Nursing a Grudge: An Earl Walker Mystery

Chapter 6

When he awoke the next day, Earl spent all morning ignoring the metal box. He was determined to put the entire business out of his mind, and so spent all morning thinking about how he was not going to think about it.

His hands and arms were stiff from the exertion of the night before. How could he have gotten involved like that? The question triggered memories of that fateful day on the bus. He shivered and tried to think of something else.

No interesting topics came to mind. At least none that did not lead around back to that metal box. So Earl threw back the covers and got up for the day. Went through his whole morning routine, all the while patting himself on the back for not thinking about the box.

He got to his breakfast—a bowl of cereal, six lemon-flavored prunes, and a glass of orange juice. He preferred grapefruit juice, but it interfered with his meds. Earl checked his pill schedule, took the appropriate pills, and finished his cereal dry.

During the whole process, his hands and arms ached. He wondered whether he might have pulled something in his shoulder.

He flipped on the TV and tried to watch the morning news, but he couldn’t focus. He flipped around the channels for a bit, trying to find something, anything, to occupy him. It didn’t work.

He finally broke down and admitted to himself that if he didn’t want to think about the metal box, he should not have sneaked it home. As the morning sun peeked through the crack in the curtain, Earl tried to remember his state of mind the night before.

Who was that old man in the wheelchair who got involved? “Oh, that’s right,” he grumbled to himself. “That was you.” It wasn’t the Earl Walker he knew. Not the Earl Walker he knew at all.

Clutching the round dining table, he pushed himself up and followed the railing around to the refrigerator. He pushed aside the ketchup, the pitcher of water, the half-empty jar of bread and butter pickles, and reached for the gray metal box stuck in the back. It was cold. The fridge might not have been the perfect hiding place, but it was all he could think of at the time. It worked, didn’t it? Nobody broke in and found it there.

Wheeling himself into the living room by the lamp, he set the cold box on the coffee table then sat back and looked at it. The only scratches were around the lock. Had the intruder broken it open, or had Kent done that himself?

Reaching for the box, Earl flipped it open. A thought shot through him, and he looked at his fingers, then wheeled to the kitchenette for a towel and some cleanser. He was about to spray down the box when he stopped himself. Was it better to have his fingerprints on this box or not? After all, he had nothing to hide. Would wiping down the box make it look like he did?

“Let’s think this through,” Earl said aloud. “If a burglar had left fingerprints on this box, that could be important evidence.” He rubbed his chin. “Then again, if said criminal person was thoughtless enough to leave prints on this box, he would have also left his prints all over that apartment.”

Not to mention, by now Earl had probably already obliterated any useful prints. He looked at the box now, the lid open, the stack of money right there. If the sheriff showed up right now, at this moment, how would he explain that?

“I’ll just explain it calmly,” Earl said out loud. “It belongs to George Kent’s family. With all manner of intruders coming and going at will, it made no sense to leave such valuable property out in the open. Right?”

It sounded good, so he went along and agreed with himself. And as he was making an inventory for the sake of Kent’s family, it stood to reason that he would have to make an assessment of its contents. And if in the process a few of his own questions might be answered, so much the better.