“Looks like it,” I said, and when I looked around for my boat on the bank, it wasn’t there. Then on the boat in the river I saw a chipped place under one oarlock that was made by a tree one day, and sang out:
“Yes, that is my boat!”
“You’re in luck, is all I have to say. It fetched up five miles down, on a float that’s anchored offshore. It was headed straight for the dam. You should tie that boat up.”
“I did tie it up.” I shook the sapling I had made it fast to.
“Then it must have been stole,” he said. “Well—there’s plenty of that going on.”
“So there was a boat!” she told Edgren, grabbing him by the shoulders and spinning him around.
“OK, OK,” he answered, “but it doesn’t prove anything, except—”
“Never mind what it proves,” growled Knight. “There was a boat; that’s the main thing.”
He turned to the fireman holding onto the root, whom the other man had called Ed, and asked: “Could you gentlemen give us a little help? We want to go upstream to a tree that’s up there, to a tree that may be hollow, and see what’s inside of it, if anything.”
Ed turned to the other man, and asked, “Rufe?”
“Sure, why not?” said Rufe.
Ed let go and Rufe gunned his motor, to shoot the boat to the bank. Then he reached the painter to me, the line from the johnboat, and I made it fast to the sapling after hauling the boat out of the bank. Then: “Who’s going?” asked Ed. Knight motioned me in, and I sat on one of the two cross-seats, the one nearest the stern. He got in, taking his place beside me. Then he motioned to Edgren and Mantle who took place on the other cross-seat. Then Rufe threw the boat into reverse, and we shot downriver. He gave it full speed ahead and we started back upriver. We passed the island on the west side, kept on past my landing, and then came to the mouth of the inlet, with the tree standing in it, maybe two feet across the trunk, and white as a sycamore always is. “That’s it,” I said, and Rufe went in reverse. That stopped our forward motion, and when we began to slide back downriver, he cut his rudder to slew us around. Then he gave it full speed ahead, and shot us into the inlet. He throtted back, so we had slowed down when we bumped the tree. Rufe caught it and we stopped. Edgren got up then and Rufe gave him a hand to steady him while he reached into the hollow.
“There’s something in there,” he said, and my heart beat up, as I took it for granted, of course, that at last he’d come up with the money and that would wind it all up. But instead of lifting the bag out, he kept pulling at something inside, complaining: “The damned thing’s caught.”
“What is it?” asked Rufe.
“I can’t tell. I don’t know.”
He felt around with his hand, and seemed to be spanning distance inside, then took his hand out again and spanned down outside from the rim of the hollow. He put his thumb on the spot he had measured to, then with the other hand took out his gun. “I don’t know if this is going to work or not, but nothing beats a try.” Then he aimed his gun at the spot and fired. Dust kicked out of the hollow and then he reached in his hand. “That did it,” he said, very pleased. “Broke the splinter off.” Then he came out with the strap, the one she had cut off that night, the loose end of the zipper bag strap, that had got caught in some crack inside.
“Hey!” he said, excited. “This thing’s red. That corresponds with the color that zipper bag was, the one that the money was put in, for Shaw to take when he jumped. On TV they kept talking about it.”
“Sure does,” agreed Mantle.
“We’re getting warm.”
I wasn’t getting warm, I was turning cold all over. “Is there anything else in there!” I asked.
“Not that I can feel,” said Edgren.
He put on a glove and rummaged into the hollow. “No, that’s all—but I’d call it quite a lot.”
Then: “OK.”
Rufe helped him once more, he stepped over Knight and me, and sat down again beside Mantle. Mantle studied the strap but didn’t ask me about it, and Edgren didn’t. Rufe backed us out of the inlet and into the river, headed downstream, and ran down past the island. I was trying to think what I’d say to Jill, how I could possibly tell her that Bledsoe’s grand scheme that she’d put into effect to please me, had completely backfired, that her money was gone, that the boat we said we had seen had actually come during the night, that it was my boat that somebody stole and used to take what was hers. Knight stepped ashore, but I wanted to be the last and waited for Edgren and Mantle. Jill’s eyes were bright as she searched us all, looking, I knew, for her money. When she didn’t see it she turned to me, a question on her face. However, before I could speak, Edgren was holding the strap up. “Well young lady,” he said, “you were right that the tree was hollow, and as we dope it out, your money was actually stashed there. Did you ever see this before!”
