Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1999

You May Already Be a Winner by Ron Goulart

She showed up on crutches.

Night had just closed in around his cottage, and a hot wind was rushing through the darkened streets of the beach town.

“I’m completely and totally reformed,” announced Casey McLeod an instant after he opened his front door. “From this moment on, Wes, I intend to tell you nothing but the absolute truth.”

Wes Goodhill meant to shut the door in her face despite the fact that she looked terrific standing there in a candy-striped blouse and a short dark blue skirt. But, as usual, he found that he couldn’t bring himself to close the damn thing. Instead, he opened the weathered door wider and frowned out at her. “Where have you been for the past five months? You disappeared out of my life that night in Santa Monica and left me—”

A powerful gust of wind hit her in the back, causing Casey to lose her balance on the wobbly wooden crutches. She dropped one crutch, stumbled forward. “Yikes,” she commented.

Wes lunged ahead to catch her. “Easy now,” he cautioned, getting hold of her beneath her arms.

The other crutch fell away, and she and Wes went staggering into his small living room.

He managed to hold onto her and remain upright. He guided her — she was limping, favoring her left leg — over to his sofa. “Sit,” he suggested, untangling himself from her and letting her topple back into a seated position. “Before you explain — or rather, before you spin some incredible falsehood to account for your whereabouts since last we met, Casey, tell me about these crutches.”

“I sprained my ankle.”

“How?”

“Jumping out a window.”

“Um.” He brought the crutches in from where they’d fallen on his porch, shut the door, and laid them out side by side against the living room wall. “And what tall tale have you concocted to account for jumping out a window? How high up was it, by the way?”

“Two stories,” she answered, frowning up at him. “Listen now, Wes, I really am a changed and reformed person. I admit that in the past, in spite of the lovely times I had while living with you here in your cosy little place in Santa Rita Beach, I tended on occasion to stretch the truth a bit. But, and it’s ironic that the very man who helped me to reform and turn into a morale person, is the very same one who—”

“Moral,” he corrected.

“Exactly,” she said, nodding and then bending to massage her bare right ankle. “What I’m attempting to convey is that while I may’ve fibbed some in the past, I don’t do that now.”

“Fibbed is hardly an adequate word to describe the monumental lies and downright falsehoods you’ve told me during the various times we’ve lived together, Case,” he told her. “You are a master of duplicity and deceit, a world class prevaricator, a—”

“But basically we love each other and that’s why I always return to—”

“Return to the scene of your crimes,” he cut in. “And granted you may love me, Casey, but there have also been dozens of other fellows who also—”

“There you go, exaggerating.” She held up her left hand and began ticking off the fingers. “There can’t have been more than five or six men I was unfaithful to you with during our whole and entire relationship to date. Let’s see, there was Roy, Carlos, Scott, and that—”

“Never mind,” he said, scowling at her. “Fidelity isn’t a matter of quantity anyway. Even one clandestine affair is sufficient to — who the hell was Scott?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I thought you knew about him,” Casey said. “No matter. Let’s move on to the serious stuff. I want to explain why I’ve come back to you — come back to stay.” She tried a small smile on him.

“Stay? You intend to squat here with me again?”

“Well, isn’t that what sweethearts do? After all, Wes, you’ve been the love of my life ever since—”

“One of a herd of loves of your life,” he said, making a but-never-mind gesture. “Get back to telling me why you jumped out a window.”

“Well, ninny, why do people usually jump out of windows? To escape pursuit from an assassin, obviously.”

“No, some people jump because their houses are on fire, others because they’ve been driven to suicide by an unfaithful mate,” he said, sitting on the farther arm of the sofa. “Who was attempting to assassinate you this time?”

“You make it sound as though I’m trying to con you, when actually I came damned close to having my throat cut,” she said, angry.

“Someone attacked you with a knife?”

“Well, they had knives when they broke into the mansion,” she replied. “I assumed, from the way they were waving them around, that they sure as heck were going to use them on—”

“What mansion?”

Sighing, Casey leaned back. “Suppose you control your compunction to keep interrupting and—”

“Compulsion,” he said. “And I don’t think it’s neurotic of me to be skeptical about the details in these fantasies you concoct.”

