Found money

  Found money

  James Grippando

  James Grippando

  Found money

  “Say not you know another entirely, till you have divided an inheritance with him.”

  — Johann Kaspar Lavater, Aphorisms on Man, c. 1788, no. 157

  Prologue: July 1979

  It was dying. No way to save it. And Amy Parkens watched with a child’s fascination.

  The night was perfect. No city lights, not even a moon to brighten the cloudless sky outside her bedroom window. Billions of stars blanketed the vast blackness of space. Her six-inch Newtonian reflector telescope was aimed at the Ring Nebula, a dying star in the constellation of Lyra. Amy liked that one best. It reminded her of the smoke rings her grand father used to blow with his cigar — a faint, grayish-green ring puffed into outer space. Death was slow in coming, over many millennia. It was irreversible. Astronomically speaking, the Ring Nebula was light-years beyond Geritol.

  Amy peered through the eyepiece, pushing her hair aside. She was a tall and skinny eight-year-old with sandy-blonde bangs that dangled in her eyes. She’d often heard grown-ups say she was destined to be the Twiggy of the eighties, but that didn’t interest her. Her interests were unlike those of most third graders. Television and video games bored her. She was used to spending time alone in the evenings, entertaining herself with books, celestial maps, her telescope — things her friends would have considered homework. She had never known her father. He’d been killed in Vietnam before Amy could even walk. She lived with her mom, a busy physics professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. A passion for the stars was an inherited fascination. Long before her first telescope, Amy would look into the night sky and see much more than twinkling lights. By the time she was seven she could name every stellar constellation. Since then, she’d even made some up and named them herself — distant constellations, beyond the reach of even the world’s most powerful instruments but not beyond her imagination. Other kids might stare through telescopes all night long and never see Orion or Sirius, because the stars didn’t line up exactly right for them. For Amy, it all made perfect sense.

  Amy switched on her flashlight, the only light she needed in her small pink bedroom. With colored pencils she sketched out the Ring Nebula on her notepad, her own makeshift coloring book. She was the only kid in her class with no fear of the dark — so long as her telescope was nearby.

  “Lights out, sweetie,” her mother called from the hallway.

  “Lights are out, Mom.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  The door opened, and her mother entered. She switched on the little lamp beside Amy’s bed. Amy squinted as her eyes adjusted to the faint yellow glow. Her mother’s smile was warm but weak. Her eyes showed fatigue. She’d looked tired a lot lately. And worried. Over the last few days, Amy had noticed the change, had even asked what was wrong. Her mother would say only that it was “nothing.”

  Amy had gotten ready for bed hours ago, well before the celestial sidetrack. She was dressed in her yellow summer pajamas, her face washed and teeth brushed. She climbed down from the chair and gave her mom a hug. “Can’t I stay up a little longer? Please?”

  “No, honey. It’s way past your bedtime.”

  Her face showed disappointment, but she was too tired to argue. She slid into bed. Her mother tucked her in beneath the sheets.

  “Tell me a story, then?”

  “Mommy’s really tired tonight. I’ll tell you one tomorrow.”

  Amy frowned, but it didn’t last. “A good one?”

  “I promise. It’ll be the best story you ever heard.”

  “Okay.”

  Her mother kissed her on the forehead, then switched off the lamp. “Sweet dreams, baby.”

  “’Night, Mom.”

  Amy watched her mother cross the dark room. The door opened. Her mother turned as if to bid a silent goodbye, then closed the door.

  Amy rolled on her side and gazed out the window. No more telescope tonight, but this was one of those incredibly clear nights when the heavens were awesome even with the naked eye. She watched for several minutes until her vision blurred and the stars began to swirl. She was getting drowsy. Twenty minutes passed. Maybe longer. Her eyes closed, then opened. Her head sank deeper into the pillow. The strip of light from the hallway disappeared beneath her bedroom door. Mom was apparently going to bed. It comforted Amy to know that. The last few nights, her mother hadn’t been sleeping.

