I lift a palm. “All right. I get it. He’s loaded and he diversifies. But is he always that … extreme?”
I don’t tell him about the funeral home on purpose—hoping Eduardo knows something and will share it voluntarily. I’ll be damned if I tell him I followed him all the way down to the funeral home on the corner. Crazy is as crazy does, but I’m giving myself a pass for tonight.
Eduardo mulls my question, the corners of his thin mouth curling down as he lifts a single shoulder. “Honestly, he comes in here about once a week, and that’s the most I’ve ever seen him talk to anyone. You should consider yourself lucky.”
I laugh because he has to be joking …
… only I’m met with a somber expression.
I’m seconds from responding when something catches the corner of my eye.
A silver logo.
On the umbrella’s handle.
SCHOENBACH CORPORATION
Schoenbach … Shane Bock.
“Anything else I can get you? Another water?” Eduardo changes the subject, his fingers rapping against the counter’s edge.
Gathering a lungful of faded-perfume-and-whiskey-scented air, I shake my head, and the instant he’s gone, I retrieve my phone from my bag. With electric fingers, I type the name “Schoenbach” into a search engine, combining it with words like “obituary” and “Paulley-Hallbrook Funeral Home” and “Worthington Heights, Illinois.”
But I get nothing.
The man remains a mystery … an infuriating, enigmatic mystery man with a story begging to be unraveled so I can make sense of what happened tonight.
Two hours later, I’m lying in bed, phone in hand, searching in vain for something, a clue, a lead, anything, but all I manage to uncover is that his first name is Bennett and he runs the Schoenbach Corporation.
Everything else is shrouded.
Even the biography on his company’s website is two lines long: Bennett Schoenbach is a lifelong resident of Worthington Heights. Succeeding his father and grandfather, Bennett assumed ownership of the Schoenbach Corporation in 2014.
Growing up, I had a foster mom that used to tell me everyone had a story, that I shouldn’t judge anyone without knowing it. As I got older, I learned that it’s human nature to judge. In college, one professor theorized that it goes to our Neanderthal ancestry, when survival depended on sizing up the intentions and capabilities of those around us.
I reach for my remote and pull up the Turner Classic Movies channel, dialing the volume down until I can barely hear the comforting lilt of Rita Hayworth’s voice in the background, lulling me to sleep.
Maybe I’m tired and overthinking, maybe I’m still trying to wrap my head around tonight’s events, but I want to know his story.
I’m going to know his story.
One way or another.
I don’t know how, but I will.
And I’m sure it’ll explain everything.
Four
Bennett
* * *
“The Alcott expense report.” I startle my assistant, Margaux, Friday morning. She damn near spills her coffee down her eyelet blouse, eyes wide as they lock onto me.
She wasn’t expecting to see me today, which is a shame.
All these years working together and the woman doesn’t know me at all. I’d have fired her early on, but her loyalty to my father during his tenure here has kept me from pulling the trigger.
My grandfather was always huge on loyalty. He believed it should be handsomely rewarded and never taken for granted. Besides, if she can handle him, she can handle me. And that counts for something.
“You said you’d send it last night,” I refresh her memory, my finger rapping on the edge of her unorganized desk.
Last Christmas I gave her an extra week of paid vacation and when she was gone, I brought in a professional organizer to give her area a “makeover,” thinking I was doing her (and the rest of us who have to walk past this hot mess on a daily basis) a service—only the spic-and-span tidiness lasted a mere six weeks before she had completely reverted to her old ways.
I tried.
“H … hi, Mr. Schoenbach.” She stutters when I make her nervous. My father had a soft-spot for her. Now I’m wondering if he had a hard-on for her too. She’s completely incapable of doing this job. “I … I was just finishing up …”
I check my timepiece. It’s a quarter ‘til eight. Her coffee is filled to the brim and her computer monitor is pitch black. Her orchid-colored lipstick is faded, like she’s been engaging in recent idle chit-chat.
Liar.
She follows my gaze, her lips teetering as she searches for a response, but I walk away before she has the chance.
On the way to my office, I count four people whispering, six people staring, and one sad sap from accounting who dares to make conversation with me at this ungodly hour.
I’m sure they’re all wondering why the hell I’m here on the heels of a family tragedy.
Unfortunately for them, it’s none of their fucking business.
I shut my office door and take a seat at my desk, turning to face the cityscape outside my windows. The Chicago skyline is surprisingly in clear sight today, the sky behind it a surreal shade of vanilla-orange dreamsicle.
If I were a mawkish man, I’d be drowning in a puddle of tears over the fact that the sun rose this morning without Larissa.
But I’m practical.
And I’m well aware that life carries on with or without us.
We’re nothing in the scheme of things.
And this is just another January sunrise.
Another Friday.
And I’m just another Schoenbach, ready to bury myself in meetings and paperwork until it’s the appropriate hour in which a man can enjoy two fingers of Scotch, and then I’ll show myself out—taking the back stairs so I don’t have to make awkward, have-a-good-weekend small talk with the suits and skirts on my payroll.
I’m certain the majority of my staff despises me, never mind that I anonymously cover Yuri’s daughter’s private school tuition, privately donated a Toyota Camry to our most tenured maintenance man when his Pinto could no longer reliably get him to work. Never mind that I make donations in all of their names to the Hadley Heart Disease Foundation every January. Forget that I secretly paid off Margaux’s mortgage the first year I took over, when her husband lost his job (and his battle with lung cancer six months later).
I’m self-aware enough to comprehend that working for me is no walk in the park, so I try to soften the blow when I can. Privately. Anonymously. Always.
I’ve no need for karma or accolades.
I’m seven answered emails into my morning when Margaux rings my desk phone.
“Yes?” I exhale into the receiver.
“Mr. Schoenbach? Your mother is here.”
Lovely.
“Send her back.” I hang up and finish composing my last response, managing to hit ‘send’ the instant Victoria Tuppance-Schoenbach strolls through the double doors.
I rise to greet her—not out of respect but because I’m not in the mood for the passive aggressive guff she’ll give if I don’t.
“Darling.” She makes her way across the room, her thin red lips puckered into a faux pout, her arms outstretched. Leaning across my desk, she cups my face in her gloved hands and kisses the air beside my cheek. “Thank you so much for handling the preparations last night. I was in the area this morning. Thought I’d come here to check on you. How’d it go?”