“Here I completely change my character for you. I struggle to be completely open and honest, Wes, and you turn a deaf ear.” Casey sniffled twice, smoothed down her short skirt. “If you could simply quit hassling me for a minute or two, I’ll tell you the whole sorry story. And, I guarantee, it’ll be the complete and absolute truth.” She drew a cross on one of her breasts. “Cross my heart.”

“Your heart is on the other side,” he pointed out, lowering himself to a sofa cushion. “All right, okay. Tell me and I’ll try not to cry out in pain every time you try to drag in some momentous he.”

Casey gave him a sideways glance. She smoothed her skirt again.

“Well,” she began, “while I was in the Bahamas two and a half months ago, I happened to meet—”

“Is that where you were making your movie?”

“What movie?”

“In your most recent farewell note, Case, you mentioned that you were planning to make a movie with the money you had left over from—”

“It’s really touching the way you remember all the little details like that.” Smiling, she reached out to pat his hand. “But, no, actually, I was overcome with wanderlust before I ever got around to thinking about getting involved with another film after Death Virgins of the Amazon. I simply bummed around the world for awhile and ended up in the Bahamas. That’s where I met Richard Barnson. Do you know who he is?”

Wes thought. “Movie actor, long time ago?”

“Yes. For about ten years there, starting right after the end of the Second World War, he was very successful in the movies, specializing in what they call film noir,” she said. “Dark Alley was his biggest hit, also Weep Not, My Wanton and The Big Double Cross. Well, the point is that, unlike many washed-up actors, Dick held onto his money.”

“Ah.”

“No, I didn’t try to talk him out of any money,” she said. “He wanted to write his autobiography, and he hired me to help him.”

“You’re not a writer, Case. You’re a part-time actress who specializes in television commercials and a part-time cartoonist.”

“That’s not fair. Do I accuse you of being a part-time animator?”

“No, because animation is my profession and I work at it full time.”

“You’re simply splitting rails.”

“Splitting hairs.”

“Anyway, I came back here to Southern Cal with Dick Barnson, and I’ve been living in his place in Bel Air and working very hard on his memoirs with him.”

“Is his the mansion you jumped out of?”

“No, and stop interrupting,” she warned. “Dick, by the way, is eighty-two years old, so there’s no reason for you to be jealous of him. The important thing is that he knew Neva Maxton.”

Wes looked blank. “Who is?”

“She was that sexy blonde actress who disappeared without a trace way back in 1953,” explained Casey. “Neva and Dick costarred in Dark Alley, which they run on American Movie Classics just about every week. It’s a noir classic.”

“What does any of this have to do with your jumping out a window?”

“I’m giving you the back story first,” Casey told him a bit impatiently. “It turns out, you see, that Dick Barnson knows what really happened to Neva Maxton. She didn’t run away at all.” Casey shook her head. “Her husband, much like you, was inordinately jealous. He trailed her to one of her rendezvouses up near Lake Tahoe. Then, in a fit of passion, he strangled her. He buried her in a remote spot in the woods, and because he could afford to establish an ironclad alibi, he was never even suspected of having anything to do with it.”

“How does this old actor of yours know that?”

“Because Dick was the one she was shacked up with that fatal weekend. Luckily for him, he’d gone out to do some birdwatching that afternoon. But as fate would have it, he was puttering around, unseen, in the very stretch of woods that Dewitt Clannahan, that’s the irate husband, chose for his burial plot. Hunkering down behind some handy shrubbery, Dick Barnson witnessed the whole burial ceremony and he also got a close enough look at the poor woman’s body to realize she’d been throttled.”

“How come he didn’t call the police or the sheriff?”

“Well, he couldn’t, dummy,” she said. “He was married himself at the time, and getting involved with a front page scandal — murder, adultery, burial in the woods — that would’ve ruined his career. It was a much more conservative era.”

“So Barnson is planning to include the truth about this in his bio?”

“Yes, exactly. Neva Maxton is dead after all. Clannahan, her dippy husband, moved to Europe right after the murder and died there years ago,” she said. “It’ll make a great chapter, and it’s sure to get picked up for serialization in one of the supermarket tabs.” She sighed, and slumped.

“But?”

She said quietly, “During this same period I’ve been consulting Alan Omony.”

“The self-help guru who wrote How to Succeed at Success?”

“That Alan Omony, yes.”

“I saw a couple of minutes of one of his infomercials one night when I had insomnia, Case. He’s a complete fraud, a con man who—”

“No, he’s really quite good at helping people with their problems,” she insisted. “Since I had a very nice financial arrangement with poor Dick, I was able to afford to see Alan for two fifty-minute sessions each and every week. He’s the one who cured me.”

