Found money

by James Grippando

  Amy stuffed a box of Rice Krispies into the pantry. “Excellent idea. She’ll be the only four-year-old in Boulder who orders pommes frites with her Happy Meal.”

  “I’m serious, Amy. This money is going to open a whole new world for your daughter.”

  “That’s so unfair. Don’t use Taylor to make me feel better about keeping this money.”

  “I don’t understand you. What’s so wrong about keeping it?”

  “It makes me nervous. Sitting around, waiting for a letter in the mail or a knock on the door — anything that might explain the money. An explanation might never come. If the money was sent by mistake, I want to know. If it’s a gift, I’d like to know whose kindness is behind it.”

  “Hire a detective, if you’re that nervous. Maybe they can check the box or even the money for fingerprints.”

  “That’s a great idea.”

  “Just one problem. How are you going to pay for it?”

  Amy’s smile vanished.

  Gram said, “You could use some of the money. Take five hundred bucks or so.”

  “No. We can’t spend any of it until we find out who it’s from.”

  “Then all we can do is wait.” She folded up the paper shopping bag, placed it in a drawer, and kissed Amy on the forehead. “I’m going to check on our little angel.”

  She grimaced as her grandmother left the apartment. Waiting was not her style. Short of hiring a detective and checking for fingerprints, however, she wasn’t sure how else to go about it. Cash was virtually untraceable. The plastic lining had no identification on it. That left the box.

  The box!

  She hurried to the freezer, yanked open the door, and grabbed the box. She set in on the table and checked the flaps. Nothing on top. She turned it over. Bingo. As she had hoped, the box bore a printed product identification number for the Crock-Pot it had once contained. Amy had purchased enough small appliances to know that they always came with a warranty registration card. She doubted, however, that they would freely give out names and addresses over the phone. After a moment to collect her thoughts, she called directory assistance, got the toll-free number for Gemco Home Appliances, and dialed it.

  “Good afternoon,” she said in her most affected, friendly voice. “I have a favor to ask. We had a potluck supper here at the church the other night, and wouldn’t you know it that two women showed up with the exact same Gemco Crock-Pot? I washed them both, and now I’m not sure whose is whose. I really don’t want to have to tell these women I mixed up their stuff. If I gave you the product identification number from one of them, could you tell me who owns it?”

  The operator on the line hesitated. “I’m not sure I can do that, ma’am.”

  “Please. Just the name. It would save me a world of embarrassment.”

  “Well — I suppose that would be all right. Just don’t tell my supervisor.”

  She read him the eleven-digit number from the box, then waited anxiously.

  “Here it is,” he said. “That one belongs to Jeanette Duffy.”

  “Oh, Jeanette.” Amy wanted to push for an address, but she couldn’t think of a convincing way to work it into her ruse. Leave it be, she thought, heeding Gram’s advice. “Thank you so much, sir.”

  Her heart pounded as she hung up the phone. She had surprised herself, the way she’d pulled it off. It was actually kind of fun, exhilarating. Best of all, it had worked. She had a lead.

  Now all she had to do was find the right Jeanette Duffy.

  7

  The kitchen smelled of corned beef and cabbage. So did the dining room. The living room, too. The whole house smelled of it. It was a Duffy family tradition going back as far as Ryan could remember, which was his grandfather’s funeral. Just as soon as the body was in the ground, they’d file back to the house and stuff themselves, as if to prove that nothing was depressing enough to ruin a good meal. Somebody always brought corned beef and cabbage. Hell, anyone who could turn on an oven brought corned beef and cabbage.

  Dad didn’t even like corned beef and cabbage. Not that it mattered. Dad was gone. Forever.

  “Your father was a good man, Ryan.” It was Josh Colburn, the family lawyer. He’d been every family’s lawyer for the last fifty years. He was no Clarence Darrow, but he was an honest man, an old-school lawyer who considered the law a sacred profession. It was no wonder his dearly departed client’s last will and testament had made no mention of the stash in the attic. Colburn was the last person Dad would have told.

