Found money

by James Grippando

  “Don’t you think we owe it to our father to trust his judgment on those questions?”

  “Hell, no. I loved Dad, but the bottom line is, he was a blackmailer. Morality aside, this money raises some serious legal problems. If the IRS or FBI gets wind of the fact that Dad somehow came into two million dollars without winning the Lotto, someone — namely us — is going to have some serious explaining to do.”

  “Fine. Then give me my million, and you can do whatever you want with yours. I’ll take my chances. But from where I sit, it seems like lawyers are pretty damn good at keeping millionaires out of trouble.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you over this. We need a plan, one we both can stick to.”

  She struggled for a deep breath, shifting her pregnant body awkwardly in her chair. The slightest movement seemed to bring on discomfort. “Damn it, Ryan. You’ve got my hemorrhoids flaring up.”

  “I’ll write you a prescription,” he said dryly.

  “Wouldn’t do any good. I couldn’t afford to get it filled. Look at the realities, Ryan. It’s been a tough year for the whole family. On top of Dad’s doctor bills, pretty soon we’re going to have to figure out a way to take care of Mom. She depended on Dad for everything, so you can bet she’ll look to us now. You’re in the middle of a divorce, and even though Liz has been acting pretty civil toward the family, I think it says something that she didn’t come to the funeral. From what I hear, she’s gone out and hired a shark of a Denver divorce lawyer who has a reputation for leaving husbands flat broke.”

  “Sarah, I can deal with my own problems.”

  “Well, I’ve got problems of my own. At my age, it ended up costing me and Brent a fortune to get pregnant. All these fertility drugs aren’t cheap. We’re up to our eyeballs in debt, and the baby isn’t even born yet. And the way Mom keeps nagging, I shouldn’t have to remind you that Brent hasn’t worked since they closed down the plant.”

  “You think two million dollars can solve the world’s problems?”

  “No. But it can solve ours.”

  “It might create more problems than it solves.”

  “Only if you let it, Ryan. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to see my million dollars.”

  He shook his head. “We can’t split it up until we have an agreement on what we’re going to do with it.”

  “It’s my money. I’ll do what I want.”

  “We have to stick together on this. There’s all kinds of issues to resolve. Not the least of which is possible estate tax.”

  “Jeez, Ryan. Just take the money, and be happy.”

  “I’m the executor of the estate. It’s my neck on the line. Blackmail is illegal, you know. We’re talking about receiving the proceeds of criminal activity. If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it the right way.”

  “And what is the right way?”

  “I’ll keep the money hidden until we find out who Dad blackmailed and why. In the meantime, we tell no one about it. Not Liz. Not Brent. That way, the secret won’t slip out and the IRS won’t come crashing down on our heads. In the end, if we’re satisfied that Dad was right — if the man did deserve to be blackmailed — then we’ll keep it.”

  “And if he didn’t deserve it?”

  “Then we make a two-million-dollar anonymous donation to charity.”

  “Get outta town!”

  “That’s the deal, Sarah.”

  “What if I don’t like it?”

  “I don’t want to be a bully about this, but you don’t know where the money is. I do. If anybody gets greedy, I’ve already picked out a very deserving charity.”

  “Shit, Ryan. That’s like extortion.”

  “It must run in the family.”

  She made a face.

  “So,” he said. “We tell no one, not even Liz or Brent. Especially not Liz or Brent. Till I find out the truth. Do we have a deal?”

  “I guess so,” she said, grumbling.

  “Good.” He rose to help his sister from the chair. She waved him off, refusing his offer. He stepped aside as she waddled toward the door. He scratched his head and watched, wondering if the compromise was the right thing to do — and questioning the strength of Sarah’s commitment.

  Ryan knew his sister was angry. She left the house immediately after their conversation, barely taking the time to say goodbye to their mother. He didn’t see any point in chasing after her. They’d each had their say. Hopefully she’d cool down on her own.

