Girl out back

  I slipped seven of them into my wallet with the one I already had. Then, sliding over a little until I was right on the edge of the bank where it dropped off into the water, I began crumpling the rest and placing them in a little pile. The last one I folded lengthwise, twice.

  I’d always wanted to do this, just once. Putting a cigarette in my mouth, I flipped the lighter, ignited the end of the folded bill, and lit the smoke. Then I shoved the torch into the pile and puffed contentedly as eight hundred dollars flared up and burned to ash. I very carefully brushed all the residue off into the lake, and then threw a bailing can full of water over it to be sure. Cranking the motor, I looked at my watch.

  It was a quarter to six. With a little pushing, I should be able to make it to Exeter before that north-bound bus went through for Kansas City and Chicago.

  Seven

  Nunn and his fisherman hadn’t come in yet, and I saw nothing of her as I made fast to the float. I shaved and changed clothes, and walked across to the lunch-room. It was empty. “Mrs. Nunn,” I called.

  She appeared in the doorway. There was something withdrawn and distant in her face as she saw me. I had the impression she wished I’d go away.

  “I just wanted to tell you I was going into town for dinner,” I said. “Is there anything I can get you?”

  She shook her head. “Thanks, I guess not. Are you going to fish tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” I said. I started out.

  “I . . .” she said. I turned. She tried again. “I’m sorry. . . .”

  I’d already forgotten the unpleasant scene at noon, but no doubt it’d been a lot rougher on her. She had to live with the surly bastard. I smiled at her. “Forget it. I shouldn’t be hanging around here interfering with your work, anyway.”

  She made no reply. When I went out she was still looking after me. I drove out of the bottom and over to State 41, where I turned right. Exeter was about twenty miles to the south. It was the largest town in the area, a county seat of about twelve thousand. I bought a cheap money clip in a drug-and-sundries store that was still open, and drove over and parked near the bus station. Folding the eight twenty-dollar bills plus a five and a couple of singles of my own, I clipped them together and shoved them in my pocket. It was after dark now. When the north-bound bus came in I walked through the waiting-room and out into the ramp. It was a rest stop; the driver and most of the passengers got out. I went aboard and sat down about two-thirds of the way back. Easing the money from my pocket, I set it on the floor and pushed it under the seat ahead of me with my foot. Nobody was paying any attention to me. I sat there a few minutes longer and then made the startling discovery that I was out of cigarettes. I got off, went back through the waiting-room, and returned to the station wagon. I was sitting there smoking ten minutes later when the bus pulled out. The chances were very good it wouldn’t be discovered until the bus was serviced and cleaned at the end of the run, either in Kansas City or Chicago. A hundred and sixty-seven dollars with no identification attached packed the court rather heavily in favor of Godwin’s Ruling on Treasure-Trove, so it’d probably get back into circulation without disturbing the lost-and-found department. It couldn’t do any harm, and if it worked it would materially ease the F.B.I, pressure around here. I had to have time, and this was one way to buy it.

  Cliffords was going to notice those twenties had disappeared, but it couldn’t be helped. I knew a little about that F.B.I, outfit and how it worked; they didn’t do anything half-way. Right now this whole countryside was alerted and they were poised and watching. Let just one more of those bills stick its head out and the game was over. There really wasn’t much Cliffords could do, anyway, except to move the tens to a new hiding place, which was all right with me. I wasn’t after them. And if he got worried enough to go back and reassure himself about the real cache, so much the better. So far I hadn’t come up with any plan at all for finding that, but having him beat a path to it would make it a lot easier.

  I drove back to the lake. The same old futile merry-go-round started again in my mind, but I shut it off with irritation. It was utterly impossible to explain how Cliffords had got that money, but I no longer had to. I knew he had it. What else mattered? You didn’t deny the existence of something just because you couldn’t account for it, did you? You accepted Time, and invented clocks to measure it, without the faintest idea what it was, and you went right on living in spite of the fact that nobody had ever come with an explanation for Life.

