Shirley Murphy - Cat Pay the Devil

“Where’d the sandwiches go?” Max said, coming to join her, looking at the wadded-up paper bag. “I was gone no more than three minutes.”

Charlie laughed.

“That hold you until we get home? Take about an hour. You’ve had a long day, you feel up to the ride?”

“Oh yes . Can you do that, can you leave, with…?”

“Dallas is here. Prisoners are secured. Wilma’s safe, with Clyde. We’ll take her statement in the morning. Right now, I think it’s time for me to take your statement.”

Flushing, she moved away to the horses. Leaving Max to wrap up a few details, she stood with Ryan, leaning against her mare. “You found me gone, and you called Max.”

Ryan nodded and put her arm around her.

Charlie said, “Guess I owe you supper.”

“Guess you do,” Ryan said. “If you two take the horses back, I’ll never see that potato salad and roast beef you had laid out.”

“Guess I can make more potato salad,” Charlie said, hugging her back, and as Max turned to join them, she tightened Redwing’s cinch and mounted up.

I t was midnight when the old man descended to the basement and, working silently, moved the piled boxes out of the closet, shoving them in among the rest of the detritus that crowded the concrete room. He guessed Lilly had gotten nervous about that safe, so visible and all. The fact that it was covered up told him there was something to be nervous about .

Kneeling over the locked metal box he tried to remove it from the closet, but it was sunk deep in the floor. Probably bolted, the bolts removable only from inside, once it was open. When he couldn’t budge it, he took from his pocket a small, rechargeable electric drill and a miniature periscope, a tiny light on a long, thin, flexible neck, an eyepiece at the end.

The sound of the drill wasn’t loud. But twice he stopped to listen to the house above him, just in case Lilly woke and started down. The big old house remained silent, and within minutes the drill had gone through the thick metal lid, leaving a quarter-inch hole into which he slid the periscope.

Slowly he turned the safe’s dial, watching through the periscope as the plates moved, slowly working out the combination until, after maybe twenty minutes, he was able to apply that information and lift the heavy lid.

Staring down into the metal box, Greeley was very still. His expression didn’t change. An observer could have read nothing on the face of the grizzled old man. He knelt there in his wrinkled clothes and old worn shoes, shaggy gray hair, three days’ growth of stubble, looking down blankly into the empty safe. Only slowly did his rage burn to the surface, like a flame that started deep inside a building, belatedly flickering and blooming until it blazed red and violent through the walls.

Rage. Disbelief. A deep and painful disappointment. He knelt there a long time, looking. At last he closed the safe again, spun the dial, and rose. He put back the boxes on top as they had been, shut the closet door, and turned resolutely to search the rest of the basement, but without much hope.

Knowing Cage, he limited his survey to places that would be relatively fireproof, because Cage had once lost a nice haul in a fire, in an old, tinder-dry apartment. He investigated a patched area of concrete where another safe might be sunk, but could find no way into it. Carefully he examined the concrete walls, the concrete floor beneath the stairs. He looked over the stacked boxes and old bits of furniture, but they were all tinder, not what Cage would choose. At last he turned away, discouraged, and left the basement, moving up the wooden stairs in his stockinged feet just as he had come down.

Back in his room, shutting the door silently behind him, he sat down on the bed, put his feet up on the spread, poured a good jolt of whiskey into the plastic glass he’d taken from the bathroom, and drank it down. You could bet that bitch parole officer had been here, just like Cage must’ve thought. Her and her partner, her and that hard-nosed Bennett-served him right coming in here and stealing, served him right he got shot.

He thought about them cats. That one cat that lived with the Getz woman. Had them cats spied on Cage, watched as he opened the safe and then told her? And she’d waltzed right in here, her and Bennett, and cleaned it out? With them cats, anything was possible.

It did not occur to Greeley that Wilma and Mandell Bennett had made that official search of the Jones house with the DEA agents some years before tabby Dulcie had come to live with her. In fact, before Dulcie was born. Sitting on the bed finishing the whiskey, the old man began to feel trapped, driven into a corner by an unfair and twisted fate. He’d been counting on that gold. Not so much because he needed it; he had already cashed out half his own share, before this trip, more than enough for all the cars and whiskey, and even women, he could handle in what remained of his lifetime; and he didn’t care about fancy houses and clothes, he cared only about his own pleasure. No, it wasn’t that he needed Cage’s half of the haul. He wanted it purely because he’d set his mind on it-because this theft had been the big one. The one spectacular prize before he retired, before he kicked back and enjoyed life. This job was big enough to have the entire Panamanian government panicked into closing its borders, if they’d knowed about it.

That was the beauty of this heist. The Guardia didn’t know, not a clue. A theft from thieves didn’t get a lot of police action. If those guys he and Cage’d stole from had run to the Guardia, they were the ones who’d be in the carcel .

And now, that bitch parole officer had cheated him out of every penny.

Sure as hell no one else had known about the stash. Cage wouldn’t of told anyone, he was too closemouthed. Greeley wondered if he’d told Eddie Sears, but Cage never had trusted him. Cage’s sister Violet, she didn’t count for nothing, skinny little thing afraid of her own shadow. Ditto Lilly Jones. Lilly didn’t have the imagination or the balls to think of stealing anything. The very idea of cracking a safe would give the old girl a sick headache.

No, it was that Getz woman. Fancy stone house and new car. Not hardly, on her federal retirement. Likely socked the rest of the loot away in some kind of securities or some little-old-lady annuity, safe and untouchable.

But right now he had to search the rest of the house. Cage could have hidden the stash somewhere else, and he’d be a friggin’ fool to miss it. Slipping out of the room to toss the main floor, he used a little penlight that wasn’t much. A nuisance searching in the dark. He went through the refrigerator-freezer, which might be impervious to fire but was the first place a burglar would look. He was turning out the living room, checking the electrical plugs for tampering, when he heard a noise at the front door. The lock clicked, the knob turned, and as the door opened Greeley drew back behind the couch, crouching down as sneaky and undignified as them damned spying cats.

“I still have no idea what Cage was after,” Wilma said, settling back into the leather booth, sipping her whiskey and water, gazing into the fire that Moreno’s Bar and Grille kept blazing even in warm weather. The cozy restaurant was nearly empty at this hour. A rare steak was on the way, with fries and onion rings. “Was he dumb enough to hide stolen stocks or securities there in the house? There’s no theft like that in his record, but that doesn’t mean much. Who knows what Cage might have pulled off that was never connected to him.”

Clyde frowned. “Stocks or securities that could be traced? Whatever it was, it had to be pretty valuable to leave it there all those years while he was in prison.”