“Relax, Ma. I got it all under control. When I finish getting paid off, I’ll disappear for a while. That fool wife of mine believed it all. She hasn’t missed a single month.”
That voice. I froze. A deep voice, slightly raspy. It was Marcus’s voice. My blood boiled. I wanted to kick down the door and enter, but reason stopped me. I knocked. *Knock, knock, knock.* The voices ceased immediately.
“Who is it?” asked my father-in-law from inside.
“Pop, it’s Kesha. I brought you a foot massage machine.”
A good while passed until I heard the shuffling of slippers. The door opened a crack. This time it was Elijah blocking the entrance. “At this hour, daughter, why didn’t you call?”
“I got off work, passed by Macy’s, and saw this machine that works great for your arthritis.”
Elijah stepped in my path. “No, no, leave it there. The house is very messy.”
“I’m not a stranger, Pop. Besides, I wanted to come in to light a candle for Marcus.”
My father-in-law’s face fell apart. “What nonsense are you saying? Go on, go home.”
Just at that moment, from the back bedroom, a cough was heard. A dry, short cough of a man. My father-in-law jumped. “Your mother is with the cough again. Go now. Go on.” He snatched the box from my hands and slammed the door shut.
I was left alone in the hallway. That cough wasn’t Viola’s. Marcus’s presence in that house was confirmed.
The next morning, I received a call from Dante. “Kesha, I found something interesting.”
I went to see him. He showed me an Excel file on his laptop. “I checked the transaction history. The pension checks arrive punctually every month, but they haven’t withdrawn a single dollar in years. They have tens of thousands of dollars accumulated.”
“They don’t withdraw money?” I asked, astonished.
“Nothing, only deposits. Then what do they live on?”
“The pizza, the beer, the things Mrs. Jenkins says she sees. All that costs money. Cash,” I said out loud. “Apart from my money, someone else has to be giving them cash.”
“Exactly. And that person can only be Marcus. He doesn’t make transfers so as not to leave a digital trail. He brings them the money in hand when he goes sneaking in at night, so they aren’t needy. They have a fortune that their son gives them, and even so, they’ve been squeezing you to the last cent.”
I clenched my fists. This truth was even crueler than if they were poor. They were rich thanks to their son’s dirty money, but their greed led them to steal the sweat of my brow.
“I suspect Marcus is involved in something illegal. The money he makes isn’t small. Can you find out what he’s doing?”
“That’s harder, but I’ll try to follow the trail through his old contacts.”
“Thanks, Dante.”
Marcus was hiding somewhere, involved in shady business, and using his parents and a fake debt to exploit his own family out of pure greed. Leaving Dante, I passed by a print shop. I was still missing one piece: Marcus’s death. I remembered the day we received the urn. The representative, a guy named Mr. Tate, said Marcus had had an accident and they had to cremate him urgently. The family couldn’t go to North Dakota to identify the body. My in-laws agreed, saying it was better for their son to rest in peace. I decided to call Mr. Tate.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mr. Tate. This is Kesha, Marcus’s wife.”
“Ah, hello, Kesha. How can I help you?”
