Rainbow’s End

18

I got up, dressed, and tiptoed up to the bathroom, but the towels told me he had already been there. I shaved, washed up, and came down, and when I went in the living room, the door of Mom’s room was open, the bed was made up, the receptacle under the bed, if it had ever been used, was empty, and everything was in order. When I looked out, Mantle was standing beside his car, talking into the phone. I opened the door and waved. He waved back but kept talking.

When he finally came in I told him to sit down and I’d get him some breakfast. He thanked me, but said he would eat in town. But the way he said it was different from the way he’d acted before, and it didn’t seem that Jill’s not being there quite accounted for it. He hadn’t hid that he liked her, but after she left he’d been friendly enough still, and it kept gnawing at me that something had happened to him right there in the house that had caused his change of manner. Then I thought it couldn’t be that, as nothing could have happened between his going to bed and getting up — and decided it had to be something caused by his phone call, perhaps some word of Mom. Later, though, I was to find out that things could happen to him, and did — right there in the house, right in Mom’s room, where he had spent the night. He was writing in a notebook without looking at me. Then: “Mr. Howell, if you’ll ring Miss Kreeger, and ask her to please come out for further questioning today, it’ll save my having to. And I’d ring that lawyer you had — Mr. Bledsoe. Have him come out. Have her and him and yourself on hand by 11:00, when Sergeant Edgren will be ready to start — and probably Mr. Knight.”

“What is this, Mr. Mantle?”

“Just matters that have come up.”

“Can you give me some idea what?”

“We can and will — all in due time.”

He looked at his watch, made more notes in his book, then repeated: “Eleven o’clock — I just talked to the sergeant, and he should be through by then, with some calls he’ll have to put in.”

“About this case?”

“Yes, of course.”

“What calls?”

“All in due time. You’ll know.”

With kind of a wave, he went out, got in his car, and drove off. I called her at the Occidental, and we tried to figure it out, what had caused the change, from a friendly enough officer the night before to a gimlet-eyed sleuth the next day. All of a sudden she asked: “The tree — what did he say about it?”

“He didn’t mention it.”

“Not at all?”

“No.”

“What did you say?”

“I was too worried about what had changed him to think about the tree. One thing at a time. When they get through with their questions, we can start up with ours.”

“It’s my money, though.”

“It’ll still be there.”

“I’ll feel better when I have it.”

Bledsoe wasn’t home. It turned out that he’d had to make a speech and had spent the night in Parkersburg. When I reached him at his office after he came in late, he didn’t at all want to come out.

“I’m busy as hell and just can’t spare the time.” But when I told him how Mantle was acting, he decided he could after all. So around 10:00 Jill came, bringing York with her, their quarrel apparently patched up. Then Bledsoe came and we all checked it over, the little I knew to tell them, trying to figure what it was all about. York went to Mom’s room and rummaged around looking for what might be there, and Jill went in and looked, but what they came up with was nothing, and what we all four figured out was the same. Then Edgren and Mantle came out in separate cars, and after them Mr. Knight in still another car. They all spoke kind of grim without really looking at us, except that Knight was grim to the officers as well as to us, as though he didn’t really have faith in whatever was coming off. It wasn’t much, but Bledsoe looked at me, then at Jill, and she looked at me like she wanted to throw me a wink.

But Edgren got at it at once, telling everyone to please sit down, which we did, Jill and I on the sofa, the others in chairs. He started in on me, referring to a paper he had, which I assumed was the night clerk’s report, and taking me over it again, what I had said on the phone and later in person to Mantle. Something kept whispering to me: “Don’t play it too smart; don’t know too much.” So when he asked about the boat we said we had seen, how many persons were in it, I said, “It was dark; I couldn’t see.” And when he asked: “How big a boat, Mr. Howell?” — I told him: “It was a rowboat, that’s all I know.”

“A johnboat, would you say?”

“I wouldn’t say, I couldn’t see.”

“What did they want with the tree?”

“I don’t know, you’d better ask them.”

“What would you think they wanted?”

“I’ve told you, I don’t know, but I’d give a lot to find out.”

“And I’d give a lot more.”

That was Jill, and Edgren snapped at her: “I wasn’t asking you.”

“No, but I’m telling you! Could be, it has something to do with my money, my money, Sergeant Edgren, not Mr. Howell’s money or your money or Mr. Knight’s money, but my money, and if you’d do what you’re supposed to, get off your backside and start in looking, ʼstead of sitting around here talking, we all might be better off, and specially I might be.”

“I’m running this, Miss Kreeger.”

“But not very well, Sergeant Edgren.”

