Chapter 3

Everyone was gasping and murmuring, and even I found myself straining to listen.

"What? How would you know? He never told anyone, did he?"

"Right! He won't say a word about what he does out there. None of us have any idea."

Uncle Gerald Emerson gave a cold laugh, looking thoroughly pleased with himself, tossed down his chopsticks, and started telling the story.

"My son told me. Ran into him once by chance out there. Said Blake was all dressed up like somebody important, with a real pretty girlfriend on his arm, everything designer, a handbag on her shoulder that had to start at a hundred grand."

"And that's not all. That girlfriend of his drives a nice car, lives in a mansion, so of course she treats him well. She even bought him a watch worth over two hundred grand for his birthday. Pocket change to a woman like that."

"Blake looks like he's living the high life, but behind closed doors he fawns over that girl like a dog, does every dirty, thankless job for her. Word is her parents never had a son, so he figured he'd just live off her, be a kept man!"

Uncle Gerald's words were downright vicious, plainly looking down on Blake.

Still, putting it all together, everything Blake had now really had come too easily.

Never mind two years of grinding it out. Even two years of cheating and swindling couldn't have gotten him this far.

Just as we sat there puzzled, Uncle Gerald dropped his voice and let slip a secret that shook me even more.

"I'm telling you, Blake had to be doing dirty work for that girl's family. Otherwise there's no way he'd come into that kind of money and come straight home showing off, fixing up the whole family grave the second he's back."

"And there's something buried under that grave! He says he put it there to set up some feng shui thing, but that night I knew something was off. I saw him dragging something over in a suitcase. Black, and heavy, really heavy!"

"Midnight, when nobody was watching, Blake buried that thing under the family grave all by himself, sneaking around! I was hiding right there in the bushes and saw it with my own eyes."

The second those words left his mouth, I caught something out of the corner of my eye that scared me half to death.

Blake was here!

Standing not far off, staring straight at our table, and all I could do was quickly kick Uncle Gerald under it.

But the man was too thick to feel it. He still hadn't caught on, still hadn't noticed how dark Blake's face had gone, and he just kept right on talking.

"It's the honest truth, I saw it plain as day. A black suitcase, and afterward Blake filled it with stones and threw it in the river. I followed him the whole way. I saw all of it."

"I could take you to the exact spot where he dumped it right now! If he wanted to get rid of it, fine, but why fill it with stones first? There's something fishy in that suitcase, mark my words."

Watching Uncle Gerald build toward flat-out accusing Blake of something shameful, I hurried to cough a few times and called out Blake's name on purpose to break the awful moment.

"Blake, you're here? Come eat something if you're hungry!"

Everyone gave a start and clamped their mouths shut.

Blake walked over coldly, stopped right in front of Uncle Gerald, and held out a cigarette to him.

"Uncle Gerald, there's something I want to ask your advice on. About fixing up the family grave. You're the one in this family whose word carries weight and who knows how these things are done. I really have to come to you."

Uncle Gerald flinched, thrown into a panic too.

He couldn't refuse. All he could do was follow Blake outside.