apparently wanted me to have it. But if it’s dirty, I don’t want to be connected to it in any way.”
“I don’t know where my dad would get two hundred thousand dollars, if that’s what you’re asking me.”
“All I’m really asking is whether your father was an honest man.”
Ryan only sighed. “I may need a little time to answer that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. There are some things I need to check into.”
“What kind of things?”
“Please, give me a week, just to get things in order. Family stuff.”
She didn’t answer immediately, but she didn’t see a choice. Not if she wanted to keep the money. “All right. I’m not looking to upset your family or ruin your dad’s good name. But if I don’t see some bank records or something that proves this money is from a legitimate source, I’m afraid I’ll have to turn it over to the police.”
“You could just give it back to me.”
“I’m sorry. But it came to my house, touched my hands. If it’s tainted money, I have to turn it in. Maybe the police can figure out where it came from.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“I know it does. Believe me, that was the last thing I intended when I made this phone call. I was hoping…”
“Hoping what?”
The words caught in her throat. There was no point telling him she had hoped to see him again. Not if he couldn’t give a straight answer to a simple question like Was your father an honest man?
“Nothing. I just hope you can come up with something to put me at ease. You can have a week, Ryan. I’ll call you then,” she said, then hung up the phone.
15
Ryan hung up, then froze. He heard a creak in the floorboard just a few feet behind him. He whirled, clutching the phone like a weapon.
His moment of panic turned quickly to relief. It was his brother-in-law. Sarah must have given him her key. “Damn it, Brent. What the hell you doing, sneaking up on me?”
“Not sneaking,” he said in a thick, gravelly voice. He smelled of spilled beer, a half-empty Coors in one hand.
Ryan peered through the kitchen window to the driveway. Brent’s car was a few feet behind his, parked at a careless angle. He must have pulled up while Amy was on the phone. “Did you drive here in that condition?”
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.
