Found Money by James Grippando Read Free Book Online

way to put this, so let me just ask you. Did you know anything about some kind of blackmail Dad might have been involved in?”
    “Blackmail?”
    “Yes, blackmail. Two million dollars, cash.” Ryan checked her reaction, searching for surprise. He saw none.
    “Yes, I knew.”
    He suddenly stopped pacing, stunned. “You knew what ?”
    She sighed. It was as if she were expecting thisconversation, but that didn’t mean she had to enjoy it. “I knew about the money. And I knew about the blackmail.”
    “You actually let him do it?”
    “It’s not that simple, Ryan.”
    His voice grew louder. “I’m all ears, Mom. Tell me.”
    “There’s no need for that tone.”
    “I’m sorry. It’s just that we haven’t exactly lived like millionaires. Now Dad’s dead, I find out he was a blackmailer, and there’s two million dollars in the attic. Who in the heck was he blackmailing?”
    “That I don’t know.”
    “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
    “He never told me. He didn’t want me to know. That way, if anything ever went wrong, I could honestly tell the police I didn’t know anything. I had nothing to do with it.”
    “But you were happy to reap the benefits.”
    “No, I wasn’t. That’s why the money’s still in the attic. To me, it was tainted. I would never let your father spend a penny of it. Your father and I had some doozy fights over this. I even threatened to leave him.”
    “Why didn’t you?”
    She looked at him curiously, as if the question were stupid. “I loved him. And he told me the man deserved to be blackmailed.”
    “You believed him?”
    “Yes.”
    “So that’s it? Dad says the guy deserved it, so you let him keep the money. But you wouldn’t let him spend it. That’s crazy.”
    She folded her arms, suddenly defensive. “We reached a compromise. I didn’t feel comfortablespending the money, but your father thought you and your sister might feel differently. So we agreed that he would keep it hidden until he died. Then we’d leave it up to you and Sarah to decide whether you wanted to keep it, leave it, burn it—whatever you decide. It’s yours. If you can spend it in good conscience, you have your father’s blessing.”
    Ryan stepped to the window, looking out to the backyard. Uncle Kevin was organizing a game of horseshoes. He spoke quietly with his back to his mother. “What am I supposed to say?”
    “It’s your call—yours and Sarah’s.”
    He turned and faced her, showing no emotion. “Guess it’s time I had a little talk with my big sister.”

8
    The Crock-Pot discovery had Amy in high gear. Just to be safe, she didn’t want to use the law firm’s computers or phones for the follow-up on Jeanette Duffy. A run through her standard Internet search engines on her home computer, however, had turned up hundreds of Jeanette Duffys nationwide, with nothing to distinguish any one of them as the possible sender. So she went to the University of Colorado law library for more sophisticated computerized capabilities. She wasn’t technically a student yet, but a sweet smile and a copy of her acceptance letter for the fall class was good enough to gain access to the free Nexis service, which would allow her to search hundreds of newspapers and periodicals.
    She figured she’d limit the search to Colorado initially, then expand out from there, if necessary. She typed in “Jeanette Duffy” and hit the search button, then chose the most recent entry from a chronological listing of about a dozen articles.
    The blue screen blinked and displayed the full text of an article from yesterday’s Pueblo Chieftain . Amy half expected to find that someone named Jeanette Duffy had just embezzled two hundred thousand dollars from the First National Bank of Colorado.
    Instead, she found an obituary.
    “Frank Duffy,” it read, “62, longtime resident of Piedmont Springs, on July 11, after a courageous battle with cancer. Survived by Jeanette Duffy, his wife of 44 years; their