Found money

by James Grippando

  The ceiling panel popped open easily, quietly. She pushed it up and to the side, opening her passage to the attic. The trapped air felt hot, heavy. With one last boost she was in.

  The flashlight pointed the way. She remembered from the last time, when she and her friends had been playing, that another entrance panel was just a few feet away. That one led to the spare bedroom across the hall. On hands and knees she crawled across the rafters, taking care not to drop the flashlight.

  She stopped when she reached the other panel, lifted it with one hand, and looked down from the attic. The closet was exactly like hers — a clothes rod on one side, built-in shelves on the other. She tucked the flashlight back under her chin and climbed down, again using the shelves as a ladder. When she reached the bottom, she crouched into a ball and took a minute to orient herself. If there was an intruder in the house, he might not find her here. She could just stay put, hide out. But the thought again crossed her mind — what if Mom needed her? What if she was hurt?

  She rose slowly. She had to go out there. And she couldn’t take the flashlight. If someone was in the darkness, it would give her away like the North Star in the night sky.

  She switched off the flashlight and opened the closet door. The hall was just a few steps away, beyond the bedroom door. She covered them quietly, then peered down the hallway. She saw nothing. She waited a few seconds. Still nothing. Her heart was in her throat as she stepped from the safety of the spare bedroom.

  Her mother’s room was upstairs, like Amy’s, but on the opposite end of the house. It was dark, but Amy found her way. She was relying more on memory than her sense of sight. She could hear the oscillating fan in her mother’s bedroom. She was getting close. She stopped at the doorway. The door was open just a foot. Amy took another step and peeked inside.

  The lights were out, but the streetlight on the corner gave the room a faint yellow cast. Everything looked normal. The TV on the stand. The big mirror over the bureau. Her eyes drifted toward the bed. It was a mound of covers. Amy couldn’t really make out her mother’s shape. But she saw the hand. It was hanging limply over the edge of the bed. A sleep far deeper than Amy had ever seen.

  “Mom?” she said with trepidation.

  There was no answer.

  She said it again. “Mom. Are you okay?”

  “Mom, Mom!”

  The sound of Taylor’s voice roused her from her memories.

  “Mommy, let me look!” Taylor was yanking on her arm, climbing up to the telescope.

  Amy stepped back and hugged her tight.

  Her daughter wiggled away. “I wanna see.”

  Amy turned the scope away from the Ring Nebula, away from her past. She trained it downward, pointing toward the Fleming Law Building, just a little farther south on campus. The lights were still burning in the library. Probably someone from the law review. She lifted Taylor up to look.

  “That’s where Mommy will go to law school in September.”

  “Do you get to look through telly scopes?”

  “No. Not in law school.”

  “Then why do you want to go there?”

  She struggled with the lump in her throat. “Let’s go home now, Taylor.”

  They were on the road by ten-thirty, but Taylor was asleep in her car seat before they’d left campus. By day, a drive on U.S. 36 offered magnificent views of Flagstaff Mountain and the Flat Irons, the much-photographed reddish-brown sandstone formations that marked the abrupt border between the plains and the mountains. At night, it was just another dark place to be alone with your thoughts and worries.

  Tonight, money was on her mind.

  She parked her truck in the usual spot and carried her sleeping beauty up to the apartment. She entered quietly and took Taylor straight to her room. It was a little dream world for both of them. Amy had painted the ceiling with stars and moons. The colors, however, had been selected by Taylor. They had the only planetarium in the world with a Crayola-pink sky.

  Amy did the best she could to remove the shoes and get Taylor into pajamas without waking her. She kissed her good night, then switched out the light and quietly closed the door.

  It had been a good night, mostly. Overall, the visit to the observatory had only raised her hopes that Ryan Duffy would come through. If the money were legitimate, she could say goodbye to law school and go back where she belonged.

  Money — the need for it — would no longer be her trumped-up excuse to run from the demons that lurked in the sky she had loved since childhood.