“Cured you of what?”

“My compulsive tendency to fib.”

“If you’re cured, Casey, why are you telling me this fantastic—”

“Every dam word is true.” Mad, she gave a sudden quick jab to his upper arm. “Oh, I know I’m like the boy who cried woof. Nobody will—”

“Wolf.”

“It turns out it was a mistake to mention to Alan what Dick had told me about the circumstances of Neva’s death.”

“Why?”

“Dewitt Clannahan, during the period when he didn’t doubt the faithfulness of his wife, showered her with jewels and baubles. The collection was estimated at being worth half a million dollars. Lord knows how much the stuff has appreciated since the 1950’s.”

“Don’t tell me Clannahan buried the stuff with her?”

“No, no, Neva had already hidden it someplace. She was figuring to leave him soon. She drew a little map outlining where the gems were stashed and folded it up in this gold heart-shaped locket she always wore. Her goofy husband, of course, didn’t know about that and buried her with the dam locket still around her neck.”

“But your gum found out about this? How?”

“Alan Omony is a real film noir buff, and he bid on a lot of Neva Maxton’s effects at an auction in Pasadena five years ago,” she replied. “He has all kinds of detective movie artifacts, including one of the fedoras Dick Powell wore in Murder, My Sweet. The thing is, he knew that the secret to the location of maybe a million dollars in jewels was in Neva’s locket. But up until I went and blabbed what poor Dick Barnson had confided in me, nobody on the face of the earth had any idea what had become of her or the locket.”

“Okay, what’s been going on since you told Omony?”

“I haven’t got any real proof that he’s responsible, but he has to be the one behind all this.”

“All what?”

“Well, somebody has kidnapped Dick Barnson,” she said forlornly. “That has to be because they want him to take them to the spot where Neva’s remains are. Soon as I came home and realized what’d happened, I departed for elsewhere. That was yesterday and—”

“Where’ve you been staying since?”

“At another mansion, this one in Beverly Hills,” she answered. “A realtor friend of mine let me use a place they haven’t been able to unload for months. Oh, and he’s gay as a three dollar bill, so you don’t have to be jealous of him either.”

“But somebody found you there?”

“Two goons with knives broke in early this morning,” she said. “I was able to jump out the window and, in spite of really bunging up my damn ankle, get away in my Mercedes. I hadn’t even dragged my luggage into the new place, so that’s still all in my possession.”

Wes left the sofa, walked over to the windows to look out at the dark ocean. “What about Barnson? Shouldn’t you go to the police about what you suspect?”

“I don’t have proof of anything,” she said. “It looked to me like somebody broke into his mansion and carried him off after a struggle. But the cops could say he got drunk, smashed a few things, and wandered off on a binge.”

“Nobody followed you here?”

“Of course not,” she said. “I took a very circumspect route from the walk-in clinic in Santa Monica.” She gestured at the crutches. “Did you know you have to leave a fifty dollar deposit on those things?”

“If any of what you’ve told me is true, Casey, then I figure you’re working on some way of using me to go up to Lake Tahoe and find the remains of this long-gone actress. After a little grave robbing, I’ll probably end up helping you hunt for the jewels. Isn’t that so?”

“No, damn you.” She stood up, wobbling, and glared at him. “That’s not the scenario at all. I don’t want any further part of this mess. I hope they don’t hurt Dick Barnson too badly, but I don’t intend to do anything to stop that. The million dollars in loot can stay hidden for all I care.” She took a few limping steps in his direction. “I really have reformed, and what I’d like to do is stay here with you and work on the next issue of my independent comic book, Bertha the Biker. That is, if you’ll let me move back in, Wes.”

After a few silent seconds he nodded. “Sure, you can stay,” he said. “But for now, use the guest room.”

It was raining in Studio City. A warm, wind-tossed rain that spattered the windows of Wes’s middle-sized office at the Sparey Arts Animation Studios.

Not quite right, he thought, shaking his head and pushing back from his drawing board.

He was supposed to be designing a pair of tapdancing elephants for an upcoming thirty-second cartoon spot advertising the new Ginkgo Bar — The Candy That Helps You Remember!! But he concluded that his elephants didn’t have any grace and, worse, they didn’t look as though they possessed exceptional memories.

