Found Money - James Grippando [9]
“You certainly know how to push a girl’s buttons.”
“So, you’re with me on this?”
Amy smiled with her eyes, peering over her cup. “Where do you want to stash our loot?”
“It’s already in the perfect hiding spot. The freezer.”
“The freezer?”
Gram smirked. “Where else would a crazy old woman keep a box of cold hard cash?”
4
Ryan spent the night in his old room, fading in and out of sleep. Mostly out.
As the only physician in town, Ryan hadn’t taken a vacation in three years. For this, however, he’d managed to clear his calendar, referring all but the most pressing emergencies to clinics in neighboring towns.
Actually, he’d spent the last seven weeks living with his folks. He and his wife were legally separated, just the crack of a judge’s gavel away from an official divorce after eight years of marriage. It was a classic case of unrealized expectations. Liz had worked as a waitress to help put him through medical school, thinking it would pay off after graduation. His friends from medical school had all moved on to mountainside homes and his-and-hers BMWs. Ryan had completed his surgery residency at Denver General Hospital and could have gone on to an equally lucrative career. He’d never been interested in pursuing the profits of “managed care,” however, where HMOs and utilization review boards rewarded doctors for not treating patients. Over Liz’s objection, he went back to his hometown to practice family medicine, the only doctor in town. Most of his patients were the real crisis in today’s health care—children of lower-income workers or self-employed farmers who earned too much to qualify for Medicaid but who still couldn’t afford health insurance. Liz eventually posted a sign in the office that said “PAYMENT DUE AT TIME OF SERVICE,” but Ryan always looked the other way whenever someone needed credit. When the uncollected accounts receivable reached well into six figures, Liz couldn’t stand it anymore. Ryan was running a charity. She filed for divorce.
So now he was home. His father dying. His wife moving to Denver. His boyhood memories staring down from the walls. With the end so near, he hadn’t the time or inclination to redecorate and dissolve the past. Posters of quarterback Roger Staubach and the Super Bowl Champion Cowboys still covered the walls, abandoned by the kid who used to dream there almost three decades ago. He wondered what had happened to the famous one of Farrah Fawcett with her feathered hair and thin red swimsuit. Gone, but not forgotten.
Innocent times, he thought. Things didn’t seem so innocent anymore.
Six A.M., and Ryan had hardly slept. He kept wondering, was it really the combination of booze and painkillers? Talk of blackmail and hordes of cash sounded like hallucination. But Dad was so damn serious.
Ryan had to check the attic.
He slipped out of bed and pulled on his jeans, sneakers and a polo shirt. The floorboards creaked beneath his feet. He stepped lightly. His mother was surely awake already, downstairs, at Dad’s bedside. The morning vigil was their time alone. No one was going to deprive her of being with her husband of forty-five years at the moment of his death.
The door creaked open. Ryan peered into the hall. Not a sound. The attic, he recalled, was accessed through a ceiling panel at the end of the upstairs hallway. Ryan skulked like a prowler past the bathroom and guest bedroom, stopping beneath the two-foot length of chain hanging from the ceiling. He pulled. The hatch fell open like a crocodile’s lower jaw. The big springs popped as the ladder unfolded. Ryan cringed at the noise, anticipating his mother’s voice. But he heard nothing. Slowly, making not another sound, he extended the ladder to the floor and locked it into place. He drew a deep breath and began his ascent.
He was sweating almost immediately, besieged by yesterday’s heat. Musty odors tickled his nostrils. A predawn glow seeped through the small