It threw him off, but not much. He sat there, measuring her up, as though trying to think what she knew. I tried to think what he knew and had the uneasy feeling he knew more than we knew he knew, probably connected with whatever it was that Mantle had turned up during the night. Then he turned to me once more and started in about Mom. He really worked me over, especially in regard to the day before — where I had been and why. I said: “I was looking for my stepmother over in Flint, where she used to live.”

“Why? What did you want with her?”

“Remind her she was supposed to be here to answer questions.”

“And what did she say to that?”

“Nothing.”

“Just nothing at all?”

“That’s right.”

“Don’t that hit you funny that you’d tell her something like that and she just told you nothing?”

“No, not at all.”

“Does me.”

“I don’t have your sense of humor.”

“Did she say whether she meant to come back?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“What do you mean, she didn’t?”

“I mean she wasn’t there.”

Everyone laughed and his face got red. Bledsoe cut in then: “Sergeant, I confess myself quite surprised. This boy has gone over this again and again and again — except in regard to his stepmother. But I remind you that he’s not her keeper and also that if he tried to bring her back, he was helping you, not blocking you off, and—”

“He’s holding stuff back, Mr. Bledsoe.”

“You think he’s holding stuff back?”

“I know he’s holding stuff back.”

He mentioned to Mantle who tapped a leather case and told me: “In here is a paper tape that I found in that room this morning. When I lay down I took off my necktie, shoes, and jacket. The tie I put on the chest of drawers, but this morning when I got up, it had falled into that wastebasket in there. When I reached for it I also picked up the tape. It’s a kind used in packaging money, and printed on it is ‘Drover and Dealers Bank of Chicago.’ And handwritten, with ballpoint, it says ‘Two thousand dollars, 100 twenties, Xerox sheets Seven 00 sixty-one — seven 00 eighty-six.’ When we called Drover and Dealers, they said those were the Xerox numbers of bills packaged up for Trans-U.S.&C, that they put in a red zipper bag and sent out for the hijacker, Shaw. They Xeroxed those bills in batches of four.”

He stopped and Edgren hammered at me: “That money has been in this house. How did it get here, Howell?”

“Of that I have no idea either.”

“Howell, this thing has looked queer from the start, but I’m warning you now, that further failure on your part to cooperate—”

“Hey, hey, hey,” snapped Bledsoe. “Ask what you want to find out, sergeant. Stop making speeches at him.”

I knew Bledsoe had to be sweating blood, as I certainly was, but at least he was acting tough. However, before any more could be said, Jill got into the act. “Mr. Howell,” she told Edgren, “can’t cooperate, on account he’s mountain and has to stand by his kin — like this Mom character you met one day, this stepmother he’s got, who stole that money, my money in case you forgot, who could have brought it here and dropped that tape in the basket without his knowing about it or me knowing about it or anyone knowing but her. So how’s about knocking this off, and doing what you ought to be doing, rowing up to that tree and seeing what’s inside it?”

“inside it!”

“Some trees are hollow, you know.”

“And some people know all about it without even having to look.”

“A guy in a boat was looking.”

“If he was.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If there was any boat. Maybe the time has now come for me to find you that money, so you can pretend you knew nothing about it, that it was put there by somebody else, so—”

He may have said more, and I could feel my mouth getting dry. But before he could finish, from down the river there came the sound of a horn. Mantle held up his hand, and Edgren told him: “You better see what that is. Sounds like DiVola.”

Mantle slipped out, and nothing was said for a time until here he came back. “It is DiVola,” he reported. “They want to speak to Howell.”

I went out, Jill with me. The officers went out, and Bledsoe, Knight, and York went out, all stomping along the path on a beautiful spring day. When I got down to the bank, the DiVola outboard was there, with two firemen in it this time instead of three. The one in the bow was holding onto a root on the snag that was still offshore a few feet, a tree maybe a foot across floating up in the current with roots pointing downriver, and branches dragging behind. But behind the outboard was a johnboat with oars in the locks — both boats being pulled downstream by the current, the fireman in the stern of the outboard hanging into the johnboat’s painter. “Mr. Howell, is this your boat?” asked the fireman in the bow, the one hanging to the root.

“Looks like it,” I said, and when I looked around for my boat on the bank, it wasn’t there. Then on the boat in the river I saw a chipped place under one oarlock that was made by a tree one day, and sang out: “Yes, that is my boat!”

“You’re in luck, is all I have to say. It fetched up five miles down, on a float that’s anchored offshore. It was headed straight for the dam. You should tie that boat up.”

“I did tie it up.” I shook the sapling I had made it fast to.

