Frozen Assets

As we drove toward the house, Katy gasped in awe. “OMG, it’s like a Christmas card!” I was driving, so I pulled to the side of the icy road to see what had affected her enough to take her nose away from her phone. The house looked beautiful. It was a large family home, extensively modernized back in the 1990s, and set on a mountainside in a winter wonderland. We had seen it before the snow started, but today it was ours and the weather had completely transformed it. The pine trees were all shrouded in snow, and the light from the setting sun glistened on the roof, with real icicles dripping down from the guttering.

Des climbed out of the back seat, stretched, and set about taking pictures and then livestreaming himself against the stunning backdrop. Nish, Katy and I waited tolerantly for a few minutes, then started winding down the windows and yelling obscenities at him. Irritated, he turned the camera in our direction while telling his fans what he thought of us, but then he signed off and walked back to the car so we could get to the house.

We drove past the front door to the garage, but when Nish opened the garage door, he shook his head and walked to my window. “We can’t get all three cars in here. There’s trash all over the place, a fridge, a freezer, tools, you name it. We can squeeze your car in here tonight, but tomorrow we’ll have to clear it before the others get here.”

“Let’s find the electric outlet in there.” The realtor had arranged for the lights and heating to be on. As long as we could plug my car in overnight, I was OK with that. Nish nodded and went up the steps to the front door. He opened the door and a few seconds later a light turned on in the garage, then Nish came back out and guided me in, pointing to a power strip connected to an outlet in the middle of the building.

After the bags were unloaded, I checked all the plugs in the power strip before removing it and plugging the car in. A Level 1 charge would work fine for now. Nothing important seemed to be running from the power strip except the freezer, which we could deal with in the morning. I covered the car and put it on charge, then joined the others in the living room. The house was warm, and Des had already set up his coffee maker in the kitchen so we could enjoy hot drinks after the long drive. We had bought the house in an estate sale, so the furniture was still there. Only high-value, portable things had been removed for separate sale.

We sat around drinking hot coffee and alcohol, enjoying the fact that we – only a year out of college – had managed to buy this house. It seemed unreal. Of course, we had all landed highly paid tech jobs and had all come from comfortable homes, so our college debt wasn’t crippling, but even so, it seemed like a dream.

“To Nish and his dad!” Des raised his glass in a toast, and we all followed suit. Nish’s dad was an oil executive, and he had organized a private loan for the six of us to make this happen.

“To my dad!” echoed Nish with a grin, draining his glass. “We have to get up early. Better get the house and the garage cleared before the girls arrive with the furniture. I’ll sleep down here in my sleeping bag. Using a dead guy’s bed seems weird.”

Katy laughed. “He didn’t die here, Nish. He died in a burning wreck on I-5. It’s not like he’ll haunt us. Joe, let’s sleep on his bed.”

I thought it was gross, but I couldn’t say that in front of everyone. I’m crazy about Katy, but she’s very hard-edged. She specializes in IT security, and she has no emotional conflict about finding and exposing hackers, whatever their motivation. I grabbed our stuff and followed her upstairs. At least we could claim the house as ours by being the first ones to have sex in the master bedroom.

* * *

We made good progress removing the unwanted stuff from the garage the next morning. Des had some difficulty opening the huge chest freezer in the garage, but eventually he used a crowbar. That worked, and he immediately started laughing. We all went to see what was so amusing. The freezer was frozen solid, with ice all the way up to the lid. We could make out packages of what appeared to be frozen meat buried in the ice.

“What do we do with that?” asked Nish. “It’ll take a week or more to defrost.”

As usual, Katy had the solution. “We have to drag it into a corner so we can park all three cars in here. It’s already unplugged, just leave the lid open and it’ll defrost itself eventually. And don’t try to save any of the contents – they’ll be way past a safe date.”

It took all four of us to move the massive freezer full of ice into a corner, but we made it. Then we forgot about it as we hustled to prepare for the arrival of the girls and our household goods. Bella and Ruby were driving up as soon as the movers had taken all the contents of our apartment in Seattle, and the deal was that we would do all the house setup and they would feed us lunch and dinner.

The previous owner of the house had kept everything pretty clean and tidy apart from the garage, so when the girls arrived we were ready for the movers to start bringing our stuff in. Bella and Ruby were able to park both their cars in the garage before bringing in the air fryer and cooking up platefuls of chicken wings.

Over lunch, we discussed who would take which rooms. Katy was quick to claim the master bedroom suite for us. “Joe and I are together, so it makes sense for us to have the big bedroom and a separate bathroom. The rest of you can each have a separate room, and then what you do and who you do it with is up to you.”

Bella spoke up next. “Ruby and I need the big bathroom, so the guys should take the smaller one. There will be no sharing of the bathrooms and we each are responsible for cleaning our own.”

Des raised his hand. “So that means any blockages and plumbing issues are dealt with by the owners of that bathroom? Are you sure, Bella? Ruby?”

Ruby stared at Bella, who eventually said “I can handle that for our bathroom, Ruby. But that means I want the bigger bedroom with the vanity unit.”

Ruby nodded, but Nish chimed in immediately. “Wait, why do you think the room with the vanity is for the girls? It can be a serious workspace for Des and his vlog or for me with my finance site. You two don’t do anything except for your corporate jobs.”

Ruby sat back in her chair and glared at Nish. “You have the whole house for those activities. We need privacy for working our female magic. The big bathroom and the two bedrooms that have enough space for self-care are ours by right. Des, if you need a makeup station, you can book time with one of us. We’ll play nice.”