  17

  The money was burning. But only in his mind.

  The metal suitcase full of cash was heavier than Ryan had expected. He’d carried it down the ladder, then down the stairs. He’d moved so quickly that the flame in the fireplace was still going strong when he returned. He dropped to his knees right at the hearth, unzipped the bag, and jerked back the metal screen. His hand shook as he reached for the money. He was determined to go through with it. And then he froze.

  Two million dollars.

  Both the heat and nerves had him dripping with sweat. Still on his knees, he looked back and forth from the money to the flame as he weighed his decision. It was making him crazy. It was making them all crazy. His father had been dead less than a week. His wife was clawing at his throat for a huge divorce settlement, spurred on by his father’s dying words. His greedy brother-in-law was threatening to beat up his pregnant sister, prompting Ryan to torch the equivalent of a month’s salary. And some mysterious woman claimed his father might have sent her as much as two hundred thousand dollars for no reason at all. The money was evil, no question about it. Burning it was the right thing to do.

  He grabbed a stack of bills and held it over the fire. His brain commanded him to drop it, but the hand wouldn’t listen. Or maybe it was the heart. He just couldn’t.

  His eyes closed in shame and anguish. He’d never felt the power of money. He’d never felt so weak.

  A sudden noise roused him from his thoughts. It had come from outside. He jumped up from his knees and hurried to the window. In the darkness, he saw Brent’s Buick coming up the driveway.

  He’s back.

  Ryan turned away in panic. The money. He had to hide the money. He grabbed the suitcase and paused for a split second, searching in his mind for a good place to stash it. He heard a car door slam. No time to spare. He stuffed it under the couch. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the fire still burning. The money should have gone with it — which gave him an idea. He grabbed the newspaper from the couch and pitched it into the fire. It burned immediately, leaving the flaky residue of burned paper. It could pass for burned money. Not many people were crazy enough to know what burned money actually looked like.

  Ryan stiffened, thinking through the possibilities. It wasn’t likely that Brent would come back to talk. It wasn’t likely he’d sobered up. He was probably even more drunk, more fired up. He’d be looking for the money. He would have come back only for a showdown. Ryan didn’t own a gun, but his father had. Ryan had inventoried everything in the estate. He knew where everything was, right down to the last two million dollars. Down to the last thirty-eight-caliber bullet.

  He sprinted down the hall to the master bedroom. The old Smith & Wesson was in the dresser, top drawer. The bullets were in the strongbox in the closet. Ryan grabbed the revolver first, then the ammunition. He loaded all six chambers and wrapped his hand around the pearl handle, the way his father had taught him. The gun was not a toy, he’d always warned Ryan, it was only for protection. Protection from drunken in-laws who were after the Duffy millions.

  Ryan heard footsteps on the front porch, then a key in the front door. He switched off the safety on the revolver and started for the living room.

  Gun in hand, he waited by the staircase, watching the front door. He heard keys jingling. He watched the lock turn. He raised the gun, taking aim, ready on the defense. The door opened. Ryan’s finger twitched. His heart pounded. His whole body stiffened, then su
ddenly relaxed.

  “Mom?” he said, seeing her in the doorway.

  She sniffed the smoky room. Her face went ashen. “Don’t tell me you really burned it.”

  He was tongue-tied with surprise. His mother had always been intuitive, but to infer from the mere smell of smoke that he had burned all the money was downright clairvoyant. He lowered the gun, deciding to play dumb. “Burn what?”

  She closed the door and went straight to the fireplace. “The money,” she said harshly. “I was at Sarah’s house and Brent came home all hysterical. Said you’d gone crazy and were burning the money.”

  “Is he out there now?” ask Ryan. “I thought I saw his car.”

  “Sarah drove me over.” She glanced at the ash in the fireplace. “I can’t believe you did this.”

  He discreetly stuffed the gun into his pocket, hiding it from his mother. “What did Brent tell you?”

