I let her have her hand back and picked up the empty box. Without a word she led me into the next room, which looked like a cross between a den and an art museum. Two facing walls consisted entirely of glass-fronted display cases full of statuettes, pottery, and glass and china bric-a-brac — the kind of stuff a man in my line doesn’t give a second look. She lifted down a squat, ugly china pot with pictures and French writing running around it and poured out the key on its long chain.
I relieved her of the key. I’d already spotted the phone in the room and I steered her away from it before I opened the safe. Between two arched doorways, one of which we’d just come through, stretched an expanse of paneled wall, blank except for a small chrome-plated clock. I swung the clock aside, put the key into the lock thus revealed, and rolled back the heavy camouflaged doors of the coin vault.
The coins were on open shelves, each in its own recess, in narrow trays covered with red, green, and blue velvet. Ashloe might or might not have more coins on deposit at the bank, but there were more than enough here to make the trip worthwhile.
I pulled a rubber glove on my left hand in case I touched something that would hold a fingerprint. Without ceremony I started tipping the coins out into the box. Mrs. Ashloe came over and helped me, still keeping one wary eye on the pistol. Under cover of the noise we were making, she leaned toward me and whispered in my ear, “Kill him.”
“What?”
“I want you to shoot him. Now.”
I stopped dumping trays. “Why?”
She went on dumping trays. “Thirty-three years, that’s why. Thirty-three years with Tucker Ashloe is more than flesh and blood can bear.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to get a lawyer?”
“No, it wouldn’t. I don’t just want to be rid of him, I want to get my hands on his money.” She spilled two more trays into the box. “Don’t look at me like that. He’s got millions, and we live from hand to mouth. Any one of these coins would pay our grocery bills for the past six months.”
I handed her a couple. “Have some caviar on me.”
She threw them into the box with the others. “Don’t be silly. I’m talking business. Keep your voice down and come in here.”
Remembering her lunge for the pistol, I made her go first and kept my distance. She led me down a long, straight, dark, plushly carpeted hall that ended at a window seat. From there we could see the back of Ashloe’s head as he sat on the couch in the living room, figuring up how much he was going to get out of his insurance company for the stolen coins.
I drew the curtains across the window and put on the light in the hall. When we sat side by side on the window seat, our eyes were nearly level.
“You mentioned business,” I said, talking hardly above a murmur. “My business isn’t killing people. Why should I risk the electric chair just because you’re greedy? I’ve already got what I want.”
A cynical smile tinged her bleak features with a gleam of hellfire. “Nobody ever gets all he wants. I’ll pay you more than those coins are worth if you walk in there now and shoot Tucker.”
“Nothing doing. What’s to keep you from turning me over to the police when I try to collect?”
“I’ll pay you in advance. Right now.”
“And what were you thinking of paying me with? If you have to scrape for grocery money—”
“Listen. That man in there—” she pointed at him as if he were a piece of furniture she wanted hauled away “—owns Visatergo Compressor Corporation, a Fortune 500 company. You certainly know that. You seem to know everything else about us.”
“I checked out your domestic arrangements.”
She rolled her eyes. “The only domestic arrangement around here is not spending any money. He’ll only let me have a cleaning lady one half-day a week. My car is nine years old. I even have to cut his hair, what’s left of it. The man simply has a phobia of spending capital. And since he reinvests every penny the company earns, everything he has is capital. He calls that a cash-flow problem.”
“Sounds familiar,” I said. “Great management, rotten business.”
“Well, listen here.” She was getting thoroughly worked up. She caught at my words like a dog snapping at flies. “Tucker Ashloe’s got a cash-flow problem he never dreamed about. I’ve been skimming the household accounts for more than twenty-five years. Had to. Self-defense.”
I almost laughed out loud. “So where’s the beef? You get your money, one way or the other.”
“But this is peanuts compared to what I could have if he weren’t holding the purse strings. Six hundred thousand, as against forty-odd million.”
“Hold on a minute. You mean you’ve saved all this cash you’ve been skimming?”
“Sure. It’s money he thinks I spent, but I didn’t. That’s what skimming means, doesn’t it?”
That time I did laugh, right in her face. “You’ve been hoarding up all this money behind his back, not spending it, and you think he’s stingy. Whatever phobia he’s got, I think you caught it.”
She didn’t like that a bit but in the circumstances she decided to let it pass. “Let’s say I’ve been saving for something like this. I’m offering you six hundred thousand dollars in cash — old bills, mostly twenties, a few fifties — to kill my husband and then get lost.”
“You’ve got it here?”
“I’ve got it here. You’ll have it in your hands five minutes after he’s dead.”
“Impossible. Five minutes after he’s dead I’ll be on the interstate with a load of bricks in my right shoe. Your neighbors will hear the shot and be—”
“Don’t you have a silencer? Maybe you could use a pillow.”
“You’ve been watching too much TV. This isn’t a Saturday night special, it’s a .45.”
She pondered. “If I pay you in advance, how do I know you’ll really kill him?”
You’d just have to trust me.
She thought some more. “How do I know you won’t kill me, too?”
“I guess you don’t. This killing business was your idea in the first place, you know.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“I’ll see that six hundred thousand first.”
“Say you’ll do it.”
“I’ll do it.”
She kept the money in a space under the bottom shelf of a built-in cupboard in the master bedroom. About a third of it fitted into the wooden case on top of the coins. We put the rest into two double-strength shopping bags.
She arranged it all neatly on the kitchen table. Here she didn’t need to whisper. “Okay, you’ve got your cash, now do it.”
“First I’ve got to get the ropes off him and tie you up.”
“Tie me up? Why?”
“It’ll look better if the police find you tied instead of him. A burglar wouldn’t tie somebody up and then shoot him.”
She was frowning dark clouds of doubt. “He’s going to wonder why you’re untying him.”
“I’ll tell him I’ve got what I came for and I don’t want to leave anything behind that could be traced to me. I’d better stick this stuff in the van before I go back in there.”
“If you do, I’m coming with you. You re not going to drive away from here—”
“Wake up, lady. All you need is for one stray neighbor to see you walking out to the van with me, and your goose is cooked. You stay in the house. Come to think of it, I’m going to lock you in that closet I saw with the key in the door.”
“What do you want to do that for?”
“It’ll only be for a minute. In case you get second thoughts and decide to call the police as soon as I go out the door.”
The second thoughts were already coming to her thick and fast as I shut the closet door on her and turned the key. She put several of them into words. Passing through the hall, I noticed that Ashloe was sitting awfully still, and detoured for a reconnaisance. His color was worse than ever — about the shade of grape soda. He hadn’t been breathing for the last ten minutes or so.