  She glanced out the window again. Beyond the trees, she saw the lights go out in the house next door. With eyes closed, she imagined the lights going out in house after house as the neighborhood, the city, the entire country went to sleep. The lights were off all around the world. But the stars burned bright. Amy was nearly asleep.

  A loud crack pierced the night — like thunder, but it wasn’t thunder. Amy jackknifed in her bed, as if kicked in the belly.

  The noise had come from inside the house.

  Her heart raced. She listened for it again, but there was only silence. She was too frightened to scream. She wanted to call for her mother, but words wouldn’t come. It had been an awful sound, enough to make her fear the dark forever. Yet it took only a second to pinpoint the source. She knew the sound. There was no mistaking it. She’d heard it before, far from the house, the time her mother had driven her out to the woods and Amy had watched her practice.

  It was the echoing clap of her mother’s loaded handgun.

  Part 1

  Summer 1999

  1

  Amy wished she could go back in time. Not way back. It wasn’t as if she wanted to sip ouzo with Aristotle or tell Lincoln to duck. Less than a fortnight would suffice. Just far enough to avert the computer nightmare she’d been living.

  Amy was the computer information systems director at Bailey, Gaslow & Heinz, the premier law firm in the Rocky Mountains. It was her job to keep confidential information flowing freely and securely between the firm’s offices in Boulder, Denver, Salt Lake City, Washington, London, and Moscow. Day in and day out, she had the power to bring two hundred attorneys groveling to their knees. And she had the privilege of hearing them scream. Simultaneously. At her.

  As if I created the virus, she thought, thinking of what she wished she had said to one accusatory partner. He was miles behind her now, but she was still thinking about it. Driving alone on the highway was a great place to put things exactly as they should have been.

  It had taken almost a week to purge the entire system, working eighteen-hour days, traveling to six different offices. She had everyone up and running in some capacity within the first twenty-four hours, and she ultimately salvaged over 95 percent of the stored data. Still, it wasn’t a pleasant experience to have to tell a half-dozen unlucky lawyers that, like Humpty Dumpty, their computers and everything on them were DOA.

  It was a little-known fact, but Amy had witnessed it firsthand: Lawyers do cry.

  A sudden rattle in the dashboard snagged Amy’s attention. Her old Ford pickup truck had plenty of squeaks and pings. Each was different, and she knew them all, like a mother who could sense whether her baby’s cry meant feed me, change me, or please get Grandma out of my face. This particular noise was more of a clunk — an easy problem to diagnose, since torrid hot air was suddenly blowing out of the air conditioning vents. Amy switched off the A-C and tried rolling down the window. It jammed. Perfect. Ninety-two degrees outside, her truck was spewing dragon’s breath, and the damn window refused to budge. It was an old saw in Colorado that people visited for the winters but moved there for the summers. They obviously didn’t mean this.

  I’m melting, she thought, borrowing from The Wizard of Oz.

  She grabbed the Rocky Mountain News from the floor and fanned hersel
f for relief. The week-old paper marked the day she had sent her daughter off to visit her ex-husband for the week, so that she could devote all her energy to the computer crisis. Six straight days away from Taylor was a new record, one she hoped would never be broken. Even dead tired, she couldn’t wait to see her.

  Amy was driving an oven on wheels by the time she reached the Clover Leaf Apartments, a boring collection of old two-story red brick buildings. It was a far cry from the cachet Boulder addresses that pushed the average price of a home to more than a quarter-million dollars. The Clover Leaf was government-subsidized housing, an eyesore to anyone but penurious students and the fixed-income elderly. Landscaping was minimal. Baked asphalt was plentiful. Amy had seen warehouse districts with more architectural flair. It was as if the builder had decided that nothing man-made could ever be as beautiful as the jagged mountaintops in the distance, so why bother even trying? Even so, there was a four-year waiting list just to get in.