Nobody who wears a straw hat ever looks all that bright, he decided, picking up an eraser.

He dropped it, left his chair, and wandered to the window to stare out at the rainy afternoon. His brooding about Casey was probably affecting his creativity.

Normally he should’ve been able to turn out a pair of dancing elephants in a couple of hours. And both of them would have ended up looking as graceful as Fred Astaire.

Casey had been back living with him for four days now. In all that time he hadn’t detected any fantastic yams from her, not even a single small fib. She hadn’t tried to con him in any way, nor had she mentioned his helping to unearth that long-missing actress so they could locate the lost gems. It was very unsettling.

Could she really have reformed?

Heavy, trotting footfalls suddenly sounded out in the corridor. Then Mike Filchock, dripping rain and shaking his furled polka dot umbrella, popped into the office. “Have you seen the paper?” the redhaired screenwriter inquired as he shed a dramatic-looking black trenchcoat. “I rushed right over from my office at the Wheelan Studios when I spotted this.”

“Is it something about Casey?” Wes left the window to approach his friend. “Don’t drip on those storyboards, huh?”

“This transcends storyboards.” From inside his aggressively plaid sportscoat Filchock tugged out a folded newspaper. “Take a look at page three.”

“Paper’s soggy.” Gingerly, Wes managed to get the wet paper unfurled and opened to the page.

The entire lower half was given over to the story and photos. The headline said: RICHARD BARNSON, TOUGH GUY ACTOR OF THE PAST, FOUND DEAD. The subhead explained: FORMER STAR, 83, TORTURED AND KILLED TWO DAYS AGO.

“Casey didn’t do this,” said Wes. “She’s been with me ever since—”

“That’s not my point, dear chum,” Filchock told him. “After that recent dizzy spell, during which you were temporarily insane enough to allow the Bride of Frankenstein to move back in with you, you told me about the latest spin she’d put on reality. Her tall tale, as I recall, was woven around this now defunct actor chap.”

“But this proves she’s been telling me the truth for a change.” Wes shook the limp, wet newspaper.

“What it proves, dimwit, is that once again Casey McLeod is involved in some complex criminal venture,” countered his friend. “This latest incident, by the way, won’t look good in ads wherein she tries to get more work as a ghost autobiographer. ‘Due to the murder of my latest client, I am now able to take on a new assignment from—’ ”

“Wait now,” said Wes. “It says here in the story that Barnson’s body was found by a couple of hikers in a patch of wilderness near Lake Tahoe. That indicates that whoever grabbed the guy took him up there to persuade him to show them where what’s-her-name’s body is buried. All of that confirms Casey’s story to me, Mike.”

“Nope, it only proves that she probably knew they were going to knock off the poor old coot,” said Filchock. “Casey needed a place to lie low and establish an alibi. That was, as so many times in the past, your humble hacienda.” He shrugged. “If you’re lucky, her fellow felons have divided the loot they stole from Barnson and scattered to the four winds. Soon as she gets her share, hopefully shell vanish again.”

Wes shook his head and tapped the soggy news story. “There’s something else that’s bothering me.”

“Were I you, I’d start calculating how many years I was likely to serve in the pokey for being an accessory after the—”

“If they killed Barnson after he told them everything, they probably have found the jewels by now,” Wes said slowly. “But if he died before giving them the secret, they could come after Casey to see what she knows.”

“You’re getting stressed over a fantasy yam that—”

“I’ve got to call her.” Wes hurried to the phone on his taboret, grabbed it up, and punched out his own number.

The phone rang four times, and then he heard his own voice on the answering tape. After the beep he said, “Casey, if you’re there, pick up. It’s me and this is important.” There was no response.

The afternoon rain had grown heavier, and the stretch of Pacific beyond Wes’s cottage was dark and choppy. He left his car in the short, curved driveway, went running across the sparse lawn to his porch.

After unlocking the front door he dived into the shadowy living room. “Casey?”

There didn’t appear to be any unusual disorder.

“Casey?” he repeated loudly.

From the bedroom came a small throat-clearing sound. He ran in there. “Is that you, Wes?” her voice inquired quietly.

“Yeah, why the—”

“Don’t go bellowing like a bulldog, I’m—”

“Bullfrog. What are you doing in the closet?”

