“Fellows, honestly, I didn’t have any notion you were dogging my, trail until you burst in here just now,” Casey assured them. “Had I suspected a pair of thugs was trailing me, I wouldn’t have checked into a roadside motel to catch a nap, would I?”
The bald one said, “Well, you’re coming with us now and show us just where she’s buried.”
“But,” said Casey, impatient, “I already explained the problem to you guys. There’s a whole town there now, and Neva Maxton’s impromptu grave is smack under a dam mall.”
“You don’t want to make us mad, the way Omony did,” advised the bald man. “We know she was buried in the woods, not under a shopping plaza. That old actor told us that before—”
“Then, yes. But keep in mind that it was decades ago. Nobody can stand in the way of progress,” Casey explained. “Fact is, I should have realized myself that everything would’ve changed in all this—”
“We have to get that locket and then find out where she buried her jewels. The sooner you—”
“But I was just there,” Casey said. “Once I saw the situation, I turned around and came back.”
“You must’ve made a mistake.”
“No, I used this map, Dick Barn-son’s map. Here, take a look at it yourself.”
“Careful what you pull out of that pocket.”
“Well, honestly, how could I conceal a weapon in the pocket of a pair of Levi’s that are this tight? It’s a wonder I could even stuff the folded map in here.”
Wes was poked in the arm. Without turning, he made a stop-that gesture at Filchock.
“That wasn’t me,” said his friend aloud.
Wes looked back and saw a thin, bearded man in jeans and cowboy boots standing there pointing a .38 revolver at him.
“If you’re going to lurk,” he told Wes, “you got to be a hell of a lot quieter than you two.”
“Well, I’ve never known her to lie,” said Wes. “And Casey and I have been friends for a good long while.”
Filchock made a strange sound.
The bald man scowled at him. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Allergies,” answered the writer. He had been made to sit in the straight-backed chair that went with the rickety writing table.
The bearded man gestured at Casey with his gun. “The only way for us to settle this is for you to come along with us.”
Wes was sitting on the bed beside her now, and she took hold of his arm. “Okay, but you’re going to look awfully silly trying to dig a hole in the food court at that mall,” she assured the gunman. “Besides, the security people would never let you drag in picks and shovels and—”
“Enough.” He came over close to her, frowning down.
“An even bigger problem you’ve got,” put in Wes, “is the police.”
“What police?”
“The ones we phoned about fifteen minutes ago from the motel office after we found the manager out cold on the floor of—”
“You damn... oof!”
When he lunged to hit Wes with the barrel of his gun, Casey had suddenly kicked him in the groin.
He doubled over, groaning.
Wes straight-armed him and grabbed his gun away from him.
Filchock had, while that was going on, left his chair and tackled the bald man.
As the two of them hit the motel room floor with an echoing thunk, the door flapped open, and three local police officers came charging in.
“Better drop that gun,” suggested Casey close to his ear.
“Huh?”
“Or they’ll think you’re a goon.”
“Right.” Very carefully he set the weapon on the faded rug.
When Wes got home from the animation studio the following Monday evening, his cottage was empty. He called Casey’s name anyway and, as he’d anticipated, got no answer.
But stuck to the refrigerator door was a note. “Gone again,” he murmured, crossing to it.
The note, however, said only Beach.
He walked down to the twilit beach, and there was Casey sitting on a long, twisted chunk of driftwood and gazing out at the darkening Pacific.
“I’ve been doing some calculating,” she announced, rising and smiling at him.
“Planning another getaway?”
“I can see where you’d still have doubts about my credibility,” she admitted. “But even though my spiritual advisor turned out to be a conniving crook who got bumped off by his colleagues in crime, nevertheless, it doesn’t mean his teachings were invalid.”
“Okay,” he said. “So what were you calculating?”
“Do you think, keeping in mind this is Southern California, that we could live pretty comfortably on a hundred fifty thousand a year?”
The surf was coming in with considerable enthusiasm, splashing foam across the damp sand.
“Did you actually find those jewels, Case?”
She gave a sigh. “Hey, the cops up there took Dick Barnson’s map and went and had a look, and there really is a darned mall over the alleged gravesite, remember?”
“You’re right, yes. So where’s this money coming from?”
“It would be, of course, in addition to what you earn at Sparey Art,” said Casey, walking closer to the water. “Anyway, Wes, this morning the publishers offered me a hundred fifty thousand to finish up Dick’s autobiography. I guess that’s not a really big advance, but as you mentioned, I’m really not an established author yet.”
“A hundred fifty is not bad.”
“Obviously, I’m no nitwit, all the publicity about poor Dick’s murder and that long-ago murder and the missing jewels and all — well, it made him a much hotter topic than he was when he was alive.” Bending, she took off her sandals and stepped into the foam.
“I’d estimate that with your hundred fifty and what I earn we’d survive,” Wes said, following her as she walked along the edge of the sea.
“And then the HBO money could turn out to be pretty handsome.”
“What HBO money?”
“They also called about maybe doing a movie about my experiences with the buried treasure and all. You’d be in the story, too. But, and that’s just the way the entertainment business is, they want to focus on me rather than you.”
He caught up with her and took her hand. “So you’re intending to stick around here for awhile?”
“I already told you that I would.” Halting, she turned and looked up into his eyes. “By now, Wes, you do trust me, don’t you?”
He only hesitated about five seconds before replying, “I do, sure.”
The Bomb Squad
by John M. Floyd
“Lights,” Becker said, looking up through the windshield. “We got lights on the top floor.”
The driver, Ed Timmons, leaned forward over the steering wheel, took a quick look, and sat back again, his eyes on the road. “Oh God,” he said, and swallowed. “It’s really him, isn’t it?”
Sergeant Tom Becker was already punching numbers into his cell phone. “I hope so,” he bed. What Becker really hoped as he waited for the security guard to answer the phone was that there was a cleaning crew up there, or someone working late. But from what the guard had told him moments earlier, there was little chance of that. Unlike the other threats and tipoffs that had flooded the police switchboards since the bomber’s latest attack, this one looked as if it might be the real thing. An anonymous call had come in to headquarters only minutes ago, delivered in a voice that was as clear and chilling as its message: his next target’s Remington Tower, top floor. He’s there now.
Becker was leaning forward for another look at the building in question when he heard Ralph Hendrix, the security guard in the Remington lobby, pick up the phone.
“Mr. Hendrix?” Becker said. “Me again. You did say everybody on thirty-two had signed out already, right? And nobody’s signed back in?” Becker paused, rubbing a hand through his crewcut as he listened. “Well, somebody’s up there now, we just saw the lights come on.” Another wait, and a weary nod. “Right. Well, what it means is, we don’t have as much time as we’d hoped. And we’re still a ways away.”