James Grippando: Found money

She smiled thinly as the computer calculated the interest on two hundred thousand dollars.

The funeral was on Tuesday at St. Edmund’s Catholic Church. Neither Ryan nor his sister were regular churchgoers. His parents, however, had attended nearly every Sunday for the last four decades. Here, Frank and Jeanette Duffy had exchanged marriage vows. It was where their two children had been baptized and taken their First Holy Communion. Ryan’s sister, Sarah, had also been married here. In the last row of the balcony, a fellow altar boy had told Ryan where babies really come from. Behind the solid oak doors in the side chapel, Ryan used to confess his sins to an old Irish priest with a drinker’s red nose. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…”

Ryan wondered when his father had last gone to confession. He wondered what he’d confessed.

St. Edmund’s was an old stone church built in the style of a Spanish mission. It wasn’t an authentic Spanish mission. The old Spanish explorers hadn’t bothered to go as far east as the Colorado plains in their search for the mythical Seven Cities of Gold. Places like the San Luis Valley and Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southwest and south central Colorado were filled with reminders of the legendary search for cities made of solid gold. The Spaniards seemed to have stopped, however, once the landscape turned interminably flat. Somehow, even sixteenth-century explorers must have sensed that no riches would lie in Piedmont Springs.

If only they had checked Frank Duffy’s attic.

Ryan felt a chill. The church was cold inside, even in July. Dark stained-glass windows blocked out most of the natural light. The smell of burning incense lingered over the casket in the center aisle, rising to the sweeping stone arches overhead. The service was well attended. Frank Duffy had many friends, none of whom apparently had a clue that he was a blackmailer who’d socked away two million dollars in extortion money. Dressed in black, his mourners filled thirty rows of pews on both sides of the aisle. Father Marshall presided over the service, wearing a somber expression and dark purple vestments. Ryan sat in the front row beside his mother. His sister and brother-in-law sat to his left. Liz, his estranged wife, had been “unable to attend.”

The organ music ended abruptly. An ominous silence filled the church, pierced only by the occasional squawk of an impatient child. Ryan squeezed his mother’s hand as his uncle approached the lectern to deliver a eulogy. Uncle Kevin was bald and overweight, suffering from heart disease, once the odds-on favorite to drop dead before his younger brother. He seemed the least prepared of all for Frank Duffy’s death.

He adjusted the microphone, cleared his throat. “I loved Frank Duffy,” he said in a shaky voice. “We all loved him.”

Ryan wanted to listen, but his mind wandered. Months in advance, they knew this day was coming. It had started with a cough, which he’d dismissed as the same old chronic emphysema. Then they found the lesion on the larynx. Their initial fear was that Dad might lose his voice. Frank Duffy had the gift of gab. He was always the one telling jokes at the bar, the guy laughing loudest at parties. It would have been a cruel irony, taking away his ability to speak — like an artist gone blind, or a musician turned deaf. The throat lesion, however, had only been the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The cancer had already metastasized. Doctors gave him three to four months. He never did lose his voice — at least not until the very end, silenced by his own sense of shame. His death brought its own irony.

The eulogy continued. “My brother was a workingman all his life, the kind of guy who’d get nervous whenever the poker ante rose above fifty cents.” His smile faded, his expression more serious. “But Frank was rich in spirit and blessed with a loving family.”

Ryan’s heart felt hollow. His uncle’s fond memories no longer seemed relevant. In light of the money, they didn’t even ring true.

He heard his aunt sobbing in the second row. Several other mourners were moved to tears. He glanced at his mother. No tears behind the black veil, he noted with curiosity. She sat stone-faced, expressionless. No sign of sadness or distress of any kind. Of course, the illness had been prolonged. She must have cried it out by now, no emotion left.

Or, he wondered, was there something she knew?

Amy met Mr. Phelps’s unrealistic three o’clock deadline. She always met her deadlines. This time, however, she was feeling abused. She went home when she finished.

She conjured up an image as she drove — a fantasy of sorts. It had to do with the money. She wouldn’t just quietly give notice, she decided. She would drive her old truck to Bailey, Gaslow & Heinz, like any other day. She’d get her morning coffee, retreat to her office, and sit very calmly at her desk. But she wouldn’t turn on her computer. She wouldn’t even close the door. She’d leave it wide open — and just wait for someone like Phelps to come piss her off.

For the moment, however, the waiting was beginning to breed paranoia.

It had been Gram’s idea to keep the money in the house and see what happened. Amy had a nagging instinct that someone was testing her, checking whether she’d do the honorable thing. She recalled the pointed questions on her application to law school. Are you currently under investigation for any crime? Have you ever been convicted of a crime? Before long she would face the same probing questions in her application to the Colorado State Bar Association. What kind of dim view might they take toward a candidate who had knowingly deprived the IRS of its fair share of a mysterious cash windfall? Worse yet, someone could be setting her up — someone like her ex-husband. Maybe he’d reported the money stolen, the serial numbers registered with the FBI. The minute she tried to spend it, she’d be arrested.

Now you’re really being paranoid. Amy’s ex-husband made a stink over paying five hundred dollars a month in child support. He certainly wouldn’t risk shipping two hundred grand in a cardboard box. Still, the prudent course was to contact the police, probably even fess up to the IRS. But Gram would kill her. She’d kill herself, if she messed up her chance to beg off law school, return to her graduate studies and follow her dreams. It was time for Amy Parkens to live on the edge a little.

Amy walked to the kitchenette and opened the freezer door. She reached for the box of cash behind the frozen pot roast.

“Amy, what are you doing?”

She turned at the sound of her grandmother’s voice. She felt the urge to lie, but she could never fool Gram. “Just checking on our investment.”

Gram placed a bag of groceries on the table. She’d returned from the store sooner than Amy had expected. “It’s all there,” said Gram. “I didn’t take any.”

“I wasn’t suggesting you had.”

“Then leave it be, girl.”

Amy closed the door and helped unload the groceries. “Where’s Taylor?”

“Outside. Mrs. Bentley from three-seventeen is watching her. She owes us, all the times I’ve watched her little monsters.” Gram paused, then smiled with a thought. “Maybe we can take some of the money and get Taylor a nanny. A good one. Someone who speaks French. I’d like Taylor to speak French.”

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?”