Chapter 2

Dale Young practically leaped down the flight of steps from his second story apartment. He felt totally awake this fine Saturday morning and ready for his run. He always felt that he looked foolish doing his stretching and warm-up exercises so he had done those in the privacy of his apartment. He started out with a fairly slow loping stride to finish warming up the muscles in his body. After a few minutes of the easy pace, he began to gradually crank up the speed. Once he reached a fast paced stride, he kept his pace the same for the next half an hour and then began to gradually slow back down. He had navigated a rather large circle on this run and carefully completed the last half-mile of his run at a very brisk walking pace to warm back down. He ran three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. On Tuesday and Thursday he usually headed to the local community center's weight room and lifted for an hour or so.

He was nearing the front door to his apartment building when he spotted the FedEx van pull up. "I hope that's not for me," he thought to himself as he continued on past the deliveryman and headed for his second story apartment. Shortly after he entered his apartment his doorbell was ringing. He opened the door to find the FedEx man standing there with a package under one arm and clipboard and pen extended towards Dale. He signed on the line indicated while wondering who had sent him the package. After he had said goodbye to the deliveryman and closed the door, he sat down in the recliner he had purchased at a bargain price from a former neighbor who had been moving, and stared at the overnight envelope for a while just trying to guess what it might contain.

The thirty-eight year old divorcee didn't really have all that much in the way of furniture in the apartment. His wife of thirteen years had found some hotshot female lawyer who had hired several "witnesses" to say that he beat her. His wimp of a lawyer advised that he not contest or delay the divorce in anyway and implied that if he did he might lose everything. Well he had lost everything anyway and afterwards he realized that while he had been staggered by his wife's betrayal he hadn't been thinking very clearly. Even now he couldn't think of it as anything but a betrayal. It wasn't so much that she had left him, since even he knew that their relationship had just seemed to fizzle out somehow; but it was more the way she did things like charging that he beat her when in reality he had never ever hit her and rarely even raised his voice at her. After the divorce proceedings where over and quite some time had passed, he realized that his lawyer must have been paid a bit on the side to encourage him to just fold and let her have things her way.

With the divorce and then the downturn in the economy, Dale hadn't had very much in the way of good news for the past several years. He looked at the shipping label on the overnight letter with a sense of foreboding. "Mahoney, Edwards, & Cunningham" he read aloud off of the shipping label. "Hmmph! Sounds like another damn lawyer to me. What is the bitch trying to do to me now!" Dale fumed aloud. Not only had she taken the house, the car, and the truck, withdrawn all of the money from their joint checking, savings, and money market accounts, but she had also run up just about all of his credit cards as well as. Most of the time when Dale received anything from a legal firm he didn't recognize it was somebody trying to get money out of him, and with his money gone and his credit in shambles it was almost impossible to satisfy any of them.

Finally, realizing that he was putting off the inevitable, he opened the package. He found that in some ways he had been correct. Mahoney, Edwards, and Cunningham was in fact the name of a legal firm; however, the letter wasn't announcing some new attempt to take money from him. Apparently his mother's great uncle Ezra had died recently. This was a formal invitation to attend the reading of his will. He read through the letter quite carefully. At first he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to afford to travel to wherever the reading was to be held; but then, in the final paragraph of the letter, he read that all travel expenses would be covered by his great uncle's estate as long as Mahoney, Edwards, and Cunningham were allowed to handle the arrangements.

Two days later, Dale found himself traveling first class to Reno, Nevada. His mother was the only child of an only child. His mom's mom, Grandma Clair, had passed away shortly after his mother, Mary Stillman, had been born. Her Uncle Ezra had raised her as if she was his own daughter there in his mountain home some 30 miles southwest of Winnemucca. At the age of twenty Mary Stillman left Uncle Ezra's home to attend UNLV where she later met Gil Young, a handsome yet shy man who became the love of her life. Gil and Mary had enjoyed a wonderful life together that ended suddenly and tragically at the hands of a drunk driver less than five years ago.