He waved the strap and she stared.
“That’s been cut off that bag!” she wailed. “The bag with my money in it!... Where is it? What have you done with it, say? My bag! Where is it?”
“You’d better ask Mr. Howell.”
“I’d better ask who?”
“Speak up, Mr. Howell.”
“I speak up, sergeant? What are you talking about?”
“Well, it’s all coming together—the paper tape in your house, the strap caught in your tree, the boat that was salvaged downstream—it seems pretty clear that though you like this girl, you like her money better. So if she wants to know where it is, like I said, she’d better ask you!”
“Dave, I can’t believe it!”
“Why don’t you say something, Howell?”
19
WHAT WAS I GOING to say? The truth? That on advice of counsel, she’d planted the money out there so he’d find it and we’d be left in the clear? That would dig us in even deeper without doing me any good, and besides would backfire on Bledsoe in a way to cause him trouble. And I knew, at the same time, that it might be just a pitch Edgren was making, that he didn’t necessarily believe but tossed at me anyhow, to see how I reacted. I can’t pretend I came up with any answer. I was just plain paralyzed, sweating, with my head not working at all.
Jill, though, didn’t let me do any telling. She exploded right in front of me, right in front of them all, spilling it all, from Bledsoe’s simple idea to what she had done about it, “wading out to that tree, with the water up to here”—motioning toward her bottom—“icy water up to here— because I wanted to please him, this friendly boyfriend of mine, because he saved my life, because he looked like God to me at that time—was that a laugh, oh my. And we’d hardly come ashore when this mother of his, I’m sorry she’s his stepmother, when she was yapping about the money—that’s all she thought about, and now, what do you know, now I find out, it’s all he thought about! He and his lawyer friend. Yes, Mr. Bledsoe, you know who’s paying you, don’t you? That was an idea, wasn’t it, for you to throw at me? That we’d put my money back, in that tree where we had found it, so the sheriff’s men would find it, and then no one could say we’d known where it was all along. And fool that I was, I did what you said exactly, with water—”
“Up to there!” snapped Bledsoe. “Was your backside bare, may I ask?”
“You better believe it was.”
“I wish I’d been there!”
That got a laugh but didn’t stop Edgren from staring over what he’d turned up, without having known that he would. He interrupted to ask: “Do you mean you planted that money? Out there, for us? On Mr. Bledsoe’s advice?”
“Do I have to go over it twice? OK, if I have to, I will. Yes, that’s what I mean. Little did I realize the reason that he had for giving me that advice.”
“And when was it that you—?”
But Knight cut him off. “She was his client,” he snapped, “and it was her money. If what he advised her to do was on the side of the law, to make possible the finding of what you’d been looking for, there was nothing wrong wi
th it, nothing unethical—any lawyer might have done it.”
“But when Howell took the money—”
“What proof do you have of that? If you’re charging him with that theft, I’m the one who must face a judge, at a habeas corpus hearing, a judge who doesn’t like it, being hauled out of bed at night, and defend the charge of yours. So far, you have no proof that Howell did anything except kill a man who damned well deserved to die. Your job is to find that woman—Mrs. Howell, I believe was her name—who could be the one, it appears, who hid that money in the first place, and until you do—”
“OK, OK.”
“It could be what you think.”