The door creaked as she pushed it halfway open and stepped out. She was wearing jeans, a sweatshirt whose faded message advocated fair treatment for dolphins, and no makeup.

“Are you alone?” she inquired as she glanced around. She’d given up her crutches but still had a slight limp.

“What’s wrong?” He skirted the unmade bed, moving up close to the subdued blonde.

She put her hand on his arm. “I haven’t been completely and absolutely truthful with you.”

“Did you have something to do with killing Barnson?”

“Not that untruthful, for Pete’s sake,” she said. “I just meant, Wes, that I know a little more about the location of Neva Maxton’s body than I may’ve let on.”

“But you’ve heard about Barnson’s being dead?” Wes pointed in the general direction of north. “Up near Lake Tahoe.”

She nodded forlornly. “Yes, it was on the news while I was having breakfast,” she answered. “That prompted me, I have to admit, to do something kind of stupid.”

“Stupider than what you’ve already been doing, you mean?”

She pressed a palm against his chest. “Wait now,” she told him, frowning. “Except for slightly fudging the facts about how much I knew, everything I’ve told you this time around has been the truth.”

“Okay, so what’d you do?”

Casey sighed. “Well, I thought that since poor Dick Barnson was dead and gone, his attorneys and heirs and hangers-on would probably be descending on his mansion any minute,” she explained. “So I knew I’d better sneak over there quick and gather up the rest of my belongings that I had to abandon when I moved out in such a hurry.”

“That was stupid,” he agreed.

“True, but the point is...” She gave an annoyed shrug of her shoulders. “I walked in on those same two creeps who tried to chop me up the other night.”

“Jesus, Casey, did they—”

“They didn’t even see me,” she assured him with a very dim smile of triumph. “But I sure as heck saw them. They were ransacking Dick’s den. The big bald one was going over all his papers and files, and the other one was checking through his computer records.”

“Looking for what?”

“This.” From her hip pocket she took a floppy disk and held it up. “It’s the part of his memoirs where he gives the specifics about exactly where Neva’s buried. We even scanned in a little map he drew of the spot.”

“You snuck that out of there today?”

“No, I took it about a week ago and hid it away,” she said. “See, I had a feeling that something—”

“You had a feeling you were going up there and do some grave robbing.”

She gave an angry shake of her head.

“That wasn’t my motive at all,” she said. “I’ve told you that the McLeods have a long tradition in our native Ireland of being gifted with the second sight, don’t you know. I’d been up to having meself a premonition that—”

“You forget that you’ve also told me that McLeod is a name you took when you decided to become an actress,” he reminded her. “What the authentic McLeods over on the Old Sod can accomplish when it comes to seeing the future doesn’t have much to do with—”

“Listen, the point you have to grasp is that these jerks were at Dick Barnson’s mansion today, Wes.” She looked him straight in the eye. “You see what that must mean?”

“They still don’t know where she’s buried,” he answered. “Meaning he died before he told them enough.”

“That’s it exactly,” she said, nodding. “It’s all terribly clear what we have to do next.”

“Hide in the closet?”

“Oh, I only ducked in there when I heard you come stomping up the porch like a flock of elephants,” Casey said.

“All right, what scheme have you come up with now?”

“This isn’t a scheme, it’s a strategy to save both our lives.”

“Our lives — how’d I get on this hit list?”

She made an impatient noise. “When they come up empty at Dick’s place, they’re sure as hell going to come hunting for me again,” she said. “Alan Omony is their boss, and he knows that I know a lot about this whole business.”

She took a step forward to tap Wes on his chest. “Alan is a very persistent man. In fact, persevere is number seven on his list of thirteen steps to wealth and happiness. Or maybe it’s number eight. Anyway, the guy isn’t going to give up short of tracking me down and torturing the truth out of me.” She gave Wes a brief, pitying look. “Naturally, my dearest friend in the world is also likely to get hurt.”

He backed away from her. “I hope I’m wrong about this,” he said, “but I suspect you want to beat them to the treasure. Go up to Tahoe, find the body of this film noir actress?”

“Now you’re acting less like a dummy,” she said encouragingly. “That’s just exactly what we have to do, Wes. We get hold of that locket and the map inside, then we go right straight to the jewels. Once this is all out in the open, Omony’s minions will have no reason to keep chasing us.”

“We could put all this out in the open right now,” he suggested. “Tell what you know and let the police and the insurance companies do the digging and the hunting.”