  “He said you burned at least ten thousand dollars in the fireplace. That you threatened to burn it all.”

  “That’s true.”

  His mother stepped toward him, looked him in the eye. “Have you been drinking?”

  “No. Brent’s the drunk. He came in here like a burglar looking for the money.”

  Her tone softened. “They’re afraid you’re going to cheat them out of their half.”

  “I’m not cheating anyone.”

  She looked again at the ashes in the fireplace. “Ryan, you can do what you want with your share of the money. But you don’t have the right to burn your sister’s.”

  “Sarah and I had a deal. The money would stay put until we figured out who Dad was blackmailing and why. She wasn’t even supposed to tell Brent. Obviously she did.”

  “You had to figure she’d tell her own husband.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s her husband.”

  “By that logic, Dad should have told you who he was blackmailing.”

  She seemed to shrink before his eyes. “I told you. I don’t know any of the details. I didn’t want to know, and your father didn’t want to tell me.”

  Ryan stepped closer and took her hand. “Mom, I came this close to burning two million dollars tonight. Maybe you would agree with that move, maybe you’d disagree. But I deserve to know everything you know before I do something that final.”

  She turned away and faced the fireplace. The flickering flames were reflected in her dark, troubled eyes. She answered in a soft, serious voice, never looking up. “I do know more. But I don’t know everything.”

  Ryan was beginning to sense why his mother hadn’t cried at the funeral. “Tell me what you know.”

  “Your father-” She was struggling for words. “I think I know where you can find the answers you’re looking for.”

  “Where?”

  “The night before he died, your father gave me a key to a safe deposit box.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “I don’t know. Your father just said that if you had any questions about the money, I should give it to you. I’m sure the blackmail will become clear once you open it.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because even though your father couldn’t say it to your face, he apparently wanted you to know. And I know of no place else to look.”

  He searched her eyes, as if scrutinizing her soul. He’d never looked at his mother that way before, never had to watch for signs of deception. He found none. “Thank you, Mom. Thank you for telling me.”

  “Don’t thank me. Can’t you see how afraid this makes me? For you, for all of us?”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  She grimaced, as if in pain. “That’s up to you. You can be like me and just stay away from it. Or you can open the box and deal with whatever comes with it.”

  He paused for a moment until their eyes met. “I have to know, Mom.”

  “Of course you do,” she said in a voice that faded. “Just don’t tell me about it.”

  18

  Panama. Until now, it had meant nothing to Ryan but a famous canal and an infamous dethroned dictator named Noriega. When his mother had told him about the safe deposit box, he’d figured it might be as far away as Denver.

  What the hell was Dad doing with a safe deposit box in Panama?

  The key and related documentation were in a locked strongbox in the bedroom closet, right where his mother had said they would be. Box 242 at the Banco Nacional in Panama City. There was even a city map. Dad’s passport was in there, too. Ryan didn’t even know he’d owned one. He thumbed through the pages. Most were blank. The passport was like new, stamped only twice. A trip to Panama nineteen years ago and a return to the United States the very next day. Not much of a vacation. It had to be business.

  The business of extortion.

  Ryan took the box up to his room and spent most of Friday night in bed awake, his mind racing. He ran though every human being he’d ever seen his father with, every man and woman his father had ever mentioned. He couldn’t come up with a single person who had the financial wherewithal to pay two million dollars in extortion. He certainly couldn’t think of anyone with connections to Panama.

  At two in the morning he finally formed a semblance of a plan. He rose quietly and peeked in his mother’s room, making sure she was asleep. Then he sneaked downstairs. The money was still under the couch, where he’d stashed it when his mother had pulled up unexpectedly. He had a mini-ware-house near the clinic where he stored extra supplies, some old office furniture. Not even Liz knew it existed. Like a cat burglar, he slipped silently out the front door, pushing his Jeep Cherokee to the end of the driveway so that the engine noise wouldn’t wake his mother. He drove straight to the warehouse and hid the money in the bottom drawer of an old file cabinet. It would be safe there. Both the cabinet and the metal suitcase his father had left him were fireproof. He returned home, went straight to bed, and waited for the sun to rise.

