“Ladies and gentlemen…as we gather here to pay our respects to Mr. Sullivan, we find ourselves taken aback,” the priest declared. “Alex, this is not how you arrive at a loved one’s funeral. Please leave and return in a suitable outfit.”

Alex chuckled as he walked up the aisle. “Sorry, Father Johnson for wearing a bright green suit to Dad’s funeral, but I’m not here to mourn.”

A wave of discomfort and confusion settled on everyone’s faces.

“You see, my beloved Dad here in the coffin…is a fraud and a big-time liar!” Alex declared, pointing at the open casket. “But what will shock you even more is that he is still…ALIVE!”

“You heard right, dear friends,” Alex continued. “Let me tell you what I discovered since my dear Daddy’s so-called death.”

The dining room was filled with laughter and the delightful aroma of a delicious meal. Friends and family were gathered to celebrate business tycoon Mr. Sullivan’s 50th birthday.

“Please join me in a toast.” Mr. Sullivan stood and lifted his glass of champagne.

“I want to express my deepest gratitude to my loving family. Thank you Jesus…for giving me a wonderful son, Alex, who I wish only the best of everything…Life is too short to worry so much, friends. So let us live this moment to the fullest…”

Mr. Sullivan’s words seemed strange to everyone. Alex was puzzled why his Dad would suddenly talk as though he was going to part ways with everyone.

“…Lastly, I’m exhausted with this fast-paced life. The more I think about it, the more I feel stressed. So, I’d like to retreat to my office,” Mr. Sullivan chugged his drink and disappeared into his office upstairs.

Everyone was unsettled. The joyful birthday atmosphere became worrisome, and nobody could tell why Mr. Sullivan behaved so strangely.

“Let’s not disturb him,” Mr. Sullivan’s brother Carter rose from his table. “Midlife crisis! I’ve been there myself. Let him have some time for himself.”

Everyone decided not to disturb him until they heard a loud crashing sound of a chair falling in Mr. Sullivan’s study around 20 minutes later.

“Oh my God…Dad??” Alex bolted to his Dad’s study.

When Alex burst into the room, Mr. Sullivan lay sprawled on the floor, trembling with labored breath as though he had seizures. A vial with a liquid spilled around it lay near his father. Dad’s speech a while ago rang in his ears. Nothing made sense then. But now, his worst fears were confirmed when he saw the vial.

“Dad…no, what have you done?” Alex burst into tears as he knelt beside his father. He felt the pulse and shouted, “Call an ambulance!”

“No…we don’t have time. I’ll take him to the hospital myself.” Alex’s uncle Carter, who was a doctor in the local clinic, scooped his brother up and rushed him to the hospital in his car.

Alex’s hopes that Dad would be alright hit a brick wall when he saw his uncle Carter outside the emergency ward, agony etched all over his face.

“Uncle Carter…is Dad alright?” Alex stuttered.

Carter placed his hand on Alex’s shoulder. Sighing a deep breath, he broke the bad news.

“I’m sorry, Alex. My brother…your Dad, he passed away from Potassium cyanide poisoning. As his brother, I feel it’s my responsibility to oversee the funeral arrangements.”

Carter’s words hung in the air as Alex nodded, unable to believe his father, who was alive and healthy half an hour ago, was now dead.

“Dad’s such a strong man…he would never do this to himself. Someone must’ve murdered him.” Alex hurried back home to check his Dad’s study.

The house was eerily empty when he arrived. The housekeepers and all the guests were at the hospital and the funeral home, preparing for the late Mr. Sullivan’s last rites. So Alex was all by himself with their family dog, Pebbles.

While Alex rummaged through everything in his Dad’s study, he didn’t notice Pebbles enter the office. Alex was checking the files when he heard a slurping sound. His heart raced at seeing his dog lapping up the poison droplets spilled around the vial.

“Pebbles…Oh my God…stop!” Alex bolted to his dog but it was too late. Pebbles had licked the poison to the last drop.

Alex scooped up his dog and hurried to the veterinary clinic.

“Doctor…nurse…” Alex bolted into the hospital with a limp Pebbles cradled in his arms. “My dog…he accidentally lapped up Potassium cyanide. Please save him.”

“Are you sure your dog lapped up Potassium cyanide?” the doctor said as he examined the dog. “Because Potassium cyanide is highly toxic. Even a few grams is lethal…but your dog is breathing…and everything seems normal.”

Alex was stunned. He looked down at Pebbles on the gurney. He looked perfectly alright, except that he was unconscious.

“I don’t understand…how is this possible?” Alex grew unsettled. He insisted the doctor test the dog’s blood.

The results that arrived two hours later were nothing short of shocking to Alex. There were no traces of Potassium cyanide in his dog’s blood.

“We only found traces of sleeping pills,” the vet said. “That’s why your dog is unconscious. He should be fine in a few hours. You may take him home.”