She shook her head. “We really must have something to show everybody,” she told him. “Otherwise, they’re only going to say that this is another of my nitwit publicity stunts to promote my career. It’s unfair, but there it is, Wes.”

“You’re still figuring to make some money out of this whole mess, aren’t you?”

She held up her hand in a swearing-on-the-Bible gesture. “Absolutely not. I simply want to save our lives,” she insisted. “Granted that one of my essential beliefs used to be, before I mended my ways, that slogan they always put on the front of the sweepstakes envelopes — you may already be a winner. But no more, Wes, honestly.”

“Going up there will be damned dangerous.”

“That’s why I knew you wouldn’t want me to do it all alone,” she said, taking him by the arm.

Heavy rain slammed at the bedroom window, a harsh wind started rattling the panes violently.

Wes sat suddenly up, awake. The bedside clock showed that it was six twenty-five A.M.

“Casey?” he said, noticing that she wasn’t beside him. “Case?”

He swung out of bed, scanning the greyness that filled the early morning room. Tugging on a pair of jeans, he hurried into the living room.

She wasn’t there either.

He found the note in the kitchen, written in her helter-skelter handwriting and stuck to the front of the refrigerator with a Disneyland magnet.

Wes, it said, I had second thoughts during the night and decided it was selfish and thoughtless of me to drag you along on this wild goat chase. So—

“Wild goose,” he corrected.

So I’m sneaking off to do it alone. No use both of us risking our necks. Wish me luck. Love, Casey. XXX

“You nitwit,” he observed, detaching the note from the door.

The phone rang in his den.

Wes spun, note clutched in his left hand, and ran for it. The phone rested on the taboret between his drawing board and his computer.

He grabbed up the receiver. “You can’t go up there alone,” he said.

“Go where, old buddy?” It was Filchock.

“I thought you were Casey.”

“If I had time, I’d be insulted,” said his writer friend. “But I have another news bulletin for you. Just heard it on the radio.”

“What are you doing up this early?”

“I arise every day at this time to practice my yoga.”

“Yoga?”

“Well, actually I touch my toes a few times while murmuring, ‘Om.’ The point is, there’s been another killing.”

“Who?”

“The TV guru who Casey claims was masterminding this caper.”

“Alan Omony?”

“Him, yeah,” answered Filchock. “His body was discovered up near Mulholland Drive in the wee hours. Dead after having been beaten and tortured.”

“Jesus, Casey’s gone off to—”

“Gave you the slip, did she? What did I predict last night when you phoned to announce your plans to go into the freelance exhumation business? I suggested that your Lizzie Borden surrogate would ditch you in favor of the loot and—”

“She says she decided to go it alone to keep me out of danger.”

“Sure, finding several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gems would put you in danger of leading the life of a playboy,” said his friend. “Darned thoughtful of her to—”

“If those goons killed Omony, it must mean they’re going to go after the jewels on their own.”

“Yep, sounds like the classic situation of thieves falling out.”

“They’re going to try to find Casey — if they haven’t already.”

“You’d have noticed that.”

“Maybe they got a tip that she was staying here,” said Wes, worried. “Maybe they followed her when she left this morning.”

“Well, get yourself up to where this movie siren is buried and—”

“I don’t know where that grave is, Mike.”

“How were you planning to do your bit of grave robbing if—”

“Casey had a map on a computer disk, and she was going to print out a copy before we...”

“I’m losing you.”

Wes was staring at his computer. He’d just noticed that a disk had been left in the slot. “I’ll call you back in a few minutes,” he promised. “I think can get myself a copy of the map.”

A moment after the rain ceased, Filchock turned off the windshield wipers in his Mercedes. Hunching his shoulders and squinting out into the late afternoon, he said, “We ought to be reaching that side road in another few minutes.”

In the passenger seat Wes again fished out the printout of the map that the late actor had drawn.

“Reisberson Road is what we want,” he said after studying the map once more.

“I know that. You’ve mentioned the name of that turnoff full many a time since you lured me along on this lamebrain journey in the early hours of—”

“Sorry, but it’s just that I’m worried about Casey. If those guys are tailing her and she’s got a lead of a couple of hours on us, then—”

“We’ve been making good time. And it’s unlikely that those thugs are driving a state-of-the-art Mercedes that they can barely afford and that their next of kin nags them about each and every day.”

