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Finders' Fee

by JM Taylor

About the Author: JM Taylor lives in Boston with his wife and son. As Taylor and under his real name, he has appeared in Crime Factory, Morpheus Tales, Crime Syndicate, Spelk fiction, and Thuglit, among others. His novel, Night of the Furies, was listed by Spinetingler as one of the best crime novels of 2013. You can find him on Twitter at @taylorjm7 and like his Facebook page Night of the Furies.

Excerpt

The sales rep told Nicole installing the AC system would be a two-day job, max.

The trouble started when there wasn’t room in the box for the new circuits. That meant a trip for Kyle, the lead electrician, to get a new box, and an extra day. Then they forgot to plug the hole for a drain hose. Nicole woke up to a crash in the kitchen, and found a bat flying figure-eights around the light fixture. She slammed the door shut, trapping it in the kitchen.

The next morning, she found the bat nestled behind the fridge. She sent a plea out to the social media gods. Ten minutes later, she’d caught the bat in a towel and threw the whole bundle out the window.

On day four, they cut a small hole in the wall for a switch, but the plaster gave way, sending lead paint dust and god-knows-what carcinogens into the air. Nicole ran in and found a foot-wide gash running from near the ceiling almost all the way to the floor. “We’ll patch it up,” Kyle said. His partner Josh added to the mess by cutting the edges smooth, revealing the emptiness between two studs.

“What’s that?” Kyle said. He reached behind the remaining plaster, pulling out a coffee can. No one in the room recognized the brand. The top was covered in canvas, held on with electrical tape. “It’s heavy,” Kyle said. “Is it yours?”

“I just moved in two years ago.”

“Open it,” Josh said.

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