Drowned Hopes Part 47

May said, "The guys out there with Tom know he's got something in mind. They'll keep an eye on him."

"That's right," Murch's Mom said. "They aren't cream-puffs, you know. My boy Stanley can take care of himself."

"And Tiny," May said. "And Andy."

Wally cleared his throat. "Just in case," he said.

Murch's Mom gave him an irritable look. "Are you talking against my boy Stanley?"

"What I'm saying is," Wally a.s.sured her, "we ought to think about all the possibilities. That's what the computer says we should do, and I agree with it."

"You always agree with that computer," Murch's Mom told him. "You got a real mutual admiration society going there, that's why you keep it around."

May said, "Wally, what are you getting at? What possibilities?"

"Well," Wally said, "let's just say Tom does something really underhanded and nasty-"

"Sounds right," Murch's Mom said.

"And let's just say," Wally went on, "that he wins. He's got the money and he's, you know, harmed our friends."

"Killed them, you mean," May said.

"I don't really like to say that."

"But it's what you mean."

Wally looked pained. "Uh-huh."

"Hmp," said Murch's Mom. But then she shook her head and said, "All right, go ahead, what then?"

"Well, that's the question," Wally told her. "Is Tom just going to take the money and run? Or is he going to say to himself, 'I don't want any witnesses left behind?' "

May looked at the storm-battered front windows. "You mean he might come back here."

"The computer thinks so."

Murch's Mom said, "And you agree with it."

"So do I," May said. She looked very worried.

Wally said, "And then there's Myrtle."

Both women were taken aback by this abrupt change of subject. Murch's Mom said, "Myrtle? That little ninny upstairs? What's she got to do with anything?"

"Well, that's just it," Wally said. "Nothing."

"That's what I figured," Murch's Mom agreed.

"What I mean is," Wally told her, "the rest of us got into this because we wanted to, we chose to be here. But Myrtle didn't. And if her father comes back and-"

May said, "Who?"

"Tom's her father," Wally said. Nodding at Murch's Mom, he said, "That lady Edna you play canasta with-"

"The girl's mother. I know."

"She worked in the library in Putkin's Corners when Tom buried the casket behind it. She was the one told him they weren't going to put in the parking lot after all. And her father was the town undertaker; it was from him that Tom got the casket."

May said, "Why didn't Tom say anything when Tiny caught her?"

"He doesn't know. And I don't think he'd care."

Nodding thoughtfully, Murch's Mom said, "Not a sentimental kind of guy, Tom."

May said, "Wally? Do you and your computer have an idea what we should do?"

"Go to Myrtle's house."

They stared at him. May said, "For heaven's sake, why?"

"It's just one block over," Wally explained. "We can see this house from there. If we turn off all these lights and go over there, then we can keep an eye on this house, and when the lights turn back on I'll come over and look in the window and make sure everything's okay."

May said, "Doesn't this mean letting Myrtle and her mother in on the whole thing?"

"Well, Myrtle's already in on a lot of it," Wally pointed out. "And her mother already knows Gladys, and-"

"I don't particularly," Murch's Mom said through gritted teeth, "like that name."

"Oh." Wally blinked. "Okay, sorry. Anyway, you know Myrtle's mother, and she knows Tom's in town. She saw him go by in a car, and that's what started Myrtle trying to find out things."

May and Murch's Mom looked at each other. Murch's Mom said, "Well? What do you think?"

"I think I wish John was here," May said.

"There's never anybody home in this G.o.dd.a.m.n place," Dortmunder said, fifteen minutes later, as he and Guffey pulled to the curb in front of the darkened 46 Oak Street. Sitting behind the wheel of the Peugeot Dormant he'd borrowed three hours ago from a cross street in the theater district back in New York, Dortmunder gazed discontentedly through the rain at the house where half the people he knew were supposed to be in residence, and where not one light was shining. Not one.

"Something wrong?" Guffey'd been getting increasingly nervy over the course of the trip, which could only be partially explained by the miserable highway conditions and Dortmunder's less than professional driving skills. He hadn't offered any first names for Dortmunder to try since way down by exit 2 on the Palisades Parkway. (George: No.) And now he sat hunched beside Dortmunder, chin tucked in as he blinked out at the night and the rain and the old dark house. He looked like one of the three little pigs watching for the wolf; the straw-house pig.

"Well, I suppose something's wrong," Dortmunder answered. "Something's usually wrong. So what we're gonna do, you stick close to me, and we're gonna go in there and not turn on any lights."

"Uh-huh."

"And we'll see what we see."

Guffey frowned. "With the lights off?"

"Yes," Dortmunder said. "We'll see what we see with the lights off. Out."

They got out of the car into the downpour and ran to the comparative safety of the porch. Guffey shied at the sight of the glider swinging back and forth with n.o.body on it. Approaching the door, Dortmunder muttered, "Last time they left the place a hundred percent unlocked. Quiet, now."

Guffey, who hadn't been saying anything, remained quiet.

Dortmunder gently opened the screen door, gently turned the k.n.o.b of the inner door, gently pushed, and the door yawned open. Dortmunder slid silently in, followed by Guffey, and they quietly closed both doors.

"Stick close to me," Dortmunder mouthed into Guffey's ear, and Guffey nodded, a movement barely visible in the faint glow that was all that could reach here through the rain from the nearest streetlight.

They moved through the house, found nothing, found n.o.body, and found no explanation. "I should have known this," Dortmunder said aloud, back in the living room, Guffey still so close to his right elbow it was like wearing a sleeve guard.

"You should have?" Guffey asked. "Should have known what?"