  He was back in the buffet line before Ryan could thank him for the kind words.

  Apart from the guests’ black attire, the post-cemetery gathering had lost any discernible connection to a funeral. It had begun somberly enough, with scattered groups of friends and relatives quietly remembering Frank Duffy. As the crowd grew, so did the noise level. The small groups expanded from three or four to six or eight, until the house was so crowded it was impossible to tell where one group left off and the other started. The food had broken whatever ice remained — tons of food from mutton to whitefish, dumplings to trifle. Before long, someone was playing “Danny Boy” on the old upright piano, and Uncle Kevin was pouring shots of Jameson’s, toasting his dearly departed brother and days gone by.

  Ryan didn’t join in. He just kept moving from room to room, knowing that if he stood still he’d be locked in conversation with someone he had no interest in talking to. In fact, he had no interest in talking to anyone. Except his mother.

  Ryan had been watching her closely all day, ever since that eulogy that had moved everyone to tears — everyone but Jeanette Duffy. She had a detached look about her. In some ways it seemed normal. She wouldn’t be the first widow to walk numbly through her husband’s funeral. It was just so unlike his mother. She was an emotional woman, the kind who’d seen It’s a Wonderful Life at least fifty times and still cried every time Clarence got his wings.

  Ryan caught her eye from across the room. She looked away.

  “Eat something, Ryan.” His aunt was pushing a plate of food toward him.

  “No, thanks. I’m not really hungry.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “Really, I’m not hungry.” Through the crowd, he tried to catch his mother’s eye again, but she wouldn’t look his way. He glanced down at his four-foot-ten-inch aunt. “Aunt Angie, does Mom seem okay to you?”

  “Okay? I guess so. This is a very tough time for her, Ryan. Your father is the only man she ever — you know. Loved. What they had was special. They were like one person.”

  He glanced at his mother, then back at his aunt. “I don’t suppose they would have kept any secrets from each other, would they?”

  “I wouldn’t think so. No, definitely not. Not Frank and Jeanette.”

  Ryan was staring in his mother’s direction, but he’d lost focus. He was deep in thought.

  His aunt touched his hand. “Are you all right, darling?”

  “I’m fine,” he said vaguely. “I think I just need some air. Will you excuse me a minute?” He started across the living room, toward the front door, then stopped. He sensed his mother was watching. He turned and caught her eye. This time she didn’t look away.

  Ryan worked his way back through the crowd toward the dining room. His mother was standing at the head of the table full of food, busily cutting a piece of corned beef into toddler-sized pieces for some youngster. He stood right beside her, laid his hand on hers, speaking in a soft voice. “Mom, I need to talk to you in private.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled nervously. “But the guests.”

  “They can wait, Mom. This is important.”

  She blinked nervously, then laid down the carving knife beside the plate of bite-size beef. “All right. We can talk in the master.”

  Ryan followed her down the hall. The door flew open as they reached the master suite. An old man came out, zipping his fly.

  “Sorry,” he said sheepishly.
“Damn prostate, you know.” He hurried away.

  They entered together. Ryan closed the door, shutting out the noise. Like his own old bedroom, the master was a veritable time capsule, complete with the old sculptured wall-to-wall carpeting and cabbage rose wallpaper. The bed was the old four-poster style, so high off the floor it required a step-stool to get into it. He and his sister Sarah used to hide beneath it as kids. Dad would pretend he couldn’t find them, even though their giggling was loud enough to wake up the neighbors. Ryan shook off the memories and checked the master bathroom, making sure they were alone. His mother sat in the armchair in the corner beside the bureau. Ryan leaned against the bedpost.

  “What’s on your mind, Ryan?”

  “Dad told me something the night before he died. Something pretty disturbing.”

  Her voice cracked. “Oh?”

  He started to pace. “Look, there’s really no delicate way to put this, so let me just ask you. Did you know anything about some kind of blackmail Dad might have been involved in?”

  “Blackmail?”