  His mother and aunts were bouncing back and forth between the kitchen and dining room cleaning up. Staying busy was certainly one way to stave off the loneliness, the crying jags. Ryan escaped to the family room and switched on the evening news. A flood in India had killed eighty-six people. A convenience store clerk had been shot to death in Fort Collins.

  A working stiff in Piedmont Springs just died in his sleep. The last one didn’t make the news. No violence, no fascination, no news. Should have jumped off a building, Dad.

  Ryan paused, wondering if his father had succumbed to the thinking that a life wasn’t worthy unless it was news worthy. Dad had always short-changed his own accomplishments, never fully seeing the beauty in the way he made others feel good about themselves, one person at a time. Most people didn’t think the cashier at the grocery store or the gas station attendant were worth their time. Frank Duffy knew their names, and they knew his. He had the magic touch with everyone. That was something to be proud of. Yet Ryan remembered back in high school, when his acceptance letter had come from the University of Colorado. The first Duffy to go to college. His father had been more excited than anyone, embracing him so hard he’d nearly cracked a rib as he whispered in Ryan’s ear, “Now the Duffys finally have something to be proud of.” At the time, Ryan had thought it sad that his father didn’t feel the pride he rightfully should have felt. Now he could only wonder what secrets had made him feel so ashamed.

  The news was turning to sports when Ryan heard a knock on the front door. He rose from the couch and answered it.

  “Liz,” he said with surprise.

  His wife stood in the doorway, tentative. “Can — can I come in?”

  He stepped aside awkwardly. “Of course. Come in.”

  Liz was wearing a casual print sundress, not exactly mourning attire. It showed the figure she’d worked hard to maintain. She’d changed her hair, Ryan noticed. It was lighter, more blonde, making her eyes seem greener, her legs more tan. Physical attraction had never been the problem in their marriage. Maybe it was a classic case of wanting what you can’t have, but to Ryan his wife had never looked better than in the last seven weeks, since she’d told him she was filing for divorce.

  “Can I get you something?” asked Ryan. “Lots of food left. You know how funerals are in the Duffy family.”

  “No, thanks.”

  Ryan wasn’t surprised. Liz never ate, it seemed, never needed sustenance. Eight years of marriage and he never did find that battery she must have run on.

  Liz said, “Can we talk for a minute?”

  She seemed to be shying from the noise in the kitchen. Ryan quickly surmised her visit wasn’t family-oriented. She wanted some privacy. “Not to push you out the door,” he said, “but how about the porch?”

  She nodded, then led the way to the big covered wood porch that extended across the front of the house, overlooking the lawn. Ryan closed the door behind them. He started toward the wicker love seat near the picture window, but they both stopped short, thinking twice. Too many memories there, watching sunsets side by side. Liz took the old rocker. Ryan sat on the porch railing beside a potted cactus plant.

  “I’m sorry I missed the funeral,” she said, eyes lowered. “After all these years, I did love Frank. I wanted to go. I just thought it would have been awkward for the family. You, especially.”

  “I understand.”

  “I hope you do. Because I don’t want us to end up enemies.”

  “It’s okay. I promise.”

  She
looked away, then turned her gaze toward Ryan. “I don’t think Frank would want us to be enemies.”

  “Dad would want us to stay married, Liz. But this isn’t about what Dad wants.” Ryan paused. His words had sounded harsher than intended. “I do appreciate the way you helped me keep the lid on the divorce around Dad. There really wasn’t any need for him to know.”

  She sniffed back a tear, nearly scoffed. It was a hopeless charade Ryan had kept up for the sake of his dying father, never telling him that the marriage was over. “He must have known. For God’s sake, we lived in Piedmont Springs. Everybody knew.”

  “He never said anything to me. To suggest he knew, I mean.”

  “We talked a couple of weeks ago. On the phone.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “He didn’t really come right out and say the word ‘divorce.’ But I think he sensed you and I were having money problems.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Just before he hung up, he said something like, hang in there. Things will get better for you and Ryan. Money will come soon.”