“Then it must have been stole,” he said. “Well — there’s plenty of that going on.”

“So there was a boat!” she told Edgren, grabbing him by the shoulders and spinning him around.

“OK, OK,” he answered, “but it doesn’t prove anything, except—”

“Never mind what it proves,” growled Knight. “There was a boat; that’s the main thing.”

He turned to the fireman holding onto the root, whom the other man had called Ed, and asked: “Could you gentlemen give us a little help? We want to go upstream to a tree that’s up there, to a tree that may be hollow, and see what’s inside of it, if anything.”

Ed turned to the other man, and asked, “Rufe?”

“Sure, why not?” said Rufe.

Ed let go and Rufe gunned his motor, to shoot the boat to the bank. Then he reached the painter to me, the line from the johnboat, and I made it fast to the sapling after hauling the boat out of the bank. Then: “Who’s going?” asked Ed. Knight motioned me in, and I sat on one of the two cross-seats, the one nearest the stern. He got in, taking his place beside me. Then he motioned to Edgren and Mantle who took place on the other cross-seat. Then Rufe threw the boat into reverse, and we shot downriver. He gave it full speed ahead and we started back upriver. We passed the island on the west side, kept on past my landing, and then came to the mouth of the inlet, with the tree standing in it, maybe two feet across the trunk, and white as a sycamore always is. “That’s it,” I said, and Rufe went in reverse. That stopped our forward motion, and when we began to slide back downriver, he cut his rudder to slew us around. Then he gave it full speed ahead, and shot us into the inlet. He throtted back, so we had slowed down when we bumped the tree. Rufe caught it and we stopped. Edgren got up then and Rufe gave him a hand to steady him while he reached into the hollow.

“There’s something in there,” he said, and my heart beat up, as I took it for granted, of course, that at last he’d come up with the money and that would wind it all up. But instead of lifting the bag out, he kept pulling at something inside, complaining: “The damned thing’s caught.”

“What is it?” asked Rufe.

“I can’t tell. I don’t know.”

He felt around with his hand, and seemed to be spanning distance inside, then took his hand out again and spanned down outside from the rim of the hollow. He put his thumb on the spot he had measured to, then with the other hand took out his gun. “I don’t know if this is going to work or not, but nothing beats a try.” Then he aimed his gun at the spot and fired. Dust kicked out of the hollow and then he reached in his hand. “That did it,” he said, very pleased. “Broke the splinter off.” Then he came out with the strap, the one she had cut off that night, the loose end of the zipper bag strap, that had got caught in some crack inside.

“Hey!” he said, excited. “This thing’s red. That corresponds with the color that zipper bag was, the one that the money was put in, for Shaw to take when he jumped. On TV they kept talking about it.”

“Sure does,” agreed Mantle.

“We’re getting warm.”

I wasn’t getting warm, I was turning cold all over. “Is there anything else in there!” I asked.

“Not that I can feel,” said Edgren.

He put on a glove and rummaged into the hollow. “No, that’s all — but I’d call it quite a lot.”

Then: “OK.”

Rufe helped him once more, he stepped over Knight and me, and sat down again beside Mantle. Mantle studied the strap but didn’t ask me about it, and Edgren didn’t. Rufe backed us out of the inlet and into the river, headed downstream, and ran down past the island. I was trying to think what I’d say to Jill, how I could possibly tell her that Bledsoe’s grand scheme that she’d put into effect to please me, had completely backfired, that her money was gone, that the boat we said we had seen had actually come during the night, that it was my boat that somebody stole and used to take what was hers. Knight stepped ashore, but I wanted to be the last and waited for Edgren and Mantle. Jill’s eyes were bright as she searched us all, looking, I knew, for her money. When she didn’t see it she turned to me, a question on her face. However, before I could speak, Edgren was holding the strap up. “Well young lady,” he said, “you were right that the tree was hollow, and as we dope it out, your money was actually stashed there. Did you ever see this before!”

He waved the strap and she stared.

“That’s been cut off that bag!” she wailed. “The bag with my money in it!... Where is it? What have you done with it, say? My bag! Where is it?”

“You’d better ask Mr. Howell.”

“I’d better ask who?”

“Speak up, Mr. Howell.”

“I speak up, sergeant? What are you talking about?”

“Well, it’s all coming together — the paper tape in your house, the strap caught in your tree, the boat that was salvaged downstream — it seems pretty clear that though you like this girl, you like her money better. So if she wants to know where it is, like I said, she’d better ask you!”

“Dave, I can’t believe it!”

“Why don’t you say something, Howell?”