The arguments continued, but Ruby had drawn a line in the sand, and no one was persuasive or tough enough to budge her. As usual, the girls had decided what would happen, and we went along with it. We’d fallen into that pattern over the last two years, as we had various couplings both within the six of us and with outsiders. Nish ended up pulling rank on Des to get the better of the last two rooms. Des had an extensive wardrobe, so he claimed a hall closet to be dedicated to his outfits. I was grateful that Katy had spoken up first, and all I had to do was agree with her.

* * *

We’d all taken a week off to settle into the house, and there was a lot to keep us busy. We all needed high speed internet, so that was set up the next day. Des and I set up the technology infrastructure – Wi-Fi, printers, shared servers, video monitoring, etc. The others took care of organizing furniture and setting up the kitchen so we could all use it at once or separately, as need be. We’d had our last year at college and a year in Seattle to learn how to divide work up easily according to skills and preferences. After a couple of days, I was finally able to start clearing out the freezer.

Now the top layer was defrosting and I was able to take out a few packages wrapped in paper and labeled. The labels were mostly unreadable because of water damage, but opening up the packages showed cuts of meat and fish. That gave us another problem. Keeping thawing flesh around would definitely attract bears, and the garbage was only collected once every two weeks. Outside stuff was mostly my responsibility, so I set up the plan. We agreed one person would remove the defrosted contents and do a run to the local dump each day until the freezer was empty.

* * *

The next day, it was Des’s turn to take the defrosted items from the freezer and drop them at the dump. He came running into the house, yelling “House meeting!”

We all assembled in the living room. Des was leaning casually against the wall, one hand behind his back. He looked at us for half a minute to build suspense, then with the air of a stage magician he produced a large Ziploc freezer bag from behind his back. We all looked at it with “So what?” expressions.

Des walked over to the table and opened the bag. Inside was money. A lot of money. It was still partly frozen so we couldn’t count it, but given the number of bundles, and the value of those bills we could see, it was serious money.

Katy looked at it in awe. “That is thousands of dollars,” she said. “Probably tens of thousands.”

“Was this the only package?” asked Nish. “Did you see any others?”

Des smiled slowly. “I think I can see one more. It’s still frozen, but I’ll put a space heater out there and we should be able to get to it tomorrow. And by then we should be able to count this one.”

I came from the richest background, apart from Nish of course. “This isn’t our money. It belonged to the previous owner. We should hand it in.”

I expected that I would meet some resistance. The first to speak were the girls.

Ruby: “Oh no, honey.”

Bella: “This could get us out of the rest of our college debt.”

Katy: “We need to find out where he got it from. It could be stolen money, so we’d have to launder it.”

I stared at Katy in disbelief. “Wait, you want us to steal and launder stolen money? What kind of security expert are you?”

Nish was the one who surprised me the most. After a few seconds’ thought, he said “We bought the house with the remaining contents. We’ve kept or sold other items that were left on the property. This is no different.”

Yes, Fitzgerald was right. The very rich are different from you and me. Nish was prepared to claim someone else’s money as his by right of conquest. I could understand the others – this was a windfall that would make a major difference in their lives. But that left Des and me as the only ones who didn’t want to keep it. I looked at Des, and he shrugged. “I agree with them. We pay off our student loans, we have a sweet deal on this mortgage, and we can all start saving for our futures.”

I gave it one last try. “Let’s sleep on this overnight. If you all say the same in the morning, I’ll agree. Des, do not under any circumstances say anything about this on any of your accounts or on your livestream. Agreed?”

There was a pause, and we all stared Des down. Finally, he nodded. “OK, but this is a huge lost opportunity.”

I shrugged. “And it’s a huge amount of money. Get over it. Moving on: Bella, this is your area of expertise – see if you can find information about a robbery that might involve all this cash. And Katy can figure out how we make sure the money we use is clean.”

* * *

The next day, we all trooped down to the garage. There was another Ziploc bag of money defrosting, but the rest of the contents looked like legitimate foodstuffs. We still had more than half the freezer to go, but since these two bags had been together, it seemed likely that this was the last of the money.

Back in the house, Katy counted the money from the first bag. “One hundred thousand dollars,” she announced. “Someone’s going to miss that. Especially if the second bag has the same amount.”

Bella had spent the night researching recent crimes that might have yielded this amount of cash. “Nothing I can find that would add up to two hundred thousand. Maybe drug money or some other illegal activity. The previous owner must have been into some shady business.”

“So,” said Ruby, “if you want us to keep the money, raise your hand.” Her own hand went up immediately.

Des and Nish raised their hands as well. Bella and Katy looked at each other. They both spoke at once.

“It’s a risk, but…”

“Maybe we keep it for a couple of weeks and see if someone starts sniffing around.”

They both raised their hands. Everybody looked at me.

“OK, I said I’d go along if you all agreed. But Katy and Bella are right – we need to protect ourselves in case someone comes looking for it. Let’s dry it out and hide it for a month before we start to use it.”

Privately, I hoped someone would show up. I didn’t feel good about stealing the money, even if it was ill-gotten gains.

* * *

The next day everything changed again. Ruby was on freezer duty, and she came running to the front door in hysterics. We couldn’t make any sense of what she was saying, so we all followed her to see what she’d found. There, starting to defrost, just peeking out from the top of the block of ice, was the top of a human head. Now we had a new set of problems to solve.