  A jolt from a speed bump launched her to the roof. The truck skidded to a halt in the first available parking space, and Amy jumped out. After a minute or two, the redness in her face faded to pink. She was looking like herself again. Amy wasn’t one to flaunt it, but she could easily turn heads. Her ex-husband used to say it was the long legs and full lips. But it was much more than that. Amy gave off a certain energy whenever she moved, whenever she smiled, whenever she looked through those big gray-blue eyes. Her grandmother had always said she had her mother’s boundless energy — and Gram would know.

  Amy’s mother had died tragically twenty years ago, when Amy was just eight. Her father had passed away even earlier. Gram had essentially raised her. She knew Amy; she’d even seen the warning signs in her ex-husband before Amy had. Four years ago, Amy was a young mother trying to balance a marriage, a newborn, and graduate studies in astronomy. Her daughter and coursework left little time for Ted — meaning too little time to keep an eye on him. He found another woman. After the divorce, she moved in with Gram, who helped with Taylor. Good jobs weren’t easy to find in Boulder, a haven for talented and educated young professionals who wanted the quintessential Colorado lifestyle. Amy would have loved to stick with astronomy, but money was tight, and a graduate degree in astronomy wouldn’t change that. Even her computer job hadn’t changed that. Her paycheck barely covered the basic living expenses for the three of them. Anything left over was stashed away for law school, which was coming in September.

  For Amy, a career in law was an economic decision, not an emotional one. She was certain she’d meet plenty of classmates just like her — art historians, English literature majors, and dozens more who had abandoned all hope of finding work in the field they loved.

  Amy just wished there were another way.

  “Mommy, Mommy!”

  Amy whirled at the sound of her daughter’s voice. She was wearing her favorite pink dress and red tennis shoes. The left half of her very blonde hair was in a pigtail. The other flowed in the breeze, another lost barrette. She peeled down the walkway and leaped into Amy’s arms.

  “I missed you so much,” said Amy, squeezing her daughter tightly.

  Taylor laughed, then made a face. “Eww, you’re all wet.”

  Amy wiped away the sweat she’d transferred from her cheek to Taylor’s. “Mommy’s truck has a little fever.”

  “Gram says you should just sell that heap of junk.”

  “Never,” said Amy. Her mother used to own that heap of junk. It was about the only thing she’d managed to come away with in the divorce. That, and her daughter. She lowered Taylor to the ground. “So, how is your dad?”

  “Fine. He promised to come visit us.”

  “Us?”

  “Uh-huh. He said he’ll come see you and me at the party.”

  “What party?”

  “ Our party. For when you gradgy-ate law school and when I gradgy-ate high school.”

  Amy blinked twice, ignoring the sting. “He actually said that?”

  “Law school takes a long time, huh, Mommy?”

  “Not that long, sweetheart. It’ll be over before we know it.”

  Gram came up from behind them, nearly panting as she spoke. “I have never seen a four-year-old run that fast.”

  Taylor giggled. Gram welcomed Amy back with a smile, then grimaced. “For goodness sakes, you’re an absolute stick. Have you been living on nothing but caffeine again?”

  “No, I swear I tried taking a little coffee with it this time.”

  “Get inside and let me fix you something to eat.”

  Amy was too tired to think about food. “I’ll just throw something quick in the microwave.”

  “Microwave,” Gram scoffed. “I may be old, but it’s not like I have to rub two sticks together to heat up a late lunch. By the time you’re out of the shower, I’ll have a nice hot meal waiting for you.”

  Along with a month’s supply of fat and calories, thought Amy. Gram was from the old school of everything, including diet. “Okay,” she said as she grabbed her suitcase from the back of the truck. “Let’s go inside.”

  The threesome walked hand in hand across the parking lot, with Taylor swinging like a monkey between them.

  “Home again, Mommy’s home again!” said Taylor in a singsong voice.

  Amy inserted the key and opened the door. Home was a simple two-bedroom, one-bath apartment. The main living area was a combination living room, dining room, and playroom. Gram sometimes said “the girls” had turned it into one big storage room. Bicycles and Rollerblades cluttered the small entrance; the small ones were Taylor’s, the big ones were Amy’s. There was an old couch and matching armchair, typical renter’s furniture. An old pine wall unit held books, a few plants, and a small television. To the right was a closet-size kitchen, more of a kitchenette.

