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 with 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.”