CHAPTER FOURTEEN #3
I couldn't help but laugh.
Good ol' Leonard Llewellyn had been attached at the hip to his precious notebooks, and when Shawn suggested incorporating a computer into the mix, the old man damn near threw a temper tantrum. He insisted that the digital age was going to be the end of our society, that he never wanted to give up the tried-and-true methods of our ancestors, but eventually, Shawn had convinced him to add just a bit more organization to the business … with the promise that he wouldn’t take away his notebooks.
"Well, as I've been transferring records over, I started noticing something," he said, folding his arms against the table. "Some of the funerals we've done … he never took money for."
I tipped my head as my mind took off instantly, running a mile a minute. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, there are funerals we did for free."
"Well, I mean, which ones? Because he never charged for kids."
Leonard had been of the firm belief that parents grieving the loss of their young children should never have to worry about funeral expenses after going through such an unthinkable tragedy.
"Not any of those," Shawn replied. "We—the three of us—had nothing to do with these funerals. Leonard handled them all. I, uh … I looked up a couple of the names. Not all of them—there's quite a few of them—"
"How many?"
His cheeks puffed out with his exhale, and then he said, "I don't know. I'm not done transferring all the records over to the computer, but so far, I've counted at least a few dozen."
"A few dozen?"
"Yeah," he said, nodding. "One of them, Tomas Nolan … I vaguely remember putting him up on the website, like, ten years ago or something like that. Maybe even more than that. I don’t know.
I didn't think anything of it at the time, but when I saw we had done his services for nothing, that felt weird to me. So, I looked him up."
"And?"
"I had to dig a lot," he explained. "Like, a lot. Guy's been dead for a while. And his name didn't bring up a fucking thing. Just the obituary I had put up forever ago. But I did a reverse image search of the picture we had used, and although I didn't pull up an exact match, I did find something."
He paused to drag a palm over his chin, and I rolled my eyes.
"Shawn, dude, I get you're trying to build the anticipation here, but come on."
He released an exhale, visibly uncomfortable. "He was murdered in front of his kid, shot point-blank in the face. They never found the guy who did it. Honestly, I'm not really sure anybody cared enough to look. Seemed like he was probably involved in some shady shit. Drugs and whatever."
"And we did his funeral for nothing?"
"No money was exchanged."
"What about the others you looked up?"
"Same deal," he replied.
"So, they were all killed."
"Well, at least the ones I could find anything about," he said, biting his lip as he nodded.
"And I'm just wondering, why the fuck was Leonard doing their services for free?
I mean, I understand we've never discriminated against anybody.
Like, remember those people … shame on me, I can't remember their names, but their son …
he had been in prison for … something—I don't even know what—but we did his services. Do you remember that?"
"Yeah," I muttered, nodding. "The Shumakers. He had been locked up for, um … aggravated assault, I think it was. Something like that."
"Right, and we didn't turn them away because their son had done some questionable shit. We showed him the same respect we’d show anyone else—and rightfully so. But we didn't do it for nothing. So, why were we doing that for these people?"
I shrugged. "I have no idea,” I said, although I could make an educated guess … but I wouldn't. Not aloud anyway.
"And that's not all of it."
"Oh, great," I muttered sardonically.
"Yeah," he replied, his eyes meeting mine. "Every year, two hundred grand was deposited into Leonard’s personal bank account. Always during the first week of the new year, except for the first time, which was … some random day in the middle of April about fourteen, fifteen years ago."
"Two hundred grand?" I repeated, casting my suspicious glare at the table.
Shawn nodded slowly, never taking his eyes off me. "A couple hundred thousand bucks just … deposited into his personal account. Every single fucking year for well over a decade."
I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms tightly over my chest.
The funeral home wasn’t the most lucrative of businesses.
As expensive as funeral services cost, we pocketed little of the money we brought in.
While Leonard had still been alive, the four of us had each made somewhere around sixty-five grand annually, which was an okay full-time salary—surely better than nothing—but none of us were living in the lap of luxury.
Certainly, we weren’t making enough for any one of us to pocket two hundred grand every single year.
How much will I make now that I’m doing Gerald’s dirty work? I wondered, the thought striking involuntarily.
Tick’s decapitation alone had earned me twenty grand in cash, the money now sitting beneath my bed in a black duffel bag, like I was nothing more than a Hollywood drug mule. Who knew how much I’d accrue in a year or two?
A thought crossed my mind then. A dark, interesting thought, one that felt a whole lot like a few little puzzle pieces sliding easily into place.
"Who was making the deposits?" I asked, my brain working overtime.
"Well, that's the funny thing, isn't it? Because it was Leonard himself making them," Shawn said. "Every year, he dropped two hundred grand, exactly, into his bank account during the first week of January. Like clockwork.”
"Which would mean he was likely depositing cash.”
"Right. And I've been looking at these books and wondering, where the fuck was he getting that kind of money? In cash?"
"And how did he deposit it without flagging the Feds?" I muttered, rubbing my hand over my bearded chin.
Shawn took a bite of his burger, and as he chewed, he said, "Oh, no, he did. Found those letters too. I'm sure he got phone calls also, but …" He shrugged, lifting a flippant hand. "His explanation for it must’ve been believable enough ‘cause, obviously, he never landed himself in federal prison."
I grunted with a subtle nod. My tired brain raced toward a thousand different reasonable justifications, searching for another reason why the old man I’d loved and relied on had come into that much money year after year, all in a desperate attempt to avoid admitting the one thing I didn’t want to be true.
That he’d been collecting blood money from the devil.
Yet every road I traveled down brought me back to the same place.
The truth.
Gerald had said they were friends, but to what capacity, I didn’t know. To be honest, I wasn’t sure the man was capable of maintaining an honest friendship with anyone. He only showed up when he wanted something, when he'd found a way to benefit from his association with you.
Could he have become buddy-buddy with Leonard over the years? I still had a hard time envisioning it, but, sure, it was a possibility. Anything was at this point.
But that friendship, whether genuine or not, I was certain now that it’d begun with a business transaction. And now I had a hunch it had something to do with a whole lot of money in exchange for funeral services.
"There's something else," Shawn said, and I looked up at him, an exasperated expression on my face. "That money … I don't know where he got it, but apparently, we survived on it.”
A loud bark of a laugh burst through my lips as I leaned against the back of the chair, tipping my head back and staring at the wooden beams stretching the length of the ceiling.
"Of course we did," I said, shaking my head.
Because that was what Gerald did.
Made you desperate.
Made you need him.
"So, we either have to figure out how he got it or"—he took a sip of his soda and swallowed—"we’re all fucked."
Leonard might've gotten up to some shady shit over the years, and who knew how low he'd been willing to go to collect some cash?
But that man saved us. He was there for us when we needed someone.
He could've easily turned us away, but didn't. He'd given us shelter, food, clothes, and work … and we'd gotten him killed.
The least I could do was save his family business.
"I'll take care of it," I muttered.
Shawn laughed, the sound abrupt and sardonic. "Oh, yeah? How? How are you gonna find that much money to keep that place afloat?”
The weight on my shoulders grew a little heavier, as I knew the blood on my hands would spill over, its depths increasing more and more until I was drowning in it.
"You let me worry about that," I said, taking a drink and washing down the incessant need to scream.