Dad’s Will

The upstairs attic was crowded and filthy. Jace took another sip from his beer before getting started. It would be somewhere up here. He put his drink on a dusty box and starting digging through the garbage. There were old bottles, old books, a stamp collection. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. Clouds of it puffed up into his nose, making him sneeze.

He found an old paper box. One of the edges was torn, and it was bent out of shape. If he knew his dad, and he was pretty sure he had, this is where the will would be. He never stored important things right. Next to it was an old corkboard. Jace hadn’t seen it in ages. He was a mechanic, but on his days off spent time on old cold cases and currently unsolved stuff. That had stopped when they moved, Jace hadn’t ever known why.

He took the paper box, the board, and his beer downstairs.

He dumped the box on the coffee table, drained the last of the bottle. He grabbed and opened a new beer from the kitchen. He’d have to clear out his dad’s fridge eventually, no harm in starting with the beers. He went back to the loungeroom and dropped himself on the couch. He took a long drag from the bottle, and the cold beer settled in his stomach like a rock at the bottom of a lake. He didn’t put it on the table immediately, instead letting the head rest against his lip for a minute. The cool glass gave him a place to settle his mind. His dad had always gone for a more hoppy bear than Jace liked, but he couldn’t do this without something to pour in the cracks of his psyche. He stared at the box, quietly cursing his father for leaving him to this. The breath from his whisper whistled out of the bottle.

He wished this sort of thing could wait, but Anthony wouldn’t let it. Older siblings are meant to look after the parents, but not Anthony. No way. Too much to do, too much money to make in other places. Too busy running his restaurant into the ground, begging dad to put the place up for collateral in a new mortgage. Jace thought that Anthony wanted their father in a nursing home. Forget that he exists, take the old house for himself, and start renting it out. Never mind that Jace was the one looking after dad. Never mind that Jace was left to go through all their dad’s stuff.

Jace put the beer on the coffee table and wiped the condensation off his hand on his jeans. He opened the box and found papers, just like he’d thought he would. There was an envelope with his father’s handwriting on the front, blocky and imprecise, spelling out ‘WILL’. Jace held it for a moment. It was so strange that something important could be so light.

To my first son, Anthony, I leave nothing. I have kept your secret and will take it to my grave. If no one knows what you have done, then I have given you the life you have. If someone discovers it, then my things won’t help you.

To my second son, Jace, I leave all my worldly possessions to do with as he pleases.

Jace was floored. He got everything? Anthony was not going to like that. And what secret? Probably the reason his ex-wife left him. Everyone knew, it just wasn’t spoken about or proved. He folded the paper, put it back in the envelope and on the coffee table. He had to process this. He drank some more of the beer.

The box still had other papers in it. He figured he would go through it for a while. The truth was that Anthony would probably contest the will, so it wasn’t worth worrying about. It wouldn't be hard to contest considering their dad didn't even do the basics to make it legally binding, like have it signed by a lawyer. He put it aside, and, by the grace of the beer, let it lie for the moment.

He drank some more and started going through the box. It had photos, newspaper clippings, handwritten notes, some receipts, a ball of red string, and some thumbtacks. Jace knew the beginnings of a conspiracy board when he saw one. The newspaper clippings were about a boy, Billy Tamers, who died when Jace was ten.

Twenty years ago… how times changed. It had been different then; a different town, practically a different life. This was probably the last board his father ever put up. Maybe he got discouraged when they announced they were closing the case. They’d moved not long after— a lot of people moved after— which had been easier on Jace than Anthony. To be fair, he was thirteen at the time. That’s a hard age to restart school. Ten is easier. The kids haven’t totally settled into their cruelty and cliques yet.

The kid was Billy Tamers, twelve years old, disappeared on August the 17th, 1998. There was a photo of him with Anthony. Jace remembered them hanging out when they were all kids. Billy was a small kid with a loud mouth who would follow Anthony around. Jace leaned the corkboard against the coffee table and stuck an old polaroid of the two of them into the middle of it. Anthony didn’t look pleased to be in the photo, but to be fair he was thirteen. Kids hate being seen at that age.

