“I want you to see to it,” Sutherland said.
Bo leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. “Eric, I don’t think we should overreact to Howell.” He still didn’t have a firm grasp on Sutherland’s intentions, but he was worried by what the old man might mean.
“He’s up here to spy, isn’t he?”
“I’m not at all sure that he is,” Bo said, as calmly as he could manage. He thought that Howell probably was at the lake to spy, but not quite the sort of spying Sutherland had in mind, and he felt this was no moment to agree wholeheartedly with Sutherland. This felt very dangerous. “My best information was that he left his job some time back to write a book. He hasn’t worked for the paper for a long time, now.”
“He knows them, though, and they know him. He’s just the sort of fellow they’d put up here if they were being sneaky, don’t you see that?”
“Well, since he knocked an editor of the paper halfway across the newsroom when he left, I don’t know that I do think he’d be the sort they’d send.” He was trying to sound reasonable; he’d never seen Sutherland quite so worked up. “His name seems to be mud around that newspaper.”
“Well, maybe he’s doing it on his own, then. Maybe he thinks he can work his way back into their good graces if he comes up with something here.”
“Our information was that the paper was sending one of its reporters. It just doesn’t add up.” Bo thought it just might add up, but he was fighting his way out of a corner, now.
Sutherland slapped his palm on the leather surface of the big desk. “Well just why in hell can’t they leave it alone, for God’s sake? It’s been nearly twenty-five years.”
“Of course it has,” Bo said. “What could he possibly dig up that could be embarrassing after this long?”
“Nearly twenty-five goddamn years,” Sutherland said, then sagged back into his chair.
“Now, Eric, I don’t want you to worry about this,” Bo said, as soothingly as he could manage. “I’m keeping an eye on Howell, and so far there’s been nothing to be alarmed about.” That wasn’t true, but he didn’t want Sutherland alarmed. Sutherland alarmed was dangerous. “You just trust me to handle him; it’ll be all right, I promise you.” He wanted Sutherland calm for his own reasons. Anyway, Howell had probably saved his ass during that holdup, and he liked the man. “Let’s not overreact,” he said again.
“I wish I’d never put that money in the bank,” Sutherland said. “It eats at me to this day.”
“You did the best thing in the circumstances,” Bo replied. “You covered yourself. There might have been serious trouble if you hadn’t done that.”
Sutherland sagged even further. “All right. You keep an eye on him. If there’s the slightest sign that he’s after something, I want to know about it, you hear?”
“Why, sure, Eric, you just leave it to me.”
Bo’s shirt was sticking to him when he left the house a few minutes later. He had to keep Sutherland happy; the man didn’t have an important heir, and Bo knew he was in line for something, maybe everything. God knew, the old man had brought it up often enough. John Howell might be a problem, or he might not be. Bo thought the best thing to do was wait. As a rule, he preferred waiting until he had to move. He still didn’t know what Sutherland’s intentions toward Howell had been. He had been afraid to ask. He didn’t want to know.
Bo glanced at his watch as he left the house. Just four minutes to go. Sutherland had nearly kept him too long. He drove quickly out of the south side of town and pulled up at a telephone booth in the parking lot at Minnie Wilson’s convenience store. The phone was already ringing when he got to it. He snatched the instrument off the hook.
“Yeah?”
“That you?”
“Yeah, I got your teletype.”
“Don’t say that on the phone, for Christ’s sake.”
“Sorry. What’s up?”
“I’ve got a big one for you.”
“When?”
“Soon enough. They’re getting cranked up down south, now. A few weeks, maybe. It takes time to put together a big one.”
“A big one means big at my end, then?”
“Don’t get greedy, friend. You’ve been very well taken care of so far, haven’t you?”
“I’m not complaining.”
“I think I can get you seventy-five, maybe eighty for this one. Trust me to deal for you.”
“You’ve done okay by me so far. I’ll trust you.”
“Okay, I just wanted you to know what’s in the works. We’ll be doing it as a training operation; there’ll be a bigger carrier involved than usual.”
“There’s not all that much room, you know.”
“Our man has been there before. He says he can do it. I believe him.”
“If that’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for me.”
“Good. You’ll get the schedule in the usual way. Postpone if there’s serious trouble, but if you confirm, it’s go all the way. I’m depending on you to see that this goes off without a hitch.”
“I don’t have hitches. I’ll do everything but drive it in and out. That’s your man’s job.”
“Right. I’ll be in touch.”
Bo hung up the telephone and leaned against the booth. Seventy-five or eighty. Funny, it didn’t seem as much as it used to. Still, it wasn’t bad for a few hours’ work. He headed back to his car.
11
For two days, Howell was an invalid. Scotty came and rubbed his back and saw that he ate, but he wasn’t sure she believed it was as bad as he made it out to be. It was, in fact, worse. Every time he got to his feet he had about two minutes of a semblance of mobility before his legs began to cramp horribly, then it was into a chair or back to bed. As long as he sat or reclined, the pain was manageable. It was manageable, even then, because of the pain killers the doctor had given him, mixed with generous doses of Jack Daniel’s.
He was in no mood to think about work, so he thought about the seance and the girl at the window. He could not bring himself to give any credence to the idea that the house might be haunted, but he was intrigued by the double coincidence of the medium’s being blind and being named Joyce, like the elder O’Coineen daughter. It was clear that they could not be the same person, since Joyce O’Coineen would now be in her late forties, and the medium had been much younger, or at least, she seemed younger. Still, he was intrigued. Both the visiting couples had left the lake the morning after the seance, apparently, to go back to Chatanooga. He couldn’t remember Jack’s last name; Helen’s name was Smith, and that was tough to trace; and Harry and Joyce Martin weren’t going to be easy, either, he thought, an opinion confirmed when the Chatanooga information operator was finally persuaded to give him the numbers of all the Harry, Harold, and H. Martins listed. There were some two dozen. Halfway through the list, he got lucky.
“May I speak to Joyce Martin, please?”
“Speaking.”
“Is this the Joyce Martin who was at Lake Sutherland a few days ago?”
“Yes, is this John Howell?”
“Yes,” he replied, surprised.
“I thought so; I’m good at voices,” the woman said.
“I’m sorry to trouble you, Joyce, but I’ve been thinking about the seance the other night, and…”
“You’re psychic, yourself, aren’t you, John?”
“Well, I’ve had a few minor episodes that were hard to explain away, but…”
“You shouldn’t suppress it, you know.”
This was making Howell uncomfortable, and he pressed on. “Joyce, may I ask your maiden name?”
“It’s Wilks. Why?”
“And may I ask where you were born and grew up?”
“At Newport, on the Isle of Wight, in England.”
“Of course, I had forgotten you were British. I’m asking, because there was a girl who lived in this area many years ago whose name was Joyce and who was blind.”