“I never hurt nobody in my life.”
“What about Tony Aquista?”
“I didn’t know about Tony. Honest, mister.”
“What about Kerrigan?”
“Don was dead when I got there. I didn’t shoot him.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know. Neither does Bozey. I was supposed to meet him. We were going away together, him and me.”
She was coming out of shock. Her eyes were beginning to move and regain their luster. A single tear left a bright track on her face.
I made a stab in the dark: “What happened to the money that Bozey gave Kerrigan?”
She didn’t answer. But her head moved on my arm, involuntarily, and she glanced at the sports car from the corners of her eyes.
MacGowan said behind me: “Josie, are you all right?”
“Sure. I’m swell. Everything’s great.” Her pointed tongue moved over her upper lip. “Grandpa?”
I left her with him and searched the two-seater. There was a package under the boot in the space behind the driver’s seat, an oblong package wrapped in newspaper and tied with dirty string. I tore it open. It was full of money, fifties and hundreds and five hundreds, all new bills. The newspaper it was wrapped in was a Portland Oregonian, dated last August. I rolled it up again and put it in the locked steel evidence case in the trunk of my car. Money and marijuana, the stuff that dreams are made of.
Jo was on her feet now, held in MacGowan’s arms. She was mewing like a kitten, a bedraggled kitten in a stormy world: “They made a circle around me. They broke open one of the cases and got drunk and took turns at me. Over and over and over.” Her voice skipped up the octaves of despair.
His face was granite against her tangled hair. “I’ll kill them, lass. How many of them are there?”
“Three of them. They came from Albuquerque to pick up the whisky. I should have stayed with you, Grandpa.”
He frowned in puzzled grief. “Didn’t your husband try to stop them?”
“Bozey isn’t my husband. He would have stopped them if he could, I guess. But they took his gun before that, and beat him up.”
I touched her shuddering back. “Are they still up there, Jo?”
“Yeah, they were loading the truck when I sneaked out. They’ve got the other truck stashed in the old fire station.”
“Show me the place.”
“I don’t want to go back there.”
“You don’t want to stay here by yourself, either.”
She looked at my car, then up and down the road as if its shadowed length was the years of her life, past and future. Without a word she climbed into the front seat.
I steered through the narrow space between the sports car and the drop into the canyon. MacGowan nursed his rifle on his knees. Jo sat between us, staring at nothing.
“Did you kill Kerrigan for the money?” I said.
“No. No. I went out there to meet him, and found him in his blood.” Her voice was a hopeless monotone.
“Why the runout, then?”
“Because they’d think I killed him. Just like you do. But I wouldn’t hurt Don Kerrigan. I adored him.”
MacGowan spat into the wind.
I said: “You took the money from him.”
“So I took the money. I had a right. Don was dead, he had no use for it. It was lying there on the office floor and I picked it up and took a car and went to look for Bozey. All I wanted was out.”
“And twenty thousand dollars. Did Bozey tell you to get the money and join him?”
“No, nothing like that. I thought I was going away with Don. I didn’t even know where Bozey was for sure.”
“That’s true. I told you that,” MacGowan said.
She lifted her face to look at me. “Why don’t you let me go? I didn’t do anything wrong, except for taking the money. And it was just lying there.” Her voice brightened. “Keep it yourself, why don’t you? Nobody will know. Grandpa won’t tell.”
MacGowan let out a sound that might have been a sob, or a snort of repugnance.
I said: “The money isn’t any good. Didn’t you know that?”
“Come again.”
“The money was hot, so hot that Bozey couldn’t spend it. He took it from a bank in Portland, and they had a list of the bills. Nobody could spend it, anywhere. Or is this old stuff to you?”
“I don’t believe you. Bozey wouldn’t do that.”
“He did, though. He was conning Kerrigan. The money was Confederate.”
“You’re crazy,” she said hotly.
“Am I? Think about it, Jo. Would Bozey risk twenty grand on a deal like this if the twenty grand was any good to him? Nobody would.”
She sat still for a while. I could feel her beside me, and almost sense the workings of her small dark mind. Her violated personality was closing up again, hard and tight and defensive as a fist.
“If that’s straight, I’m glad they beat him. He had it coming. I’m glad they cheated him out of his payoff.”
We climbed toward the ridge, which rose solid black against the star-punctured sky. I nursed the laboring engine along in second, swinging from one side of the road to the other to avoid the holes and slides.
“Jo?”
“I’m still here. I haven’t gone any place.”
“You said last night that you were elected to flag down Aquista’s truck, then something changed the plan. What was it?”
“Don didn’t want me to take the risk,” she said with a certain pride. “That was the main thing, anyway.”
“What were the other things?”
“He did a favor for a friend of his. Then this friend of his did a favor for him.”
“By stopping the truck and shooting Aquista?”
“Stopping the truck was all. Don didn’t figure on any shooting. This friend of his crossed him up.”
“Who was it, Jo?”
“Don didn’t mention names. He said the less I knew, the better. He wanted me to be in the clear if the blueprint didn’t work out.”
“Was it Church? The sheriff?”
She didn’t answer.
“Meyer?”
Still no answer.
“What was the favor Don did for his friend?”
“Take it up with Bozey, why don’t you? He was in on it. Bozey went out in the desert with Don, Monday night.”
“What were they doing out in the desert?”
“It’s a long story. You wouldn’t be interested.”
MacGowan clucked like a hen. “Don’t hold back now, honey. You ought to make a clean breast of everything.”
“Make a clean breast, he says.” Her laugh teetered on the shrill edge of hysteria. “I had nothing to do with it. I’m clean. All I know is what they told me.”
“Who?”
“Tony, and then Don.”
“What did Tony tell you Sunday night?”
“Don said I should keep quiet about it. Only I guess it doesn’t matter any more, now that he’s dead. What does? Tony followed Anne Meyer up to Lake Perdida on Saturday. She was in Don’s cabin with some guy, and Tony was window-peeping. This doesn’t make much sense. Nothing that Tony did ever made much sense. He only had about forty-eight cards in the deck.”
“What did he see?”
“The usual, I guess. Beautiful music.”
“Who was the man with her?”
“He didn’t say. I think he was scared to tell me. The whole thing threw him, see. He was stuck on Anne Meyer, and when he looked in and saw her lying dead on the floor–”
“He saw her dead?”
“So he told me.”
“Saturday night?”
“Sunday. He went up there again on Sunday. He peeked in the window and there she was, kaputt. At least that was his story to me.”
“How did he know she was dead?”
“You’ve got me. I didn’t cross-question him. I had a fast idea that maybe he killed her himself. He was nutty enough.”