Rainbow's End (11 page)

“You can kiss it and make it well.”

“Come here.”

She came, and we started being happy all over again. Then she asked: “Dave, what about her?”

“What about who?”

“Well, who do you think? We know who put it there. She has to be the one.”

“Then—she put it there.”

“Well, what do we do about her?”

“Leave me out.”

“What do
I
do about her?”

After a long time, I asked: “Do you have to do anything?”

“OK, but what do I say?”

“In what way, say?”

I knew what she meant, of course. She couldn't just find this money, bank it, and not tell anyone. She would have to tell Mr. Morgan, and from then on the thing would have to come out—in the papers, to Edgren, to Mantle, to everyone. And yet, I couldn't make myself face it. Face up to it, is what I'm trying to say. Because Mom had stolen that money, of that there could be no doubt. And it belonged to Jill, of that there could be no doubt. And Mom had tried to get her killed, of that most of all, there could be no doubt. And yet I was ducking the rap, and I knew why. I was mountain and that's how we do—stand by our kin regardless, no matter how guilty they are.

But over and above that, Mom was still Mom to me, no matter how silly she was or what ideas she'd got in her head. And over and above that was what I couldn't sidestep: she'd stashed that money for me, so we could go off with it, to Florida or some other place, and lay out on the beach with it, and then go inside now and then, to take off our clothes or whatever. Pretty soon Jill asked:

“And what do I
do
?”

When you're backed in a corner, you yell. “OK,” I told her, “prosecute. Call Edgren, call Mantle, tell them come out and take it as evidence. Could be a year before you see it again—if you ever see it again. Have you thought of that? Suppose somebody steals it, out of the sheriff's office? Are you sure Washington County is going to be nice about it and pay it back to you, pack for pack and dollar for dollar?”

“You're just saying that.”

“OK,
you
say.”

“Let's go in the other room”

We started into the living room, but halfway there she stopped and went back to the kitchen. “I can't leave it here,” she whispered. “I can't bear to. I have to have it with me.”

By then the red bag was dried out or pretty near dried out, and she stuffed the money back in it. Then, carrying it by the two straps she led to the sitting room and sat down on the sofa—still in my pants and jacket. After some time she asked: “You don't want me to prosecute?”

“Well? Would you?”

“Suppose they prosecute anyway.”

“You mean Edgren and Mantle?”

“And Knight, if that's his name. That lawyer from the state's attorney's office.”

“It's your money, don't forget. If you don't charge her, they can't.”

“I'm not so sure of that.”

“If it's your money she took—”

“The money's not all.”

“What else is there?”

“Her lying to the police—the sheriff, whatever he is, deputy sheriff, if that's it. Giving false information's against the law, and whose money it is is not the whole point.”

“So?”

“They could prosecute
you
.”

“Me? For what?”

“Yes you, Dave Howell, who looks like God and acts like a mountain outlaw.”

“I asked you, for what?”

“Giving false information—giving
no
information, about this Mom character and how she blew. Listen, I have to report this money. I can't let them go on looking for it, trying to find it for me, and not say I already have it.”

“OK, then, you have to report it.”

“Well, don't I?”

“Listen, it's your money.”

“You want
me
prosecuted for lying to them? Not telling the truth is lying, I would think.”

“OK, that's what you think.”

“What do you think?”

“Do I have to think?”

“I'm going back to town.”

“I was hoping you'd spend the night.”

“I was hoping to, too.”

“I'm telling you right now, if I'd found a hundred grand, the place I'd take it wouldn't be to a Marietta motel, that—”

We sat there, suddenly so self-conscious we couldn't talk or look at each other. Then she went in the den and came out with one of my blankets. “OK,” she told me, “I'm spending the night.” She put a sofa pillow under her head, stretched out on the sofa, and pulled the blanket over her.

“What's the big idea?” I asked her.

“I'm sleeping here, that's what.”

“Oh no, you're not.”

I went over and started to pick up the blanket, but a foot drove into my gut. I staggered back against the table. She pulled the blanket on again. “Dave,” she said, “good night.”

“Good night.”

H
ER VOICE AT THE
phone woke me in the morning. When I looked it was eight o'clock. I went in the living room, and she was just hanging up. “That was Bob York,” she told me. “He's so excited he can't talk. He cautioned me, though, not to do anything and especially not to tell anyone until I've talked to a lawyer. Since we already have one, I mean that one who was here yesterday, he thought it was all very simple and would probably ‘work itself out,' as he said, without me having to do much of anything—except carry the money to bank. What was that lawyer's name?”

“Bledsoe.”

“Will you look up his number for me?”

York had told her to call him at home before he left for his office and not to tip him off over the phone, “what it's all about, because he could easily spread it around without even meaning to if someone is there when you call, before you're together on it about what you're going to do.” So she did, but Bledsoe was pretty grumpy about it, telling her call him later at his office, “after I've had a chance to open my mail.” So she asked me to talk to him, and I worked on him a little, but think it was my voice, how I sounded over the phone, that alerted him that something big was up. So he said that as soon as he'd had breakfast, he would be out. Her clothes, her regular clothes, the ones she'd changed out of to put on the fishing gear she'd worn during the night, were in my room, and I left her there to dress while I went up and bathed. When I came down she was piling the money on the table in front of the fireplace and folding the blanket over it. We had just finished our bacon and eggs and were back in the living room when Bledsoe's car pulled up. I let him in. He got to it at once: “What is this?” he asked. “But before you tell me, first let me tell you: You don't call an attorney at his home unless it's emergency, and—”

“You don't?” said Jill. “I do.”

She stepped to the table and lifted the blanket, and his eyes all but popped out. “My God!” he exclaimed, after he'd stared.
“My God!”