“All right, I won’t mention the name of the road or Casey for a while,” vowed Wes, gazing out at the highway and the small Northern California town they were driving through. “How’s Angel on Horseback coming along?”

“It’s not.”

“I thought NBC okayed a pilot, feeling television was in need of one more show about a heavenly visitor.”

“Angels per se are fine by NBC, but some of their younger execs decided that no one likes cowboys any more.”

“Sounded like a dandy premise to me. An angel in the guise of a gunslinger, traveling through the Old West and—”

“As I recall, you loathed the idea.”

“You’re right, it sounded sort of trite to me.”

“Well, we’ve come up with a brilliant switch, and all and sundry at the National Broadcasting Company are gaga.”

“Which is?”

“Gabriel’s Gig.”

“We’re talking about the Angel Gabriel?”

“The same, yes. He comes back to earth and each week sits in on trumpet with a different band, while at the same time helping some person change his or her life for the better,” explained Filchock. “One week Gabe plays with a rock group, the next it’s polka time, then country & western and—”

“Casey’s car,” cried Wes suddenly. “Back there.”

Filchock slowed the auto. “At that motel we just passed?”

“Yeah, I spotted her red Toyota in the parking lot in front of the Golden Bear Inn & Motor Lodge.”

“You’re certain?” He pulled over to the side of the highway.

“How many red Toyotas have a ‘Bertha the Biker’ decal in the back window?”

“I’d guess the number was limited.” As soon as there was a break in the traffic flow, Filchock executed a U-turn and drove back to the motor lodge.

They parked near Casey’s car and got out.

“We’ll ask the manager if she’s got a room here.”

“I hesitate to mention this, old buddy, but it’s just possible that she’s here for a rendezvous with some old beau. In which case—”

“We’ll ask anyway.” Frowning, Wes moved ahead of his friend and trotted across the white gravel to the rustic motel office.

There didn’t seem to be anyone behind the desk. But when Wes got close to the counter and peered over it, he saw a plump bald man in a Hawaiian shirt sprawled facedown on the floor.

Very slowly, very carefully, Wes stretched up out of his cautious crouch. When his head was a few inches above the sill of the open motel cabin window, he risked a glance inside.

He heard the slap before he spotted Casey.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing her fingertips over the red splotch on her cheek. “This would be a stupid time to lie to you guys, wouldn’t it?” she asked the large, wide, bald man who was leaning angrily over her.

“Just tell us the damned truth,” he told her in his raspy, high-pitched voice.

There was at least one other man in the room with Casey. Wes saw part of him, stained jeans and scuffed cowboy boots. Apparently he was slouched in an armchair, watching his associate threaten the young woman.

“They’ll notice you,” warned Filchock in a whisper as he tugged at Wes’s coatsleeve. They were kneeling amidst the overgrown shrubbery on the muddy ground beside the cabin wall.

Wes hunched down below window level.

“She’s in there,” he mouthed, pointing with his thumb. “At least two men have got her.”

“But that was just, you know, fate,” they heard Casey saying inside.

Turning his back on his friend, Wes raised his head a few more inches and listened.

“After all, that poor film noir actress was buried an awful long time ago,” Casey went on.

“Why’d you turn back?” asked the bald one.

“I didn’t until I realized that—”

“It was because you noticed we were following you,” accused the other goon.

“Fellows, honestly, I didn’t have any notion you were dogging my, trail until you burst in here just now,” Casey assured them. “Had I suspected a pair of thugs was trailing me, I wouldn’t have checked into a roadside motel to catch a nap, would I?”

The bald one said, “Well, you’re coming with us now and show us just where she’s buried.”

“But,” said Casey, impatient, “I already explained the problem to you guys. There’s a whole town there now, and Neva Maxton’s impromptu grave is smack under a dam mall.”

“You don’t want to make us mad, the way Omony did,” advised the bald man. “We know she was buried in the woods, not under a shopping plaza. That old actor told us that before—”

“Then, yes. But keep in mind that it was decades ago. Nobody can stand in the way of progress,” Casey explained. “Fact is, I should have realized myself that everything would’ve changed in all this—”

“We have to get that locket and then find out where she buried her jewels. The sooner you—”

“But I was just there,” Casey said. “Once I saw the situation, I turned around and came back.”

“You must’ve made a mistake.”

“No, I used this map, Dick Barn-son’s map. Here, take a look at it yourself.”

