Chapter 7 #2
She rolled her eyes at him. “It’s really irritating when you’re always right.”
He snorted. “I am never right, and, just for the record, you end up being the one who’s always right. And you always being right … is extremely irritating.” She stared at him, but he just waved a hand. “No worries. I’m fine.”
“Good,” she muttered. Just then her phone rang, and it was Scott.
“Hey, the car expert is here.”
“Good,” she muttered.
“How are you doing with the bedrooms? The transport trucks aren’t very far away.”
“We have three cleared,” she shared, “and we’re working on the fourth but just found a hidden safe.
” She frowned and added, “I’ll see if Mack wants to go give you a hand with the vehicles.
” With that, she ended the call from Scott and waved a hand at Mack.
“The car expert, whoever he is, is apparently here.”
“I’ll go,” Mack offered. Then he faced his brother, a bit of a guilty expression on his face. Still, Nick just laughed and shooed him away. “Go on. I’ll stay here and help out Doreen.”
And, with that, Mack disappeared.
Nick turned to her and explained, “You know, it’s bound to be a little hard on him, … exposed to all this money.”
“Why?” she asked, frowning at him. “Isn’t money supposed to make life easier?” she asked in confusion.
He chuckled, smiling at her. “Absolutely. At least it’s supposed to, but, in many cases, it also makes life more complicated.”
“I’m not into making life complicated,” she muttered. “I’ll need help setting up some donations to charities and all that, but I don’t plan on making any life changes that will affect Mack.”
Nick’s lips twitched. “Are you telling me that the money won’t affect Mack?”
She took a moment to consider that, then groaned.
Nick reminded her, “You’ll have so much money now. So much more than before.”
She glared at him, protesting, “That’s not an issue.”
“Good. So, you might want to tell Mack that. Otherwise he may worry that it’ll be a problem between you two.”
“How can it possibly be a problem?” she asked, staring at him. “We can do an awful lot of good with this money, as you know. I was hoping that, with your help, we could get that rolling.”
“And I’m willing to do that,” Nick confirmed. “I just don’t want my brother to feel as if he’s not important, or that …” He frowned. “I guess I’m more concerned that he’ll feel he has nothing to offer you because he doesn’t have this kind of money, the same as you do.”
She snorted. “Nobody does,” she declared, with a dramatic wave of her hand. “This money issue is ridiculous. I mean, look at him. … He spent all that time and energy amassing all this wealth, and where is he?”
Nick stared at her in confusion. “Where’s who?”
“Mathew,” she cried out. “He spent all that time creating these various collections of whatever, paranoid every moment, stashing away good money that he refused to spend, and now he’s dead. He’s not here to enjoy any of it. I would say that he never enjoyed any of it.”
“That’s a lesson for you then,” he noted, with a smile, “because I think you will also be one who never spends it.”
“I haven’t spent it,” she pointed out, “because I don’t have it yet.”
“You have a pocketful of it now,” he stated.
She frowned at him. “I do?”
He chuckled. “Remember the wad of cash we found in the toilet tank earlier?”
“Oh, yeah, right,” she muttered, with a headshake. “However, you told Mack—and I’ll remind you now of this—how we can’t spend this money. It needs to be properly logged in and serial numbers documented, et cetera. So, yet again, I don’t have any money to spend.”
“Yes, and we should probably be checking the rest of the toilet tanks in this mansion as well. The bottom line of all of this is that you just have to keep being you. Don’t let the money get to your head or change who you are.”
“I can’t imagine that’ll happen,” she muttered. “It never mattered to me when I was married to Mathew, and it certainly won’t matter to me now that he’s gone. I’m very happy with the life I have these days.”
“Good.”
They went back to searching through the guest bedrooms, in a bit of a panic as they realized how much time they didn’t have.
By the time they had finished another two bedrooms, they had completed six of the guest rooms. That left the master en suite and three more guest rooms—the ones each of them were sleeping in.
She was well aware that Scott had movers coming right now to remove all the bedroom furniture.
Still, she headed back to the fourth guest bedroom where she’d found the hidden safe.
“We haven’t found anything, but it still bothers you, right?” Nick asked.
“Yes,” she declared, “I don’t know whether it’s the safe that bothers me or something else about this room.”
She walked over to the picture, moved it aside, and stared at the safe for a long moment.
Then she suddenly turned around, her back against the safe, facing the opposite wall, and studied it for a long moment, now smiling.