He sat down in front of it, then looked up and whispered: “You did right to call. I take everything back!”

“There it is,” she announced. “Every cent!”

He began counting it, pack by pack. After counting it once, he counted again. “I make it 49 packs,” he said. “Where's the other two thousand bucks?”

Now counting it was one thing we hadn't bothered to do, so we did, and it came to what he said, ninety-eight thousand neat, but not the hundred thousand Shaw had baled out with. “So OK?” he snapped, pretty sour, “you're shy two grand, and it's not too much trouble to guess where it is. Who stole it, I mean. OK, let's have it. Where did this money come from?
If
you're free to tell me! If not, let's cut it off now, as I don't want to get in a position of knowing stuff I should report. In plain English, then: evidence of a crime.”

“That's what's bothering us,” she told him very solemnly. “We don't know what to do.”

“Are you free to say how you got it?”

“We'll have to say,” she said.

“I guess we do,” I said when he looked at me.

So she told it. You'd think it would have taken an hour, but it took her about a minute.

Pretty soon he said: “Let me think this over. Let me get alone with it. Let me walk around a few minutes.”

He did, circling the house, climbing one of the hills and staring down at the river. I went out to watch, and he called to me to come, so I did. He had me take him up the bank to the boat landing, point out the tree to him, where it stuck out of the water, just up the river, and explain everything that had happened, from our trip in the boat to catch fish to her twirling the hook in the air to her finding the bag in the hollow. Then he led on back to the house where he led in to the living room, sat down, and began: “Well—you have it, there's no getting around that. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. You have that on your side. Nevertheless, in this case the question arises: Can you keep it?”

“Can
she
keep it,” I corrected.

“That's it: Can she?”

“Why can't she? Or couldn't she?”

“I don't exactly know, but I feel her claim is quite shaky, in spite of that deed Mr. Morgan drew. It makes the money hers, but it wasn't hers at the time it was hidden. At the time it was hidden—by whom? Do you know?”

“I'd rather not say,” I told him.

“Then count me out,” he snapped, annoyed. “You're skating on thin ice. I can't be of any help if you make me skate wearing blinders.”

He got up to go, but Jill put her arms around him and pushed him back in his seat. “By his supposed-to-be mother,” she said.

“Who?”

“You met her. The woman he thought was his mother, except it turned out that she wasn't. She's his foster mother. We assume she hid the money and skipped.”

“It certainly looks that way.” He asked some questions, then: “And she's not friendly?”

“Friendly? She hates my guts.”

“Well, you can't exactly blame her.”

“If you're talking about Dave,” she told him very quick, “I do like him, but don't jump to conclusions, please. I did call you from here and did spend the night—but right on that very same sofa, and the reason was money, not romance. I was afraid to take it to town with me, to bring it to that hotel, where it could be stolen, quite easy. It wasn't what you think.”

“How do you know what I think?”

“I don't want you to get a false impression.”

“I don't think, I know—that you told her to her face she tried to get Shaw to kill you. If you think that arouses love for you,
I
don't.”

“I see what you mean.”

“But that's not what you told the officers.”

“That's right. You told us to take it easy.”

“I would say the same thing now.”

“Well, what are you getting at?”

“I'm not sure. I have to think.” He took us over it step by step and minute by minute—what had happened out there that morning, what Shaw had said, what I had said, what Mom had said, what Jill had said, and what we all four had done. He took us inside, to my bed, to the bathtub, and Jill lined it out, exactly what had happened, even to my looking like God. When we got done, he got up and walked around with it for quite some little time.

Then: “Your trouble,” he said at last, “is that
your
finding the money, conveniently on purpose now, is going to look very suspicious—at least to Edgren and Mantle, who've been suspicious from the start. You can say all you please, that you found it completely by accident while trying to catch a carp, but that won't convince these officers, at least, if I know them. And on top of that, if this woman is ever located and vents her spite on Miss Kreeger by saying you all three did it, then you're really in trouble.”

“Why?” asked Jill. “The money's mine. What difference does it make what she says?”

“On account of Mr. Morgan. If, from what she says, he gets the idea that the three of you conspired, you and Dave and this woman, to gyp him out of this money, then he can allege that you obtained your deed through fraud and have it declared void.”

She flared at that. “Mr. Morgan wouldn't think any such thing.”

“For a hundred thousand bucks, I wouldn't trust anyone.”

That kind of took care of that, but I felt he'd come up with something, and asked him: “OK, get to it. So what?”

“So if you put that money back, in the tree, right where you found it, and then tonight saw a prowler, someone in a boat. If you reported that to Edgren, he'd have to investigate. Then
he
would find the money. Then
no
one could say you knew it was there. This woman can scream her head off, and still you're in the clear.
And
, if you graciously mention reward, a small percentage to Edgren, I don't know how he'd feel—whether he'd take it, that is, whether he'd feel that he could. But he might—just might persuade himself it would be all right—in which case that brings down the curtain. The rest of the money's yours, with no more nonsense about it.”

“What do you think?” she asked me.

“Well,” I told her. “It's why we got Mr. Bledsoe in it, why
you
did, why you asked him to come out. It covers everything that we were worried about and in a very simple way. At last we'd be playing it safe.”

“How much reward?” she asked.

“Well, that's up to you. I would say maybe five percent, which you could well afford. It's off your taxes anyway.”

“My—what?”

“You'll pay heavy tax on this 98. On 93 you'd pay less.”

“You mean, give him five thousand?”

“Well? For finding your money, for deciding no charges are called for—?”

She sat there staring at him, and then: “I don't know. I don't know what to say. I have the money now. If I put it out there again—?”