  He rose early Saturday morning, having managed only a couple of hours of sleep. He showered, dressed, and brought the box down to the kitchen. His mother was sitting at the table, drinking coffee and reading the Lamar Daily News, a local paper put out by the nearest “metropolis” — Lamar, population 8,500. It was usually no more than sixteen pages, three or four of which would typically be devoted to a photographic recap of the annual Granada High School class reunion or the 4-H Horse Show. The sight of his mother and her small-town news made it all the more absurd, the thought of his father flying to Panama and opening a safe deposit box.

  “I’ve looked everything over,” said Ryan.

  His mother stared even more intently at her newspaper.

  “Don’t you want to know exactly what’s in there?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  Ryan stood and waited, hoping she’d just look at him. The wall of newspaper between them seemed impenetrable. Fitting, thought Ryan. Most people in Piedmont Springs at least once in a while read the Pueblo Chieftain, the Denver Post, or even the Wall Street Journal. Not Mom. Her world was filtered through the Lamar Daily News. Some things she just didn’t need to know.

  “Mom, I’m going to take all this stuff with me, if that’s okay with you.”

  She didn’t respond. Ryan waited a full minute, expecting her at the very least to ask where he was going. She simply turned the page, never making eye contact. “I’ll be back late tonight,” he said on his way out the kitchen door.

  He put the box in the backseat of his Jeep Cherokee and fired up the engine. The sun was just rising over the cornfields. Miles and miles of corn, all for animal feed, not the sweet corn grown for human consumption. A cloud of dust kicked up as he sped along the lonely dirt road, a shortcut to Highway 50, the first leg of the two-hundred-mile trip to Denver.

  The air conditioner in Amy’s truck was still broken, making the Saturday afternoon traffic jam even more unbearable. According to historians, Arapaho Indian Chief Niwot once said that “people seeing the beauty of the Boulder Valley will want to
stay, and their staying will be the undoing of the beauty.” Inching toward the fourth cycle of the traffic light at 28th Street and Arapahoe Avenue, Amy was beginning to see the truth in what locals referred to as “Niwot’s curse.”

  Amy had a twelve-thirty lunch reservation at her favorite restaurant. Gram had graciously agreed to babysit until three o’clock. For Taylor, that meant nonstop reruns of Three’s Company and The Dukes of Hazzard, at least until she went down for her afternoon nap. It made Amy feel a bit like a child abuser, but tomorrow she’d figure out some way to reverse the brain damage.

  She parked near Broadway and walked up to the Pearl Street Mall. For all its natural beauty, Boulder was ironically quite famous for its mall. The four-block open-air walkway was the city’s original downtown area, converted for pedestrians only. Historic old buildings and some tastefully designed new ones lined the brick-paved streets, home to numerous shops, galleries, microbreweries, offices, and cafes. The mall was prime people-watching territory, especially on weekends. Jugglers, musicians, sword swallowers, and other street performers created a carnival atmosphere. Amy smiled as she passed “Zip Code Man,” a virtual human computer who, with no more information than your zip code, could identify and often even describe your neighborhood, no matter how far away. Taylor had stumped him last December, using the zip code she’d posted on her letter to Santa Claus.

  Narayan’s Nepal Restaurant was a sizable downstairs restaurant right on the mall, offering a distinctive mountain fare at bargain prices. As a graduate student, Amy had shared many a lunch and dinner at Narayan’s with Maria Perez, her old faculty advisor from the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. Together, they’d plotted the course of her doctoral research over stuffed roti or the ever-popular vegetable sampler. Amy hadn’t seen much of Maria since she’d left astronomy. Even though she still considered her a friend, she found it hard to just pick up the phone and give her a call. Partly, she felt she’d let Maria down. Mostly, she felt she’d let herself down.