Stuart Woods - Under the Lake

She put a finger to her lips, and nodded toward the front porch. The creaking of the swing could be heard. “I’ll come when I can,” she said.

Howell thought, as he drove home, about what Mama Kelly had said. She didn’t make sense. Kathleen O’Coineen was dead, and her whole family with her. Howell wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he did.

When Scotty arrived at the office, Bo was there ahead of her, shut in his office working like a beaver. It was very unusual for Bo to arrive so early in the morning. She rapped on the glass and stuck her head in his office.

“Morning. Coffee?”

Bo was hunched over his typewriter. There were papers scattered all over his desk. Among them, Scotty saw the green ledger sheets. “No thanks, I’ve already had some. Take my calls, will you? I don’t want to be disturbed.”

“Sure.” She closed the door and went to her desk. Bo rose, walked around his desk, and pulled down the shades between his office and the station room. She had never seen him do that before.

Scotty worked her way through the morning on routine matters. She did the mail and answered the phone, taking messages for Bo.

Just before noon, the bell on the teletype rang once. Scotty went to the machine and tore off the printed message, it read:

PRSNL SHF B. SCULLY, STHRLND CO.,

LSCA 0910 0330 80. CNFRM. MSG ENDS.

Scotty ripped the message off the machine and went back to her desk, her heart pumping away. Quickly, she copied down every word and number, then put the original with Bo’s phone messages. A few minutes later, the shades went up in his office, and he came out with a large, thick, brown envelope under his arm. The green ledger sheets were no longer on his desk, and the filing cabinet was locked. She handed him the messages; the white teletype paper was easily visible among the pink telephone message slips. Bo ignored the phone calls and went straight for the teletype message.

His face showed no emotion as he read it. He went back into his office, tossed the fat envelope onto his desk, and sat down. For the better part of ten minutes he sat there, obviously thinking hard. Then he got up, walked into the station room, went to the teletype machine and sat down.

Scotty grabbed some papers and made for the copying machine, just next to the teletype. Bo was already typing but suddenly stopped. As his hand went to the paper, she shot a quick glance at it, but he ripped the transmission copy away before she could read it. It had been a very short message; she had seen only the last word.

Bo stuffed the paper and the original message into his pocket, went to his office, retrieved the large envelope and headed for the door. “I’ll be at Mac McCauliffe’s for a while, then at Eric Sutherland’s, but don’t call unless it’s an emergency, okay?”

Half an hour later, Bo left the lawyer’s office, his business done – signed, witnessed, and relegated to McCauliffe’s safe. It would be a long time before anyone read it, he reckoned. McCauliffe had not read what he had written, just witnessed his signature. Bo drove to Eric Sutherland’s. He had made his decision.

Sutherland didn’t waste time with pleasantries. “What have you learned?”

“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.”