James Grippando - Found money

He grinned widely, as if it were funny. “I don’t remember.” Typical Brent. Still proud of the way he could polish off a six-pack faster than a drunken frat boy.

Brent was actually four years younger than Ryan, but he looked older. He had been handsome once — he still was, to a lesser degree, at least on the two or three days a week he was showered, shaved and sober. His glory days had passed with high school football, rekindled briefly in his late twenties with delusions of becoming a bodybuilder. Ryan got him to quit the steroids, but then he turned to alcohol. The muscles softened, the personality hardened. Now he was just a large, angry man, like the overweight and over-the-hill wrestlers on television — except that Brent had no job. Ryan had never been thrilled with Sarah’s choice of a mate, but five years ago she’d panicked, nearly forty years old and never married. She’d latched onto Brent, good looking and nine years younger, winning him over by playing his live-in maidservant. Now she was forty-something and pregnant, stuck with a shell of a man who slept off a hangover every morning as his pregnant wife trudged off to work at Wal-Mart for minimum wage.

“You were here earlier, weren’t you?” asked Ryan.

“Yup. Waited over an hour for you.”

Ryan noticed the empty beer bottles on the kitchen table. He counted eight. “Way to go, buddy,” he said with sarcasm. “I see you’re cutting back.”

Brent’s face was flushed. He was clearly buzzed. He offered Ryan his half-empty bottle. “Want some?”

Ryan pushed it away, his tone harsh. “What were you doing here?”

He went to the refrigerator, got himself a fresh beer. The head went back, the bottle was emptied. Twelve ounces in twelve seconds. He wiped his chin, then looked at Ryan. “Looking for the money.”

The word hit like a sledgehammer, but Ryan kept a straight face. “What money?”

“Don’t play dumb on me. Sarah told me.”

Ryan flushed with anger. Good ol’ Sarah, always great with secrets. “What about it?”

“I need fifty thousand dollars. And I gotta have it tonight.”

“What for?”

“None of your damn business, that’s what for. It’s Sarah’s money. And I want it.”

“Sarah and I had a deal. Neither one of us takes any of the money until we know exactly where it came from.”

Brent’s eyes narrowed. “How do we know you haven’t already spent it?”

“You’re just going to have to trust me.”

“I’m still trusting your ass for nine hundred and fifty thousand. Just give me the fucking fifty grand.”

“No. Who do you think you are, Brent? Coming into my mother’s house, looking for money.”

He rose, threatening. “It’s Sarah’s money. Give it to me!”

“I said no.”

Brent wobbled toward him. “Give me the fucking money, man, or I’ll-”

Ryan silenced him with a steely glare. “Or what, Brent?”

Brent knew better than to take on Ryan drunk. Still, he had a crazed look in his eyes, as if the eight empty beers on the table were merely a footnote to a full day binge. “Or,” he said with a slur, “I may be forced to hit a pregnant woman.”

Something snapped in Ryan. He lunged forward and grabbed him by the throat, knocking him to the floor. “I told you I’d kill you, Brent! You ever touched her again, I’d fucking kill you!”

Brent wriggled and clawed, trying to break Ryan’s grip around his throat. His face was turning blue. Ryan squeezed harder, spurred by the memory of stitching up his own sister after the blows from her husband. He should have settled the score then, but Sarah begged him not to.

“Ry-an,” Brent was wheezing, barely conscious. His eyes were bulging.

Ryan stopped, suddenly realizing what he was doing.

Brent pushed him off and rolled on his side, coughing and gasping for air. “You coulda killed me, you crazy bastard.”

Ryan was shaking. He could have killed him.

Brent rose slowly, whining pathetically, a drunk on a crying jag. “I want my money. I need it, bad. Please, Ryan, I gotta have it.”

Ryan’s hands were shaking. Since the funeral, all anyone talked about was money. Liz would divorce him for it. Brent would beat his sister for it. And Amy — who the hell knew what she was up to.

“You want it?” he said bitterly. “Fine. I’ll give you the damn money. Wait here.” He stormed out of the room and raced upstairs, gobbling up two and three steps at a time. He yanked down the ladder to the attic and climbed up. He went straight to the old dresser and shoved it aside. In seconds he popped the floorboard and grabbed a bundle of bills — a few thousand, easy, but he didn’t even count it. He scurried back down the ladder and ran downstairs. He was huffing like a sprinter as he raced past the living room, then stopped short. He suddenly had an idea. It was as if Liz, Amy and now Brent in the same day had brought everything to a head. His father’s betrayal. The greed all around him.

He called out to the kitchen. “Come get your money, Brent. It’s all here.”

Brent hustled eagerly into the living room. He stopped cold at the sight across the dimly lit room. Ryan was standing beside the fireplace. He had a stack of bills in one hand. A long, burning matchstick was in the other. An open can of lighter fluid rested on the mantel.

Brent’s voice shook. “What — what you doing?”

“Easy come, easy go.” He brought the match to the stack of bills, lighting the corner.

“No!”

The bills burst into flames, thoroughly soaked with lighter fluid. Ryan tossed them into the fireplace. Brent rushed forward. Ryan grabbed the fireplace poker, cocking it like a baseball bat. “Not another step, Brent!”

He stopped in his tracks, his face filled with anguish. The money was burning, but Ryan looked deadly serious. He was nearly in tears. “Ryan, man. Please don’t burn it.”

Ash fluttered up from the fireplace. The bills burned quickly. Ryan didn’t budge. “You lay a hand on Sarah, I’ll burn it all. I swear, I will burn every last bill.”

“Okay, man. Just be cool, okay?”

“It’s the rule,” he said, as if to remind himself as much as Brent. “No one gets the money. No one tells anyone else about the money. Not until we find out who paid it to my father and why.”

Brent backed away slowly. “Okay, my friend. You’re the man. You make the rules. I’m going home now. Just don’t burn any more of that money. That’s fair, right? You and me just pretend like this little episode never happened.”

Ryan kept the poker cocked, ready to crack Brent’s skull if he had to.

Brent stepped backward to the door. “No problem here. If you say that’s the rule, that’s the rule. I’ll just go home and tell Sarah we gotta play by the rules, that’s all.”

“Get the hell out of my sight, Brent.”

Brent gave an awkward nod, then hurried out the door. Ryan went to the front window and watched him pull away. He glanced back at the fireplace. The money was a glowing pile of smoldering ash. Thousands of dollars. Gone. Strangely, he felt good about that. He glanced up the staircase, toward the attic. There was still plenty more to fight over.

Or plenty more to burn.

He checked the clock on the end table. Mom wouldn’t be home for another hour. He stoked the ash with a shot of lighter fluid, then threw on some kindling and a dry, split log. As the fire hissed and flames reached upward, he closed the screen and started up the stairs.

At 9:00 P.M., Amy had a date. With Taylor.

The Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado was the largest planetarium between Chicago and Los Angeles. All summer long, Fiske sponsored Friday night programs in astronomy, followed by public viewings at the observatory. The evening programs were way over Taylor’s head, more on the level of college students than a four-year-old girl. She had loved the Wednesday morning family matinees, however, learning how runaway slaves had used the Big Dipper to find freedom, and taking a tour of the solar system with a make-believe robot. The simulated displays inside the dome were impressive enough, but Amy had promised to take her to the observatory for a look at the real nighttime sky. Tonight was the night.