Ten
S cott intended to turn left and go down the stairs. But he didn’t want to come back to the house, and he still hadn’t looked at his room. Scott might not have wanted to keep much, but he didn’t want someone else combing through the items he thought were important enough to keep all those years ago.
Nothing had changed in his room.
Just like his father’s bedroom, his own room was locked in time from fifteen years ago. Even the posters on the wall were the same ones he’d put up during high school. There wasn’t any dust in the room though, so some must have come in and cleaned it. He slid the closet door open and the clothes hanging there were the same ones he left behind when he went to college.
Not seeing any reason to contemplate his fashion choices from that time, Scott left the closet and knelt down by his bed. He’d stuffed a box filled with memorabilia under his bed when he left and was pleasantly surprised to see it was still there. Pulling the box from under the bed, he lifted the dust-covered lid. Whoever came in to clean the room must have decided cleaning objects under the bed wasn’t part of the job description. Inside the box, he discovered pictures and yearbooks, untouched by time. The letter from the Tempo Rubato Inc., granting him a scholarship sat on top of everything.
He fell back on his heels and pulled out his phone, searching for the name of the company. It was a small company incorporated in Delaware, which wasn’t all that strange. A lot of companies incorporated in Delaware. But it was registered the same year he graduated from high school. And the more he looked back at that time in his life, he realized he never actually applied for a scholarship from that company. He’d done the usual ones, like the Lion’s Club and the Eagles, and the VFW, but he couldn’t recall every applying for a scholarship from any company. How had he never realized that the letter came from a scholarship he never applied for and wasn’t associated with the University?
Digging under the pictures and papers, he found the pair of gloves he wore while Lauren hung over the trestle. He also found the rhinestones she had stuck on the bridge they painted pink. And the mud pie she made him the one time he agreed to play house with her. He had even kept the peony she stuck on the note she gave him when she asked him to homecoming. At the bottom of the box, he found a friendship bracelet she had made him out of knotted string.
He had kept everything tied to Lauren.
It was too much.
Scott jumped to his feet, raced down the stairs and out the back door, then stood in the yard. Taking in a deep breath, he captured the fresh air in his lungs and held it. With nothing else to do, he looked around the back yard. All the houses in the neighborhood needed some kind of repair. New gutters or a fresh coat of paint. How had no one noticed that his father’s house was in far better condition than every other house on the block?
He had thought the breath of fresh air would help, but all he’d done was remind him of everything he hated about his father. Not being able to stand it any longer, he walked back inside. The sooner he finished, the sooner he could leave.
For all of thirty seconds, he considered dumping the contents of the box into the same bag that held his father’s papers, but he wouldn’t tarnish his memory of Lauren that way. He wasn’t sure what his dad had been up to, but from the cursory look, none of it looked to be on the up and up.
He dug into his own closet and found a backpack deep in the corner, buried beneath a few pairs of shoes. He put everything from the box in the backpack. Even the mud pie. Well, almost everything. The sandwich bag holding the rhinestones went into his pocket.
Scott stood, gathered both bag and backpack, and walked out the front door. He dumped everything in the passenger seat of the SUV and returned to the front door, locking both the deadbolt and the lock on the handle.
Scott needed a drink.
The hotel had a bar. He’d check in, swing by the bar, buy an over-priced bottle of scotch, and then go to his room and drink while he went through all the papers until he fell asleep.
S cott stood in the middle of the sitting room of the hotel suite. He had moved all the furniture he could move to either the wall or the bedroom portion. The floor was clear enough that he could use it to organize the papers he’d taken from his father’s house.
He sat down in the middle of the now-empty room and dumped out the bag of papers. There had to be a reason his father was hiding them and not just because some were bank account statements.
Thirty minutes later he had the papers organized into stacks and positioned so each stack had some relationship to the stacks next to them.
Forty minutes later dread loomed in the recesses of his mind, ready to pounce at the first opportunity, as he stared at the bank statement with almost half a million dollars in the account.
He’d have to go to the bank to get answers now. That meant he’d need to put on a charming face and meet with the manager, who wouldn’t be working on a Saturday morning. It also meant he wouldn’t be leaving on Sunday like he planned.
Scott grabbed his phone and called Georgia. She was the only person he could trust right now.
“Have another company you want me to look up or have you been talking with more clients?”
“No. Well, yes to the first and no to the second. Also, I need to extend my stay in Iron Creek for a few days.”
“Oh? Why?” Her tone implied she was hoping it was because of something good.
If only that was the case.
He quickly laid out his discoveries, what he knew, what he thought, and what he hoped wasn’t true, but almost certainly was.
“I’ll change your return ticket to open-ended and call your investigators. In the meantime, Scott, there’s nothing you can do until Monday. So, find a way to distract yourself before you drive yourself crazy.”
“Don’t use our regular investigation team.”
“Alright?” Georgia dragged out the ‘t’, unsure why Scott needed new investigators, but not wanting to ask.
“Make sure they’re trusted.” Scott didn’t want to answer her unasked question. Not yet at least.
“That goes without saying.”
“Request the quickest turn around possible and remind them you don’t care about the cost.”
“Fine, but you and I both know that the quickest turnaround is going to take several days. Which means, you won’t be leaving on Monday or Tuesday even, assuming you’re planning on staying until you get some answers?”
Scott made a noise of agreement. Although, he wasn’t happy about it. All his plans to leave as soon as he came back to Iron Creek were ruined the moment, he looked in his father’s office and went through all the files.
“As soon as I get off the phone with you, I’m calling the airline and I’m going to change your ticket and I’m extending your hotel reservation for at least a week.”
“Georgia…”
“Trust me on this, Scott. And you can just tell everyone you decided to stick around for the funeral.” Before Scott could offer another word of protest, Georgia continued. “I’ll also reschedule next week’s meetings. You don’t need to worry about anything.”