  “Yes, blackmail. Two million dollars, cash.” Ryan checked her reaction, searching for surprise. He saw none.

  “Yes, I knew.”

  He suddenly stopped pacing, stunned. “You knew what?”

  She sighed. It was as if she were expecting this conversation, but that didn’t mean she had to enjoy it. “I knew about the money. And I knew about the blackmail.”

  “You actually let him do it?”

  “It’s not that simple, Ryan.”

  His voice grew louder. “I’m all ears, Mom. Tell me.”

  “There’s no need for that tone.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that we haven’t exactly lived like millionaires. Now Dad’s dead, I find out he was a blackmailer, and there’s two million dollars in the attic. Who in the heck was he blackmailing?”

  “That I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “He never told me. He didn’t want me to know. That way, if anything ever went wrong, I could honestly tell the police I didn’t know anything. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “But you were happy to reap the benefits.”

  “No, I wasn’t. That’s why the money’s still in the attic. To me, it was tainted. I would never let your father spend a penny of it. Your father and I had some doozy fights over this. I even threatened to leave him.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  She looked at him curiously, as if the question were stupid. “I loved him. And he told me the man deserved to be blackmailed.”

  “You believed him?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that’s it? Dad says the guy deserved it, so you let him keep the money. But you wouldn’t let him spend it. That’s crazy.”

  She folded her arms, suddenly defensive. “We reached a compromise. I didn’t feel comfortable spending the money, but your father thought you and your sister might feel differently. So we agreed that he would keep it hidden until he died. Then we’d leave it up to you and Sarah to decide whether you wanted to keep it, leave it, burn it — whatever you decide. It’s yours. If you can spend it in good conscience, you have your father’s blessing.”

  Ryan stepped to the window, looking out to the backyard. Uncle Kevin was organizing a game of horseshoes. He spoke quietly with his back to his mother. “What am I supposed to say?”

  “It’s your call — yours and Sarah’s.”

  He turned and faced her, showing no emotion. “Guess it’s time I had a little talk with my big sister.”

  8

  The Crock-Pot discovery had Amy in high gear. Just to be safe, she didn’t want to use the law firm’s computers or phones for the follow-up on Jeanette Duffy. A run through her standard Internet search engines on her home computer, however, had turned up hundreds of Jeanette Duffys nationwide, with nothing to distinguish any one of them as the possible sender. So she went to the University of Colorado law library for more sophisticated computerized capabilities. She wasn’t technically a student yet, but a sweet smile and a copy of her acceptance letter for the fall class was good enough to gain access to the free Nexis service, which would allow her to search hundreds of newspapers and periodicals.

  She figured she’d limit the search to Colorado initially, then expand out from there, if necessary. She typed in “Jeanette Duffy” and hit the search button, then chose the most recent entry from a chronological listing of about a dozen articles.

  The blue screen blinked and displayed the full text of an article from yesterday’s Pueblo Chieftain. Amy half expected to find that someone named Jeanette Duffy had just embezzled two hundred thousand dollars from the First National Bank of Colorado.

  Instead, she found an obituary.

  “Frank Duffy,” it read, “62, longtime resident of Piedmont Springs, on July 11, after a courageous battle with cancer. Survived by Jeanette Duffy, his wife of 44 years; their son, Ryan Patrick Duffy, M.D.; and their daughter, Sarah Duffy-Langford. Services today, 10 A.M., at St. Edmund’s Catholic church in Piedmont Springs.”

  Amy stared at the screen. A death made sense of things. Perhaps the two hundred thousand dollars was some kind of bequest. She printed the article, then logged off the computer, headed for the pay phone by the rest rooms, and dialed home.

  “Gram, do you remember the exact day our little package was delivered?”

  “I told you before, darling. I wasn’t there when it came. It was just waiting on the doorstep.”

  “Think hard. What day was it when it just showed up?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. But it was right after you left. No more than a couple days.”

  “So, definitely more than a week ago?”

  “I’d say so, yes. Why do you ask?”