He went missing on the 17th, showed up dead on the 18th. He was found floating face down in the Jamerson’s swimming pool. With the safety of suburbia shattered, everyone started to point fingers. The last person to see Billy alive was a petrol station cashier. She’d seen Billy and another boy. The other boy was probably around Billy’s age, but she didn’t remember what he looked like. She said she saw a lot of kids come in for snacks, and this one had been wearing his hood up. She only remembered Billy because he was “loud”.

There was a picture of Hugo Jamerson in the pile. Jace remembered him. He was fifteen, and a bully. He was always going at Billy for his bracers, or his bowl cut, or his torn-up shoes. He wasn’t as bad when Anthony was around though. That’s probably why Billy stuck to him. Jace stuck the photo on the board.

The answer so far seemed obvious. Everyone in town had thought so too. Hugo got too rough, drowned Billy, and left him there. The problem was, when the trial started it pretty quickly got out that he couldn’t be guilty. Usually, juvenile cases have a lot of extra protection around them with almost no press. The problem was Mrs Jamerson, who Jace had always remembered as a lot prettier than her interview picture showed. She was, allegedly, distraught about the fact that her son was on trial for murder, but would only do paid interviews.

The interview she did was not the most objective. It had a lot of fluffy language about how delicate she looked, and about how teary she got. Still, a lot of what she said held true to the very little that had been published by more reliable outlets. Hugo wasn’t home that night; the whole family was out of town visiting his sick grandmother.

That was a solid alibi. It didn’t take Billy’s body out of the pool.

The other thing that got leaked was from a member of the jury. Someone who was anonymous since they had sworn not to tell anyone, but apparently couldn’t keep their vow after hearing what had happened. Billy hadn’t drowned. He was beaten.

.

The problem was, Jace couldn’t figure out why anyone would kill Billy. Sure, he was annoying sometimes, but not murderous-rage-inducing annoying. Just a little loud and a little daft.

The next suspect was Kevin Porter. Thirty-four, owned a local convenience store, douche. Jace mostly remembered him for his daughter, Lilly Porter. He’d had a crush on her. Everyone had a crush on her. For a pack of ten- to thirteen-year-olds, a fourteen-year-old girl was the hottest thing around. Billy had a crush on her which meant, whenever she went past, he had something to say. Anthony had as much luck wrangling him in as anyone else, so he would have to stand off to the side looking sheepish and apologising. Mr Porter only saw it a couple of times and was more annoyed about finding stolen lollies in Billy’s pockets. He’d threatened him a couple of time. Nothing as serious as murder, and he’d never done anything, but he was always saying he’d “get him”. Whatever that meant.

But Kevin had a solid alibi, as reported by the local newspaper. He was in the store working when Billy was last seen and didn’t leave until after six. Then he went home to his wife and daughter. Also, conveniently, he was a thirty-four-year-old man, rather than the thirteen-year-old boy Billy was last seen with.

Jace remembered what happened next. His friends stopped talking to him, his teachers started to side-eyed him, and his parents started fighting. Anthony was next to prove his innocence.

There was a copy of the statements Anthony and their father had made. They both said the same thing: Anthony came home after school and was in his room. The only difference was that their father said “doing homework” and Anthony admitted to playing games. Jace tried to remember, but it was hard to pick one specific night twenty years ago. He knew that Anthony had a ground floor window he would sneak out of sometimes, but he didn’t have any way to know if he’d done it that afternoon.

So, there it was, another solid alibi. Jace was starting to see why his father had stopped putting all the work in to make these boards. They didn’t really lead anywhere, and they couldn’t go out and look for more information that wasn’t publicly accessible.

Feeling deflated he turned back to the box. There was one piece of paper left. It was faded and hard to make out.

The receipt was for the petrol station. Two cans of coke. So incredibly innocuous. But there in the corner was the time and date: 16:52 17th August 1998. Jace held the thin paper between his fingers. This was the last thing Billy bought. How did his father get a hold of this?