“There it is,” she declared. She walked carefully forward, her gaze glued to the one spot on the far side wall, Nick walking every step with her, not seeing a thing, just making sure she was okay.
She reached out and pressed the heel of her hand against the wall, and out popped a section of it.
“Good God,” Nick muttered, as she opened the hidden cubbyhole.
“I remember something Mathew mentioned one time,” she shared, as she stared at the numerous cloth bags inside there. “I think this is more of his running money.”
“This is … more running money?” he asked, whistling. He pulled out the nearest bag and opened it up, and, sure enough, a lot of cash was stuffed inside. Same for the next three bags. Still more were inside this deep cubbyhole.
“Yeah, that may be the last of it here,” she muttered. “He told me once, if he had to run, he would leave and not have to worry about paying for anything for the rest of his life. So I assumed that meant he had stashed aside a fair bit of money.”
“That would make sense,” Nick noted.
She looked around and added, “If we look in the closets, we should find a bag, maybe a duffel bag.”
Nick headed over to the closet, which was empty except for a couple duffel bags on the bottom, also empty.
“And that would be how he knew which bedroom, if he ever forgot,” she stated, with a laugh.
Nick brought them both over and they removed the contents of the hidden compartment into the duffel bags.
She looked down at these and asked, “Now what will we do with this?”
Nick shrugged. “Technically it needs to go in the bank, but we don’t really have time today.”
“You’re making me really nervous,” Doreen shared.
“Let’s put it all in the master, before anybody knows it’s here,” she suggested.
With that, Nick picked up the duffel bags, and she closed the secret cubbyhole, then looked back at the safe on the other wall and nodded.
She added, “I think that’s a dummy. And it was meant to draw our attention, but the real treasure was right here. ”
Nick noted, “We might have to get a safecracker in, just to be sure.”
She frowned and walked back over to it and pressed on all the corners. She heard a little click, and the safe popped open. She smiled as she peeked inside, picked up an envelope left there, and told Nick, “This is what’s in here.”
As they opened the envelope, they found a big happy face, with a handwritten note under it. Try again.
She laughed, showing him the note. “That’s so Mathew.”
“Sorry, but the guy sounds like an absolute jerk,” Nick muttered.
She nodded. “Absolutely. Are you just figuring that out?”
He laughed. “I’m just figuring out the depth of it because I had nothing to do with him personally. However, his home reveals so much about him.”
“He was all about money, all about power, all about esteem,” she stated. “And, when he couldn’t get that, everything in his life was focused on making sure he did.”
“Got it.”
And, with that, they carried the duffel bags to the master bedroom. She sighed. “We still have four more rooms to check. This master and the three we’re using.”
“Let’s go search mine first,” Nick suggested. “It doesn’t seem to have all the furniture that the others do. The movers can take the furniture in mine, while we search the remaining bedrooms.”
They quickly searched his and found nothing.
Doreen sighed. “I don’t feel anything else is in here.”
“Are you relatively secure about this?” Nick asked her.
“I am,” she replied.
Nick added, “I think we’ll still get them to sign a doc, stipulating that anything they find inside the furniture is yours.”
She shrugged. “I feel as if that should go without saying, particularly in this situation.”
“Maybe,” he conceded, “but let’s just make sure that we reinforce it by documenting that thought.”
Next, they went through the room where Mack was staying. Since she had chosen to have a separate room herself, they went through that guest bedroom too.
“So, all these are fine,” she noted. “I’ll definitely need more time to go through the master.”
“That’s okay. We’ll tell Scott to do that bedroom last.”
Scott came up the stairs just then and had four men with him. He asked her, “Well?”
Nick stepped up and shared, “We’ve gone through the nine guest bedrooms, so you can start with those, leaving the master for last.” He pointed out the master. “Given that the owner of this house was a person who absolutely loved to hide things, we’ll need some reassurances.”
“What kind?” Scott asked.
“Simple and easy. If you find anything inside any of the pieces taken from this house or its garage, it belongs to Doreen and has to be returned at the earliest opportunity.”
“Of course, of course,” Scott agreed. “Let me take a look at the master, if you don’t mind. I mean, I do know some of the pieces, but I don’t think these styles typically have hidden drawers.” He pointed at the crew gathering behind him. “Let me just get them started, and I’ll come right back.”
Scott walked with the packing crew to the farthest guest bedroom, telling them to work toward the master. The head guy nodded, and they stepped inside the first of ten bedrooms and started making plans to move this as efficiently as possible.