Part 3 (1/2)

We had left Sanport at midnight, after I had put my own car in a storage garage and bought a few things I'd need. I checked them off in my mind: flashlight with spare batteries, small screwdriver, Scotch tape, half a dozen packs of cigarettes. It was all there.

She was driving fast, around sixty most of the time. There was very little traffic, and the towns along the highway were asleep. We came into one now, and she slowed to thirty-five as we went through.

”It's the next one,” she said. ”About thirty miles.”

”You won't get back until after daylight.”

”It doesn't matter. n.o.body knows me there. And Mrs. Butler probably won't be up before noon.”

”The police may be tailing her. Just on the chance she might be meeting Butler.”

”I know.” She punched the cigarette lighter and said, ”Give me a cigarette, Lee. But what if they are? They don't know anything.”

When the lighter popped out, I lit the cigarette and handed it to her. We were running through a long river bottom now, with dark walls of trees on both sides. I looked at her. She had put on a long, pleated white skirt and maroon blouse. She was a smooth job, with the glow of the dash highlighting the rounded contours of her face and s.h.i.+ning in the big dark eyes.

I lit one for myself. ”There's one thing I still don't like,” I said. ”There may be a lot of that money in negotiable securities instead of cash. I mean, he was a banker and he'd know how to convert 'em without getting tripped up, but we wouldn't.”

”No,” she said. ”He was going to get it all in cash. He was going to pick the time when he could get it that way.”

”Good,” I said. ”G.o.d, that's a wad of dough.”

”Isn't it?”

”It would be a pretty good-sized briefcaseful, figuring a lot of it would be in tens and twenties. What kind of hiding place would you look for, if you had to stash it around a house?”

”It's an old house,” she said. ”A very old house, and a big one. The only thing to do is start at the attic and work down, taking it a room at a time. Look for places that appear to have been repapered recently or where there's been some repair work, like around window sills and doorframes. Trap doors above clothes closets, in the floors or walls. And remember, she's plenty smart. She's just as likely to wrap it in old paper and throw it in a trunk or a barrel of rubbish. Take your time, and tear the house apart if you have to. She's in no position to call the police.”

”We hope,” I said.

”We know.”

”All right,” I said. ”But I still don't want her to catch me in there just to see if we're right. So I've been trying to figure out some way you can tip me off if she gets away from you and you think she's on her way home. I think I've got it. Call the house, long-distance, and-”

”But, my G.o.d, you couldn't answer the phone if it rang. There's no way you could tell who it was.”

”Wait till I finish,” I said. ”Of course I won't answer until I'm sure it's you. Here's the way. Call right on the hour. I won't answer, so put the call in again at a quarter past, as near as you can make it. I won't answer then, either, because it still might be a coincidence. But repeat it again, as near half past as you can, and I'll pick it up. Just ask if Mrs. Butler is better. I'll say yes, and hang up and get the h.e.l.l out of there.”

I thought about it again. ”No. Wait. There's no reason I should have to answer at all. Those three calls, fifteen minutes apart, will be the signal. When I hear the third one, I scram.”

”That's good,” she said, nodding. ”You know how to use your head. It's funny, but in a lot of ways you're just like Butler.”

”Not too much, I hope.”

”Why?” she asked.

”He's dead. Remember?”

She fell silent. We came up out of the river country and ran through rolling hills with dark farmhouses here and there along the road. In a few minutes she said, ”We're almost there. It's on the left as we go into town.”

I looked, but it was too dark to see much. All I got was the shadowy impression of a house set far back from the street among the darker gloom of big trees. There was no light anywhere. We made a gentle turn to the right and then were on the street going into town, with houses and lawns on both sides. About three blocks up a street light hung out over an intersection. She turned left before we got to it, went a block down a side street, and turned left again.

”When I stop,” she said, ”we'll be right behind the place. There's a big oleander hedge and a woven-wire fence, but the gate probably won't be locked. Or if it is, you can climb over or go around in front. Good luck.”

”Check,” I said. ”Friday morning at two o'clock. Right here.”

She was slowing. The car came to a standstill for not more than two seconds. I slid out and eased the door shut. Her hand lifted and the car slid away. I was on my own.

The red taillights of the car swung left and disappeared. I stepped off the street and stood for a moment while my eyes adjusted themselves to the darkness. There was no moon, and the night was hot and still. Somewhere across town a dog barked. I could see the dark line of the oleanders in front of me now, and started walking toward them, putting out my hand. I touched the fence, and walked parallel to it, looking for the gate and a break in the hedge.

I'd forgotten to look at my watch again before I got out of the car, but I should have nearly two hours until daybreak. It was plenty of time to find a way into the house.