  She hesitated, fearing her grandmother’s wrath.

  “I’ve been doing a little investigating.”

  “Amy,” her grandmother said, groaning.

  “Just listen. The money came in an old box for a Crock-Pot, right? Well, I took the serial number from the box and found out that the Crock-Pot belonged to Jeanette Duffy. Turns out there’s a Jeanette Duffy in Piedmont Springs whose husband died five days ago.”

  “Don’t tell me. They buried him in a Crock-Pot.”

  “Stop, Gram. I think I’m on to something. The obituary said he had a courageous battle with cancer. That means he knew he was dying. He could have sent it to me before his death. Or his wife could have sent it. Like a secret bequest or something that he didn’t want their children to know about.”

  “Don’t you think you’re jumping to conclusions here?”

  “Not really. All my fears about possible criminal connections seem off the mark, the more I think about it. Criminals wouldn’t send money in a Crock-Pot box. No offense, Gram, but that sounds like something an old man or woman would do.”

  “So, what are you going to do now? Call this Jeanette Duffy just a few days after her dead husband is laid in the ground? Please, give the poor woman some time to grieve.”

  “Gosh, I hate to lose any time.”

  “Amy,” she said sternly. “Show some consideration.”

  “Okay, okay. I gotta run. Love to Taylor.” She hung up, tempted to snatch the phone right back and call Jeanette Duffy. But Gram was right. It was conceivable that Jeanette Duffy’s husband had sent the money without his wife’s knowledge. Or Amy could have the wrong Jeanette Duffy entirely. Either way, it would be cruel to confront a recent widow with a discovery like this. She checked the obituary again. A sly smile came to her face as she hurriedly dialed directory assistance.

  “Piedmont Springs,” she said into the phone.

  “Yes, I’d like the number and the address for Ryan Duffy, M.D.” She smirked as she jotted down the information.

  The widow was off limits. But the son was fair game.

  9

  “We’re rich!”

  Sarah Langford’s face beamed with excitement as she spoke. His sister wo
uld have leapt from her chair, thought Ryan, had she not been eight months pregnant.

  Sarah was just five years older than Ryan, but to him she had always seemed old. In grade school, her beehive hairdo and sixties-style cat’s-eye glasses made her look more matronly than their own mother. Kids used to tease that Ryan was prettier than his sister, more a slap to her than a compliment to him. Sadly, she hadn’t really changed much over the past three decades, save for the gray hair, crow’s feet around the eyes, and additional poundage. Sarah had been big before getting pregnant, which made her eighth month look more like her twelfth.

  “Two million bucks!” She was literally squealing with delight. “I just can’t believe it!”

  They were alone in Ryan’s old room. Their mother was downstairs with a handful of relatives who had decided to make dinner out of the leftovers from this afternoon’s post-service feast. Ryan was sitting on the bed. Sarah had squeezed into the nicked and scratched Windsor chair from his old desk. There had been no option but to tell her. Half the money was rightfully hers. Still, he hadn’t expected her to go giddy on him. At least not on the very same day their father had been buried.

  “Easy, Sarah. There is a catch.”

  Her excitement slowly faded. “A catch?”

  “It’s not really found money, so to speak. At best, it’s tainted.”

  “In what way?”

  “Dad got it by blackmailing somebody.”

  Her eyes widened once again, this time with anger. “If this is your idea of a joke, I’m-”

  “It’s no joke.” In minutes, he explained all he knew — in particular, how neither he nor their mother knew who had paid the money. “The only thing he told Mom was that the guy deserved to be blackmailed.”

  “Then we deserve to keep it.”

  “Sarah, we don’t know that.”

  “What do you want to do, give it back?”

  He said nothing.

  His sister shot him a troubled look. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I just want to get some basic questions answered before we do anything. For all we know, Dad extorted some poor old fart for every cent he was worth. Or maybe he was forced to steal to meet Dad’s demands. And what horrible thing did this guy do in the first place to make him vulnerable to blackmail?”