Scammed by Ron Chudley Page A

was the obvious starting point. The chaotic jumble of its contents no longer bothered him; creating order from other people’s mess was, after all, what he did every day. By the end of the day, the first winnowing was done: bills, receipts, correspondence, bank statements were all organized into piles, ready to be gone through later in greater detail.
    In the process, Greg came across a brochure for the cancer clinic, two round-trip tickets to Los Angeles, and a schedule—but no tickets—for an airline offering connector flights to Mexico. So there it was: physical evidence of a dream that had been shattered. The final piece of the sad puzzle he found not in the desk, but in a nearby corner, as if it had been flung there: an old-style bank passbook, with the deposits and withdrawals neatly itemized. The final entries told the tale all too clearly. A month ago, there had been a deposit for twenty thousand dollars, proceeds from the securities that had been sold. Then later, four withdrawals were itemized in rapid succession, five thousand dollars each, with the closing balance—the discovery of which had set off the fateful plunge to catastrophe—zero.
    Greg took the passbook back to the kitchen. He got out the whisky and poured himself a shot, discovering with surprise that, since the night of the tragedy, he’d managed to go through most of a bottle. Well, who cared? His father wasn’t going to need it anymore. During his lifetime, he’d done little enough to promote his son’s peace of mind, so it was only fitting that he should provide some small comfort now, if only via the medium of his liquor supply. This, in fact, was substantial; Greg discovered half a case of Glenfiddich in the cupboard. The old man, at least in that regard, had evidently not felt the need to stint himself.
    Greg downed the first shot and poured another. While he ate supper, he examined the pathetic little passbook again. By that time, he had pretty much decided on the next thing he needed to do.
    â€¢ • •
    Next morning, when he phoned his parents’ bank in Duncan, he got an appointment for that afternoon. A hunt through the Yellow Pages then provided a local lawyer who could fit him in within a day: it had been in his mind to apply for probate of the will himself, but, uncharacteristically, he decided he wasn’t in the mood to tackle the minor legal formalities. Even his customary business suit felt oddly uncomfortable when he donned it to go into town; living at his parents’ place seemed to be having a strange effect on him.
    The fifteen-minute drive into Duncan, winding by the river, then through the woods and across the brief stretch of farmland that merged into the outskirts of the town, was an experience so anciently familiar that he hardly noticed. By then his mind was already at the bank, running through the confrontation to come. Of one thing at least he was certain: those people were going to be made to feel very bad for their part in what had happened to his parents.
    Downtown Duncan, however, did give him a surprise. It had changed from the sleepy village of his youth into quite a cool little metropolis, with cafés and boutiques, a new town square and some tasteful decoration. He parked near the bank and, realizing that he was ravenous and still had half an hour till his appointment, found a place to eat. At five minutes before one, with his belly full, the adrenalin running and spoiling for a confrontation, he was leaving the café when he suddenly thought, God, I’m actually pumped. Giving these people hell is going to feel good. Maybe I’m more like Dad than I knew.
    The bank manager had a corner office, pleasantly appointed, with—yet again—a Walter Lothian seascape prominently displayed. His name was Herb Wilshire, a round-faced forty-year-old with a confident handshake and an annoyingly sincere smile. Seeing Greg’s eyes on the painting, he nodded