  The sheer magnitude and the excitement of it began to catch up with me now, for the first time. Up until a few hours ago it had been an intriguing puzzle, an abstract sort of thing whose fascination was inherent in the problem itself rather than any concrete expectation of gain. You didn’t really believe it; you couldn’t. In your heart what you actually believed was that the separate scraps of evidence added up to an answer that was incompatible with the whole, and you were interested in learning why. But now . . .

  It was money—tangible, real, concrete. A fortune. A fantastic amount of money. There was no longer any doubt he had it because I had seen the clinching argument—those ten-dollar bills. The twenties could have been merely thrown away by Haig because they were identifiable and hot. But Cliffords had it all; he had it hidden somewhere in something that was rusting. All I had to do was find it. Nobody would ever know I’d got it. I had the intelligence and the will-power to destroy any part of it that was even conceivably identifiable and to refrain from making any display of wealth too suddenly. I’d go to Florida and go into the boat business in a small way, expanding gradually. Boats I knew, liked, and understood; the business was booming all over the country. I’d own a marina. . . . I stopped.

  That was what I owned now, wasn’t it?

  Hah!

  I swung off State 41, headed for the camp, my mind furiously at work. The thing couldn’t take too long; at any time Cliffords could go back and dig up some more of it, and when he did there was a chance he’d wind up with another bunch that could be identified. It was only a miracle he’d got by with it this long. He was erratic, too potty and unpredictable to be trusted with a thing like this. One slip would blow it up. He might talk, start bragging, or begin playing the girlie circuit in the sawmill towns around here. He was only forty-six, and with unlimited funds at his disposal he might decide to ditch the comic books for grown-up toys, just had to beat him to it, by finding it. Sure, that was all. But how?

  * * *

  It was four in the afternoon. I stood in dense timber a half mile behind his cabin and wearily fit a cigarette. Since seven this morning I’d been back here, searching, walking, crisscrossing, studying the terrain, and gradually having it brought home to me just what I was up against. Sweat drenched my clothes; the air was stifling, and all about me was the silence of the big woods. I sat down on a log and took the folded map from my pocket. It was roughly two miles this way; call it ten to twelve north and south. And that was only on this side of the first arm of the lake. Add in the country on the other side and the trackless maze of islands and swamp cut by the twisting channels of the waterways, and what did you have? At least fifty square miles of wilderness. It could be anywhere; he didn’t have to hide it under his pillow. And just how sure could you be that he hadn’t sunk it in a watertight container in the lake itself, somewhere in those God-only-knew how many thousands of acres of isolated inlets and sloughs and weedbeds?

  Well, one way to locate it was to keep watch on him until he went to it himself; he would sooner or later. So? Just move out here? It could be weeks, or months. I was married; I was supposed to be running a business. If I could get out here once a week without arousing suspicion I’d be lucky.

  There was always the third method, of course, but I shrugged it off impatiently. You could either do that sort of thing, or you couldn’t, and there was no point in considering something you wouldn’t have the guts to carry out. I wasn’t trying to take a bow; there was no moral issue involved. It was merely an appraisal. You ha
d to be sick in the head so you enjoyed it, or you had to be completely without imagination, or fanatic. I failed on all three counts.

  So there was nothing to do but go on looking. I did. A little before sunset I gave it up for the present and went back to where I’d hidden the boat. Nunn was on the float when I got to camp.

  “Well, where’s all the fish?” he asked.

  “Still up there,” I said. I unclamped the motor.

  “Didn’t you get nothing at all?”

  “A few,” I said indifferently. ”Was I supposed to kill them?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he replied. “I’m not a big-time sport.”

  “Well, cheer up,” I said. “It takes all kinds.” I was getting little sick of him.

