Ellery Queen - Cop Out

How do you walk on them?

Malone sat up swallowing a groan and shivering, the house was cold and he had slept without a cover. He stretched and a minefield of muscles went off. When was the last time I sacked out on a bed?

On eggs. How do you walk on them?

He listened. Ellen and Barbara were breathing as if it were an ordinary day. There was a great quiet in the house. So the Three Bears were asleep, too.

He wondered where.

Malone went through his isometric exercises to get the circulation going and when he was satisfied he got to his feet with no noise, which was his objective for more reasons than Ellen and Barbara.

He felt around with his big toe and located the hole and slipped the floorboard back over the rat’s nest, thanking the Lord he hadn’t had to use it. Hinch must be sleeping off the one he tied on with Don’s scotch.

I could get away from them now, maybe all three of us could.

The thought came to Malone with the unexpectedness of all good things, in a rush of warmth.

All we have to do is slip out of the house and down the Hill to the station and we’re safe in John’s hands and that’s the end of the nightmare!

It could be that easy.

Or could it?

He took two minutes to open the bedroom door.

His eyes were used to the half dark now and in his stockinged feet he made his way inches at a time along the hall, hugging the wall so the floor would not creak.

When he came to Barbara’s room he found the door shut. With care Malone grasped and turned the porcelain knob and with more care pushed. The door refused to give. It can’t be Furia or Hinch, it must be the woman. But why should she lock the door? If she’d jumped into the hay with Furia I’d have heard them through the wall. It must be Hinch, she doesn’t trust Hinch.

He tucked that thought away with the others he was accumulating.

The door to the spare bedroom across the hall was half open. Were the two hoods bedded down there? Malone was puzzled. With his broken nose and a bellyful of scotch, Hinch ought to be sounding off like a freight train.

Malone crossed the hall in a tiptoe stride and pulled up at the other side, holding his breath. He listened some more. Very carefully he looked in, he could see well enough by now. But the room was empty.

One of the cots was gone.

They’re sleeping downstairs.

He catfooted to the landing and risked a look over the railing. He could see down into the parlor and he could see through the archway into the entrance hall. The sofa was gone from its place, they had dragged it into the hall and set it up against the front door. A small figure lay curled like a cat on the sofa, covered by Ellen’s afghan.

The sight of Furia defenseless tightened Malone’s hand and the railing squealed. Furia woke up like a cat, too. The Colt Trooper looked enormous in his hand. Malone dodged back to the protection of the wall, holding his breath.

After a while he heard Furia settle back to sleep.

Hinch must be bedded down in the kitchen on the cot from the spare room, blocking the back door as Furia was blocking the front. Malone strained and heard snores. He’s there, all right. Maybe he drank so much that I could… But there was Furia, who slept like a cat and woke up like one.

Malone made his way back to Ellen and Barbara. In the bedroom he made a slight noise and Ellen shot up in bed.

“Loney?”

The terror in her voice touched him like a live wire. He went over to the bed and stroked her tumbled hair and whispered, “It’s all right, honey. Go back to sleep now,” and she sighed and did.

Later, at the window, he even considered Ellen’s suggestion about a rope of bedclothes. But Ellen and Bibby couldn’t climb out without lots of noise and then there’d be hell to pay.

I’ll have to play it like it is.

Malone settled down, going over desperately what he had muddled through during the night. Does it stand up? Or is this another pipe dream?

Goldie wouldn’t have hidden the payroll where there’s any chance Furia might find it. So the cabin is out. Ditto the Chrysler. And she couldn’t hide all those bills on her body.

Then where?

Had she set up a place in advance, the way they set up their hideout at Balsam Lake? But she couldn’t have known they were going to be hung up in New Bradford because of Pickney finding Tom Howland’s body so soon and the roadblocks being set up so fast. Or even if she figured on that, the thing just didn’t smell of a planned doublecross before the murder and robbery. The stocking on her head, the men’s overshoes and gloves, she must have bought them in town yesterday afternoon when she and Hinch came in, at some store where she could be sure she wasn’t known, maybe the Army-Navy Store on Freight Street, Joe Barron was only in New Bradford two years, it all smacked of spur-of-the-moment.

If that was true, then her hiding place for the money must have been picked on the spur of the moment, too.

All right. She’s got this loot. And she’s smart. She has to choose a hiding place where Furia can’t possibly put his hands on it even by accident. Even if he suspects her and tries to muscle it out of her. Even if he makes her tell him. That would be Goldie’s style.

All right.

The way it worked out, nobody in town knows the Aztec job was pulled by a gang including a woman. Nobody but Ellen and Bibby and me, and we don’t count. That’s the way she’d figure. So she can come and go in town like she did yesterday, with just the small risk that she might run into somebody who’d recognize her from the old days. And even if they did, so what? She’s back to visit her family. Nothing to tie her in to the crime.

Yes, one likely place. Just the hiding place a smart cookie like Goldie would hit on. I’ve got to check it out.

But the way things are, where do I go from there?

At this point Malone shut his mind down.

One thing at a time.

He waited with his ear against the door and heard the woman go downstairs and the whistle of the kettle in the kitchen and the spin of Furia’s voice.

Ellen was explaining things to Barbara.

“I knew those people were bad,” Barbara said in her grownup voice, the one she used when she disapproved of something. “Did Daddy get me back?”

“Yes, darling. How’s your head?”

“It feels icky. You know what they did, Mommy? That lady made me drink some liquor. She said it would make me sleep. I didn’t want to, it tasted awful, but she forced me.”

“I know, baby. Don’t think about it.”

“Why did I sleep in your bed last night?”

“They’re here in the house, Bibby,” Malone said. “I want you and your mother to stay in this room. Be very quiet and do what Mommy says.”

“Where you going, Daddy?”

“I may have to go out for a while.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“Now none of that,” Malone said. He turned away.

“I’m famished .” It was her latest favorite word.

“I’ll get you some breakfast later,” Ellen said.

“Ellen, I’m going down,” Malone said.

“Loney, for God’s sake.”

“Don’t worry. Just stay up here unless they call you. Do exactly what they say. Don’t cross them.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Try to get Furia to let me go into town.”

“Do you think he will?”

“He’s got you and Bibby.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“I don’t know. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Malone opened the door. He could hear Hinch grousing and Goldie’s sarcastic laugh. He went over and kissed Barbara and then Ellen and left in a hurry so that he would not have to see their faces any more.

They were in the kitchen slupping coffee. The kitchen looked like a battlefield on the morning after. They had yanked out every drawer and emptied every cupboard. Dishes and cutlery and pots and bottles and boxes of cereal lay strewn about like the unburied dead. The door to the freezer compartment was open and Malone saw that half Ellen’s supply of meat was gone.