“And the money’s still in the bank, I hear.”
“So it is, and with a lot of interest on top of it. ”Course the bank don’t give a shit if Donal never turns up and asks for it. They got a nice, fat deposit, just sitting there.“
“Bo, is there any possibility that somebody else could have written the letter? I mean, since it wasn’t in Joyce’s handwriting, couldn’t somebody have forged it to make you think the family was still alive?”
“No, no. It was in Kathleen’s handwriting. She’d written all of Joyce’s letters to me when I was in Korea. There must have been a hundred of them. I’d know that handwriting anywhere.”
“Then there’s no chance at all that the O’Coineen family could have been drowned when the roadbed gave way and let the lake in?”
“Absolutely none. Look, John, now I see what all this interest in the maps was about. People like to think the worst, and that story has been making the rounds periodically for years, but I’m in a position to know the truth of things. First of all, I know the money’s in the bank; I’m a director of the bank. Second, Joyce communicated with me after the family left, and I know for a fact the communication was genuine. I was in a position to know; there was some personal stuff in that letter, stuff that only Joyce and me – and Kathleen – could have known.”
Howell felt badly deflated, and he must have looked it.
Scully leaned forward. “John, I can see how this tale of the O’Coineens must’ve looked pretty sexy – especially with somebody like Eric Sutherland being the villain. But there’s just nothing to it. Oh, Sutherland was the bad guy, all right, putting pressure on people to sell land they’d owned for generations, but he did it legally all the way, and at the end of it all, it’s meant a whole new world for the people who live here. And let me tell you something else. If I thought for a minute that Sutherland had been involved in something like a murder, I’d of had him long ago. I respect the man, but I don’t like him much, and I loved Joyce. I wouldn’t be a party to covering up her murder. I hope you believe me.”
Howell did believe him and said so. “I’m sorry, Bo, if I’ve ruffled feathers around here with all this, especially Sutherland’s. I know that can’t make life any easier for you.”
“Well, you’re right about that, John. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sutherland quite so riled. Look, I’m going to run down this credit card – like as not there’ll be some perfectly logical reason why it was there, somebody from out of town at the party, I expect – then I’ll do what I can to quiet him down. I don’t know if you were in there the other night, but even if you were, I think I understand why, and the hell with it as far as I’m concerned. So just forget this visit, okay? But listen, if you get the old man flustered again, he’s going to start making life difficult for me, and I can’t have that, and I’ll have to do something about it. Do you understand me?”
“Sure, Bo. Believe me, I don’t want to make life difficult for you.”
The sheriff left, and Howell went to the phone.
Scotty moved through the files with almost reckless speed. She knew she might miss what she was looking for at the rate she was going, but she also knew that, with events closing in on her, she might never have another chance. Still, after three quarters of an hour, she was only finished with one drawer and half finished with another. She was aided, though, by the neatness of the files. Nothing seemed mixed up or out of place. Finally, it was color that led her to what she wanted.
In a file marked “Miscellaneous,” full of one standard form used for domestic disturbances, peeping toms, and other minor concerns, she saw something green. Everything else in the file was white. She fished half a dozen sheets of loose ledger paper from the file and looked at her watch. Ten past two. She had been luckier with time than she could have dared wish for. The telephone rang.
“Sutherland County Sheriffs office.”
“It’s John. Sutherland found your credit card outside his office.”
“I know, you sonofabitch. Bo has already written to Neiman’s to find out all about it.”
“He was just here, asking questions. Just so our stories match, I told him we cooked a steak and got to bed early.”
“You told him I slept there? Thanks a lot.”
“He asked, but I told him it was none of his business. We had what you might call a very frank discussion about what’s under the lake, and I think maybe I’ve been on the wrong track.”
“Well, judging from what I’ve got in my hand, here, I’m not on the wrong track. There were some ledger pages stuck in a file where they shouldn’t be. That’s not like Bo.” She glanced quickly through them. “There are a lot of figures on them.”
“Well, you’d better get a copy of them quick. Bo’s already been gone from here a couple of minutes, and if he’s headed for the office, that means you’ve got very little time.”
“See ya.” She hung up the telephone and ran for the copying machine. It hadn’t been used yet that morning, and it took a couple of minutes to warm up. She drummed her fingers restlessly on the machine, waiting for the green light to go on. She had copied only two of the pages when the front door opened. She froze. The filing cabinet was still unlocked, the file was on Bo’s desk, and papers were in her hand that shouldn’t be.
“Thanks, sugar, how do I look?” Mike, the radio operator sauntered by, stroking his hair.
“Slick, Mike,” Scotty managed to croak. She kept making copies. “You’re gonna knock ‘em dead.”
“You know it, sugar,” Mike said, arranging himself in his chair and opening a Playboy.
Scotty grabbed the last copy and, as quickly as she could without seeming to hurry, walked back toward her desk. When she was around the corner and out of Mike’s sight, she ducked into Bo’s office, stuck the sheets back into the file, got it into the drawer, and locked the cabinet. She had been back at her desk, the copies safely in her purse, for five seconds when Bo walked in.
“How’d you like Sutherland’s party?” he asked, casually, as he strolled past her desk.
“Not bad. He was, really pretty nice.”
“Stay late?”
“No, I went back to John’s for a steak.”
“Stay long?”
She looked at him sideways. “None of your business.”
He laughed and went into his office.
In her mind, Scotty ran through what she had just done, just to be sure. She’d replaced the ledger sheets at exactly the place in the file where’d they’d come from; She’d put the file in exactly the same place in the drawer; and, this time, she’d made sure the lock was firmly engaged. Then she stopped in the middle of a sigh of relief. There was something wrong, something out of order, something she hadn’t done properly. The copying machine. In order to make copies, she placed the originals, one at a time, under a flap on top of the machine. The machine drew a sheet of blank paper from a stack on one side, and spat out a copy on the other. She had, she now realized, made the first five copies in the ordinary way, placing an original under the flap, pushing the button, then replacing the original with the next page. She had her own copies, now of all six pages. But, she knew in her bones, she had left the last original under the flap. It was still there.
Bo came out of his office, a letter in his hand, and headed for the copying machine.
“No!” Scotty practically shouted.
Bo stopped and turned. “Huh?”
It was hard to talk with her heart in her throat. “Uh, don’t use that just yet. The paper isn’t feeding properly, and I haven’t had a chance to get at it.”
“Well, I’ll take a look at it. I need this right away.”
Bo never liked to wait for anything, she knew that. She walked over and muscled between him and the machine. “Get out of the way, Bo,” she said, playfully. “You’ll just screw it up. You know you can’t fix anything.” She popped open the side of the machine and removed the stack of blank paper.