  “Did you ask him what he meant by that?”

  “I didn’t push it. At the time, I didn’t see the point.” She paused, as if considering what she was about to say. “But I’ve been thinking about what he said. A lot. I guess that’s why I drove all the way down here to see you.”

  Ryan bristled. “What have you been thinking?”

  “I thought, if only that were true. If we could solve our money problems, maybe we wouldn’t be where we are now.” She looked up, catching Ryan’s eye.

  He blinked. She looked sincere, sounded like she meant what she was saying. Yet he somehow didn’t trust her. Anger swelled inside him. It was the damn money. Either she was after it, and it was making her deceitful. Or she knew nothing about it, and it was making him paranoid. The damn money.

  “Liz, I’d be lying if I said I’d lost all feelings for you. But I just buried my father today. I can’t get on this emotional roller coaster.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, rising. “I didn’t come here to mess with your head.”

  “I didn’t mean to send you away.”

  She smiled sadly. “It’s okay. I really should go. Give my love to Jeanette.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek — just a peck, next to nothing.

  “Thanks for coming by. It means a lot.”

  “You’re welcome.” She headed down the steps and crossed the lawn. With a half-turn she waved goodbye, then got in her car and drove away.

  He watched as her taillights faded into the darkness. He was tempted to call her back and tell her about the money. But his sister’s earlier warning echoed in his mind — how Liz had hired herself a shark of a Denver divorce lawyer. Maybe Liz was just fishing for assets, something to report back to her lawyer.

  Ryan walked back inside, chiding himself. After coming down hard on Sarah to keep things quiet until they sorted out the truth, there he was ready to tell all to Liz at the first sign of a possible reconciliation. Still, he couldn’t deny his feelings for Liz. What was so awful about a woman who wanted a little financial security?

  He went to the living room and picked up the phone, ready to call her answering machine and tell her to call him as soon as she got in. He punched three buttons, then hung up.

  Sleep on it, he told himself.

  10

  Two days had passed, and Amy was still working up the nerve to phone Ryan Duffy. Just one question — the two-hundred-thousand-dollar question — had her paralyzed: Did she have the right Duffys?

  She had done some serious checking. Yesterday, she’d even taken a sick day from the firm and driven all the way to Piedmont Springs, looking discreetly for obvious signs of wealth, a lifestyle befitting a family that could spare an extra two hundred thousand dollars. She found nothing of the sort. The Duffys owned a simple house in a rural middleclass town. The only car in the driveway was an older Jeep Cherokee. Ryan’s clinic had the street presence of an abandoned five-and-dime store, serving patients who looked like they might barter sheep for services. And Frank Duffy had worked for wages his entire life.

  Her findings had so befuddled her that last night she’d gone back to the computer to check the remaining Jeanette Duffys on her list. No one, however, seemed more promising than the Duffys of Piedmont Springs. Amy figured that whoever had sent the money didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to do it. Something had to trigger the decision — a traumatic and life-altering event, like Frank Duffy’s illness and impending death. It couldn’t be coincidence. It had to be these Duffys. For whatever reason, they just didn’t flaunt their money.

  Amy had to be cautious in her approach. It simply wouldn’t be smart to phone Frank Duffy’s son and say, “Someone in your family appears to have sent me a box full of cash for no good reason.” Greedy heirs weren’t likely to explain why she’d gotten the money. They were more likely to say, “It’s mine, give it back.”

  At lunchtime Thursday, Amy grabbed a Pepsi and an orange from the employee lounge and went back to her office. She peeled the orange and broke it into wedges as she glanced at the handful of snapshots she’d taken of the Duffy house. Eight of them were spread across her desk. It had seemed wise to take pictures, just in case she ever had to go to the police. Police were always taking pictures — at least that was her experience. She remembered when she was eight, when her mother died. The police were all over the house taking photographs.

