Ten Dollars in the Ground

Where did it all go? She must have put at least ten million in her account, why did she only leave me ten dollars? I know that I was her favorite. She was quirky, but not that abnormal. My frontal lobe is absolutely perplexed. This is an issue that even my grand problem-solving skills are shocked by.

***

My mom died a week ago. The revered CEO of Bronté Fashion Company, Riccia Bronté, is gone. There are flowers placed in the room at their optimal locations, best calming grievers. They make me think of the aroma of her jasmine perfume. I wonder how such a healthy, lean woman could possibly die on command. The doctors I ask say it's a brain aneurysm, some nonsense about subarachnoid hemorrhage. All I have the decency to care for is that she’s no longer existing. 

The COO of her fashion company will probably pop herself into my mother’s position and move everybody else up; they have enough people for that to go smoothly.

I snap back to reality and smooth out the wrinkles on my black dress, cleaning my crusted face with a moist towelette. My heels hit the stone as I race down the marble steps to the Main Hall, where friends and family have gathered to pay their respects. I slip through the teeming crowd, heading towards the vacant living room where I can be alone in my misery. Then I bawl my eyes out for another two minutes. I exit the living room and walk back to the Main Hall all the while refining my dismal composure.

“Ms. Bronté,” a man says. He takes my hand, kissing it lightly with a formal bow. “I am very sorry for your loss. I worked for the great Mrs. Bronte, it is so difficult to believe it; she is truly gone.”

I nod, lifting my chin, “Thank you, sir. My mom and I were never the closest, given that she was so busy with the company and all, but I loved her all the same. It’s such a shame I could never really say goodbye.” I release a relieved breath, thankful that my voice did not crack and eager to dismiss this male character.

A voice interrupts. “Yes, such a shame for you. She never spent much time with you, because I can count the time she spent with me. Let’s see, one, two, oh, three fingers; comes short of the good ol’ fifth. Last time I asked, she spent every spare moment with Rosie here.” A woman stands behind me, her large eyes stare at me in a mildly creepy manner as if she’s never seen me before.

“Little sister?” I say, my voice surprisingly level.

Put us side by side, one would probably assume that we aren’t related. Emilia has our father’s smooth voice and dark hair, his flat nose and olive skin. I, on the other hand, have my mother’s pale complexion and blonde locks. Yet we both take after her so much. She was our role model, ironic; she’s worked with so many models herself. Our mother passed on hereditary information that made it necessary for us two to have a commanding aura, a knack for business and management, our flawless manner, and, unfortunately, a tendency to distance ourselves from family.

“Long time, no see, Emilia.” I add, awkwardly embracing her.

“Yes, yes.” Emilia muttered, “I hear mom is gone, brain ane- something.”

“Brain aneurysm.”

“Yeah, that.”

There is an uneasy pause between us, for we are unsure of what to say after so many years of being apart. We were once close, Emilia and I. We would play in the garden while mother was working, or climb to the roof to watch the sun set. After high school, we went our separate ways, only interacting during business meetings or an occasional wedding. Not even a family reunion could bring us back together.

“Nice . . . seeing you here.” I uttered, then realized she had already whisked away into the sea of black. I strode up to make my speech with my vulnerable heart yanking me towards the front of the room.

***

I tapped my spoon on the glass, “Now may we please turn our attention to the probate judge for the reading and interpretation of the will.”

A man rose from his chair. He seemed about forty, and he held a stack of paper.

“I will now read the last will and testament of Riccia Bronté.” He cleared his throat,  “I, Riccia Bronté, acting with sound mind, and no influence or duress, while fully understanding the extent of all my property, declare this to be my final will and revoke all previous wills, hereby proclaim the following:

Article I: Funeral Expenses and Payment of Sustaining Debt

I direct all my unsecured debts, hospital expenses, and the expenses of maintaining my estate to my youngest daughter, Emilia Bronté

Article II: Money and Personal Property

I give all my tangible personal property and insurance covering such property to my eldest daughter, Primrose Bronté. My executors may use my estate to pay the expenses of delivering the aforementioned tangible properties to their proper beneficiaries.

“What!” Emilia shrieked.

Emilia dragged both the judge and I out of the room, her face turning a deep crimson red.

“There must be some sort of mistake,” she stated, struggling to maintain her composed manner.

“I’m afraid not, Ms. Bronté,” the probate judge said, “Riccia Bronté gave this to me herself before she . . .”

That must have been the final straw for Emilia; she began to scream at the judge with such anger that he cowered behind me. “What do you mean?” she shouted, “Can’t we split it?”

 “No, the law states that we can’t change the will. Mom left the fortune all for me. Last time I checked, you're the second child!” I said.

