“Santos,” Edgren told him.
When the ambulance had gone off and the tow car had gone off hauling what was left of Sid’s car behind it, Edgren and Mantle came in the house to question me, my mother, and Jill, but mainly Jill. Edgren, now that the case was solved, and in a way that did not make him look silly at all, was nice as pie to Jill, coming back to it several times: “You had reason to think that this man had taken your money, that he had it in the car, and you shot his tire out to stop him. What reason did you have to think so?”
She said she had driven out to the house, “to talk some more to this lady, find how things were going, whether she’d heard anything, or had something to tell me. Then I saw this car, and remembered it from before, when that man Giles had come and Mr. Howell had kicked him out. So I kept right on around, around the loop I mean, passing the other cars, and started back toward the highway. But then I thought I’d better go back and see what’s going on. So I parked at the side of the lane and slid down in the gully. I followed it around, then cut to the back of the house and went in the kitchen door. I took care to make no noise, and went through the hall, till I was close to the arch, that one there, where I could hear what was being said. Then here all three of them came, on their way out to the cars, and I stepped in under the stairs. I was pretty scared, as I thought that man might kill me — my second close call of that kind, all in less than a week. But he didn’t, and soon as all three were out I ducked back to the kitchen, grabbed that rifle and went outside. I kept close to the house, and heard him order them back, Mr. Howell and his mother, into the house again. Soon as he started his car I pulled the bolt and got ready. And then—”
“Just a minute,” Edgren cut in. “You knew this man was armed, and shot out his tire as one way of protecting yourself, of saving your life perhaps—”
“Something like that,” she answered. “I’d a lot rather that man should stop and look down the barrel of my gun, instead of me looking down his.”
“OK,” said Edgren. He turned to Mantle, who looked at the notes he’d been taking. “That covers it,” he said, “except for one thing: From what Mr. Howell has told us and what his mother has said, when this man’s wallet is searched, a flock of twenties will be in it, maybe a hundred, amounting to two thousand bucks. Do you claim that money as yours?”
“I hope to tell you I do.”
Jill banged it back real quick, and Mantle played his ballpoint on his teeth. “You have any proof it belongs to you?” he asked her.
She started to tell how Mr. Morgan had given it to her, but then stopped, seeing right away that that wasn’t the trouble. What had to be proved was that the two thousand bucks in the wallet was part of the Morgan gift. They all three looked at each other and I guess I got in it. “You impounded the proof of this money,” I told Edgren. “On that tape Officer Mantle found was the record of copies made, of the Xerox pictures they took, of the bills that tape was around, and—”
“They’ll show it,” he cut in. “That’s right, that makes it simple. We call Chicago, they look up their Xerox pictures, get us the numbers — and that does it. OK, that straightens us out.” Then: “Are we done?” he asked Mantle.
“Not quite,” Mantle answered, clicking his pen on his teeth once more. “Her shooting his tire out was justifiable, along the line of a citizen’s arrest, if she knew he had her money. But as it hadn’t been found, she didn’t know it, really. But, on the basis of what she heard, listening in from the hall, she knew, she knew for certain, that whether he had the big pot, the cash in the zipper bag, he did have that two thousand bucks, in twenties there in his wallet — and she had to know it was hers—”
“So there was a corpus delicti,” said Edgren, “a corpus she knew about.” And then, to Jilclass="underline" “A corpus delicti, miss, doesn’t always mean a body. It generally means that, too, but mainly it means evidence a crime was committed.”
“And it’s important,” said Mantle, pretty solemn. “In this case, especially.”
“Very important,” said Edgren.
“Thanks, Dave!” sobbed Jill, coming over and grabbing my hand. However, I shook her off. “I don’t want your thanks,” I told her, “or any part of you.” She crumpled up on the sofa and really started to bawl. “Dave,” snapped my mother, “you must be under a strain — I think you forget yourself. If you’re going to marry this girl—?”
“I’m not! Stop trying to say I am!”
By then Edgren and Mantle were at the door. Edgren made a stiff little speech: “Thanks ever so much, Mrs. Howell,” he began.
“Miss Giles,” she corrected.
“Mrs. Giles, I’m sorry.”
“Miss Giles, I’m not married.”
“Miss Giles, for being so cooperative.”
My mother bowed, her face set, as though it was chiseled in marble.
“Mr. Howell, thanks for your help, and Miss Kreeger—”
But all Jill did was bawl, and on that pleasing note the officers finally left.
24
So, not to string it out, they had the inquest Tuesday, by now a week late, kind of a triple, in one of Santos’ parlors, with the coroner, Dr. Snyder, a jury of six people pulled in from the street, Mr. Knight, for the state’s attorney’s office, and Mr. Bledsoe, for my mother, Jill, and me. And three verdicts were brought, two of homicide, justifiable, and one of accident, by drowning, with nobody held. So that rang down the curtain, and the three of us walked out free.
Then one thing happened that I’ll get to, but after that nothing at all for two or three months. My mother went back to Indianapolis and called often but didn’t come out any more. Then, however, things happened and happened fast. The wire came from Arizona, and my father at last was free. So in a few days he and my mother got married, and showed up in his car, a big Rolls limousine, with him and my mother in back, and his secretary and the driver up front — with grins on everyone’s face and an invitation to the bridal supper in one of Marietta’s swank hotels. His name, it turned out, is John Gilmore Rider, who I’d heard of as the president of Husky Bus Lines, but it turned out that was a sideline with him. He was mainly president of Polaris Oil, which had started Husky 20-odd years before as a way of using up surplus gas. It also turned out how he and my mother had met. It was in Logan County, West Virginia, when she was a secretary for the Boone County Coal Corporation, at Clothier, and he was a young stockholder of Polaris, locating bus lines for them. He began taking charge of my life, how I should change my name to correspond, go to Cornell, to finish my college education, then move to Oklahoma to learn the ropes at Polaris, so I could succeed him as president when he felt he ought to retire. But I told him to back it up, that I’d decide those things, not he, and it made him laugh. But just to act friendly with him, I did agree to tape up all that happened, from the time Shaw came down until the inquest was over, so his secretary could type it up, and he would know everything. So I did, and this is it. Nothing’s been settled yet, but I image I’ll go to Cornell, and eventually head for Tulsa.
So that takes care of him, my mother, and me, but it doesn’t take care of one other, and maybe a wedding we had, some weeks before my mother’s. But to explain about her, and how one thing led to another, I’ll have to backtrack a bit to that same afternoon after the officers left and we were all three sitting there — my mother, Jill, and me in the living room of my house — or at least my mother and I were, with Jill stretched out on the sofa. And my mother closed her eyes, saying: “How wonderful it would be if that phone were to ring right now, with the news I’ve been praying for. No, I don’t pray for it, I wouldn’t pray for somebody’s death, but if it has to come, why couldn’t it come now, so we could have it double, a real ceremony!”