AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Shaking my head, I forced my mind from such thoughts and returned it to business.
Except a knock on my door interrupted me.
Bruno poked his head into my office. “Morning, Mr. Hayden. You got any trash for me today?”
“Always.” I automatically reached for the small black receptacle located under my desk and pulled it out to hand to him. There was actually very little inside since Bruno was so fastidious and usually made his trash rounds once or twice a day, but he wouldn’t mind. I think he made so many rounds because he just liked to talk to everyone.
Bruno had actually been the first employee hired by Marcella and Arthur Judge when they turned their two-person operation into a company. He was also the only employee still remaining with JFI after Lana has taken over, other than myself and Brick, that is. Maybe she hadn’t fired him because he lived on the spectrum with high-functioning autism; she didn’t think he could be any kind of threat to her throne. But she was wrong about Bruno. The old man was a smart, loyal, and dependable employee. He could’ve done anything he wanted here. Knowing Arthur as I had, I’m sure he’d offered Bruno advancement, except Bruno just wanted to remain where he was as the building’s caretaker.
If I had asked him why he’d always stayed where he was, he probably would’ve told me—in a lengthy, detailed way—but for some reason, I never did. He seemed to enjoy his life as it was, and that was more than most people could ask for. More than I could ask for, it seemed.
“Still sticking to the granola bars, I see,” he mused, examining what I had to offer him as he dumped my trash into his rolling cart.
He always made a comment on the contents of my trash can.
Some people collected stamps; Bruno nosed through people’s waste.
“That’s good.” He nodded his approval when he handed the can back. “You’ll live longer than that crap-eating brother of yours. I tell you, there’s nothing but candy remains and chip bags in his bin.”
“Sounds about right,” I answered as I retrieved my receptacle.
“I don’t know how he stays as healthy as he does,” Bruno went on, turning away only to snap his fingers and point in the air before pausing and turning back. “That reminds me; speaking of health issues, I thought that old lawyer of Arthur’s was dead.”
I sat up, lifting my eyebrows, because I totally hadn’t expected to hear such a comment. It’d almost been two years since anyone had spoken Arthur’s name in my presence. Hearing it now, caused something to shift and then constrict in my chest.
God, I missed the sharp, old bastard.
“He is,” I answered, shaking my head in confusion as I frowned at Bruno. “Why? What made you bring him up?”
Randolph Finley, my stepfather’s lawyer had died not long after Arthur himself had. I’d actually been trying to get into contact with Finley to ask more about the will he’d drafted for Arthur when the news had come through that he was gone. It’d been a harsh blow for me in my quest for answers, since I had a feeling Finley—or Fin Tin, as Arthur had always called him—could’ve helped me discover a lot.
“Well, I was wiping up a tea spill in Ms. Lana’s office this morning,” Bruno answered, lifting his eyebrows with meaning, which told me the spill had most likely not been an accident but one of Lana’s temper tantrums where she’d no doubt tossed it across her office, probably at someone—that someone most likely being Kaitlynn, her unpaid intern. “And she called some bugger on the phone Fin Tin.”
“What?”
With a single blink, I stared at him, my skin going ice cold. Then I shook my head slowly. “That—that’s not possible.”
Except all the while I murmured the words, thoughts and questions raced through my mind.
Fin Tin wasn’t a common nickname. Who else would she have called that?
Damn, was he still alive? I guess I’d never questioned it or gotten it confirmed. Why the hell had I never gotten confirmation? But why would someone fake their own death?
And why would he contact Lana of all people if he was still alive? I wasn’t even aware the two had known each other that well. Unless—unless they’d secretly been in league together.
And maybe he’d altered Arthur’s will for her without Arthur’s knowledge about it, in which case, hell yes, he’d have to fake his own death afterward to escape any kind of consequences in case the truth ever came out.
Holy shit.
Across the room, Bruno was shrugging. “Ah well.” He pushed his cart toward the door. “Maybe I heard her wrong. She could’ve said Fenton or something like that. My ears aren’t what they used to be, you know.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” I nodded, blindly agreeing as he meandered from my office, shutting the door behind him and leaving me stunned and full of new conspiracies.
Staring straight ahead, I sat in silence with nothing but racing thoughts banging around the inside of my head.
“Fin Tin,” I repeated aloud.
Was it possible he was still alive?
