hand against my skin before I felt the stinging pain, but mostly, I felt shock.

  The force of the slap knocked me back onto the couch. I landed and stared up at my sister. I hadn’t been hit like that, well, since I made the grave error of telling my mother to eff-off when I was around sixteen.

  “Anne Lynnette!” my mom yelled from her chair. “Stop this!”

  “Mom, this isn’t Aunt Tricia’s fault.” Logan ran across the room and grabbed his mother who still stood above me, her whole body shaking. He wrapped his arms around her and dragged her away. “Leave her alone. This is my fault. Alex and I shouldn’t have taken that money. Alex felt so guilty after we did it that he started drinking and partying. It’s what killed him. We regretted taking it and tried to make it right before he died, and I did the best I could after he died.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Anne yelled, trying to get out of his grasp.

  “Yes, I get it. I made the worst mistake of my life when we did that. We should have let Frank and Grandpa have it.”

  “Yes, you should have!

  As soon as I could move and get off the couch without her reaching me, I did. I hurried toward the kitchen. All I wanted to do was get the hell out. But I couldn’t since Anne was parked behind my rental car.

  Thankfully, she’d left her purse on the counter. Her keys were sitting right inside.

  “Hey, what the hell are you doing?” she yelled at my back.

  “I’m leaving.” I grabbed her keys and ran to the door.

  “Like hell you are! Let me go, Logan.”

  “Mom, no. Let her go. You need to calm down!” I could hear her and Logan scuffling.

  She yelled as I slammed the front door behind me.

  I ran toward her mini-van. As soon as I got in, Anne careened out of our Mom’s house, heading toward me. When had my sister gotten bat shit crazy? I locked the car door and shoved the key in the ignition, hoping that Logan could hold her off until I could get into my car and leave. I just wanted to get the hell away from my insane sister.

  She banged on the passenger window as I shoved her car into reverse. The mirrors were all pointed in the wrong direction for my height, so I turned my head to make sure I didn’t hit anything when I backed up.

  And froze.

  My sister’s gym bag was on the back seat. It was partially unzipped, and the edge of a black running shoe poked out. A shoe I’d seen before. Only I didn’t recognize it until this moment.

  I slammed on the brakes and stared at my sister, who stood outside banging on the passenger window.

  “Get out of my car. Now!” she yelled.

  I shoved the car into park. I couldn’t reach her bag, so I clambered into the back seat and grabbed it. The bag held two black running shoes, one of which was splattered with something dark.

  I thought back to when I knelt next to Frank and the runner bolted out of the laundromat’s foyer. I closed my eyes, and I could see her, the slight build, the black shoes, the hoodie pulled up. It was my sister.

  “What are you doing? Those are my gym clothes. Put that down. Get out!” Her voice rose in panic.

  I stared at her and felt like vomiting. Anne killed Frank. When I’d finally gotten home to my mom’s, she said she’d been at the gym. I remembered her wet hair, but she hadn’t showered because of a run and workout. She showered because Frank’s blood was on her. I dug through her bag but didn’t see any of the clothes she was wearing that night. She got rid of those, and I glanced back up at her, wondering why she hadn’t dumped the shoes. Had she taken the gold from my closet too? I was so sure it’d been Logan, but it wasn’t. It was his mother. After his confession, I felt like he would have admitted to taking it. He’d sounded almost relieved that the gold was gone, and he’d finally shared his secret that had clearly been a burden for years.

  “Tricia! Get out of my car!” Anne banged so hard on the window I thought it might break, and I ducked.

  Logan and my Mom came out to the driveway and watched Anne bang on the windows and scream at me. Tears streamed down my mother’s cheeks as she gripped her walker.

  I climbed into the third row and peeked into the way back of her van. A quilt was piled into the narrow space. I lifted it off and found the gold for the second time.

  We stared at each other through the van’s rear window.

  I couldn’t deny it.

  My sister the gold out of my closet.

  She killed Frank.

  My sister was the murderer.

  She was shaking her head, repeating, “No. No. No. You can’t Tricia. Get out.”

  I had zero intention of getting out of this vehicle. I’d probably ruined half of the evidence, but I didn’t care. She killed once. And there was no way in hell I was going to be her next victim. In that moment, I really believed she hated me that much.

  I wanted to save her from her marriage, support her.

  But I couldn’t rescue her from this.

  Nobody could.

  And I felt a little bit sad that I no longer wanted to help her. At all.

  I couldn’t save her, just like I couldn’t save Bret. He was responsible for his choices. My sister was responsible for hers. No matter how much they hurt, no matter how much I wanted to help, I couldn’t rescue them from themselves. Only they could if they chose to.

  I took a deep breath and felt my chest and throat tighten as tears came.

  I climbed back into the front of the van and reached for my purse as my sister continued to bang on the window and yell at me.

  Mike finally picked up. “Hi, Mike? This is Tricia Seaver. You need to come to my mom’s house. Immediately. And bring Brian. He needs to be here too.”

