No Safe House

Fifty-four Terry

“Cyn!” I whispered. It was a pretty loud whisper. I wanted to be sure she heard me, but didn’t want to get the attention of the elderly couple who lived in this house.

Her head popped up into the attic for the second time.

“I’ll tell them about the mold,” she said.

“I need to talk to Vince.”

“You can’t find the money?”

“I found money. But I found something else.” I held up one of the bags of crystal meth.

“What is that?”

I tossed the bag in her direction. It landed a couple of feet short of the hatch, and she reached over, grabbed the bag, and examined it. She looked at me.

“You know what this is, don’t you?”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea,” I said. “It’s one thing driving all over town with cash, but what if we get pulled over with that in the car?”

“Give me a minute.”

Her head vanished. I tried to find a way to get comfortable while I waited for her return. I parked my butt crossways on one of the beams, rested my feet on one in front of me, placed my two hands on another behind me, and leaned back. I’d have much preferred a leather recliner.

Five minutes went by. I began to hear voices below me, then the rattling of the aluminum ladder.

A second later, Vince’s head came into view. I held up the bag and said, “You think we should be wandering around with this?”

“You’re wasting time,” he said. “They said they wanted everything. So we’re giving them everything. Maybe they know about this. Maybe this is part of what they want. I’m trying to save Jane and you’re going to get picky about what we’ve got in the car?”

“I’ll toss it over. You can drop it down to Cynthia,” I said. When all the stored drugs and cash had been removed, I tamped the insulation back down.

By the time I got down to the front door with the ladder, Vince was back in the car and Cynthia was giving the home owners a short list of contractors they could call to take a look at their problem.

“Whaddya know,” she said, getting into the backseat next to Grace. “We did a good deed.”

Vince looked at his watch. It was already past noon. He’d be getting a call soon. He gave me directions to another house.

We got lucky there. Like the first place, no one was home. Vince and I went in while Cynthia and Grace kept watch out front. I had to lift up almost all the insulation to find the cash. Vince had thought it was on one side of the house, but it turned out to be on the opposite.

“Eldon,” he muttered under his breath.

“What happened there?” I asked while I was bent over hunting for money and Vince was watching me from the access hatch. “Bert took off. Gordie got run down by a truck. You said Eldon’s dead, too.”

“Yeah,” Vince said.

“How?”

“Don’t ask,” he said.

“Could it have been him?” I asked.

“Him what?”

“Who ripped you off? Was his son helping him? Him and Stuart? Something went wrong?”

Vince shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“But it had to be someone who knew the money was there. You never told Teresa why you wanted into our house. And you didn’t tell the dog walker, either.”

“No. Unless he figured it out.”

“You saying it couldn’t have been one of your own people?”

It was suddenly very quiet in the attic. It was several seconds before Vince spoke. “I suppose one could think that. But that’s my problem. Not yours.”

We finished up, did our best to make it look as though no one had ever been there, and left the house. I got the ladder strapped back onto the roof rack.

“Where to now?” I asked as I got back behind the wheel.

Vince looked again at his watch. “They’re supposed to call in half an hour. We haven’t got time to do any more.” He talked in a monotone, as if on autopilot, his mind elsewhere.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly, which told me he did. “She said she wanted everything, like maybe it’s not just about the money. It’s the needle in the haystack.”

Grace asked, “What?”

“Maybe it’s that crystal meth. The people who left that with me have been perfecting their product for some time. Maybe someone wants that batch to figure out how they did it. Or maybe it’s some documents, tucked in with some money from another house. Something they know is in one of my hiding places, but they don’t want to ask for it outright so I could just go to the right house and get it. They don’t want me to know what it is. Because if I knew it was that valuable, maybe I’d want to hang on to it myself.”

“So we might not even have it yet,” I said.

“Yeah.” He thought some more. “That’s kind of what I’m hoping.”

I shot him a look. “What?”

“But if we do have it, I still have to tempt them with something more.” He wasn’t talking to us. He was talking to himself.

His interior monologue got cut short. His cell phone was ringing. He grabbed it from his jacket, looked at the screen, and said, “It’s them.”