Family Money by Chad Zunker

Author:Chad Zunker [Zunker, Chad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2022-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

After getting the girls down for bed, I told Taylor I was going over to her parents’ house to grab a few framed photos to use in the presentation. Instead, I drove straight to the storage facility where my father-in-law kept his old boxes of legal files. I pressed in the code at the security gate and then parked in a spot outside of the two-story building. It was after dark, and the parking lot was empty. I pressed more codes at the building door to get inside, took the stairs up to the second level, and once again found myself standing in front of the various stacks of boxes. I knew right where to search this time.

I found the two boxes labeled Bruce Gibson & Daniel Gibson, Attorneys-at-Law, and popped open the lids on both. First, I searched for the thirty-five-year-old letter from Greta in the back of the second box. I read it again and stuck it in my pocket. Then I began pulling out the files from the boxes. They were all from the same client: Grande Distributors. I found a file labeled Company Info and discovered that Grande Distributors had been based out of Mexico City with a distribution center in El Paso. The company mostly stored and transported appliances and electronics to and from Mexico. I did a quick Google search on my phone. The company still existed all these years later and appeared to have grown massive in size and in scope.

I looked deeper into the files. From what I could tell, Joe and his father had represented the company on about a dozen general-litigation matters over about a year’s worth of time—so not long. Mostly disputes with truck drivers and issues with wholesalers and vendors. I pored over every word in these files, wondering if one of them could’ve entailed the mysterious multimillion-dollar settlement. I had skimmed them during my previous visit to the storage unit because they didn’t have Joe’s name on them. I reached the last file in the second box and found nothing related to a big settlement, nothing unusual at all about the files. So why had Joe secretly taken them from his old office after his supposed death thirty-five years ago?

I packed up the two boxes and put them back with the stacks of others. Then I closed the garage door to the unit and hit the stairs again. Inside the stairwell, I paused and stared out a window to the outside parking lot where I could see my Tahoe parked in its spot. I noticed that a black Ford Explorer was now parked across the parking lot. It had not been there when I’d entered the building. That didn’t necessarily concern me. Renters could come and go whenever they pleased. What did concern me was that I could see someone sitting in the shadows of the vehicle behind the steering wheel. The glow of a phone screen cast a slight bit of light on the driver’s face. But it wasn’t enough to tell anything about the driver.

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