Then, one morning, the idea bubbled up to the surface of my brain as I was drifting off to sleep. I did take care of things that were important, like Les and Marge’s bank account, which I’d managed since I married Rob. If Les was up to something, maybe some strange activity would show up in their bank statements.
My father-in-law did not understand how online banking or e-mail worked. So Rob had insisted that we help his parents out by paying their bills online, since I was a bookkeeper. Years before, I’d set up their online bank account and taken care of the utilities, mortgage payments, insurance payments. Marge still had the checkbook, and since she hadn’t brought it up, I assumed she’d taken over her own bills, but since her e-mail password was “1234danny,” I guessed she hadn’t taken the time to change the password for her bank account, either.
So at the crack of sundown the next evening, I sat down at my laptop. If my in-laws hadn’t changed their account password and I technically hadn’t been barred from accessing the account, it wasn’t a crime to log in, right? I could call and ask her permission, but I wasn’t so sure I wanted her to know that I suspected Les of chicanery. That would definitely upset the fragile truce we’d reached.
I typed in Marge’s user name. My fingers hovered over the keyboard as I tried to rationalize my snooping.
“Seriously? Of all the things I’ve done so far, this is the least ethically offensive,” I muttered, typing in the password.
Marge and Lester’s bank account opened up, showing a meticulous list of payments and credits. I scanned the list, finding the usual debits at the grocery store, the quilt shop, Marge’s hairdresser. They weren’t actual debits, of course, because Les didn’t trust debit cards. But I could see scans of the checks Marge had written. She seemed to have taken on the task of paying her own bills handily, though she hadn’t logged into the online system at all. I suspected my mother-in-law was a lot more capable than she let on.
There were a few odd line items—the payment to the funeral parlor for Les’s service and a payment to a landscaper with the note “weekly mowing service” in the memo line. I shuddered, imagining how Les would react to another man mowing his lawn so soon after his death. I thought he would have preferred that Marge immediately start taking lovers. I scrolled back a couple of pages, to before Les’s death, looking for other unusual vendors.
I noticed that Les had transferred about twenty thousand dollars out of their retirement account and moved it into checking. That was unusual. Les considered their retirement account sacrosanct. He’d toiled at the feed mill for almost fifty years to secure their golden years. He wouldn’t have touched it, unless maybe he was planning to use it to fund their legal fees to obtain custody of Danny? I scanned the vendors for names of law offices and found a two-thousand-dollar retainer paid to Freeman, Newton, and Lahey, a local firm. I also noted that it was paid about a month before I was turned, meaning that Les had been planning on taking custody of Danny while I was still clinging to life. Lovely.
So what was the rest of the money for? I scrolled back to the date of my turning. About a month after I “came out of the coffin” to my in-laws, Les had paid ten thousand dollars to “Argentum Investment Advisers.” My eyes went wide. Les didn’t believe in investing in anything beyond a savings account. When the mill switched over to a 401(k) system, he ranted for days about the instability of the market and the untrustworthiness of stockbrokers. He threatened to withdraw his retirement plan and bury his money in mayo jars in the backyard. I think the only thing that stopped him was that Marge refused to save the jars because they were “germy.”
I’d heard the word “Argentum” before but couldn’t remember where. Somewhere in my new-vampire reading, maybe? I opened my copy of The Guide for the Newly Undead and checked the index. Silver. “Argentum” was the Latin word for silver. That seemed significant, considering what silver represented to vampires. Itchy, blistery potential death.
I opened my browser window and Googled “Argentum Investment Advisers.”
Nothing.
No Internet presence whatsoever. That seemed impossible. My father-in-law wouldn’t have given ten thousand dollars to a firm unless it had a solid reputation. And a friendly cartoon animal mascot. And commercials during the Super Bowl.
My late father-in-law had been up to something super-shady right before he died. But what? Could he be cheating on Marge? Maybe he had a second family over in Murphy and was sending them money. No, I wasn’t thinking big enough. Les had been killed just a few weeks after this payment had been made. That had to be significant, too.