“Sir, I said OK.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
That shut Edgren up but not Jill. She raved on and on, damning me, damning Bledsoe, saying over and over what she’d said before. In the middle of her show I was startled to see my mother, standing out on the edges, halfway back of Mantle, as though she’d been there some time. She looked perfectly beautiful, pale in the sunlight, a red ribbon on her hair, a short dress showing her legs, the mink coat carelessly thrown over her shoulder. Edgren saw her about the time I did and wasn’t nice about it. “Madam,” he said, “this is a sheriff’s investigation. If you don’t mind, we’d prefer not having a gallery.”
But at that I broke, perhaps from the strain I’d been under, and blew my top. “Sergeant,” I bellowed, “this is my place, and I’ll say who stays and who doesn’t. This lady’s my mother. She stays.”
“Not if I say she doesn’t.”
“Goddamn it, I say she does!”
“Howell, I warn you that use of such language to an officer of the law is a misdemeanor in this state, and—”
“For Jesus Christ’s sake, how often do I have to say it?”
“You know who has that money?” she asked Edgren, as he was drawing breath to speak.
“What’s it to you what I know?”
“I do know, that’s what.”
The change in Edgren’s expression, in Jill’s expression, in everyone’s expression, was funny to see, or would have been if anything could have been then. She looked calmly from one to the other and finally wound up studying Jill. “Well, Jill?” she asked. “What do you say to that?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Makes a difference, doesn’t it? A moment back, you were telling the world, at the top of your lungs, and your lungs have quite a top. Now you don’t know what to say. I know, I think I know, who took your money last night. It wasn’t Dave. You knew that, didn’t you? Knew it all along?”
“I didn’t want to believe it.”
“Answer me. You knew it wasn’t Dave, didn’t you?”
“OK, then, I did.”
“But you had to blame someone—?”
“Maybe.”
“But now that you think I know where your money is, who took it last night, you’re willing to calm down—?”
“What are you getting at?”
“I just wanted to know.”
And then, to Edgren: “Sergeant, I know, I have to admit, Mrs. Howell took that money, my cousin, my son Dave’s stepmother. I don’t think she has it now. I told Dave yesterday, there’s something very peculiar about her disappearance that complicates things for you, yet perhaps, in a way simplifies them for me. Sergeant, I think my cousin is dead. She hasn’t turned up in Flint, the coal camp that was her home, and I simply can’t imagine her driving off without taking that money. Someone took it last night, that much I know, but I don’t think she was the one. OK, I’m going to assume she is dead. That’ll cut me loose from all duty to stand by my kin and leave me free to help you—if you want my help.”
It was Knight who walked over and took her hand with quite a courtly bow. Everyone was standing around wondering what to do next. The firemen were in their boat watching Edgren, maybe for some kind of sign, what he wanted of them next.
And then, all of a sudden Rufe opened his mouth and let go right in the river, a gush of yellow vomit splashing down. Everyone stared at him, and then a sickening smell floated in. Then Jill screamed and we saw this horrible thing, with a belly big as a barrel, arms sticking up, and eyes popping out of its head. I knew it was Mom, just from the glimpse I got, before turning away and swallowing hard to keep my stomach down.
I could hear Rufe telling Knight: “I know what the answer is: she’s the one that took out the boat, that last time we were here, and capsized it on that tree—when Mr. Howell thought, and we supposed that the boat had floated off on a rise of the river, and hung up on the tree, just by its own self.”
Just then Rufe gave a yell: “It’s broke loose, it’s going downstream—that corpse I’m talking about!”
Sure enough, out of the corner of my eye I could see it, spinning around in the current, down past the roots of the tree. Now it was no longer tangled up in the branches. Rufe started his engine again and Ed picked up a boat hook. Rufe steered around the snag, cut sharp to pass the island, and then shot downriver fast. Ed jabbed two or three times with the hook, and finally caught it in something. I couldn’t see what. He had to work the hook around the bow while Rufe let the motor idle. Then Rufe brought the boat into the bank, and Mantle yanked out the corpse, letting go real quick and stumbling off to the bushes. “You know who it is, Howell?” Edgren asked, turning to me.
“My stepmother,” I said.
