Busting Broncos Pt. 08

It took us most of the morning but finally the house was empty of furniture. Filth and trash was another thing, we both had brought respirators and industrial strength trash bags and began filling them with everything loose. I told Steve to hold aside anything that looked like personal papers, I was curious to find out what I could about the Crouch family.

By late afternoon the building was empty and swept clean. We decided to wait until the next day until even tackling the barn.

Steve and I did a walk through and he explained to me what he planned to do inside. He'd decided to strip the place down to the bare studs and put up new drywall in every room. We were in the old bedroom and he was showing me something about the windows which I couldn't concentrate on, I was just too tired. As he droned on, I stood surveying the room.

Across from me, high up on the wall was a crack in the drywall about a foot long from side to side. The rest of the wall was reasonably clean but for some reason, there were greasy marks around the crack. It made me wonder if there might be some sort of pests living in the walls.

Interrupting Steve's monologue I asked him, "What kind of bugs or animals live inside of walls?"

He paused and then he said, "All kinds. Snakes, roaches, lizards, spiders, bees and wasps, even scorpions. Did you hear something?"

"No, I just notice that crack over there. It's dirty like something has been going in and out of it."

Steve walked across the room to look at the crack. It was low enough from the ceiling so that he could reach it with his hand and he held his hand in front of it.

"No air coming out." he said. "But the wall is sticky, like greasy dirt."

He backed away and looked at the crack, then around the room at the baseboards. Next he went out into the next room and looked at that wall, then came back into the bedroom.

"That wall, its built out." he said. "There's no way into the space on the other side and you can see where the baseboard is missing. Maybe there are pipes and vents back there."

He pulled a stool that we'd kept in from the kitchen and stood on it, then hit the wall where the crack was with his hammer. The drywall crumbled and there was a dark hole in the wall.

"Hand up that flashlight." he told me.

When I did, he shone the light into the wall and just stood there looking inside until he said, "Jesus Fucking Christ." He turned to me, his face pale and his eyes wide.

"What is it?" I asked. "Is it something nasty? It's not dead bodies, is it? I don't want to see any old dried up dead bodies."

Steve gripped the edge of the wall board and pulled it toward himself and a piece about a foot long broke away. When it did, money spilled out of the hole. There were bills of every denomination littering the floor.

"Let me see!" I said and he stepped down and helped me up onto the stool. Behind the drywall was a cavity that had once been a closet from the look of it. And it was filled with bills, of a depth higher than my head while standing on the floor.

"No fucking way." I said to Steve. "Do you think it's really full?

He steeped back up on the stool and reached into the hole and stirred the bills around.

"I can't even reach the back wall and when I force my hand down into the pile I can sink in to my elbow without feeling anything but more bills."

As he felt around inside he asked, "Do you think we should notify the IRS or somebody?"

Steve was my brother and I had come to care for him a great deal since moving back home. On the other hand, no one was going to stand between me and that much cash. I was still holding a crowbar that I'd been using earlier and my grip tightened around its shaft.

"What do you think?" I asked. I'd really miss him, if it came to that.

"Fuck no." he replied. "We're the only ones who know about it and I say we keep our mouths shut. We deserve it, I think."

I was so happy to hear him say that that I stepped over and wrapped my arms around his waist.

"Get off of me, you little weirdo." he said. "You're going to make me fall and break something."

He jumped off of the stool, unaware of how close he'd been to tragedy. He took the crowbar from my hand and said, "Run out to the truck and get more bags while I clear away the rest of this wall board."

I did as told and when I returned he'd pulled the covering away from the closet door. Cash had spilled out of the opening all the way halfway across the floor and there was at least a yard high mound still inside, packed down by its own weight.

"How much do you think is here?" he asked, excited.

"There are bills of all amounts, there's no way to even guess until we separate it and count it." I told him, starting to stuff cash into one of the bags. "We'll get Tony to help us, he's great with cash."

Steve paused and said, "Do you think that's a good idea. Getting Tony involved. He's such an airhead."

"There's a lot more to Tony than you know. And I'd trust him with any secret of mine; he's been keeping secrets all of his life."

Steve just looked at me funny for a moment, and then went back to stuffing cash into his bag. He stopped when he came to an envelope and peeked inside. He pulled out paperwork and examined it and then said, "It's a deed. For a building downtown."

He ruffled through more of the cash and found another manila envelope. Inside were more papers.

"Anything not cash, put to one side." he told me. "It looks like we found Crouch's safety deposit box."

Over the next half hour we stuffed trash bags full of cash. When we had finished and every bill had been packed, there were 11 trash bags filled with cash sitting in the room and a pile of paperwork at least 6 inches tall.

"What are we going to do with all of this?" Steve asked. "We need to hide it. I never thought I'd see the day that we had so much money that we didn't know what to do with it."

