Misgivings: Day 20

Word Total: 120,089

Year to Date: 420,215

Summary of Events:

Greyson chatted with the mechanic and learned some more about the Fransbergen family, mainly learning that Ayers was smart, but not necessarily quick-witted. The following morning Greyson was making breakfast when he was confronted by Mr. Fransbergen, who accused Greyson of snooping around despite their agreement by sitting around looking out the front window. Greyson claimed that he was only doing it because there was no back deck, but Mr. Fransbergen called his bluff and Greyson, seething at himself, set about to rearrange the living room furniture. He discovered some cuts in the carpet under the couch while doing so that made a flap, beneath which he was shocked to find stacks of $100 bills…

Excerpt of the Day:

He warily reached out and took up one of the stacks by its rubber band, revealing a particle board underfloor beneath, as well as making it clear that the multicoloured foam underlayment was about 1cm thick.

Thus, the stack of bills — all of which were brown $100s — was 1cm thick, but Greyson had no idea how many bills it took to make 1cm of thickness so, with a trembling hand, he removed the rubber band and, finding the textured darker brown place close to Sir Borden’s head made for getting a good grip on them in just such a situation, counted them out silently.

One hundred bills were in the stack. Greyson fished his cell phone out of his pocket and multiplied 100 by 100. 10,000 was the answer. This one stack of bills was $10,000.

Since there were seven stacks in four columns, that meant there were twenty eight stacks, and if each stack was, indeed, comprised of only $100 bills — which Greyson felt was reasonably likely, seeing as the other two stacks he could see edges of showed nothing but brown — that meant that there was $280,000 sitting before him.

Over a quarter of a million dollars, hiding under the carpet of a janky, dated old trailer hiding out in the middle of nowhere on a dodgy chicken farm. Greyson couldn’t believe it.

His hands still shaking, he drew the stack back together and wrapped the rubber band back around it before replacing it in its spot. He’d just about been giddy to see five $100 bills in one place. This was many more times that than he could calculate in his head.

Carefully Greyson put the carpet flap back in place and, after a moment, got up and went over to the vacuum, which he turned on and ran carefully over the carpet so as to not accidentally lift up the flap and possibly end up sucking some of the money into the vacuum, which he imagined would clog the vacuum, if not even damage both it and the money, all of which had looked crisp and new, despite the fact that polymer bills had been in circulation for nearly a decade, and Greyson had seen for himself some pretty mangled bills over the years.

He dragged the coffee table over the cuts in the carpet and drew the couch around to be against the wall, centred along the picture window and sat on it, still hardly able to wrap his head around what he’d just seen.

There was no way that Mr. Fransbergen knew about that money. He would not have told Greyson to rearrange the furniture if he’d known it was there. It couldn’t be Ayers’ either, as Ayers had last lived in the trailer before polymer bills had been introduced. All of that money had to have been left behind by Terry without anyone having known about it; but where was it from, and why was it there?

Next Post: 30 April.