Charles Williams - Girl Out Back

It was money—tangible, real, concrete. A fortune. A fantastic amount of money. There was no longer any doubt he had it because I had seen the clinching argument—those ten-dollar bills. The twenties could have been merely thrown away by Haig because they were identifiable and hot. But Cliffords had it all; he had it hidden somewhere in something that was rusting. All I had to do was find it. Nobody would ever know I’d got it. I had the intelligence and the will-power to destroy any part of it that was even conceivably identifiable and to refrain from making any display of wealth too suddenly. I’d go to Florida and go into the boat business in a small way, expanding gradually. Boats I knew, liked, and understood; the business was booming all over the country. I’d own a marina. . . . I stopped.

That was what I owned now, wasn’t it?

Hah!

I swung off State 41, headed for the camp, my mind furiously at work. The thing couldn’t take too long; at any time Cliffords could go back and dig up some more of it, and when he did there was a chance he’d wind up with another bunch that could be identified. It was only a miracle he’d got by with it this long. He was erratic, too potty and unpredictable to be trusted with a thing like this. One slip would blow it up. He might talk, start bragging, or begin playing the girlie circuit in the sawmill towns around here. He was only forty-six, and with unlimited funds at his disposal he might decide to ditch the comic books for grown-up toys, just had to beat him to it, by finding it. Sure, that was all. But how?

It was four in the afternoon. I stood in dense timber a half mile behind his cabin and wearily fit a cigarette. Since seven this morning I’d been back here, searching, walking, crisscrossing, studying the terrain, and gradually having it brought home to me just what I was up against. Sweat drenched my clothes; the air was stifling, and all about me was the silence of the big woods. I sat down on a log and took the folded map from my pocket. It was roughly two miles this way; call it ten to twelve north and south. And that was only on this side of the first arm of the lake. Add in the country on the other side and the trackless maze of islands and swamp cut by the twisting channels of the waterways, and what did you have? At least fifty square miles of wilderness. It could be anywhere; he didn’t have to hide it under his pillow. And just how sure could you be that he hadn’t sunk it in a watertight container in the lake itself, somewhere in those God-only-knew how many thousands of acres of isolated inlets and sloughs and weedbeds?

Well, one way to locate it was to keep watch on him until he went to it himself; he would sooner or later. So? Just move out here? It could be weeks, or months. I was married; I was supposed to be running a business. If I could get out here once a week without arousing suspicion I’d be lucky.

There was always the third method, of course, but I shrugged it off impatiently. You could either do that sort of thing, or you couldn’t, and there was no point in considering something you wouldn’t have the guts to carry out. I wasn’t trying to take a bow; there was no moral issue involved. It was merely an appraisal. You had to be sick in the head so you enjoyed it, or you had to be completely without imagination, or fanatic. I failed on all three counts.

So there was nothing to do but go on looking. I did. A little before sunset I gave it up for the present and went back to where I’d hidden the boat. Nunn was on the float when I got to camp.

“Well, where’s all the fish?” he asked.

“Still up there,” I said. I unclamped the motor.

“Didn’t you get nothing at all?”

“A few,” I said indifferently. ”Was I supposed to kill them?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he replied. “I’m not a big-time sport.”

“Well, cheer up,” I said. “It takes all kinds.” I was getting little sick of him.

I packed my gear in the station wagon and settled with him for the cabin and boat. There was no pressing invitation to hurry back and sample his overflowing hospitality again, which was fine because when I did come back it would be in through that road to the upper lake and I wouldn’t be bringing a brass band. I didn’t see her until I was turning the station wagon to leave. She was standing behind the screen door looking out. I thought I saw her hand move, as if she had waved good-bye. I waved, and went on.

It was dark before I got out of the bottom. I went back the same way I’d come, northward on State 41. When I slowed for the S-bend I saw the white crosses again in my headlights and tried once more to put a finger on the thing that kept nagging me about the place. Wasn’t it something about the last accident? I knew the people involved—or rather Barbara Renfrew did. That was it. They were friends of her grandfather’s, a couple around sixty years of age who’d lived on a farm just north of Wardlow. Their car had gone off the road one night in a heavy rain and they were killed instantly when it crashed into the trees out there. Barbara had taken time off to go to the funeral, but that wasn’t all of it. It was something she’d said. I frowned, trying to remember. Wait. . . . Something about the wreck itself. She said she couldn’t understand what they were doing on this road because it was out of their way. They were returning from Sanport.

So? But just when? I couldn’t remember, except that it was winter before last. It could have been in February. I whistled softly.

I arrived in Wardlow at eight thirty. When I pulled into the drive I saw lights were on in the living-room and upstairs, so she was home. Let’s see, where had we left off? I’d counterattacked along the left and my flank was holding, but there was no telling what she was moving up, or where. A great fighting animal, the female, I thought—tenacious and tricky as hell.

I carried the stuff in through the living-room. We apparently didn’t have any company. That was nice; non-combatants and refugees were always a hazard. It took two trips. I was down in the den drying the fly-rod before putting it away when I heard her footsteps on the basement stairs. She appeared in the doorway. Over her nightgown she was wearing a robe of peach-colored mist, and she looked like the Sultan’s favorite on the way in. She gave me a tentative smile.

“Did you catch any fish, Barney?”

“A few,” I said. “You look nice. I like that austere touch; reminds me of John Calvin.”

She grinned. She had a hell of a grin when she unsnapped the leash and turned it loose. “I was lying in bed reading when I heard you come in.”

Likely story, I thought. The calculated swirl of that platinum mop hadn’t been near a pillow. “Books,” I sneered. “You egg-heads are all alike.”

Her face softened reflectively. “I’m sorry about the fight. I missed you, Barney.”

I put down the rod. “I missed you, too.” Then it occurred to me, strangely enough, that I wasn’t even lying. I had missed her.

I moved, and she moved, and my arms had that ache in them as I tightened them around her. The big, vital, blonde face was under mine, tilted back, surrendering and demanding at the same time, and I was kissing her too roughly. A little more suave in the salve, Godwin, I thought; you could make chairman of the board. Then I wondered why I never seemed to make sense any more, even to myself; I’d married her because she had money and I’d done nothing but bitch about it since. I was a melon-head.

I put my right arm down behind her knees and picked her up. She was a lot of woman, but the way I felt at the moment I could have carried her up six flights of stairs and through the roof like a berserk elevator. The eyelids parted just slightly and she regarded me roguishly from under the lashes.