But Edgren got at it at once, telling everyone to please sit down, which we did, Jill and I on the sofa, the others in chairs. He started in on me, referring to a paper he had, which I assumed was the night clerk’s report, and taking me over it again, what I had said on the phone and later in person to Mantle. Something kept whispering to me: “Don’t play it too smart; don’t know too much.” So when he asked about the boat we said we had seen, how many persons were in it, I said, “It was dark; I couldn’t see.” And when he asked: “How big a boat, Mr. Howell?” — I told him: “It was a rowboat, that’s all I know.”
“A johnboat, would you say?”
“I wouldn’t say, I couldn’t see.”
“What did they want with the tree?”
“I don’t know, you’d better ask them.”
“What would you think they wanted?”
“I’ve told you, I don’t know, but I’d give a lot to find out.”
“And I’d give a lot more.”
That was Jill, and Edgren snapped at her: “I wasn’t asking you.”
“No, but I’m telling you! Could be, it has something to do with my money, my money, Sergeant Edgren, not Mr. Howell’s money or your money or Mr. Knight’s money, but my money, and if you’d do what you’re supposed to, get off your backside and start in looking, ʼstead of sitting around here talking, we all might be better off, and specially I might be.”
“I’m running this, Miss Kreeger.”
“But not very well, Sergeant Edgren.”
It threw him off, but not much. He sat there, measuring her up, as though trying to think what she knew. I tried to think what he knew and had the uneasy feeling he knew more than we knew he knew, probably connected with whatever it was that Mantle had turned up during the night. Then he turned to me once more and started in about Mom. He really worked me over, especially in regard to the day before — where I had been and why. I said: “I was looking for my stepmother over in Flint, where she used to live.”
“Why? What did you want with her?”
“Remind her she was supposed to be here to answer questions.”
“And what did she say to that?”
“Nothing.”
“Just nothing at all?”
“That’s right.”
“Don’t that hit you funny that you’d tell her something like that and she just told you nothing?”
“No, not at all.”
“Does me.”
“I don’t have your sense of humor.”
“Did she say whether she meant to come back?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“What do you mean, she didn’t?”
“I mean she wasn’t there.”
Everyone laughed and his face got red. Bledsoe cut in then: “Sergeant, I confess myself quite surprised. This boy has gone over this again and again and again — except in regard to his stepmother. But I remind you that he’s not her keeper and also that if he tried to bring her back, he was helping you, not blocking you off, and—”
“He’s holding stuff back, Mr. Bledsoe.”
“You think he’s holding stuff back?”
“I know he’s holding stuff back.”
He mentioned to Mantle who tapped a leather case and told me: “In here is a paper tape that I found in that room this morning. When I lay down I took off my necktie, shoes, and jacket. The tie I put on the chest of drawers, but this morning when I got up, it had falled into that wastebasket in there. When I reached for it I also picked up the tape. It’s a kind used in packaging money, and printed on it is ‘Drover and Dealers Bank of Chicago.’ And handwritten, with ballpoint, it says ‘Two thousand dollars, 100 twenties, Xerox sheets Seven 00 sixty-one — seven 00 eighty-six.’ When we called Drover and Dealers, they said those were the Xerox numbers of bills packaged up for Trans-U.S.&C, that they put in a red zipper bag and sent out for the hijacker, Shaw. They Xeroxed those bills in batches of four.”
He stopped and Edgren hammered at me: “That money has been in this house. How did it get here, Howell?”
“Of that I have no idea either.”
“Howell, this thing has looked queer from the start, but I’m warning you now, that further failure on your part to cooperate—”
“Hey, hey, hey,” snapped Bledsoe. “Ask what you want to find out, sergeant. Stop making speeches at him.”
I knew Bledsoe had to be sweating blood, as I certainly was, but at least he was acting tough. However, before any more could be said, Jill got into the act. “Mr. Howell,” she told Edgren, “can’t cooperate, on account he’s mountain and has to stand by his kin — like this Mom character you met one day, this stepmother he’s got, who stole that money, my money in case you forgot, who could have brought it here and dropped that tape in the basket without his knowing about it or me knowing about it or anyone knowing but her. So how’s about knocking this off, and doing what you ought to be doing, rowing up to that tree and seeing what’s inside it?”
“inside it!”
“Some trees are hollow, you know.”
“And some people know all about it without even having to look.”
“A guy in a boat was looking.”
“If he was.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If there was any boat. Maybe the time has now come for me to find you that money, so you can pretend you knew nothing about it, that it was put there by somebody else, so—”
He may have said more, and I could feel my mouth getting dry. But before he could finish, from down the river there came the sound of a horn. Mantle held up his hand, and Edgren told him: “You better see what that is. Sounds like DiVola.”
Mantle slipped out, and nothing was said for a time until here he came back. “It is DiVola,” he reported. “They want to speak to Howell.”
I went out, Jill with me. The officers went out, and Bledsoe, Knight, and York went out, all stomping along the path on a beautiful spring day. When I got down to the bank, the DiVola outboard was there, with two firemen in it this time instead of three. The one in the bow was holding onto a root on the snag that was still offshore a few feet, a tree maybe a foot across floating up in the current with roots pointing downriver, and branches dragging behind. But behind the outboard was a johnboat with oars in the locks — both boats being pulled downstream by the current, the fireman in the stern of the outboard hanging into the johnboat’s painter. “Mr. Howell, is this your boat?” asked the fireman in the bow, the one hanging to the root.
“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.”