"We'll put it in the truck and take it to our house. We'll stuff as much as we can under your bed and my bed and put any leftovers under Tony's bed. If that's not enough, we'll hide some in Tony's closet."

We loaded the bags up and I sat on top of them in the truck bed for the short trip home. When we walked inside, each lugging a bag, Tony was in the front room grooming Trixie.

"I gave Trixie her bath." he said. Looking at us he asked, "What's in the bags?"

Without replying I took the tie off of the bag and held it open. His demeanor immediately changed, his eyes cleared and he stood up straighter.

"I don't want to know what the two of you did." he said in a new voice. "Just tell me when and we'll figure out an alibi story. If they have photos of you, it might not work, but we can come up with something plausible. We just need to get our story straight."

"We won't need an alibi." I said. I then told him the events of the last few hours while he listened wide eyed.

"Both bags are full of money?" he asked, incredulous.

"And 9 more in the truck." Steve said. "Every kind of bill, there's no way to even estimate how much it's worth."

Tony took charge.

"Put them all in my room." he said. "I'll start separating the denominations right away. No one ever goes into my room and we can tell daddy that I'm not feeling well. I'll stay up all night if I have to."

The three of us carried the bags into the house and stacked them in Tony's small bedroom where they almost filled the space.

"If daddy or Cody sees anything, the story is that I'm collecting old clothes to take to the church for their rummage sale. Got it?" Tony asked. "Now, get out and let me get to work."

In the hallway I said to Steve, "And you get to work and figure out what all of those envelopes contain."

* * * * * *

The next morning Steve drew me outdoors.

"The envelopes that we found are a mixture of stocks, bonds and property deeds. All of them are in the name of 'Star Co.' so I'm not sure what we can do with them."

"Leave that to me, I've already got an idea." I told him.

Daddy came out as we were talking and he asked, "Why are the 3 of you acting so mysterious?" As he asked that, Cody also came outdoors. Steve glanced at me and walked away.

"We've been talking about a friend of yours." I said. "Dr. Johnson, the vet."

"Ed Johnson is a good man." daddy said.

"And damned fine looking, too." Cody added.

"Well, that's what we've been all talking about. When I took Trixie to him, I sort of wound up in his bed."

"Do tell." daddy said smiling.

"And I had to tell Tony, so when he went over to check up on Trixie, he sort of wound up having sex with him, too."

"So Dr. Johnson is in the club?" Cody said. "I've always wanted to give him a tumble."

"Not only that, he's fantastic in bed, he's got a great body and a big porn god dick."

Daddy smiled at Cody, who smiled back.

"We never did have those new horses checked out to make sure they're healthy." Daddy said to Cody.

"I believe I'll call Dr. Johnson and ask him if he's free to look them over later this afternoon." Cody replied.

Steve was awaiting me in the truck and as we drove the short distance to the old Crouch place I said to him, "Our first order of business is to go through all of the furniture we carried out, empty every drawer. I didn't even bother to look in that old desk; I figured anything in it would be worthless. But, I want every scrap of paper we can find that belonged to Crouch. No matter what it is, we save it."

And so we did. We had a bulging trash bag full of papers when we'd finished which I stored inside the truck before we got to work.

The blood stain in the barn wasn't as difficult to deal with as it looked. As I'd said to the sheriff, Coca-Cola is the perfect cleaner. The combination of ascorbic acid and sugar eats away at the blood so that there isn't so much as a stain. It wasn't the first time I'd used it.

Steve insisted on saving all of the old metal in the barn to sell to a scrap dealer so that by the time the barn had been emptied, the entire place looked like a cyclone had come through. Steve said that was good, too, that it would discourage interest by outsiders.

Tony showed up later that day carrying Trixie. He looked pale and tired but he was beaming.

"I was up past 4 this morning sorting out the bills." he told us. "But, it's all done. All we have to do is count it."

"And with any luck, daddy and Cody will be entirely occupied all night." I said.

Tony placed Trixie in the cab of the truck because he 'didn't want her to relive any bad memories' and then began checking out the furniture from the house. His assessments were rapid; he knew exactly what could be salvaged and what was to be burned. As he Okayed an item, Steve or I carried it into the newly cleaned barn for storage.

When he'd worked his way through everything he asked, "Does this include whatever might be in the basement?"

Steve and I looked at each other, thinking the same thought.

"We didn't even look in the basement, we forgot all about it." I said.

Tony smirked at us and said, "Don't worry, I'll come over tomorrow and empty it." Then he said, "It's time to fix dinner. I'll drive the truck but you two are sitting in the back, you both stink like Crouch and I don't want Trixie upset. "

So, we were relegated to the truck bed while Trixie rode home in style.

After showering I began supper. Hearing a car, I glanced out the window in time to see Dr. Johnson arrive and exit his car. As he stood talking to daddy and Uncle Cody, I couldn't help admiring what a totally gorgeous threesome they made.

