Linwood Barclay - No Safe House

As we were taking the few steps to the car, Vince caught my eye and smiled.

Once we were all in the car and Wyatt had put into the trunk all the bags of money and other assorted items that had been recovered from the homes Vince had used as safe-deposit boxes, Vince tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Get us out of here and go left on Cherry. When you get to Prospect, go left.”

I did as I was told.

“So, I’m curious,” Reggie said. “How do you do this? You hide the money in regular people’s homes, right? But is it without their consent, or are they in on it?”

“They don’t know,” Vince said.

“Brilliant. But then how do you keep them from stumbling onto it? If you put it in the walls, between the studs, you’d have to cut into drywall, do all kinds of repair, paint, that kind of thing. I mean, if you were going to leave something there for ten years, that’d be okay, but it’s not like that, right?”

“Attic,” Vince said. “Under the insulation, usually.”

We no longer had a ladder with us. I hoped, whatever house we were going to, the attic was going to be easily accessible.

“Two men, brothers,” Vince said. “Logan and Joseph. They’re with you.”

“Yeah,” Reggie said. “We all left some money with you to see where it would end up. And you’re right about the GPS. Every time we gave you money, we watched it go to a different place. But we had no idea how many spots there are. If it was just one, we could have handled this some other way. In the end, it made more sense to grab your kid and get you to bring it all to us.”

Was Vince thinking what I was thinking? If they knew where some of the money had been stashed, maybe they’d been the ones who’d hit the Cummings house last night. They’d scored there, but it wasn’t as big a score as they’d thought it would be.

“How’d you hear about me?” Vince asked.

“One of your other customers. Goemann. He was hiding some things that didn’t belong to him. Took them from my uncle. Couple hundred thousand, and the vase. Said he entrusted them to you, couple of weeks ago, because he figured my uncle would come after him before he could sell them to another interested party. How would Goemann have heard about you?”

“He been staying with some girl whose biker boyfriend mentioned me to him. At least that’s what he said.”

“Hiding stuff for biker gangs, too?” Reggie asked.

“Go on with your story.”

“So, Goemann fills us in on this unique banking service you offer. We asked him which house the stuff was hidden in, figuring maybe you told your depositors that, but he said he didn’t know. Me and Wyatt pressed him on that, and he came up with this house where a couple of old retired teachers lived. Turns out Goemann just pulled the address out of his ass, because we searched that house from top to bottom. Attic, too.”

The Bradleys . These two had murdered Richard and Esther Bradley. Reggie and Wyatt were more than a couple of crooks trying to rip off another crook. They were stone-cold killers.

Vince said, “Hang a right here.”

I did. Now we were driving through the old downtown, along Broad Street. A minute later, we were on Golden Hill.

“Left up here,” Vince said, “and then stay on Bridgeport.” To Reggie, he said, “Now I’ve got a question for you.”

“Go ahead. We’re all friends here.”

“That was a lot of seed money you put in. Maybe not the biggest deposits I ever had, but cumulatively that was a chunk of change.”

“Well, first of all, we’re getting it all back, aren’t we?” she said. “But even if we didn’t, we did have some money to throw around. Ever heard of filing bogus returns to the IRS?”

“Let me guess,” he said. “Rip off identities, file returns in their name that claim decent refunds, have them sent to a PO box.”

“More or less. Wyatt here — he’s my husband — is the brains behind that.” I glanced in the mirror, saw the man smile.

Reggie continued. “We got refund checks coming in pretty steadily. Great line of work. Not like robbing a bank. You don’t get hurt. Maybe some RSI, all that time you have to spend at the computer, but other than that, it’s great. That’s Wyatt’s baby. I take on other jobs that are more physically demanding.”

“Like killing people?”

“Whatever.”

“So why this, then?” Vince said.

“Hmm?” Reggie said.

“Ripping off what’s in my houses, all this bullshit, when all you want is what Eli left with me.”

“Like I said, it’s a favor for my uncle. Getting back what belongs to him. But you can see how this has turned into a golden opportunity. It’s like fishing with nets. Maybe you’re just out for salmon, but if you end up with a ton of lobster, you don’t throw it back into the ocean.”

“Left at the lights up here,” Vince told me.

I put on the blinker and moved into the turning lane.

I slowed, tapped the brake, put my left blinker on. Once I was through the intersection and heading south, Vince gave me a couple more directions. Now we were heading down a street I knew very well.

“It’s up here,” Vince told me. “Turn into that house up there with the small SUV with the ladder on the roof.”

I pulled into the driveway, killed the engine. I’d had a feeling this might be where we were headed. No wonder Vince had told Cynthia and Grace to get lost.

I was home.

Vince had hidden Eli Goemann’s stuff in our attic?

If so, it hadn’t been there long. Reggie had made it clear that it had been left with Vince in only the last couple of weeks.

When the hell had he been in our house? Him, or one of his crew? And if there was nearly a quarter-million dollars hidden over our heads, why had Vince not wanted to bother getting it before we left to clear out other houses?

It wasn’t as if I could ask him right now.

“Nice little house for a nurse,” Reggie said as she took the keys from me and the four of us opened the doors of the BMW. I noticed she had Vince’s gun in her hand, and once Wyatt was out I saw he had his tucked into his waistband.

Vince struggled some to get out of the car, and he wobbled some when he got on his feet. He didn’t look well.

“I need to find a can,” he said. “I’m gonna overflow.”

“Huh?” Reggie said.

“My goddamn bag,” Vince said to her.

She blinked, taking a moment to figure out what he might be talking about. “Oh,” she said. “Well, let’s get inside.”

Vince pointed to my Escape. “Grab the ladder off that car. We could use that.”

Wyatt had a puzzled look on his face. “If the woman who lives here is at work, whose car is that?”

Shit.

Vince didn’t wait a beat. “The hospital’s only five minutes from here. She bikes it.”

“How do you know?” he asked.

Vince shot him a look. “You think I’m gonna leave money in people’s houses and not know their routines?”

I went over to the Escape. Normally, to get something off the roof racks, I’d open a door or two and stand on the sill to make it easier to undo the bungee cords. But I wasn’t supposed to have a key to unlock it, so I had to stand on my toes to get the job done. I dragged the ladder down carefully.

I carried it to the front door, where everyone was waiting for me. “You’ve got the key, right?” Vince asked.

I reached into my pocket. “I do,” I said, pulling out a ring that included the keys to the Escape sitting in the driveway. If Wyatt or Reggie thought it odd that I kept my car remote on the same ring as the key to just one of the many houses Vince had access to, they didn’t mention it.