“I called Neiman’s and talked with the credit manager. He hadn’t had time to write to me yet, but he gave me all the information I wanted.” Bo took a sheet of paper from his inside pocket and consulted it. “Harold Martin MacDonald is a 71-year-old, retired insurance salesman from Atlanta. His house was burglarized four weeks ago and his Neiman-Marcus credit card stolen. The store has already cancelled the card and sent him a new one.”
“What does this mean, Bo?”
“This is what’s happened. Whoever burglarized MacDonald’s house took the credit card. For some reason, he didn’t throw it away. He’s apparently an itinerant burglar. He showed up in Sutherland and was attracted to your office because it’s set apart from the house. You can see it from a quarter of a mile down the road. He used the credit card to jimmy the lock, but your dog frightened him away before he had a chance to get into the office, and in his hurry to get away from Duchess and Alfred’s flashlight, he dropped the card. Mystery solved.”
“Were there any other burglaries in town?”
“No. I figure he was just passing through, and it looked tempting.” Bo grinned. “I reckon that Yorkie of yours that thinks he’s a Doberman scared him right out of town.”
“Well.” Sutherland sat back and sighed. “All that certainly makes sense. I suppose I should be relieved, but I still think Howell’s up to something.”
So did Bo, now that he knew who Scotty was. She and Howell were clearly working together, but they weren’t after Sutherland. “Eric, I honestly don’t think you have a thing to worry about. I think you’ve been so worked up about this that it’s hard to let go of the idea, but please just try and relax, will you? Everything is okay.”
Sutherland stood up. “You’re probably right, Bo. Forgive me for hanging onto this idea for so long. I expect I’ll get over it.”
Bo left the house and drove slowly back toward town. He probably would never see the old man again, he knew. He was surprised to find that he felt some regret about that. After all, Sutherland had taken care of him. He’d demanded a lot, but he’d made Bo the second most powerful man in the county. God knows, he’d had a pretty good run.
But now, it was coming to an end. Scotty and John Howell had seen to that, even if they didn’t know it. They couldn’t know much, he reckoned. He’d been too careful for that. He didn’t feel immediately threatened. Just once more would put him over the top. Then he wouldn’t need Eric Sutherland anymore. He would be gone.
Howell looked at what Scotty had written down and compared it with the ledger.
LSCA 0910 0330 80
“Well, it fits, to a digit. I don’t know about LSCA; we still have to figure that out. But if these columns are dates and times and amounts, what we’ve got here is September 10 at 3:30 AM and $80,000.
Scotty whistled. “That’s the biggest payment so far. That’ll put him over the million mark.”
Howell nodded. “Must be pretty big, this one, whatever it is. And soon, too. The tenth is a week from tomorrow.”
“Yeah, and the one word of his teletype I could see was, ”CNFRMD.“ Whatever it is, is on.” Scotty wandered out onto the deck, and Howell followed. “You know,” she said, “I have the feeling Bo is wrapping something up. He’s been real busy the last few days, almost as if he were setting everything in order. That’s the sort of person he is; no loose ends for Bo.”
“Well,” Howell said, “when you think about it, a million bucks is a pretty good cutoff. That’s what everybody wants, isn’t it? A million bucks? Maybe that was always his goal. Invested wisely, he ought to get an annual income of, say, a hundred and fifty grand out of that.”
“Tax free? I could scrape by on that.”
“Well, Scotty, maybe your pigeon is about to fly the coop. This could be your last shot at him.”
Scotty nodded. Howell was right. It was more than just all the tidying up Bo was doing. His whole attitude seemed to have changed. Not just toward her. He still seemed embarrassed about their little roll in the hay, but there was something more. He had seemed sad, lately, as if he had lost something important.
“Well, we’ve got to figure out what LSCA is, that’s all. We’ve got to catch him with his hand in the cookie jar.”
“You’ve got to catch him. I don’t much care about the cookie jar; I don’t care how much he’s got stashed in Switzerland. I want to know what happened to the O’Coineens, and Bo’s got to know something about it. I still think he’s shielding Sutherland.”
“Well, look at it this way, old sport,” Scotty said, digging him in the ribs, “if he pulls off whatever it is on the tenth and then splits, how’s that going to help you? Maybe if we – I stress we – can catch him in the act, he’ll be more in the mood to talk about what’s under the lake.” She went back into the house, got her purse, and sat down next to the phone.
Howell flopped down next to her. “I guess you’re right,” he said ruefully. “He’s not going to be much help to me if he’s in Switzerland.”
Scotty took a small, black object from her purse, dialed a telephone number, waited, then held the black thing to the phone and pushed a button. “That’s right,” she said, “and don’t you forget it.” There was a silence on the phone, just a crackle of static, and then, from a distance, she heard her own voice shouting, “Jesus Christ, Mike, will you stop that? You scared the shit out of me! C’mon, grow up, will you!” Then Mike’s voice answered, “Aw, come on, Scotty, a little goose is good for you now and then.” Then there was a click on the line.
Scotty hung up the phone. She felt as if she’d been struck in the chest with a heavy object.
“Scotty. Scotty? What’s wrong?” Howell was looking into her face, worried. “What’s the matter?”
“Oh, shit,” she replied. “Bo knows.”
27
Bo drove slowly out of town, north, then west along the lakeshore. All the car’s windows were down, and the scent of pines blew faintly through. He remembered when he was in Korea; in the worst of times, when he wanted to summon some feeling of home, he would conjure up that scent, cool and evergreen.
The valley had smelled like that, too, before the lake, except when hay was being cut, then the two scents had mixed in a perfume that had been headier than anything he had experienced since. He still loved the pine. The smell of new mown hay made him claustrophobic and ill.
He circumnavigated the shining water in an unhurried fashion, taking in the trees, with their first hint of autumn color, and the light bouncing and playing on the lake’s surface. Switzerland was beautiful, too, he remembered, but the thought didn’t make him feel any better.
Everything was in place. The corporation had been formed – Central Europe Security – there was an accommodation address in Zurich, with an answering service on the telephone. The managing director was a Swiss lawyer who held the same position with God-knew-how-many other such paper corporations. An ad had been placed in a law enforcement journal, seeking applicants for a job with the company. The two dozen applicants had received letters saying that the job had been filled. Bo’s application had, of course, been accepted. He had a stock of letterheads with which to outline the terms of his great good fortune, when the time came. The time was growing near.
He passed Taylor’s Fish Camp and turned east along the south shore of the lake. The grocery store where John Howell had kept him from being blown away passed on his left. On the outskirts of the town, Bo stopped the car and got out. A freshly painted wrought iron fence separated him from the cemetery. He found the gate and walked in. He had not been here for years.
It had been an oddly sympathetic thing for Eric Sutherland to do. After years of fighting the valley people for their land and finally getting it, he had, quite unexpectedly, exhumed the bodies from the valley churchyard and reinterred them here, at his own expense. Nobody had really thought about the cemetery, except, apparently, Sutherland.