  Chapter 27

  BRIAN ARRIVED FIRST, AND as soon as he pulled up, my sister finally stopped banging on the window, pleading with me to get out.

  Instead, she ran.

  Like literally ran down the street as if she could get away and escape. But it was too late. Everything she’d done was coming back to her.

  It was Brian who chased her down while Logan came around and helped me out of the minivan, and my mom stayed on the porch, looking stunned.

  Brian caught my sister at the end of the block, and we could hear her yelling about her crazy sister and how I planted stuff in her car. I looked at Logan, who shook his head. He swiped his face, wiping away tears that started to come. I got out and hugged him, both of us crying silently.

  He opened the back of the van and stared at the gold. “Did you call the cops?”

  I nodded.

  He pulled two handfuls of coins out of the box and dropped them on the carpeted floor. Then he tried lifting the box, but it was still too heavy. “Take some out,” he grunted.

  I grabbed a few more handfuls and dropped them on the floor.

  “No, put them in your purse.” He grabbed some coins and shoved them in my purse. “Hurry.”

  “Wait, you’re taking them again?”

  “Unless you want it to be locked up in evidence for the next three years, and the rest to go to taxes. We’ll need it for le
gal fees, and we have another bill coming up for Grandma’s care. And half of it’s Carly’s. Help me. Please.”

  He took another few handfuls out of the box, dropped them on the car floor, and hoisted the box up, before hurrying into the house with it.

  I followed right behind.

  My mother watched us go in, but stayed on the porch, watching Brian wrestle Anne back toward the house.

  Logan headed to his grandmother’s bedroom and directly to her walk-in closet where the entrance for the house’s crawlspace was. He gave the trapdoor a good yank, and it came right up, unlike when I’d tugged and tugged at the damn thing a few days ago. As soon as he got the door out, he dropped the box the four feet or so to the dirt, and gold coins bounced everywhere. He’d just flung probably a million dollars under there.

  I gaped at him as he closed the trapdoor, grabbed some of my mother’s shoes and her dirty clothes basket and draped them across the floor. My mother would be mortified at the mess we made, but it did hide the door.

  We walked out and found Brian in the doorway of my mother’s bedroom.

  “You still don’t get it, do you?” Logan asked me, while Brian watched.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I still need to know, did you kill Alex?”

  “Hey, what the hell?” Brian came into the room toward me but stopped when Logan held up his hand.

  “I, well, I don’t know, but I think so, yeah.”

  Brian’s mouth fell open when Logan spoke.

  “We were drunk. Out on Alex’s 4-wheeler when we rolled. Somehow, I got clear. I don’t really remember. I just remember looking over the edge of the road and seeing Alex all bent and broken.” Logan’s face was pale, as if he were haunted by the memory. Tears tracked down his young face, but he didn’t wipe them away. “I panicked. I was drunk and scared. I called mom. She came and got me. She saw Alex too, but she told me that if we called for help, I’d go to jail forever. And I believed her. She went down and wiped my prints off the 4-wheeler, and I went home with her. I passed out in the car. I don’t even remember getting home, but when I woke up and heard that Alex died, I knew what really happened, and I’ve hated myself ever since.”

  “So, you were driving?” Brian asked.

  “I don’t know if I was driving when we crashed, but I left my best friend there to die alone. And I let his parents search for him for two days without saying that I knew where he was. I pretended to search, remember? But I was so scared. And mom told me my whole life would be ruined and so would hers if I said anything.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Dad, you might as well have them come arrest me too. I killed him. It was an accident, but I was drunk, and we crashed. It was my fault. Mom covered it up.”

  “Your mother…” Brian fell into a stunned silence.

  I felt sick. My sister and I were more alike than I thought. She was just trying to take care of her kids. But she’d taken it way too far.

  Logan finally broke the silence. “I need to take responsibility for this.”

  Whatever color was left in Brian’s face now drained out completely.

  “Son, let’s talk about this tonight. We don’t need to decide right now.”

  Logan started toward his dad, but I stopped him. “Wait. What about the safe word? Was Alex scared for his life with you?”

  Logan scoffed. “No, he was just fucking with his Dad. Frank was pretty fun to screw with. He was paranoid. Especially after we took the gold. He thought everyone was out to get him. And he could be an asshole. Alex would screw with him when he was being a dick to Carly. We were drinking that day, and Frank apparently lost his paycheck again, gambling. Carly was angry and scared. Alex sent it because he knew his dad wouldn’t show up, and he wanted to make the point that a ‘safe word’ was pointless if whoever got it ignored it and didn’t do shit. But it doesn’t change that I was there. And I lied about it. He might have been alive when we left him. I don’t know.”

  “Hold up,” Brian said. “The two of you took the gold? From your own Grandpa and Alex’s Dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When you were sixteen?” Brian asked again, in disbelief.

  “Yes, Dad. We went back and took the gold.”