“Sleeping pills?” Alex whispered.

He left the clinic with his dog, and on his way home, he got a call from the local police station.

“Mr. Sullivan, this is Officer Dan from the police department. We believe your father’s death is a premeditated suicide…because of tax evasion.”

“What?” Alex worriedly pulled over to the roadside.

“Your father was recently implicated in a tax evasion case. He sold the company tax-free for around $10 million in cash. We’re trying to locate the missing money. Any information you can provide on your father’s financial dealings would be helpful, Mr. Sullivan.”

“I…I don’t know anything about this, Officer,” Alex said.

Alex hung up and found himself running in a maze. Before one shock could settle, another surfaced. He did not understand what was happening.

He looked at his dog and a strange thought struck him: “If it’s not Potassium cyanide poisoning…then why is he declared dead? Is there something I’m still missing?” Alex wondered.

After leaving his dog at home, Alex immediately drove to the hospital, where Mr. Sullivan’s body was kept in the morgue.

Alex crept into the morgue and began searching for his Dad’s body. The chillness in the morgue haunted Alex as he marched across the racks, looking for the tag with his Dad’s details.

After a tedious search, he found the body. But when Alex lifted the white sheet, he found a corpse of an unknown man bearing a tag with his father’s details:

“Jesus Christ…what’s happening? Who is this man with Dad’s toe tag?”

Alex froze with shock. He could not help but suspect his uncle had something to do with this.

“When Dad said he wanted to be alone in his study and we were all worried, Uncle Carter was calm,” Alex pondered. “He told us to leave Dad alone…and insisted on driving Dad to the hospital instead of calling an ambulance.”

Alex returned home to look for answers. He scoured every nook and cranny of Dad’s study for the $10 million. If his suspicions were correct, the money would be somewhere in the house.

When hours of searching arrived at another dead end, Alex combed Dad’s car in search of anything that could lead him to the missing money.

“There has to be something…where did he keep the money?” Alex was frustrated until his gaze shifted to the car navigator.

Desperate for answers, Alex checked the navigator and found an unknown address on the outskirts of town that Dad had frequented.

“This place looks deserted. Why would Dad go here?” Alex wondered. With slim hopes of finding a clue, Alex immediately drove to the address to check.

When he arrived at the spot half an hour later, he found himself outside an eerie, abandoned mansion surrounded by a haunting cluster of dilapidated houses.

Garbage and litter sprawled across the property, disgusting Alex. The place looked like it was being used as a dump by the locals. It did not make any sense for a rich businessman like Mr. Sullivan to frequent this place.

“Why would Dad come here?” Alex effortlessly broke open a rusty lock and crept into the mansion.

Nothing seemed shady inside until Alex found a hatch on the floor, hidden under a pile of trash. What bewildered Alex was the new lock on the hatch. He broke the lock with a stone and opened the hatch. What he found confirmed his worst fears.

“Oh my God…is this the $10 million the cops were looking for?”

Alex held his mouth in shock when he found two bags full of money stashed in a little cellar.

Alex rummaged through the bags to see if there was something else. In one bag, he found $3 million, and in the other, he found the remaining $7 million and two passports. One of the passports had his Dad’s photo, but to Alex’s shock, the name on it read: Alan Parker. At this point, Alex understood it was a fake.

“Linda Parker? Who is she?” Alex grew tense at seeing the photograph of an unknown woman on the other passport. “Why is Dad faking his identity? What’s his connection with this Linda?”

The puzzle was pieced together when Alex found two plane tickets to Miami in his Dad’s passport. The flight was scheduled for five hours after the funeral.

“…And that’s how I unraveled the mystery!” Alex finished narrating the story with a chuckle. “If you still don’t believe me, then check this out!”

Alex approached his Dad’s coffin with a hand mirror and placed it near his mouth. Several seconds later, he showed the misted mirror to the guests and the priest.

“See? My Dad’s breathing!” Alex declared. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s wake the sleeping beauty up!”

Alex administered a syringe of adrenaline into Dad’s body. Minutes later, Mr. Sullivan sat up in his coffin, breathing heavily.

“Good morning, Dad!” Alex laughed as Mr. Sullivan looked around, disbelief and horror etched on his face.

An hour later, Mr. Sullivan and his brother Carter sat in the interrogation room, handcuffed. They realized there was no point in running away and decided to come clean.

“I planned on replacing the vial in my brother’s study with real Potassium cyanide…to distract the forensics department…And on the way to the cemetery, I had to fix the hearse…and tell everyone I called the funeral services company…and that another hearse was on the way,” confessed Carter.

“We already arranged for the second hearse…it was a fake…with my mistress Linda hiding in it. According to our plan, she was supposed to carry an adrenaline shot. And in the crematorium, we planned on burning the body of an unidentified male from the morgue,” Mr. Sullivan disclosed as he stared at his handcuffs.

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