Three Rich Men

Three Rich Men
by Susan Brassfield Cogan

“So what exactly is in that closet?” asked Mike. The big old house was creepy. Sheets draped over the furniture looked like ghosts curled up having a nap. Ghosts that would wake up in a nasty mood.

“The safe,” said Harry. “And money. The old man had money out the eyeballs and he liked to have it where he could touch it.”

“But the old man’s been in South America for years,” said Mike, stumbling over a low table. “How do you know there’s still money in the safe?”

“He used to go away for months at a time. The first thing he’d do would be to go up to his bedroom and open the safe. He’d sit in front of it for hours playing with the stacks of bills and pulling out all the boxes of jewelry. He’d have one of us bring his supper up there, so we all got a load of what was in that safe.”

Harry stopped and Mike bumped into him. Harry was dressed in a long sleeved black turtleneck and black jeans. Mike was in cut-offs and a yellow tank top, he didn’t realize they were supposed to dress like ninja.

“Did you hear something?” said Harry. Mike listened. He only heard thundering silence, heavy, oppressive quiet that made your ears feel like there was cotton in them.

“Nope,” said Mike. Harry led him on. When they got to the staircase, Harry finally turned on his flashlight. The stairs groaned and creaked as the men climbed them. Mike was weak in the knees by the time they got up to the third floor. He felt like the whole house was now awake and looking at him. And it wasn’t happy. The flashlight didn’t do more than stab holes in the velvety dark of the top floor. Harry didn’t hesitate, though. He knew what he was doing. Harry always seemed to know what he was doing.

“I can see why he would get the hell out of a house like this,” said Mike. “It’s creepy.”

“Nah. He married a girl half his age and went down to Rio. About six months later he showed up for a couple of days without her and then blew out again leaving pink slips for everybody but Martin, the butler.”

“How come not the butler?” Mike just wanted to keep Harry talking. Somehow the sound of his voice made the place less like a mausoleum as they padded down a thick carpeted hall behind the flashlight beam.

“The girl the old man ran off with was Martin’s daughter. I figure the geezer owed him.” Harry stopped at a door at the end of the hall and turned the knob. The air that belched out of that room smelled of dust and ancient decay.

“We gotta go in there?” Mike choked. He didn’t want to whine, but there might not be enough money on the planet to get him to step into that room.

“This was the old man’s room. Yeah, we gotta go in there.” Even Harry seemed to be hesitating, but finally he stepped inside and Mike had no choice but to follow him in or be left alone out in the hall.

“So where’s the butler now? Does he still live here?”

“I know Martin lived here for a while after his daughter took off, but I don’t know where he is now. Look around. Nobody lives here.” Harry looked around. This room wasn’t quite as dark as the rest of the house. The curtains were open and the security light outside cast pale blue ghost light on the rumpled bed. Some of the furniture was turned over and a broken lamp lay splattered on the bedside table.

“Looks like there was a fight in here,” said Mike.

“Shit,” said Harry splashing around the beam of his flashlight. “You’re right. I wonder if somebody got here ahead of us. Damn. Damn. Damn.” Harry strode across the room to the closet door and pulled it open. The closet was also a wreck.

“I don’t see the safe,” said Mike. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“The safe’s in a secret room in the back,” said Harry. He kicked his way through the clothes, shoes and tangled coat hangers scattered on the floor, pushed aside a rack of coats and revealed another door. He tried the knob and let out an explosive sigh of relief. “It’s still locked,” he said. “Hold this.” He shoved the flashlight into Mike’s hand and pulled the roll of burglar’s tools out of his back pocket. He unrolled them and then, down on one knee, he set to work on the lock.

Harry was good. He made a decent living getting jobs at rich houses and then cracking their safes later. He’d even had a few rich matrons hire him back because he was good looking and knew how to set up a great buffet table. Within minutes the lock clicked and Mike looked up at Harry with a big grin on his face. He stood.

The air that roiled out of the secret room was the breath of the grim reaper. There were heaps of money in there, all right, but around the loot was wrapped the desiccated corpse of what had once been the old fart who had owned it.

Mike wanted to scream or cuss or something but the sight of those rotted out eyes clamped his throat so tight he almost couldn’t breath. The light in the closet clicked on. They both whirled.

“Martin, I--” Harry croaked. The guy holding the gun on them was wearing what Mike thought of as a butler suit. His eyes were black glacier ice. Mike hadn’t cried since he was eleven years old, but thought he was about to bawl now.

“He killed her, you know,” said Martin almost conversationally. It didn’t make the gun in his hand look any smaller. “Crissy loved him. They used to play in that money together. He’d hang the jewelry on her and she loved that too."

“Martin, I’m so sorry about your loss,” said Harry. “If you would--”

“When he refused to marry her, she jumped out of a moving car. He told me that right before he died. He told me a lot of things.” Now Martin only seemed to be talking to himself. That was a bad sign, Mike thought. A tear rolled down his cheek. “He only loved the money. He never loved anything else.” There was a pause. Mike tore his eyes away from the gun barrel and looked around hopelessly for some way to escape, for any way out of this hellhole.

Martin’s icy voice brought him back to reality. “And now the money belongs to you boys,” he said.

“What do you mean?” said Mike. He didn’t really want to hear the answer.

Then, after a while, there were three rich men in the closet.

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Susan Cogan is the author of The Last Gift, Hands of the Buddha, Heart of the Tengeri, The Button Man, Murder on the Waterfront and The Man Who Needed Killing. She written numerous short stories, some of them contest winners. Three of them were chosen for inclusion in the Amazon Shorts program. Visit her website at: www.coganbooks.net