I went twenty steps along the fence. Thirty. There had to be a gate somewhere. She'd said there was. I came to a corner. There was no opening. I had gone the wrong way. I turned and went back, touching the fence with my hands. It was six feet high, with steel posts. The oleanders were on the inside, a solid wall of them nearly fifteen feet high.

I found the gate. It rattled a little when I put my hand on it. I felt along one side for the latch and located it. Apparently there was no chain or padlock. I eased it open. A dry hinge squeaked in the silence. I stopped, then pulled it open very slowly.

I could see the dark bulk of the house looming ahead of me now across the expanse of rear lawn. It was enormous, two stories and an attic, probably, with high gables running off into the big overhanging trees at each end. Off to the right was a smaller pile of blackness, which I took to be the garage.

I stepped inside, through the break in the hedge, and studied the blank windows carefully for any sliver of light at all. There was none. The whole place was as dark and deserted and silent as if it had been vacant for twenty years.

I eased across the gra.s.s toward the back porch. Then, suddenly, I thought of something we had overlooked. We hadn't thought of the grounds themselves. There were probably two acres of trees, flower beds, shrubs, and lawns around the place. If the money-or even Butler's body-had been buried out here somewhere, it would take a gang of men with a bulldozer a week to search it all. We'd been stupid.

But what could we do about it, if we had thought of it? Our only hope was that the stuff was in the house. If I didn't find it there, we were whipped. The only thing to do was go on.

I came to the corner of the porch and went around it to the rear of the house itself. In the darkness I could just make out the forms of two windows set close to the ground and partially screened by shrubs. They were just what I had been hoping to find-bas.e.m.e.nt windows.

I slipped up to the first and took out the small flashlight. Standing close to s.h.i.+eld it with my body, I shot the tiny beam inside. The screen and the window were both dirty, but I could see the latch where the top and bottom sashes met. It was closed. I moved to the other window. It was latched too.

Probably they all are, I thought. I stood back a little and sized them up. This one was better screened behind the shrubs. Getting down on my knees, I turned the light on again and shot it in on the hook at the bottom of the screen. I took out the screwdriver, pushed the blade in through the wire, and pried at the hook. It slid out, and the screen was free. I swung the bottom of it outward against the shrub and got in behind it.

Taking the Scotch tape out of my pocket, I began peeling it off and plastering strips of it across the gla.s.s of the upper sash, crisscrossing it in all directions. Then I reversed the screwdriver and rapped smartly with the handle right in front of the latch. The gla.s.s cracked, but the tape kept it from falling. I slid the screwdriver blade through against the latch, and pushed. It slid open.

I raised the bottom sash, swung the beam of light down inside, and dropped in. Pulling the screen back in place, I hooked it and closed the window. I took a quick look around the bas.e.m.e.nt. This must be only part of it. It was a big room with a furnace in the center. Against the opposite wall was a coal bin, and beside it were some old trunks and a pile of magazines and newspapers. I saw a door, and went through it. This room held a was.h.i.+ng machine and a lot of clotheslines.

There was no use trying to search this now. What I had to do first was take a quick look at the whole house and size up the job-and make certain that maid wasn't here. Diana James had said she'd be gone, but it wasn't Diana James that was going to wind up behind the eight ball if she happened to be wrong.

I went back in the first room and started swinging the light around, looking for the stairway. I'd just spotted it, over against the rear wall, when I stopped dead still and cut the light. I held my breath, listening. I could hear my heart beating in the dead, oppressive silence, and the hair along the back of my neck was still p.r.i.c.kling. The place was making me jumpy.

What I'd thought I heard was music.

Music at four o'clock in the morning in an empty house? Nuts. I listened for another full minute and then flicked the light on again. I went up the stairs. There was a door at the top of them. I opened it softly and went through. I was in the kitchen.

There was a window over the sink, but the curtains were drawn. That was something I had to check in all the rooms, so I could move around freely during the day. I examined the rest of the room. The door by the sink must be the one going out onto the back porch. The one on this side, beyond the stove, apparently led into the dining room and the front of the house. This left one more, besides the cellar door I'd just come through. It was at the end of the kitchen, and it was closed. I had to see in there. It should be the maid's room.

I eased over to it, got my hand on the k.n.o.b, and cut the light. I turned it slowly, very slowly, and pushed. It swung open into more of the same impenetrable darkness. I stood perfectly still, listening for the sound of breathing. It was the maid's room, all right.

The room was full of her, but that didn't mean she was here now. What I was smelling was the place she lived in. But I had to know, and know now, before it was daylight and too late to get out. I flicked the light on, pointed straight down, my nerves tightened up for the scream that would split the night. Or the gun blast that'll blow my stupid head off, I thought, if she's here and she's got company. I was sweating. I eased the beam forward. It hit the end of a bed, climbed it. The bed was empty. I breathed again.