  Funny, but the Duffy house resembled her old house in some ways. An old two-story frame with green shutters and a big porch out front, the kind they didn’t seem to build anymore. She wondered if Frank Duffy had died in that house, as her mother had died in theirs. She wondered who had found his body, the first to realize he was gone. The thought chilled her. There was something eerie about a house in which someone had died, which was only compounded when, as in her house, that someone had died so violently. Amy hadn’t gone back to her old house since the night of the gunshot. That is, she hadn’t physically gone back there. In her mind, she’d relived that night many times. Now, alone in the silence of her office, the photographs of the Duffy house seemed to blur, drifting out of focus. Her mind, too, began to drift. The image in the photographs looked more and more like her old house, until she could see beyond the likeness, see right into her old bedroom. She saw herself on that unforgettable night, a frightened eight-year-old girl alone in her dark bedroom, shivering with fear on a warm summer night, unsure of her next move…

  Amy was sitting on the window ledge, a tight little ball with her knees drawn up to her chin. She had waited for another gunshot, but there had been only one. Not another sound. Just silence in the darkness.

  She didn’t know what to do, whether to run or stay put. Someone could be out there, a burglar. Or Mom could need her help. She had to do something. It took all her courage, but slowly she lowered her feet to the floor. The wooden planks creaked beneath her feet, startling her. She took a deep breath and started toward the door. She stepped lightly, so as not to make a sound. If there was someone out there, she couldn’t let them hear her.

  The knob turned slowly in her hand. She pulled the door toward her. It opened a crack, then caught on something. She tugged harder. It would open no more than a two-finger width. With her cheek pressed against the door frame, she peered out the narrow opening. She blinked, confused. A rope was tied to her bedroom doorknob. The other end was looped around the banister across the hall. With the door open just an inch, it was taut as a tightrope.

  Someone on the outside had tied her inside her bedroom.

  She closed the door, trembling. On impulse, she ran into the closet and shut the door. It was pitch dark inside. She was accustomed to the dark, all the nights she’d spent with her telescope. For the first time, however, she was truly afraid of it.

  The flashlight, she thought.

  It was in there, she knew, with her astronomy books. The third shelf. She groped in the darkness, sorting throug
h her possessions by touch. Finally, she found it and switched it on. The brightness hurt her eyes, so she aimed it at the floor. The closet glowed. Her eyes adjusted. Shoes lay scattered on the floor. Her clothes hung on a rod directly above her head. To the side were the built-in shelves, reaching like a ladder from floor to ceiling. At the top was a panel — an entrance to the attic.

  She had used it once before to make an escape, when she was playing hide-and-seek with her friends. It led to the guest room across the hall. When her mother had found out, she’d told her never to go up there again. Tonight, however, was clearly an exception.

  Amy was frightened to go up alone but even more afraid to stay put. She swallowed hard for courage, then tucked the flashlight under her chin and climbed up the shelves.

  …The phone rang on her desk, rousing her from her twenty-year-old memories. Just a friend calling for lunch. “Sure,” said Amy. “Meet you in the lobby at noon.”

  She hung up, still distracted, connected to her past. It had taken a lot of courage for that little girl to climb out of that closet and see what lay outside her room. It was time to dig inside and find the same fortitude.

  She picked up the phone and dialed Ryan Duffy at his clinic. This time, she stayed on the line when the receptionist answered, unlike yesterday when she’d lost her nerve and hung up. “May I speak to Dr. Duffy, please?”

  “I’m sorry, he’s with a patient.”

  “Can you interrupt him, please? This will take just a minute.”

  “Is this an emergency?”

  “No, but-”

  “If it’s not an emergency, I’ll have him call you.”

  “It’s personal. Tell him it’s about his father.”

  The receptionist paused, then said, “Hold one moment.”

  Amy waited, reminding herself of the dos and don’ts. Tell the truth — to a point. First name only, not her last. No mention of where she lived.