CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Bruno arrived, having chased the greyhounds all the way to the other side of the woods. "Something spooked them last night, I guess," he said, dragging them in, all of them soaked from the outdoors. We got towels, dried off the dogs, and put them in their kennels.

Then he told me what he'd discovered.

While I'd been at Pola's house, Bruno and his boyfriend had been tearing apart the ceiling of the dining room. It had begun to bow and bend a bit, heavy with drippy plumbing from a leak Bruno hadn't been able to identify, although he had assumed it was from our father's bathroom. He had already

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recaulked the tub and tiles upstairs, but the water damage had increased in the ceiling below it.

He had a stepladder set up, and Cary passed him tools while he pulled at the ceiling. It burst all over him as he sat at the top of the ladder.

Mosquitoes and tiny gnat-like flies swarmed down from the damp open hole that was left behind. He was amazed that mosquitoes could be living in the gaps in the ceiling and walls in the dead of winter. "But the water was warm, so I guess they just kept breeding," he said.

He led the three of us into the dining room and pointed to a suitcase on the rug, by the table. "I already opened it, but maybe you should take a look."

I got down on the floor and turned the suitcase on its side. Popped it open.

As I did this, Bruno said, "He must've put it in there when he put in the new tub upstairs."

"A long time ago," I said.

Inside the suitcase, wrapped in plastic and old newspapers, was more money.

"Wow!" Zack said. "You're rich!"

Pola drew him back from bounding forward to pick up some of it. "What's all that from?"

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"It's like there's another house underneath this one," Bruno said.

"Dad's buried treasure."

"Look at all this," I said. I unwrapped the plastic off one pile of bills. "Did you count it?"

"Barely touched it. I crapped out and then had to go hunting those dogs down. For all I know ..." But he didn't finish the thought.

"Hell, Bruno, it looks like ten-maybe twelve thousand dollars here."

We spent an hour counting it. Some of it was in neat stacks, others had been thrown loosely into the plastic wrap and newsprint. Zack helped out by counting the stray bills that had fallen loose. "Fifteen thousand," I said when I'd finished the final count.

Bruno looked tense.

"Fifteen thousand," I repeated.

"Well, now we know where he stashed it," Bruno said.

Bruno began pacing after that. "He hid stuff in the house. He did it. He did the repair on the tub. Shit, he did a repair on the front stairs.

What do you bet there's something behind there?"

"The crawlspace?" I asked.

I tried to talk him out of it, but Bruno got a crowbar and a drill. I followed behind him, trying to reason with him, then 316

shouted at him to stop, but by the time I grabbed him by the shoulder, he had already smashed the crowbar into the wall behind the front staircase, leaving a huge hole in the thin wall.

He opened up the wall, and reached into the dark opening.

But there was nothing. Just the empty space that ran along the front quarter of the house, behind the stairs.

"I bet I can squeeze back there," he said.

"I can do it!" Zack volunteered, leaping up, raising his hand as if he were in school.

"You're too big," Pola said.

"I can do it," Zack said.

"Nobody is going in there," I said.

"Remember how he kept repairing things?" Bruno asked. "How he'd always be working on something-the pipes, the walls. What if he put money back there? What if there's more?"

"That's crazy."

"No, it's not," Bruno said. "He never trusted the bank. He never liked anyone knowing what he made. He and Brooke used to fight about the store because he never kept up with the books."

In a moment of silence, Zack whispered in awe: "I bet there's pirate treasure back there."

I stared at the wall by the staircase, and the raw tear he'd just made in it. "Don't do it! This is crazy!"

"Let's find out," he said, without waiting for any approval from me. He smashed the crowbar into the drywall. It went through. "He had a hand-axe somewhere. He always kept it. Go find it."

"You're going to destroy the house," I said.

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Bruno's face looked as if it burned with fever. "I think this house is sick. I think it needs some destroying."

When he'd opened the wall up with an axe, a crowbar, and some reckless hammering, we saw what we both wished we had never had to see.

It was our mother's suitcase.

Her red dress.

Her beige shoes. The ones she wore often. The ones that she left the house in.

Even her rosary and a small statue of the Virgin Mary that she had taken with her.

To Brazil.

Not to Brazil at all.

The only foreign country we knew was Hawthorn itself.

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