 “This is what I mean. You’re an abhorrent, egoistic, conceited, loathsome, idiot! I don’t care about some dumb cash. The idiot you are could take it and I wouldn’t care!” She retorted, her hands balled into fists.

“Great.” I barked, and then I left to retrieve my money.

***

I’m chauffeured to the bank. I bear mom’s death certificate and my identification. I entered the dim, but large bank.

“Hello, I am Primrose Bronté. I’m here to claim my mother’s death will money.” I smiled, pulling the papers from my bag.

“Bronté? Oh, I heard about your mother’s passing, I am so sorry for your loss.” The woman answers, uncapping her pen.

I nod sadly, and pass her the documentation. Then I peek through the glass for a glimpse at what she was doing, a lot of typing, that’s all. After minutes of waiting, she handed the papers back to me. “It seems like your mother has left you with a good amount of money-” My eyes widened in anticipation. Ten thousand dollars? A million? A hundred million? The woman paused, looking from the paper to her computer, then back again.

“Well?” I asked, tapping the tiles with my boots.

“Ten.”

“Ten?” I shouted, as heads turned to face me, “Ten hundred? Ten thousand? Please, it must be ten million?”

“Just ten.”

I breathe deeply, forcing a smile onto my lips to mask the dreadful emotions that I was witnessing, “Very well, I’ll be back tomorrow to claim my fortune.”

I step into my limousine, waving my hand for the driver to take me home. A quiet hum fills the air, as I scramble to pull out my violently vibrating phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi Rosy.”

“Emilia, you’re calling.” I muttered, clenching a gloved hand.

“Good observation, sister. I see you’ve inherited mom’s keen observation. I simply wanted to say that I am sorry for my behavior at last night’s dinner, that was rather rude of me.”

I growled, “Yes, you should. How dare you make a fool of me in front of that many people! Plus, there was only ten dollars. Really, sis, have you sunk that low? Are you in desperate need of ten dollars?”

“Ten dollars? So that’s the entire fortune mom left you.” She sounded genuinely surprised, but a hint of amusement managed to leak into her voice.

“It’s not funny, I don’t want to offend mom’s legacy, but she was dirty rich. Don’t you think she would have left more for us.”

“Possibly. Where did ‘us’ come from, you’re that one that said ‘Mom left all of it for me’.” She said in a mocking, but sour voice. And with that, she hung up.

***

I sat in my ultra modern, renovated, high ceilinged office room that was the size of a large living room. It was the perfect embodiment of my aesthetic, clean, crisp white. “Come in,” I mumbled, looking up from the Empire Paper Building on my coffee table.

“Ms. Bronté.” A woman said. She must have been thirty, at least, yet she looked like a sixteen year-old girl.

“Detective Kain, a pleasure to meet you.”

She smiled, “Please, call me Daphne.” Daphne paced back and forth, “So you say that your bank account has been emptied by an anonymous source.”

“Well, it hasn’t been completely robbed, but yes.”

“You do realize this might have just been your mother’s intentions?”

I suppressed a gasp, shocked that anyone might think such devilish thoughts.

“No! Mom would never do that. Besides, I already know Emilia has done it. I simply need you to get me the evidence.”

“Emilia?” Daphne asked, pulling a notepad from her leather coat, “And who might that be?”

“My little sister. We had a fight the other night, when we found that all of mom’s belongings would go to me.”

“Mmm, anything else?” She questioned, her hand moving faster than her mouth.

“Yes, she claims she didn’t do it. That seems awfully suspicious.”

“Now, Ms. Bronté, we cannot jump to such conclusions.”

“But I know that Emilia did it, I know it!” I shouted, my voice rising. I stood up, “If that is how you will work, then you can escort yourself out at this very moment.”

“To find the true convict, you must keep an open mind. Do not allow your personal grudges to get in the way of our investigation.”

I flopped back onto the couch with a huff, “Well? Continue.”

“Would you mind calling Emilia to come?” Daphne stated after many moments of pacing around the room.

My scowl melted into a grin, little incompetent Dectective Kain was finally understanding my reasoning. “Of course, detective.”

***

“Sister, what is this?” Emilia grumbled, bursting through the doors. 

“You—” I started.

“Would you care to sit, Ms. Emilia?” Daphne interrupted, motioning for her to come over.

“Who might you be?” Emilia asked, struggling to keep her voice from rising.

“Detective Kain, but please, call me Daphne.”

“Detective?” She turned to me, “You called a detective? She’s like what, sixteen?”

I ignored my sister, “Daphne, would you get this over with and arrest her.”

“It shouldn’t be that complicated, the evidence all points to her. Additionally, I think my case is pretty solid. There isn’t exactly room for interpretation.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Emilia protested, her face going red with rage. She was the one that was looking and acting like a sixteen year-old now.