  “So,” Brian paused and rubbed his hands across his face, “I’m confused. You robbed your own family, but your mother has it now? In her van?”

  Logan nodded. “We hid it in Gram’s shed. But she found it. Or Aunt Trish found it and moved it. And Mom found that. But… wait! Where’s Mom now? She was with you!” Panic laced Logan’s voice.

  Brian rubbed his face. “Mike is here. He’s talking to her out front. She wants you out there now. She keeps saying how Tricia planted evidence in her car, but she’s innocent. But innocent of what? What the hell is going on?”

  “She was the runner, Brian,“ I said. “I think she killed Frank.”

  Brian grabbed onto the door jamb. “There’s no way. Anne? My Annie?”

  I wanted to cry at that endearment. I’d forgotten that he used to call her that. He was the only person on the planet who ever got away with it. “Go get her gym bag out of her car. Test the stains on her running shoes. All the evidence is there. In her car.”

  “But why?” Brian asked. “Why would she do that? What would she get out of killing Frank?”

  “Dad, you know how she is, more than a little protective. This winter, I made the mistake of telling her that Frank was around. Maybe because of the safe word. I don’t know, but when he’d get drunk, he’d call or wait outside my apartment. Yell shit. Accuse me of killing Alex. So, I stopped doling out any coins for him to cash in which is what Alex and I’d been doing since we took it. And Frank got worse. I got a little nervous.”

  “What were you thinking, Son?” Brian yelled. His face which had been leached of color started to redden in anger.

  This was the Brian I recognized.

  “I can’t believe you would take the gold from your own family,” he yelled. “What the hell’s wrong with you? And now this?” He waved his arm toward the front of the house, before turning and storming back out.

  Logan watched him go in silence.

  “Logan? Are you going to tell him about what you’ve got under this house?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Maybe. I honestly don’t know. I’ll figure that out later.”

  I reached up and gave him a hug. “I won’t say a word.”

  Logan broke down sobbing in my arms. “I’ve ruined this whole family. This is all my fault. Alex and I should have never done any of it.”

  His body shook as I patted his back.

  “Well, I won’t disagree with you there, but you didn’t know what would happen. It sounds to me like you were trying to do the best thing. Now it’s time to do that again. Be honest and own up to everything.”

  It took a few minutes, but Logan finally managed to calm himself down, and we headed out front.

  I followed him but while he headed across the lawn to his parents, I stopped and sat next to my mother on the porch, her eyes starting to swell from the tears. I patted her leg and felt my own tears coming as I watched the drama play out in the front yard. The street was filled with cop cars. Neighbors stood in their yards or together in small groups, staring and trying to figure out what was going on.

  Anne was pleading with Brian. Her face was streaked with mascara. She started yelling at her son as soon as we came out of the house.

  “How could you, Logan? After all I’ve done for you, to protect you. Everything was for you, to protect you, Logan. You.”

  Logan’s shoulders dropped with the weight of his mother’s words. “How would anything you did protect me? You didn’t protect anyone. You’ve ruined this family.”

  “Me? I didn’t steal from this family—you did. And, Logan, Frank knew. He knew you were with Alex. I saved your future. This was all to protect you. I did it for you, son!”

  Brian closed his eyes and took a breath before speaking. “That’s it, Mike. Take her in.” He grabb
ed his wife’s upper arm and escorted her to Mike who cuffed her and read her, her rights.

  More cops headed toward the porch.

  “We’re going to need to take statements from all of you,” a uniformed officer said.

  “Of course, but is there any way I can get my purse out of my sister’s car? And my phone? I told my kids I was going to be driving back to San Francisco today, and that’s apparently not happening,” I said.

  “No, I’m afraid the investigators are going to need to go through everything in that vehicle. It could be a while before you get that back.”

  I groaned as the officer began to separate us so we could all give our statements.

  Four hours later, the cops finally left. They ended up taking Logan to the station for his statement related to Alex’s accident but since there was no evidence that he’d been driving, or was even there, they weren’t charging him with anything. He left the scene of an accident, but Anne swore he told her he’d been a passenger. They were holding Anne on Frank’s murder, though it would take a day to get a match back on the blood they found on her shoes and formally charge her.

  Thankfully, during the entire questioning, I never lied to cover for Logan dumping the bulk of the gold under my mother’s house. They asked about me finding the gold in the shed, and I told them I moved it to the house, but it vanished from my closet. I hadn’t seen any of it again until I saw it under the blankets in the back of my sister’s car. I didn’t tell them about the one I cashed in and taken to Carly or the one I still shoved in my bra.

  But they hadn’t asked.

  I answered all their questions. My mother had, too. But none of our answers could save my sister.

  ♦♦♦

  I ended up staying in Idaho for another two weeks, more for moral and emotional support for my mother than anything else. The day Anne officially got charged with first-degree murder impacted Mom more than even my Dad’s death. She didn’t want to eat. She cried constantly. She kept trying to understand where it had all gone wrong, but there was no understanding any of it.