“Get down here and help me with this.” I’ll thank him later. Time is of the essence.
He gets to his knees beside me, and even then, he’s so much taller than me. Gosh, he smells good up close. Like spices and metal grease from the machine shop.
Titus tugs at one buckle on the trunk, grunts, and laughs. “Damn, it’s stuck. You don’t have a key?”
“No. That would be too convenient in a crisis.”
“Maybe we can smash it with a rock,” he says.
“I’ll try anything,” I say.
Unlike Herc, I love him for not asking why I’m trying to open this trunk. As Titus dashes outside to find a rock, my brother’s broad silhouette darkens the shed’s doorway, and he flicks the light on. “What the hell is happening in here, children?”
I shoot him a pointed look. “Tennis is our meal ticket, remember?”
Herc blinks at me. I love my brother, but he’s not going to win at an escape room anytime soon. I jerk my head in the direction of the trunk.
I watch as the proverbial light bulb gradually brightens in his eyes. “Oh, whoa. You mean…no, that can’t be right.”
I smile. “That’s the difference between you and me, bro. Glass half full,” I say, patting myself on the chest, then gesturing toward him, “glass half empty. It can’t hurt to see what’s inside.”
Titus returns with a rock about the size of his head, and Herc and I stand back as he smashes the buckle. The rusty metal breaks apart on the third try, and the three of us kneel in front of the trunk.
It creaks like it’s been sitting undisturbed for centuries.
But before we look at what’s inside, there’s a knock on the sliding door that sits open.
My thudding heart once again is in my throat as we spin around to face our sudden visitor.
The badge she flashes us reads, “FBI.”
Oh, double fudge. This isn’t a bunch of Internal Revenue Service bean counters.
We’re thoroughly fudged.
The agent is deliberately blocking our exit. With a tone that’s way too perky under the circumstances, she asks, “What are y’all up to in here?”
Without missing a beat, Herc replies, “Just reminiscing about our…dead mother.”
Good, good, I think. Play the sympathy card. It might buy me time to think.
The agent, whose badge reads something-something Stephens, smiles kindly but remains firm.
“I’m going to have to ask you to take your hands off that trunk and step outside. We are here to seize any property of the Treadway residence, that includes any outbuildings,” the agent informs us in an officious tone.
Herc pipes up, “You don’t seriously think this trunk is worth anything, do you? Look at it?”
“Then what are you doing with it?” she asks.
No way my brother is a match of wits for an FBI agent. I have to take control here. I speak fast. “Agent Stephens? Ma’am? My mother…Momma loved this trunk. It’s… all we have left of her. Since y’all froze our accounts, and we won’t be able to attend college, we were just going to use the trunk to get some clothes from the house real quick so we could move out until everything settles down and we can come back home.”
The agent shifts her weight from one foot to the other and stares at me like I’m a complete loon. “Young lady, your father is being charged with running an illegal gambling ring, money laundering, tax fraud, and embezzlement. I’m sorry to tell you this, but you and your brother will never be moving back to this house. This house is now the property of the Internal Revenue Service.”
I think my knees might give out. My daddy? Dex Treadway? Not my hero. Not tax fraud. That has to be an accounting mistake. And, I don’t think I know what laundering or embezzling is. I’m confident Daddy doesn’t know, either.
I start to fear that not even Arthur Gamble and his entire team at Gamble, Gamble, and Gamble could get our family out of this jam.
I suck my bottom lip, willing myself not to cry. Titus stands slowly, showing his palms to the agent.