“Naw. It’s clean.”
“Well, then, just to make sure, you might haul your ass over to that shack with the rock machinery in it.”
“Uh,” Baker said, and swallowed. Senna said, “And after that take a walk around the place and see if you spot any fresh-turned earth.”
Baker scowled and moved away toward the rock-tumbling shack. I made a half-turn to keep him in sight. I hadn’t seen any gun-bulge against his shirt but Baker was the type who could squeeze a tennis ball flat in one fist.
I said to Senna, “He won’t find anything. We haven’t got what you’re looking for.”
“We’ll see.” He turned again to Joanne: “One or two people ain’t going to like it much that you came runnin’ up here instead of going to your real friends right away and telling them what happened. You gave your solemn word you was going to stay away from this cop, and your friends respected your word. It ain’t likely to sit well.”
Joanne said, “If I knew what had happened I’d have told them. I don’t know.”
Senna’s look of sarcastic disbelief prompted me; I said, “Look, she didn’t know anything and she got scared. She thought she’d be blamed for it.”
“For what?” Senna breathed, and to Joanne: “How much you told the cop?”
“He’s not a cop.”
“Yeah. Ex-cop. He’s still got the odor from here.”
I gave him a cool smile, wanting to give him no satisfaction. He said to her, “One more time. How much you told him?”
She spread both hands. “How much do I know? Nobody lets me in on any secrets, you know that.”
I said, “She went to Aiello’s house at seven-thirty and found it empty. The place had been torn apart. She got scared and came here. That’s all there is.”
Senna considered it. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe.” He turned and watched the shack, waiting, until Baker came out and shook his head and began to prowl the grounds, head down like a sniffing bulldog. Senna said abruptly, “Dolly, I’ll want your car keys a minute.”
“They’re in the car,” she said shortly.
Senna grinned “Don’t never leave your keys in the car,” he said. “Some crook might steal it. You know eighty percent of stolen cars had their keys left in them? Dumb.” He walked over to the convertible, glanced inside, reached in to get the keys, and walked back to the trunk. He opened it, looked, and shut it; put the keys back in the ignition and spent a moment bent over the car with his back to us, pulling up the seats and looking underneath and shoving them back in place. Then he lifted the hood and looked under it—an automatic gesture, I suppose, though I couldn’t conceive of anybody hiding valuable flammable papers in the engine compartment of a car. He slammed it shut and sauntered back toward us, smiling vaguely. “Ain’t no blood in the trunk, which could be a good sign.” He walked to my Jeep and gave it a cursory glance—there is no place to hide anything in an open Jeep—and came back.
He watched Baker for a few minutes and finally, evidently satisfied himself that Baker wasn’t going to find anything; he turned to me and said, “Aiello will turn up.”
“I guess he will,” I agreed judiciously.
“He’ll turn up dead, or he’ll turn up alive. I kind of suspect he’ll turn up dead.”
“Uh-huh.”
“If he does,” Senna said in the same regular tone, “you and the girl friend are the number-one suspects. Naturally me and my friends don’t fly off the handle, we don’t jump to conclusions, and maybe Aiello’ll turn up in Tijuana with a blonde on each arm havin’ a fine time. But it don’t look likely, does it?”
It wasn’t a question that required an answer. He went on:
“He had some goodies that belonged to some of us. Me and my friends, I mean. You know, like Pete? We’re kind of anxious to get it back. Now, if you two got it; it might be a good idea for you to give it back. You could pack it up and ship it to Pete anonymous, so we wouldn’t have any way to prove who sent it, but you’d be in the clear because the heat would be off—unless, of course, we happened to find out you killed Aiello and ditched him someplace. I’m just making suggestions, you understand. We’re all civilized people; we don’t give orders or make threats. But just as a suggestion I might mention it wouldn’t be considered friendly for either one of you to try to leave town before we find out what’s happened to Aiello and the stuff that disappeared from his house.”
Baker was still on the prowl; Senna called him over. They got into the car and Senna was smiling amiably when they turned the car around and drove away.
Joanne hadn’t moved an inch. Now her shoulders lifted defensively and she put the back of her hand to her mouth. I walked over to her and put an arm around her shoulders and walked her inside; this time she didn’t argue. I sat her down on the couch and said, “I think you could use a drink.”
“Make it a double,” she said in a small voice.
I made a drink for her and stood nearby while she gulped half of it down. I said, “Aiello will probably turn up soon, trying to get out of the country with the loot.”
“Don’t try to calm me down with lies.” Her hands dug out a mangled cigarette like an addict snatching an overdue fix. “They can’t let it lie, Simon. The things in that safe were too hot. They’ve got to. find them.”
“They won’t find anything by killing people. They know that.” I turned half away from her, hardening my gut consciously before I said, “Senna said we were the prime suspects but he was just making talk. If they didn’t have a line on somebody else, they’d have been a lot rougher on us. If they really thought you knew where the stuff was, they’d have put the snatch on both of us and you’d be sweating it out right now.”
I wheeled toward her and said flatly, “Who is it, Joanne?”
Her eyes flashed. “You’re babbling.”
“You’ve been holding something back.”
She put the drink down, jammed the cigarette pack into her purse and snapped it shut; got up and headed for the door, icy and stiff. I let her get as far as the door and then I said, “It’s Mike, isn’t it?”
It stopped her in her tracks.
Her teeth were white against the tan face. “What—what gives you—”
“He’s back,” I said, making it a statement.
She took a breath. “How did you find out? How long have you known?”
“I didn’t,” I said, “until you just said that.”
The menace in her eyes came and went quickly, and was replaced by self-disgust. “I never was a good liar.”
“I’m a hard man to lie to,” I said, not softening it. “Now sit down and finish your drink and tell me about Mike.”
She moved back to the couch like a mechanism, sat by reflex and leaned back; her eyes never left my face. I stared at her until she blushed. When she finally spoke it was without apologia or preamble:
“They let him out of prison yesterday. He came back to town last night. I honestly don’t think he meant to get in touch with me at all—he only wanted to see Aiello and try to straighten things out so they wouldn’t get after him all over again. But Mike always did have a talent for trying to soothe troubled flames by throwing oil on them. Simon, I swear to you he had nothing to do with Aiello disappearing.”
“Can you prove that?”
“No, but he—”
“Don’t swear to things you don’t know,” I said. “Christ, of all the asinine things to do. All this rigmarole just to protect Mike Farrell—why? You’re not even married to him any more?”
“He didn’t do it,” she said adamantly.
“Did you see him?”
“Only for a few minutes.”
“When?”
“Last night. He’d had a big argument with Aiello and he wanted a shoulder to cry on. My God, Simon, I wouldn’t even let him come in the house. He stood on the porch and bleated at me through the door—I had it on the chain—and when I wouldn’t let him come in he stormed back to his station wagon and went away with his tires squealing. I expect by now he’s halfway to the Mississippi River.”