“Settle down, both of you.” Daphne ordered, seeming to be surprisingly calm, “I simply want to ask Ms. Emilia a few questions.”

“Please continue,” Emilia mumbled, then added, “So I can get out of this wretched place.”

The next three hours were incredibly boring. They were filled with questions, “No!”s, the scratching of Daphne’s pen on her notepad, and . . . that’s all actually. I could’ve sworn I blacked out during that time, only awoken at moments by my little sister screaming at the detective. It was pretty anticlimactic, I thought that the case would be settled immediately.

“Did your mother ever tell you what she was going to do after retiring?”

Emilia paused, “No, though I’m not sure she even planned to retire.”

“But mom always loved the ocean,” I added.

“Hmmmm,” Daphne mumbled.

Perhaps after another hour, or another year, the raging sea finally calmed. Ending with Emilia stomping off to go to the bathroom, Daphne on the phone, and me unsure of what to do next.

“What are you doing?” I called after Daphne, “That cannot be it.”

She held up a finger to silence me, leaning down to address my private driver. “Take us to the Charoux Cemetery.”

“Why?” I asked, stumbling into the car behind her. Minutes later, she leaped out of her seat, racing down the cobblestone path. Mom’s grave was the largest tombstone there. It was made of marble with a statue of mom on the top. Her name was embossed in gold at the foot of the stone, as well as a free verse on a silver plate.

The tides have fallen,

As I sink beneath the sand.

Below I hide my place of rest,

Redemption will be earned.

As I stood gawking at the message I had never known was there, Daphne grabbed a shovel from the trunk of the car and began to dig into the earth.

“What are you doing? Is this even legal?”

She ignored me, dragging the coffin onto the grass then throwing it open. There was no rotting corpse, nor a brittle skeleton. But a single folded piece of paper.

“Just as I thought,” Daphne said with a smile. “The message is hidden in the third line of the poem. ‘Below I hide my place of rest.’ She hid where she was going in her coffin.”

“Huh,” I mumbled, turning the paper over in my hands.

37.8° N, 20.6° E

“Coordinates,” I murmured, my eyes widening.

“Hello,” Daphne said into my phone. Wait, my phone? She was not nearly as suprised as I, “I need you to search for a female who has recently bought multiple incredibly expensive items off the internet. More specifically, some sort of  beach house, or perhaps a yacht in Greece.”

“We can’t just leave Emilia all alone at home. You have to arrest her!”

“I cannot.”

“Why?”

“Because she never touched your mother’s bank account.”

“What?”

“Then who emptied it.”

“Your mother.”

“How? When? She wouldn’t.”

“Visit Navagio, Greece and you’ll find out.”

“Navagio, what’s in Navagio?”

“Your mother.”

“My mom is dead.”

“The empty coffin says otherwise.”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. The person I had buried a week ago, was alive.

***

A lone figure stood on the dock when we approached. Daphne had begged me to allow her to tag along, and after all she’s done, I couldn’t refuse. I had also dragged Emilia along, saying that it was her business just as much as it was mine.

The woman wore a white dress and a sun hat, her sun-tanned back turned towards us.

“Mom?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper, “Mom!”

The woman spun around, revealing the face of the person who had raised me.

She looked just as shocked as I, “Primrose? Emilia? You’re here?”

“Yeah, we found the note you left us.”

“Note? I did not leave any note.”

“Of course,” Daphne interrupted, “Your COO, she left the note, I dialed her up to confirm.”

“You did?” I asked, “When?”

She smiled sheepishly, “Thirty minutes ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Emilia questioned, still shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably.

“W-well, um . . . You know, I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure, I didn’t want to provide any false information.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Emilia said with a glare. She nodded at mom, who was currently breathing in the ocean air.

“Um . . .” My mom said, “Um . . .”

“Oh my gosh,” Daphne exclaimed, once again , “The last line of riddle, ‘Fame will be earned’. Do you need an explanation or should she tell you?” 

I paused, my temper rising, “You did all this . . . for fame?”

Mom rolled her eyes, “Why, of course, and also partially for relaxation. Don’t you kids know that people only admire you when you’re dead. I mean, look at Van Gogh and El Greco. They all achieved fame after death. Wouldn’t it be so great to die knowing that everything you did would go down in history and be recognized for its brilliancy?”

A tense silence formed between us, filled with both confusion and anger.

“Primrose, please unde-” She had no chance to finish, for then I slapped her. A firm hard strike across the face was all I could do. For fame, just for fame.

I grabbed Emilia, who was gawking at mom with a familiar anger in her eyes, and Daphne, who was practically leaping out of her boots in excitement.

“Let’s go. We’re not going to dabble with this greedy lunatic; we’re better than that.”

With that I swished my ponytail in her face, and we never saw her again.