“Careful what you pull out of that pocket.”

“Well, honestly, how could I conceal a weapon in the pocket of a pair of Levi’s that are this tight? It’s a wonder I could even stuff the folded map in here.”

Wes was poked in the arm. Without turning, he made a stop-that gesture at Filchock.

“That wasn’t me,” said his friend aloud.

Wes looked back and saw a thin, bearded man in jeans and cowboy boots standing there pointing a .38 revolver at him.

“If you’re going to lurk,” he told Wes, “you got to be a hell of a lot quieter than you two.”

“Well, I’ve never known her to lie,” said Wes. “And Casey and I have been friends for a good long while.”

Filchock made a strange sound.

The bald man scowled at him. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Allergies,” answered the writer. He had been made to sit in the straight-backed chair that went with the rickety writing table.

The bearded man gestured at Casey with his gun. “The only way for us to settle this is for you to come along with us.”

Wes was sitting on the bed beside her now, and she took hold of his arm. “Okay, but you’re going to look awfully silly trying to dig a hole in the food court at that mall,” she assured the gunman. “Besides, the security people would never let you drag in picks and shovels and—”

“Enough.” He came over close to her, frowning down.

“An even bigger problem you’ve got,” put in Wes, “is the police.”

“What police?”

“The ones we phoned about fifteen minutes ago from the motel office after we found the manager out cold on the floor of—”

“You damn... oof!”

When he lunged to hit Wes with the barrel of his gun, Casey had suddenly kicked him in the groin.

He doubled over, groaning.

Wes straight-armed him and grabbed his gun away from him.

Filchock had, while that was going on, left his chair and tackled the bald man.

As the two of them hit the motel room floor with an echoing thunk, the door flapped open, and three local police officers came charging in.

“Better drop that gun,” suggested Casey close to his ear.

“Huh?”

“Or they’ll think you’re a goon.”

“Right.” Very carefully he set the weapon on the faded rug.

When Wes got home from the animation studio the following Monday evening, his cottage was empty. He called Casey’s name anyway and, as he’d anticipated, got no answer.

But stuck to the refrigerator door was a note. “Gone again,” he murmured, crossing to it.

The note, however, said only Beach.

He walked down to the twilit beach, and there was Casey sitting on a long, twisted chunk of driftwood and gazing out at the darkening Pacific.

“I’ve been doing some calculating,” she announced, rising and smiling at him.

“Planning another getaway?”

“I can see where you’d still have doubts about my credibility,” she admitted. “But even though my spiritual advisor turned out to be a conniving crook who got bumped off by his colleagues in crime, nevertheless, it doesn’t mean his teachings were invalid.”

“Okay,” he said. “So what were you calculating?”

“Do you think, keeping in mind this is Southern California, that we could live pretty comfortably on a hundred fifty thousand a year?”

The surf was coming in with considerable enthusiasm, splashing foam across the damp sand.

“Did you actually find those jewels, Case?”

She gave a sigh. “Hey, the cops up there took Dick Barnson’s map and went and had a look, and there really is a darned mall over the alleged gravesite, remember?”

“You’re right, yes. So where’s this money coming from?”

“It would be, of course, in addition to what you earn at Sparey Art,” said Casey, walking closer to the water. “Anyway, Wes, this morning the publishers offered me a hundred fifty thousand to finish up Dick’s autobiography. I guess that’s not a really big advance, but as you mentioned, I’m really not an established author yet.”

“A hundred fifty is not bad.”

“Obviously, I’m no nitwit, all the publicity about poor Dick’s murder and that long-ago murder and the missing jewels and all — well, it made him a much hotter topic than he was when he was alive.” Bending, she took off her sandals and stepped into the foam.

“I’d estimate that with your hundred fifty and what I earn we’d survive,” Wes said, following her as she walked along the edge of the sea.

“And then the HBO money could turn out to be pretty handsome.”

“What HBO money?”

“They also called about maybe doing a movie about my experiences with the buried treasure and all. You’d be in the story, too. But, and that’s just the way the entertainment business is, they want to focus on me rather than you.”

He caught up with her and took her hand. “So you’re intending to stick around here for awhile?”

“I already told you that I would.” Halting, she turned and looked up into his eyes. “By now, Wes, you do trust me, don’t you?”

He only hesitated about five seconds before replying, “I do, sure.”