Supper was almost completed when they came hurriedly in the back door, Dr. Johnson between the two of them. Even if he hadn't been so hugely hung, it would have been difficult for the vet to hide the massive erection ballooning out his khakis. Daddy and Cody were in a comparable state.

"We're skipping supper tonight." Daddy said. "And we're going to be busy so don't disturb us."

Nothing else was said as they herded the vet down the hall to their bedroom and slammed the door.

After supper, Tony and Will watched TV while Steve and I went through the mounds of salvaged papers at the kitchen table. What we pieced together was that Crouch had been doing business on the side under the name "Star Co." for at least the past 15 years. "Star Co." itself was actually a postal box in the next town, nothing else. Also, after I did an internet search, it became obvious that there were no records of a company by that name ever actually existing. It was an invented shell. I now knew what to do.

We organized the files and Steve added the deeds, stocks and bonds that he'd salvaged. There were deeds for 7 rental properties and others for vacant land adjoining our plots. We had the entire paperwork history of Crouch's subterfuge in our possession and none of it bore his name. I got the rubber stamp that daddy used on paid receipts and had Steve stamp each of the papers with it. While he did that, I used another old piece of paper to rub over the surface of the new stamp. It automatically ages ink, rubbing it that way, making it look like it had been on the paper for a while.

We'd also found a signed, dated blank will and a couple of power of attorneys that had never been completed. I guess that Crouch hadn't had anyone he wanted to name as heir; they were dated 10 years before. I wasn't sure what I could do with those but they were good to have.

"I'm going into town first thing in the morning." I told Steve. "I'm not sure how long I'll be gone but I'll help you and Tony when I get back."

There was a loud thump and then another from daddy's room down the hall and then the sound of three men laughing.

* * * * * *

The next morning I was up before dawn. I was in the kitchen making breakfast when I heard laughter down the hall and someone creeping out of daddy's room in bare feet. When Dr. Johnson, shoes in his hand, came into the kitchen and found me there he was plainly embarrassed.

"Sit down." I said as I poured him a mug of coffee.

I set it in front of him as he looked down at the tabletop, seemingly afraid to meet my eyes.

"I made you some pancakes and sausage." I said. "You missed your supper last night and I'm not about to let you weaken or lose weight on us. We need you healthy."

He looked up at me smiling and I said, "I think I'll add some eggs to that order, too. You look a little tired out."

He ate enough for two before heading out the door.

Everything that day went so smoothly I was almost ashamed of myself. I went to our lawyer's office with my files and gave him a story that daddy had been the one doing business as "Star Co." these past years and that I'd only recently discovered the fact. I wanted to protect daddy's assets, I told him, and as I had expected he advised me to incorporate as "Star Co., Inc." with all of the family businesses under one umbrella. I took all of the paperwork he needed signed and headed to the bank.

I gave much the same story to the bank manager; how daddy had secretly been running a business enterprise all of these years unbeknownst even to his brother. I even pointed out to him that 'star' translated to Steve, Tony and Andy Russell in initials. He swallowed it whole hog and allowed me to open a business account for our future corporation. He even complimented me, saying how lucky my daddy was to have me looking out for his interests.

My last stop was the post office where I rented a postal box and then filled out change of address forwarding cards for the P. O. Box that Crouch had used in the next town.

When I got back home, I typed a form letter informing the renters of the company name change and new address and referring them to Steve, our new property manager, with any concerns about the properties. I printed out enough copies and sealed them in envelopes to be mailed.

Then I walked over to the Crouch place, now the Russell place. There was a new mound of debris in the yard outside of the wide flung cellar doors. Just as I arrived, my brother Tony, the blond angel with porcelain skin, climbed the cellar steps.

"You just about missed all of the fun." he told me. From head to foot he was covered in grime, his hair so dirty that it stood out from his head, his clothes covered with years of accumulated basement filth. "I found some really good things, wait till you see." He was so excited about the treasures he'd found that he wasn't even aware of how grimy he was.

Steve came up the stairs, just as filthy.

"This little fucker things he's a slave master or something." Steve said. "He wouldn't even let me take a break, if I took a drink of water he griped at me."

"It was worth it." Tony said. "The cellar is empty and I found such good stuff."

"Did you get your chores done?" Steve asked.

"As soon as we all sign off and the lawyer files the papers, we are officially known as 'Star, Inc.". With multiple property holdings that you are going to have to manage."

"Does daddy know that we're going to be incorporated?" Tony asked.

"Daddy and Cody will sign what I give them and then I'll tell them afterward. I was thinking, though, that the three of us should celebrate our new status tonight."

"What did you have in mind?" Steve asked.

"I think we should spend our evening counting all of that money."

Steve and Tony both broke into huge smiles.