Village Squire, 1973-06, Page 20One by one the bills turned up over the next few weeks, when-
ever the boys ran low on spending money or wanted a new toy
of some sort. Climax of the whole affair was when Kelly
McGintee, the town's stolid upholder of the law, tried to
cash a twenty at Margaret's restaurant during the morning
coffee break. When Margaret spotted the twenty she laughed
and said she had better check it. When she checked it she
recognized it for what it was. The laughter echoed around
Kelly for days. How could he explain that his son had slipped
it into his billfold in exchange for two tens? He didn't even
know.
Michael and Brian didn't really feel guilty about their "crime".
In fact, they weren't even sure it was wrong. Neither of them
had even had much to do with twenty -dollar bills before so
they weren't even sure they were fakes. As far as they knew
they were real money and the only qualms they had were about
having tricked Peggy into giving the bills to them.
Having always been given small and strictly supervised allo-
wances by their frugal parents, the boys found their new wealth
enchanting. They took care not to spend it carelessly and that
is why the bills turned up infrequently with no apparent pattern.
This was the one mystery of the town, who was passing the
bills and how come they only turned up now and again. The
other was how people could be duped into accepting such ob-
vious forgeries. Everytime a bill appeared it was after some-
one else had accepted them.
The mystery lasted nearly all summer. It was late in August
when the secret finally came out. The bank manager was
walking through his domain when one of the tellers laughingly
commented that he must be getting very generous toward his
son because Michael had just deposited twenty dollars and raised
his account by an extreme amount. The manager knew he
hadn't given the boy money so he went over to look at the
record. On it he saw the first twenty dollar deposit and when
he asked to see the money his son had put in he knew the horrid
truth. There was another counterfeit.
That night under rigorous cross examination Michael spilled
the beans to his father. This led to further investigation which
uncovered Peter and Peggy's part in the episode. Because of
the obvious embarrassment to such prminent townspeople, the
bank manager, the chief of police and the town's printer and
newspaper publisher, the story was hushed up as quietly as
possible. Peter had already destroyed the plates so there was
no worry about them. The last of the bills were rounded up
and destroyed and the fathers pitched in to pay back the money
that was missing because of the incident.
Of course the news soon did get to the townspeople finally
because the secret could not be kept. It made great conversat-
ion for almost a week and then, mercifully, was forgotten
except by the old-timers who gathered every morning on the
benches under the old maple by the post office. They stored
it with the story of Will Stimers' fools -gold discovery and the
story of the chase of the counterfeiters and retold it to anyone
who would listen 'till years to come.
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