Part 21 (1/2)
She picked up the phone and dialed. ”Exactly the way I told you,” I warned.
I held my car close to the receiver. We were in luck. I heard the bartender say, ”Yeah. I think he's still here. Just a minute.”
He must have put the receiver on the bar directly in front of somebody. Above the jukebox and the ground-swell of bar-room conversation I heard a man say, ”I'm glad I'm not in the sum-b.i.t.c.h's shoes when Redfield catches him!”
”h.e.l.lo.” It was Talley's mush-mouth drawl. I nodded to her.
”Pearl!” she cried out. I think something's wrong. Miz Crossman phoned out here a few minutes ago-”
”What'd she want?”
”She's tryin” to find Frankie. She said he got a phone call from somebody about half an hour ago and left the house in a big hurry and didn't say where he was goin'. And just after he left, Calhoun came there lookin' for him She don't know what for, but Calhoun acted like it was real serious.”
”Oh, Frankie's jest been in another fight, or somethin'.”
”No! That ain't all. Frankie called too. He jest this minute hung up. I don't know where he was, but he said he was gettin' out of town. He was so excited I couldn't make out everything he said, but it was something about all h.e.l.l was going to bust loose. He said he found out that man is a private detective workin' for an insurance company. I'm not sure what he meant, but I'm scared, Pearl. T. J.'s scared. We're goin' to get out of here-”
”You stay right where you are,” he said coldly. ”That's the worst thing you can do-” He apparently realized that he was being listened to by people in the bar, for he went on easily. ”Shucks, it ain't nothin'. You jest sit tight. I'll be along.”
He hung up.
I dropped the receiver back on its cradle, feeling myself tighten up. We had seven or eight minutes at most. ”All right, Trudy. Stand up and turn around.”
”d.a.m.n you!” she lashed out. ”He'll kill me. You don't know him.” she lashed out. ”He'll kill me. You don't know him.”
”Shut up!” I told her. ”I'm trying to get you out of sight before he gets here.”
She put her hands behind her willingly then. I began tying them. ”Georgia!” I called out. She came in quickly.
”What's Frankie's car? That panel truck?”
”Yes,” she said. Then she gave a short laugh that ended in a little choking cry, and put a hand against the doorframe to steady herself. She brushed the other across her face. The strain was beginning to get her.
”Take it easy,” I said.
”I'm all right.” She took a deep breath. ”It was just the truck. The same one that backed into you-when was it? How many years ago?”
I managed to grin at her. ”We were young then.” Then I jerked my head towards Frankie. ”See if the keys are in his pocket. If he tries to kick you, brain him with something.”
”The keys are in the switch,” she replied. ”I've already checked.”
”Good girl.” I finished off Trudy and hustled Frankie to his feet. ”Bring the rest of those strips,” I said, and shoved them ahead of me, holding them by the arms. We went out on the porch. After being in the light, I couldn't see at all for a moment or two. Frankie stumbled, stepping off the porch, and almost fell. I caught him. Georgia led the way to the truck. I opened the doors in back and shoved them in. She found the switch and turned on the light. I hurriedly tied their ankles. Frankie lay on his side, the black, mean eyes staring at my face. I was suddenly sick of all of them, sick to the bottom of my heart of the whole tough, cheap, crooked lot. Be a police officer and look at that all your life?
”Watch the road,” I warned. ”He'll be here any minute.”
”Nothing yet,” she said.
I slammed the rear doors and we got in and drove down behind the barn. I cut the lights and the engine, and sighed, beat-up and tired and hurting all over. I put out a hand to touch her, and she took it and held it between both of hers, in her lap.
”What are our chances?” she asked calmly.
”I don't know,” I replied. ”They pulled off a robbery that night and killed a man up in Georgia. Bringing the stuff into another State makes it a Federal case. That, and the felony murder, is what they've been so jittery about.”
”Can we prove it?”