  I packed my gear in the station wagon and settled with him for the cabin and boat. There was no pressing invitation to hurry back and sample his overflowing hospitality again, which was fine because when I did come back it would be in through that road to the upper lake and I wouldn’t be bringing a brass band. I didn’t see her until I was turning the station wagon to leave. She was standing behind the screen door looking out. I thought I saw her hand move, as if she had waved good-bye. I waved, and went on.

  It was dark before I got out of the bottom. I went back the same way I’d come, northward on State 41. When I slowed for the S-bend I saw the white crosses again in my headlights and tried once more to put a finger on the thing that kept nagging me about the place. Wasn’t it something about the last accident? I knew the people involved—or rather Barbara Renfrew did. That was it. They were friends of her grandfather’s, a couple around sixty years of age who’d lived on a farm just north of Wardlow. Their car had gone off the road one night in a heavy rain and they were killed instantly when it crashed into the trees out there. Barbara had taken time off to go to the funeral, but that wasn’t all of it. It was something she’d said. I frowned, trying to remember. Wait. . . . Something about the wreck itself. She said she couldn’t understand what they were doing on this road because it was out of their way. They were returning from Sanport.

  So? But just when? I couldn’t remember, except that it was winter before last. It could have been in February. I whistled softly.

  I arrived in Wardlow at eight thirty. When I pulled into the drive I saw lights were on in the living-room and upstairs, so she was home. Let’s see, where had we left off? I’d counterattacked along the left and my flank was holding, but there was no telling what she was moving up, or where. A great fighting animal, the female, I thought—tenacious and tricky as hell.

  I carried the stuff in through the living-room. We apparently didn’t have any company. That was nice; non-combatants and refugees were always a hazard. It took two trips. I was down in the den drying the fly-rod before putting it away when I heard her footsteps on the basement stairs. She appeared in the doorway. Over her nightgown she was wearing a robe of peach-colored mist, and she looked like the Sultan’s favorite on the way in. She gave me a tentative smile.

  “Did you catch any fish, Barney?”

  “A few,” I said. “You look nice. I like that austere touch; reminds me of John Calvin.”

  She grinned. She had a hell of a grin when she unsnapped the leash and turned it loose. “I was lying in bed reading when I heard you come in.”

  Likely story, I thought. The calculated swirl of that platinum mop hadn’t been near a pillow. “Books,” I sneered. “You egg-heads are all alike.”

  Her face softened reflectively. “I’m sorry about the fight. I missed you, Barney.”

  I put down the rod. “I missed you, too.” Then it occurred to me, strangely enough, that I wasn’t even lying. I had missed her.

  I moved, and she moved, and my arms had that ache in them as I tightened them around her. The big, vital, blonde face was under mine, tilted back, surrendering and demanding at the same time, and I was kissing her too roughly. A little more suave in the salve, Godwin, I thought; you could make chairman of the board. Then I wondered why I never seemed to make sense any more, even to myself; I’d married her because she had money and I’d done nothing but bitch about it since. I was a melon-head.

  I put my right arm down behind her knees and picked her up. She was a lot of woman, but the way I felt at the moment I could have carried her up six flights of stairs and through the roof like a berserk elevator. The eyelids parted just slightly and she regarded me roguishly from under the lashes.

  “Do you think you’d better? It’s a long way up there.”

  To the kitchen?” I said. “I thought we’d scramble some eggs.”

  She murmured a naughty word from behind the Mona Lisa smile and gently swung her feet. A slipper fell off. It was among the more unnoticed events of the year.

  I was going through the living-room when I felt her begin to go rigid in my arms. “You don’t have to show off your strength,” she said. “I know you’re younger.”

  Jesus, not now, I thought. “Shucks, ma”am,” I said. “It ain’t hardly nothin’ at all. Little ol’ triflin’ armful like you.”

  “Don’t overdo it,” she said. “You’ll scare me. I’ll take your word there were no girls out there.”