“Then, if you’ll look at her, you can identify her, and we’ll take it from there.”
“I can’t look at her!”
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to.”
“I can’t, I won’t.”
“I’ll identify,” said my mother.
“I’m sorry, madam, it has to be done by a relative.”
“I am a relative, closer than he is. She was my second cousin. He was her nephew twice removed, though she raised him as his stepmother. I said I’d identify.”
The way she said it meant business and Knight motioned to Edgren. My back was to her and the corpse but I heard her recite:
“This was Mrs. Myra Giles Howell, widow of Jody Howell, age about 38, no close kin except for her stepson, my son, David Howell, and a brother, Sidney Giles, address Flint, West Virginia. Her address this property here, highway 60, Marietta, Ohio.”
“That covers it, thank you, ma’am.”
Edgren was most respectful. “Now,” she went on, stepping off to one side, her handkerchief to her nose, “I think we should go to the ranchhouse, that place you see up there, the original one she lived in, and see if her car is there—my son’s car, actually. Apparently, as this gentleman”—nodding toward Rufe—“has kindly figured it, she drowned when the boat capsized after she took it out, we would assume to pick up the money, where she’d hid it in that tree. But she left home in the car, and if we find it, that will explain, I think, most of what happened that night.”
By that time, after a whispered conversation with Edgren, Mantle had left, I supposed to phone in from his car, for the undertaker to be called, and maybe the coroner notified. He was now trotting up the path, and Edgren, after a glance in his direction, told my mother: “OK, soon as Officer Mantle gets back. Someone must stay with this body, and—”
“Can do, can do,” Rufe chirped up, very friendly. “We’ll stand by, if you want. You don’t mind if we move upwind a little way? Like to the island, maybe.”
“Of course not,” said Edgren. “Thanks.” Then: “OK,” he told my mother.
So we all headed for the ranchhouse, he and my mother leading, Bledsoe and Knight following along behind, and York following them, with me. And sure enough, soon as we passed the kitchen there was my car, parked between it and the house. When I opened the door, Mom’s bag was on the seat, and her keys were in the ignition. Edgren had me open the house, and then open the kitchen, so he could search, as he did once before. I think he hoped he might find the money. When he came out my mother told him: “Now, if you want my help, I have to tell you I could
do without yours for a while. There are people I have to see, to find out what they know, and they’re the kind of people who won’t come in to talk if police cars are parked outside.”
“You want us to leave?”
“If it’s not asking too much.”
Knight nodded. “OK,” said Edgren. “We’ll clear out soon as we’ve cleared the undertaker, when he comes for that corpse. By now, Officer Mantle has put in the call.”
“And one other thing: I’ll have to be using that phone for some fairly personal calls. I have to know if it’s bugged.”
“Well, madam, as to that, we don’t give out information—”
“Is it bugged?” Her voice snapped.
“No, ma’am, it’s not.”
“That’s what I want to know.”
Knight eyed her, Bledsoe eyed her, York eyed her, Jill eyed her, and Edgren did. It was no trouble to see who was running the show. She thought a minute, then said: “Now, Dave, if you’ll drive us over—I think Jill can ride with us—we can get busy with what we have to do. First, we could use some lunch—or at least I could.”
I got in and she opened the other door, standing aside for Jill. “You ride in the middle,” she whispered.
“You ride in the middle,” I snapped. “Let her ride by the door.”
Mother hesitated, then got in. Jill said: “I don’t have to ride at all!”
“OK, then, walk,” I told her.
I reached over Mother and closed the door, then pulled out after starting the motor. “You weren’t very nice to her,” said my mother.
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
“She’s a very sweet girl.”
“She’s a rotten little bitch.”
“She had some provocation.”
“What provocation?”
“When you lose a hundred thousand dollars—”
“Ninety-eight thousand dollars.”
“When you lose $98,000, you’ll find out, all by yourself, what it can do to you—your temper, your love, your everything.”