"That I'd have to give that reservoir one more whack at me," Dortmunder said.

Soft ground. Heavy boat. Stan finally got the station wagon and boat turned around in the restricted area of the clearing at the end of the access road, but when he tried to ease down the muddy slope into the water everything immediately bogged down. The two rear wheels of the hauler virtually disappeared into the mud, and the rear wheels of the station wagon spun messily in place.

"Well, h.e.l.l," Stan said. "Everybody out."

"h.e.l.l it is," Tiny agreed, and everybody but Stan climbed out into the rain and the dark and the mud and the mess and a kind of nasty little needle-tipped wind.

The station wagon was lighter now, but the boat was still heavy and all the wheels were still stuck. Kelp and Tiny pushed against the front of the wagon while Tom stood off to the side and observed. The wagon's big engine wailed and whined in compet.i.tion with the wailing and whining of the storm, but nothing happened except that the pushers got extremely muddy.

Finally, Stan put the wagon in neutral, opened his window, and called Kelp and Tiny over. They slogged around to talk to him, looking like the defensive line in the final quarter of a particularly hard-fought football game, and Stan said, "We aren't getting anywhere."

Tiny said, "You noticed that, too, huh?"

"What we gotta do," Stan said, "is get up on dry land and start again."

"There isn't any dry land," Kelp told him.

"Drier," Stan explained. "A little more solid, I mean. If I get up there all the way to where the road comes in, up at the top of the clearing, then I can get up some speed, run it backward fast as I can, get some momentum on shoving that G.o.dd.a.m.n boat into the water."

"Without jackknifing," Kelp pointed out.

"I gotta give it the try," Stan said.

"Very tricky on this messy surface," Kelp suggested.

Tiny said, "I hate having ideas like this, because I know who they make work for, which is me, but I think maybe we oughta drag it up to the end of the clearing like you say, and then turn this blessed car around and put the trailer hitch on the front b.u.mper instead of the back, so you can drive frontward in low-low."

"Now that is an idea," Stan told him.

"I was afraid it was," Tiny agreed. "And now I got another one. Doug can get down off that boat and help push."

Kelp grinned at the idea. "Doug'll love that," he said.

"We all will," said Tiny.

They went around to the prow of the boat and yelled at Doug for a while, and after he gave up pretending he didn't understand what they wanted, he very reluctantly came down off his high boat and helped.

At first the station wagon didn't want to move forward either, but then its rear wheels came struggling up out of the holes they'd dug, and the hauler's wheels grudgingly began to lumber along through the mire, and movement took place. At the top of the clearing, Stan brought the wagon and the boat to a stop. The V tongue on the hauler was removed from the trailer hitch, and then Tiny lay down in the mud and Kelp stood by to hand him tools while Tiny, his work illuminated by the station wagon's back-up lights, with some difficulty removed the muddy hitch from the muddy b.u.mper. Then Stan turned the wagon around and Tiny bent over the front b.u.mper with the trailer hitch in his hands and studied the situation. "It doesn't want to fit," he decided.

"Make it fit," Kelp advised.

"Yeah, that's what I figured."

Doug, sounding scared, his voice cutting through the ongoing roar of the storm, said, "Stan, turn off your lights!"

Stan didn't ask questions. The heel of his hand slapped the headlight control on the dashboard. Their clearing became abruptly black, pitch black, and they all turned their heads to watch the bright lights approaching down the access road through the rain and the night and the sopping trees.

"Still no light," Myrtle said, coming back down to the living room from her own bedroom, where she had the best view past the intervening buildings to the house on Oak Street.

"Oh, I think they'll take another hour, maybe even more," Wally told her.

"Plenty of time," Edna said, "to tell me what's going on. Myrtle, you begin."

"I think I see a car," Dortmunder said, peering through the windshield and out at the storm-tossed night. "They're probably all out on the reservoir in that big boat May told me about."

He braked the car to a stop at the beginning of the clearing. It was hard to see anything at all through the sheets of rain, even with the headlights on; the zillion raindrops just bounced the light right back at you.

Guffey said, "What's three thousand, seven hundred fifty dollars compounded at eight percent interest for forty-three years?"

"I give up," Dortmunder said. "What is it?"

"Well, I don't know." Guffey sounded surprised. "That's why I was asking you."

"Oh," Dortmunder said. "I thought it was one of those puzzle things."

"It's what Tim Jepson owes me," Guffey said grimly. "So I figure a lot of that money you say is down there in that reservoir comes to me."

"You can discuss that with Tom," Dortmunder advised him. "And remember, half of it belongs to the rest of us."

"Sure, sure. Sure."

Dortmunder switched off the headlights. "Can't see a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing," he said.

"Sure you can't," Guffey said. "You turned the lights off."

"I'm looking for their lights," Dortmunder told him. "We better get out of the car."

The interior light went on when they opened the doors, illuminating the inside of the car but nothing else, and only making the surrounding blackness all the blacker once the doors were shut.

Dortmunder and Guffey, two bulky huddled figures in the night, met at the front of their car, and Dortmunder pointed past Guffey's nose, putting his hand up close so Guffey could see it. "The reservoir's that way, and I thought I saw a car over there. That's where we'll look."

"Uh," Guffey said, and fell down.

"Uh?" Dortmunder turned, bending, to see what had happened to Guffey, and therefore spoiled Tiny's aim. The sap merely brushed down the side of his head, not quite removing his ear, and bounded painfully off his shoulder. "Ow!" he yelled. "G.o.ddammit, who is that?"

"Dortmunder?" came Tiny's voice out of the dark. "Is that you?"