But over and above that, Mom was still Mom to me, no matter how silly she was or what ideas she’d got in her head. And over and above that was what I couldn’t sidestep: she’d stashed that money for me, so we could go off with it, to Florida or some other place, and lay out on the beach with it, and then go inside now and then, to take off our clothes or whatever. Pretty soon Jill asked:
“And what do I do?”
When you’re backed in a corner, you yell. “OK,” I told her, “prosecute. Call Edgren, call Mantle, tell them come out and take it as evidence. Could be a year before you see it again — if you ever see it again. Have you thought of that? Suppose somebody steals it, out of the sheriff’s office? Are you sure Washington County is going to be nice about it and pay it back to you, pack for pack and dollar for dollar?”
“You’re just saying that.”
“OK, you say.”
“Let’s go in the other room”
We started into the living room, but halfway there she stopped and went back to the kitchen. “I can’t leave it here,” she whispered. “I can’t bear to. I have to have it with me.”
By then the red bag was dried out or pretty near dried out, and she stuffed the money back in it. Then, carrying it by the two straps she led to the sitting room and sat down on the sofa — still in my pants and jacket. After some time she asked: “You don’t want me to prosecute?”
“Well? Would you?”
“Suppose they prosecute anyway.”
“You mean Edgren and Mantle?”
“And Knight, if that’s his name. That lawyer from the state’s attorney’s office.”
“It’s your money, don’t forget. If you don’t charge her, they can’t.”
“I’m not so sure of that.”
“If it’s your money she took—”
“The money’s not all.”
“What else is there?”
“Her lying to the police — the sheriff, whatever he is, deputy sheriff, if that’s it. Giving false information’s against the law, and whose money it is is not the whole point.”
“So?”
“They could prosecute you.”
“Me? For what?”
“Yes you, Dave Howell, who looks like God and acts like a mountain outlaw.”
“I asked you, for what?”
“Giving false information — giving no information, about this Mom character and how she blew. Listen, I have to report this money. I can’t let them go on looking for it, trying to find it for me, and not say I already have it.”
“OK, then, you have to report it.”
“Well, don’t I?”
“Listen, it’s your money.”
“You want me prosecuted for lying to them? Not telling the truth is lying, I would think.”
“OK, that’s what you think.”
“What do you think?”
“Do I have to think?”
“I’m going back to town.”
“I was hoping you’d spend the night.”
“I was hoping to, too.”
“I’m telling you right now, if I’d found a hundred grand, the place I’d take it wouldn’t be to a Marietta motel, that—”
We sat there, suddenly so self-conscious we couldn’t talk or look at each other. Then she went in the den and came out with one of my blankets. “OK,” she told me, “I’m spending the night.” She put a sofa pillow under her head, stretched out on the sofa, and pulled the blanket over her.
“What’s the big idea?” I asked her.
“I’m sleeping here, that’s what.”
“Oh no, you’re not.”
I went over and started to pick up the blanket, but a foot drove into my gut. I staggered back against the table. She pulled the blanket on again. “Dave,” she said, “good night.”
“Good night.”
14
Her voice at the phone woke me in the morning. When I looked it was eight o’clock. I went in the living room, and she was just hanging up. “That was Bob York,” she told me. “He’s so excited he can’t talk. He cautioned me, though, not to do anything and especially not to tell anyone until I’ve talked to a lawyer. Since we already have one, I mean that one who was here yesterday, he thought it was all very simple and would probably ‘work itself out,’ as he said, without me having to do much of anything — except carry the money to bank. What was that lawyer’s name?”
“Bledsoe.”
“Will you look up his number for me?”
York had told her to call him at home before he left for his office and not to tip him off over the phone, “what it’s all about, because he could easily spread it around without even meaning to if someone is there when you call, before you’re together on it about what you’re going to do.” So she did, but Bledsoe was pretty grumpy about it, telling her call him later at his office, “after I’ve had a chance to open my mail.” So she asked me to talk to him, and I worked on him a little, but think it was my voice, how I sounded over the phone, that alerted him that something big was up. So he said that as soon as he’d had breakfast, he would be out. Her clothes, her regular clothes, the ones she’d changed out of to put on the fishing gear she’d worn during the night, were in my room, and I left her there to dress while I went up and bathed. When I came down she was piling the money on the table in front of the fireplace and folding the blanket over it. We had just finished our bacon and eggs and were back in the living room when Bledsoe’s car pulled up. I let him in. He got to it at once: “What is this?” he asked. “But before you tell me, first let me tell you: You don’t call an attorney at his home unless it’s emergency, and—”
“You don’t?” said Jill. “I do.”
She stepped to the table and lifted the blanket, and his eyes all but popped out. “My God!” he exclaimed, after he’d stared. “My God!”
He sat down in front of it, then looked up and whispered: “You did right to call. I take everything back!”
“There it is,” she announced. “Every cent!”
He began counting it, pack by pack. After counting it once, he counted again. “I make it 49 packs,” he said. “Where’s the other two thousand bucks?”
Now counting it was one thing we hadn’t bothered to do, so we did, and it came to what he said, ninety-eight thousand neat, but not the hundred thousand Shaw had baled out with. “So OK?” he snapped, pretty sour, “you’re shy two grand, and it’s not too much trouble to guess where it is. Who stole it, I mean. OK, let’s have it. Where did this money come from? If you’re free to tell me! If not, let’s cut it off now, as I don’t want to get in a position of knowing stuff I should report. In plain English, then: evidence of a crime.”
“That’s what’s bothering us,” she told him very solemnly. “We don’t know what to do.”
“Are you free to say how you got it?”
“We’ll have to say,” she said.
“I guess we do,” I said when he looked at me.
So she told it. You’d think it would have taken an hour, but it took her about a minute.
Pretty soon he said: “Let me think this over. Let me get alone with it. Let me walk around a few minutes.”