Dale had visited his Great Uncle Ezra at least a dozen or more times while growing up. The visits ended when it seemed to cause tension between his former wife and himself. He probably should have wondered about her even back then; but he hadn't and he couldn't change that now. While the plane was in the air, he thought back to times past when he had been a child being taught how to fish and hunt by the kindly old gentlemen. He remembered Uncle Ezra taking him out at night for a bit of 'star gazing' through the telescope he had placed out on the balcony running along the second story on the back of his house. If you lived in the city, you'd never really see very many stars; but out in the wilderness the night sky was filled with them and he had always enjoyed learning about them with his Uncle very much. Now, years later, he felt bitterness and self-loathing well up inside him as he realized just how early in their marriage he had "folded" whenever his bitch of a wife pushed him to. Bitterness at her for the relationships that she had ended, mainly the one between him and his Uncle Ezra and the strained one between him and his father, and self-loathing when he thought about how easy he had made it for her to do so.

He came out of his reverie a bit when the pilot announced that they were on approach to Reno. Soon enough the squad of stewards and stewardesses swept through the passenger cabin making certain that seats were placed in the upright position with tables stowed away for landing. Dale looked out the window and watched as they made their landing approach. After the pilot had executed a picture perfect landing, the aircraft taxied to the assigned departure gate. Soon the call came for First Class passengers to exit the aircraft. Dale stood up and opened the luggage compartment above his seat. Once he had extracted his carryall bag, he left the plane and headed out to the section of curb where the limos and private cars were supposed to pick up their passengers. Soon enough he heard a driver calling his name and headed towards the large and well-appointed vehicle. "Wow! First Class and now this! I better enjoy my day or two of luxury while it lasts," Dale thought to himself as the driver placed his bag in the trunk and then held the door open for him.

It was mid-day when Dale arrived at the offices of Mahoney, Edwards, and Cunningham. After he met the lawyer appointed to take care of his Uncle's will, Dale asked who else had been invited to the reading.

"Other than the customary witnesses to the proceedings - no one else has been invited. According to Mr. Gage's directions you were the only one to be invited," Jacob Edwards informed him.

The news surprised Dale somewhat but he decided to keep that to himself and waited for them to get started. Once things were underway, he learned a few things that he had been previously unaware of. His Uncle Ezra had a half a dozen or so patents that had paid off handsomely. He had invested the proceeds in stocks, land, and in several business ventures where he had remained the silent partner. One of the last things he had done before he died was to sell mineral rights to some land he owned where plutonium had been found. It turned out that the total value of his assets now exceeded more than seventy-three million dollars. All of this was a bit shocking to Dale. He had never known of his Uncle's wealth nor would he have been that interested in it if he had. He had enjoyed the friendship, camaraderie, and sense of acceptance he felt when he was with the kindly gentleman.

The very last bit of information was even more of a shocker; he had named Dale as his sole heir. Dale's heart began to beat at an accelerated pace as the news began to sink in and the adrenalin began to flow. He let out a whoop of excitement; but then, after a minute or two, he seemed to calm down and turn almost despondent.

"What's a matter? Why the sullen face? I thought you would think this was good news," Mr. Edwards inquired.

"I guess I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop," Dale replied.

"What do you mean?" the graying fifty something attorney asked.

"My luck has been so bad for so long that I guess I'm just expecting something to ruin the good news you've just given me; something like the amount of death taxes I'll be expected to pay," he answered.

"Well now, let's see," Mr. Edwards said as he leafed through the paperwork in front of him. "The amount will be close to sixteen million; but before you start to think that will ruin things for you, just let me point out that more than twenty-seven million in cash is sitting in the bank right now from the recent sale of some mineral rights. That money can be used to pay the death taxes. In addition, if you would break your lease immediately and move to Nevada within the next five days, I can hold off on filing the final paperwork until then and as a Nevada resident, you will pay no state taxes on your inheritance."