  I gave it the old fourth-quarter try. “Stop fighting me, you alabaster houri. I’ve got my arms full.” I kissed her, but it was all nothing now. She’d retreated into the cave to paw over her wrongs, whatever they were. Well, she’d certainly picked a strategic time for it. I went on up the stairs, feeling savage about it, and dropped her on the bed. She could go to hell.

  “Well?” she asked sweetly.

  “Well, what?”

  “This is the old professional? Where’s the technique?”

  “I lost my way,” I said. “We should have gone out and climbed on the back fence.”

  “You would feel more at home there, wouldn’t you?”

  ”Is there anything else?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “It’s Thursday,” I said. “The help’s night out.”

  She clenched her hands down by her thighs and looked up at the ceiling. “Go away,” she said in a thin, quiet voice. “For the love of sweet Jesus Christ, go away. Go away, go away.”

  I went away. I drove over to the store, let myself in, and savagely attacked the accumulated paper work. There was usually some release and satisfaction in that, because I liked the place. I’d built it up to what it was. The first time I’d ever seen it, one afternoon a little over two years ago when I’d dropped in for some item of tackle I needed on a fishing trip, I had recognized its potentialities and it had interested me. She’d come in about that time to say something to the inept and lethargic old gaffer who was running it for her, and she had interested me even more. Well-to-do widows with sex appeal are rare enough to be collector’s items in this vale of tears, and here was a real jewel. I gave her a good sales talk about what I could do with the place, quit the public relations outfit I was working for in Sanport at the moment, and moved in. Both phases of the project were wide open for an operator with any talent at all; inside of sixty days the business was in the black and I was in her bed. Four months later we were married. Not that she was particularly a patsy; but we did hit it off well in the hay, and she was in the market for a romantic and suggestively tragic figure who never talked much about his past. It’s stock, but easy.

  It was ten p.m. when I ground out the last of the letters and finished checking the receipts and making up the bank deposit. I slammed the door of the safe and stood for a moment looking around the dim interior of the showroom. Mrs. Jessica Roberts McCarran Godwin, I give it to you. Cherish it, and guard it well in that old classic repository of the fervent resignation and the disenchanted farewell. From now on I’m just going through the motions here while I look after Godwin’s future. And no motions at all at home. Put it away, dear Mrs. Godwin; you had your little revenge and I’ll admit it was a nice piece of strategy, but it works only once in this league.

  The drug store was still open. The c
opy of that digest magazine Cliffords had in his trunk was the current issue, and I found it on the stand. I drank a coke while I read the article about Haig. It could be, I reflected thoughtfully; it was a million-to-one shot, but it was probably the only thing they’d never thought of. I got in the station wagon and drove out to the cemetery just north of town. The night was dark and there were no houses within a half-mile; I had it all to myself. I took a flashlight from the car and went through the gate.

  Grayson? No-o. Greggson. . . . That was it. It took about ten minutes to find the double headstone. I splashed the light against it and felt a surge of excitement as I read the date.

  I could quit worrying about that part of it. I knew now how Cliffords had got that money.

  * * *

  I left the house before she got up, and had some breakfast in town. Otis was parking his car at the side of the store when I arrived.

  “How was the fishing, boss,” he asked.

  “Poor,” I said. I opened the front door and we went in. “Those jokers probably got their bass somewhere else. Never believe a fisherman.”

  “Who does?” he said. He leaned against the showcase and lit a cigarette. “Say, where’d you stay up there?”

  Dan Cahoon’s fishing camp was the obvious answer, since it was the only good one, but that warning bell went off in my mind just in time. “Oh,” I said. “Some little place on the west side. Why?”

  “Man came in yesterday and made us an offer on those two reconditioned fifteen-horse jobs. Said he’d take both of ‘em if we’d cut the price fifty dollars. I tried to get hold of you at Cahoon’s, but they said you wasn’t there.”

  That was too close for comfort. “I started there, but decided to try a new one. In this business, the more camp operators you know, the better.”