Still…
Bill went to the living room and pulled out the couch — and then didn't know whether to cry or scream, whether to tear the place apart or just lie down on the floor and rot there.
The wall panel was unseated.
He fell to his knees and looked inside.
Everything was gone. Of course it was.
The bearer bonds, the coin collection, the two million-plus in ill-gotten gains.
All of it gone.
The only thing back there right now was a handwritten note in Annie's florid script:
ASSHOLE
Bill trudged back to the bedroom wearing a thousand-yard stare. How the hell was this possible? The panel had been secure yesterday — he checked it every day — and Annie'd packed her bags and took off way before he'd checked that afternoon.
Last night, he realized.
It was the only answer. Annie had ripped him off last night. But she hadn't been in the apartment.
Or had she?
I'll just find her and kill her, he thought. Not the most reasonable solution but he liked the sound of it. Calm down, calm down, he thought. Get your ass under control.
An instant later he began to feel a little better. He willed himself to feel better. Life had its ups and downs, right? Well, today was one of the downs. Definitely one of the downs. He'd had them before, hadn't he? He'd risen above it.
So what? The bitch took my stash. I must have mouthed off about it last night too, then she came back tonight and did the job while I was asleep. Big deal. Score one for her. I've still got plenty of stuff in the works. Half a dozen months from now I'll have just as much money in that wall as I did yesterday.
There. Much better.
Being in control was a wonderful thing.
But it still bugged him. Women were treacherous. Of course they were. He knew that. But how the hell…?
A thought came to mind and it was a doozy of a thought. He headed for the front door, fast, just to prove himself correct. He always turned the second deadbolt at night before bedtime and Annie didn't have a key for that. So how the hell could she have gotten in? Unless tonight of all nights he'd forgotten to lock it. But he never did that.
He stared at the little brass knob.
In the locked position.
The only other person who had a key to that deadbolt was Laura. From back in the days just after he walked on her, before Annie, when they were still talking like adults and he was making a show of maybe reconciling so he could occasionally play hide the salami with her.
And that's when he heard her voice.
From the bedroom.
He ran back.
The recorder was still going.
It was Laura's voice on the recorder.
"…bag of shit," she hissed. "Well, now he's really gonna get his. And good god, didn't you loathe all that snoring and moaning? Disgusting. I had to put up with it for five years."
A second whispered voice agreed. "I haven't gotten a good night's sleep the whole time I was with him. Can't tell you how many times I wanted to cut his head off just to make him shut the hell up!"
Annie's voice. On the tape. With Laura's. Which meant… They'd both been here last night. Listening to him!
The two bitches were in cahoots!
And he could see them now, huddled there together, crouching in the dark, waiting for him to sleep-babble the location of the bonds and coins. Cunning, devious bitches.
All right. Score two for them. But, man oh man, do I have a three-pointer coming.
The vengeance when it came would be sweet, but he'd have to be smart, be cool, be reasonable.
Be in control.
He'd work something up nice and sweet for both of them and when the time was right he'd fix their wagons so they never rolled again. Bill Dumont did not like to be made a fool of.
"It was only a matter of time," said a voice on the recorder. "When sleep talkers go into REM, they tend to reveal the things they most want to hide. Along with a lot of gobbledegook, of course. Unacknowledged guilt mixing with subconscious backwash. You just need an informed person to separate the gobbledegook from the data. Our plan worked. I was fairly sure it would."
This third voice wasn't Laura's and it wasn't Annie's either. It was a man.
And it rang a bell.
That fuckin' doctor! Annie's boss! Seymour!
The three of them were here last night!
It boggled the mind! But he still didn't get it. How could they have known exactly which night he'd sleep-babble the location of his stash?
Annie, now: "And thank God you were right. I've hated that scumbag for so long. And I knew he stole my uncle's coins."
"Were we a couple of fools," Laura said. "Falling for that lying, thieving piece of shit!"
“—Shhh!" Annie said. "Keep your voice down. You'll wake him up."
"No need to worry about that," Seymour said. "The benzothiamide (???Benzthiazide?) you were adding to his nighttime dose of Clonifil is not only the latest hypnotic on the psychiatric market, it's one of our best sleeping pills. It's a diazepam analogue…"
"Urn, could we talk in the English language please?"
"My point is that even if he got up right now and began somnambulating, he wouldn't know we were here. He wouldn't enter a waking state if you screamed in his face, that's how powerful this drug is. I'm just sorry about the side effects."
"Yeah, Annie. He could've killed you."
"Yes," Seymour said, "I told you to be careful. One side effect is night terrors in persons with high serum sodium levels, which is the case with hypertensives."
"Well, it was a chance I had to take," Annie whispered. "I needed to be right by his side every night so I'd hear him when he decided to start talking about it. But the other night, that was the last straw. That psycho scared the shit out of me."
"Well, we got lucky. We got what we needed tonight." The doctor again. "Speaking of which, let's go get it. Behind the couch, correct?”
“Yeah," Annie said. "Come on."
The machine deactivated for a second, then voices turned it back on again.
"Oh, I just can't believe it!" Laura was squealing with joy.
"Not just the coins and the bonds but…it looks like Billy-Boy has been up to some work on the side," Seymour said.
Annie's voice. "God! Look at all this money! There must be a million dollars here."
Bill was paralyzed. No. Not a million. Two million. And change. Seymour was chuckling. "Looks like we're all quite rich. Let's go, ladies. My place. The champagne's on me."
More squeals of delight.
It seemed to be over and as the saying goes, enough was plenty. He'd been duped perfectly. And he couldn't help but be furious. Control, control, he kept telling himself. Deep breaths. Calm down. His chest was tightening. But it wasn't over. There was more.
Laura's voice. "Wait. What about him."
"Don't worry about him." Seymour said. "I've already taken care of him.”
“What did you do?" Annie said.
"What we discussed. I emptied his morning Clonifil capsule and refilled it with potassium dichloride. He'll have a massive heart attack within thirty minutes of taking it. With hypertension on his medical files no one will give it a second thought."
A door opening. And closing. Keys in the lock.
Then his own voice shouting, fists pounding on the wall.
He turned it off.
Bill's eyes felt practically lidless. Chest ever tightening, he staggered to the kitchen and rechecked what he already knew. The little blue plastic pill box that he always put his next day's meds in before bedtime.
The slot for his Clonifil was empty.
Bonus: First Drafts