Triple Treat
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 505

The old man lay in the hospital bed. He looked around at the family and whispered, “Listen, there are some hidden assets, the first clue will be in the house, you’ll have to go from there to find them,” he groaned, closed his eyes, and he was gone.

The machine hooked up to his arm via an array of tubes beeped and howled loudly, calling out for help, though the man was well beyond that now.

Two nurses came in, scurrying about like ants at a picnic, amongst the relatives. They weaved in and out of the distressed family members and busily tried to revive the old man until the doctor arrived.

Ten minutes later, he was pronounced dead.

Twenty minutes later, the youngest son made an excuse to leave the hospital to go to the house and find anything that looked like a clue.

Half an hour later, the eldest brother and his wife arrived at the family home.

“Should have known you’d be here first,” the eldest brother said to his sibling.

“Yeh, well I know you and Charlie will probably get the biggest chunk of the inheritance. If I can get a head start in this treasure hunt, I might just end up with and equal share.”

“Dale, Grant,” a voice said from the open front door. “I hope you were going to wait for me.”

“Charlie, you know you were the old man’s favourite. The will probably has you with as the sole beneficiary,” Dale, the youngest brother said.

“Oh, grow up Dale,” Grant said. “You’ve always been paranoid. Dad would have left us an equal share. We’ll all look for this ‘hidden clue’ together.”

Two hours later, Grant found the clue.

“I’ve found it,” he called to his brothers.

The three brothers sat down in the lounge room and listened as Grant read out the note.

“Dear boys, I know each of you expect to receive part of the family inheritance. Your bickering and fighting nearly drove me insane over the years, so I’m leaving only one of you anything, and everything. There are three notes under the clock on the fireplace. One with instructions for each of you for finding a unique will. You have a limited time to find the wills, though. Only one will be valid, an incendiary device in the storage box they are stored in will destroy the other two. Your directions are based on your knowledge of your siblings. I don’t expect any of you to find your will before it self-destructs, and in this case a final will will be opened by my lawyer. This one leaves everything to the RSPCA. I hope you found this note shortly after you came back to the house. You have three hours to find your wills, and your piece of the pie.

Good luck. I hope you work together to solve this.”

THE END