  Amy dropped her suitcase at the door.

  “Let me get started in the kitchen,” said Gram.

  “I help!” Taylor shouted.

  “Wash your hands first,” said Amy.

  Taylor dashed toward the bathroom. Gram followed. “Your mail’s on the table, Amy. Along with your phone messages.” She disappeared down the hall, right on Taylor’s heels.

  Amy crossed the room to the table. A week’s worth of mail was stacked neatly in piles: personal, bills, and junk. The biggest stack was bills, some of them second notices. The personal mail wasn’t personal at all — mostly that computer-generated junk written in preprinted script to make it look like a letter from an old friend. In the bona fide junk pile, a package caught her eye. There was no return address on it. No postage or postmark, either. It appeared to have been hand-delivered, possibly by a private courier service. For its size, it seemed heavy.

  Curious, she tore away the brown paper wrapping, revealing a box bearing a picture of a Crock-Pot. She shook it. It didn’t feel like a Crock-Pot. It felt like something more solid was inside, as if the box had been filled with cement. The ends had been retaped, too, suggesting the Crock-Pot had been replaced with something else. She slit the duct tape with her key and opened the flaps. A thick plastic lining encased the contents, some kind of waterproof bag with a zipper. There was no note or card, nothing to reveal the identity of the sender. She unzipped the bag, then froze.

  “Oh my God.”

  Benjamin Franklin was staring back at her, many times over. Hundred-dollar bills. Stacks of them. She removed one bundle, then another, laying them side by side on the table. Her hands shook as she counted the bills in one stack. Fifty per stack. Forty stacks.

  She lowered herself into the chair, staring at the money in quiet disbelief. Someone — an anonymous someone — had sent her two hundred thousand dollars.

  And she had no idea why.

  2

  Lazy swirls of orange, pink and purple hovered on the horizon in the afterglow of another southern Colorado sunset. From the covered wood porch of his boyhood home, thirty-five-year-old Ryan Duffy stared pensively at what seemed like nature’s daily reminder that endings could
be beautiful. The spectacle slowly faded into darkness, a lonely black sky with no moon or stars. The brief burst of color had nearly fooled him. He felt guilty now for having thought even for a moment that his father might be better off dead.

  Ryan’s old man had lived his sixty-two years by one simple rule: “last” was the most vulgar of four-letter words. For Frank Duffy, there was no such thing as second place, no ranking of priorities. Everything was first. God, family, job — he devoted unflagging energy to each. A tireless working slug who never missed a Sunday service, never let his family down, never left a job site before someone had said, “That man Duffy is the best damn electrician in the business.” Only in the most important battle of his life did he seemingly avoid being first.

  He was the last to admit that his cancer would kill him.

  Not until the pain was unbearable did he finally concede he couldn’t beat it on his own. Ryan was furious with him for shunning medicine. Being a doctor had only seemed to make his incessant pleas less credible, as if Ryan were just another one of those test-crazy physicians Frank Duffy had never trusted. As it turned out, treatment would only have prolonged the inevitable — two months, maybe three, tops. Ryan would have welcomed any extra time. Had the tables been turned, however, he knew he might well have displayed the same stubborn denial. Ryan enjoyed it when people said he was just like his father, and they looked so much alike that comparisons were inevitable. Both were handsome, with warm brown eyes. His father had long ago gone completely gray, and Ryan was on his way, with distinguished flecks of gray in his thick dark mane. At six-one he was the taller of the two, though he would have been the last to point out that his proud father was shrinking in his old age.

  The sun was completely gone now, dipping below the flat horizon. After dark, the plains of southeastern Colorado were like a big ocean. Flat and peaceful, not a city light in sight. A good place to raise a family. No crime to speak of. The nearest shopping mall was in Pueblo, a blue-collar city a hundred miles to the west. The closest fancy restaurant was in Garden City, Kansas, even farther to the east. Some said Piedmont Springs was in the middle of nowhere. For Ryan, it was right where it ought to be.