”Not yet,” I said. ”I'm trying to make them lose their heads. I couldn't get anything out of Frankie, but we've still got Pearl and Mrs. Redfield to go.” I broke off wearily, aware that if Cynthia Redfield sat tight and didn't panic we had no chance. We had to get her or it was nothing.
”But Kendall?” she asked. ”Where was there any connection with him?”
”One of the places they robbed was a jewelry store,” I said. ”They must have had some of the stuff there in the house that morning, and he saw it. Remember, it wasn't just robbery; they knew they'd killed a man. A felony murder is the same as first degree.”
”But why would he go there?” she insisted.
I don't know,” I said.
Well, I thought defiantly, I don't really. It's just a guess.
And maybe I was still wrong about the whole thing. There was the time element. Langston was apparently killed at a few minutes past four in the morning. Weaverton was nearly a hundred miles. If they'd entered the first place shortly after twelve, when the lights went out and the police converged on the fire, they still had only four hours. They might have been able to get away with the safes and drive back in that length of time, but they couldn't have opened them. That would take hours. And disposing of them in a river somewhere would take more time. So what had Langston seen?
Well, they'd cleaned out a jewelry store, and everything wasn't kept in a safe at night. There'd have been watches, and silver. . . .
”I hear a car coming,” she said.
Headlights flashed briefly across the trees beside the barn, and died. A car door slammed. Pearl was here.
17
”Stay here,” I whispered.
I eased out of the truck and around the corner of the barn. It was too dark to see him, but I heard his footsteps as he hurried across the front porch. He wouldn't waste any time looking for the others. The car's being gone would be evidence enough they'd run out. I hurried across the yard and reached a position by the side window as he came into the room. I couldn't see him; he was off to my left somewhere. Then I heard the sound and recognized it, and excitement ran along my nerves. It was the faint, metallic rattle of the k.n.o.b of the safe as he spun it through the combination.
He could be after money so he could run; or my hunch might be right and there was something in it he wanted to get rid of and hide somewhere else. I waited tensely; I had to be sure it was open before I went in. Then the telephone rang. It rang again. He paid no attention to it. I heard the click of the handle as he swung open the door of the safe. Slipping round in front, I eased the screen door open, and stepped into the hall. The telephone shrilled once more in the silence, covering any sound I might have made.
He was kneeling before the opened safe with his back to me, wearing another of those garish s.h.i.+rts, the cowboy hat pushed onto the back of his head. On the floor beside him was one of the metal drawers from the safe. It held two chamois bags, one of them very small.
”Turn around, Pearl,” I said. ”And get away from the front of that safe.”
He whirled and stood up. After the first gasp of surprise, there was no confusion or fear in his face. The blue eyes were calculating and more than a little cold as they looked at me and then moved slightly, estimating the distance to the desk drawer.
”There's no gun in it,” I said. I crossed over in front of him. The telephone started to ring once more, but cut off in the middle of it. Whoever it was had hung up. Silence seemed to roar in my ears. I thought of the shotgun going off in that loft, and the obscene foaming of acid, and whispered filth on a telephone. For an instant I wanted to get my hands on him now that we were alone and beat him into something unrecognizable, but I pushed it wearily aside. What good would it do? What good had it done last time?
I jerked my head. ”Move over. Away from that safe.”
He took a step to his right, towards the jukebox, the china-blue eyes watching me carefully. He knew I had a gun. I lifted the two chamois bags to the desk and worked the drawstrings loose. One of them was filled with engagement rings in all sizes of stones, and the smaller one held perhaps a child's handful of unset diamonds. I didn't know whether they were expensive stones or not. Another drawer in the desk held several dozen men's and women's wrist-watches, wrapped in tissue paper. Apparently he had destroyed the gift cases as being too bulky to store. The last compartment I slid open was stacked with bundles of currency sorted by denomination and held together with rubber bands. Several thousand dollars, I guessed. You wondered how many times he'd counted it.