He hit Skip on the jaw. Skip staggered against the wall, and pots and pans crashed in the next room. Skip reeled away from the wall throwing wild haymakers.
Oh, cripes, this isn’t even fun, Barney decided.
He knocked out two more teeth, connected with the black-beard jaw again, and Skip fell to the floor. He lay groaning, and when he felt the touch of Barney’s hands as he tried to pull him to his feet, the groans became whimpers.
Barney allowed Skip to mouth broken, incoherent pleas for a moment; then he suggested flatly, “Shut up!”
Skip quieted.
“Where’s the dough?”
“I dunno.”
Barney worked his right hand into a fist, drew it back, and Skip amended, “In the loft.”
“Where?”
“Upstairs. Up that ladder. In a trunk.”
Then, as if he were hearing it in a dream, Barney heard Charlie Collins’ nasal voice say, “That’s nice to know.”
Barney stiffened; Skip raised his head; they both looked at the doorway. Charlie and Leah walked in. Charlie was smiling with his thin lips. His white flesh looked ghostly in the flickering lamplight. “Nice of you to make enough noise to cover the sound of our arrival and warn us a little party was going on,” Charlie said. “I believed your tale of getting slugged, Barney, and also your story about Bobo having a tough sidekick named Skip Merrill. It wasn’t too hard to find where pal Skip lived, and I waited for night to keep anyone from seeing me drive up here. Now it seems you’ve saved me a little trouble.”
Barney looked at Tyne Conover’s gun where it lay, far away in the corner. Strictly a sap, that’s me, he thought. He looked in Charlie’s eyes and began to feel the cold touch of fear.
Charlie said, “Leah, scoot up that ladder and start tearing apart any trunks you find. We’ll have the dough and be out of here by morning.”
“Just like that, huh?” Barney said. “And I take the rap for Bobo’s killing?”
“I’m sorry about that, Barney, but, for all I know, you did kill him.”
Barney watched Leah walk to the ladder that led up to the loft. He thought, Leah killed Bobo.
It fitted like a glove. Bobo had repeated his assertion at Josie’s that he could bring pressure on Charlie. He would force Charlie to lay off. But he didn’t have anything on Charlie, Barney was reasonably certain — or he would have used it before. Who else, then, was there to put the pressure on? Leah, of course. And she, Bobo had figured, could call Charlie off.
A clunk, that’s me, Barney thought. Bobo had practically told him what kind of goods he had on Leah. Murder, he had said as he died, strictly murder. He hadn’t been talking about his own death; anybody could see that it was murder in his case. Another death, then. And what death? Leah’s first husband, of course. Not suicide after all, but murder. It had to be that way. No other picture fitted the frame.
Barney could picture it in his mind. Bobo getting to Leah, telling her she’d better call Charlie off if she knew what was good for her, telling her that he was meeting Barney that night in the Little Sanloosa cabin, and Charlie had better be brought around so that Barney arrived with the right news. Leah getting that unregistered gun she or Charlie had picked up sometime in the past, going to the cabin, hearing the kicker as Barney came in over the lake.
She would have had plenty of time. The sound of the kicker in Barney’s ears would have kept him from hearing the shot. Then she’d made a quick exit, leaving Bobo for dead.
And waltzing in the shadows, lured on by the hopes that he could somehow get that dough for himself, had been Skip Merrill. Unknown to Leah. The joker in the deck.
Leah started up the ladder. Barney watched the swing of her legs and hips. He said, “Charlie, she’ll probably end up crossing you the way she’s crossing me right now.”
Leah stopped going up the ladder, and Charlie’s mouth tightened. “What do you mean by that?” he said.
“We had a little deal of our own, Leah and I — after Bobo told me about her killing her first husband.”
Leah gripped the braces of the ladder to keep from falling. Charlie shifted the gun toward her. “No, don’t believe him! It isn’t true! Bobo knew — he heard you in the Jersey training camp the night you came in drunk and threw it in my face, Charlie. It was your fault. Since that time, Bobo has known. But he didn’t tell Barney. And I didn’t make any deals! Honest. You got to believe me!”
“Then how does Barney know?”
“He’s guessing — only now does he know for sure. You were too quick to doubt me and throw that gun on me.”
“I don’t trust you,” Charlie said. “You had me alibi you that night — and later, when I guessed that it hadn’t been really suicide. I knew you’d play me for a sucker.”
“It was a drunken brawl, Charlie. I didn’t mean to kill him. I’ve told you a hundred times.”
Barney looked at them, each wary of the other, bound together by a bond so dark and evil it caused him to shudder. A pair of tramps... Gripes, what a complement!
Barney was edging toward that comer where the sheriff’s gun lay. Then Charlie seemed to jar to life again, and he centered his gun on Barney.
“Okay, Leah,” Charlie said, sounding suddenly almost tired. “What do we do with them now?”
“Make it look like they killed each other in a fight,” Leah suggested.
“No,” Charlie said.
“You haven’t much choice,” she pointed out. “You’re accessory after the fact in one murder. I’ll swear you killed Bobo yourself if you try to turn me in. You’ve got to pull the trigger, Charlie!”
Charlie was sweating. It stood out on his forehead in heavy drops. Then he was pulling the trigger. But the crash of the gun came from outside, and Charlie’s revolver flew from his hand.
Josie stood spread-legged in the doorway with Pa Calhoun’s rifle in her hands.
“Barney, my boy, Skip Merrill I reckoned you could handle. But when Charlie Collins’ car passed me, heading this way, I thought I ought to turn that pickup truck around. I parked down the road far enough to slip to the house here quietly. I almost took too long, didn’t I?”
“Cripes, yes,” Barney said.
Leah took a step toward Barney, her green eyes frantic. “Barney, I gave you a break. I helped you get out of the cell.”
“Yeah, in hopes that Conover would shoot as I made the break or hunt me down with a gun in the hills — which would have closed the case in a nice package. You wanted that, knowing I was going to keep on screaming until I got the right kind of lawyer. You wanted the case closed in a hurry, because you were guilty. You looked awfully disappointed when I slugged Conover so fast and put him out of action until I could get away.”
Her shoulders slumped, then straightened. “Okay, Barney. Maybe I’ll have more luck with a judge and jury.”
“Maybe. But I doubt it, if Skip saw you coming out of that cabin on Little Sanloosa.” He looked at Skip. “State’s evidence?”
“You’re dern tootin’!”
The next day just before noon, Barney beached his rented boat below Josie’s house. He found her in the living room. She asked, “How is it going?”
“Conover is clearing up details fast. Found one of her footprints to back up Skip’s statement. Charlie’s scared stiff. He and Leah both will be trying to outtalk each other before nightfall. The twenty thousand that started all this has been impounded.”
“And you, Barney?”
“Well—” He was thoughtful. “Bobo was my buddy. I’ve got a few grand salted away. Enough to help Uncle Josh some and still have a buck left over to pay down on a fishing camp around here some place.”