shore, and return it to the boathouse he’d taken it from. The kicked-in door was simple vandalism, the normal kind of petty crime in this area and nothing to worry about.
Morris’ Plymouth was waiting in the driveway. Parker got in it and drove the long way back to Claire’s house, avoiding the highway.
Claire had a mop and a bucket and was doing the kitchen floor. She’d dressed in slacks and sweater and sandals, she’d tied her hair up in a cloth, and she had the fixed look of a woman who is going to make it by will power alone. The table and chairs had already been cleaned and set right, the dishwasher was buzzing, and the few stains that had been along one wall were gone.
Parker came in and said, “No trouble?”
“No trouble.” The rifle was lying on the kitchen table. Claire saw Parker looking at it, and she said, “Next time I’ll know what to do with that. I learn fast, when I have to.”
“It’s loaded again?”
“Of course.”
Parker sat down at the table, pushing the rifle slightly away. “Tell me about them now. Who they are, what their game is, what their connection is, anything they told you.”
“Morris told most of it. For my benefit, I think. He already knew who they were.”
“What was Morris doing here?”
“He was doing the same thing you were. He’d heard that your friend Keegan was looking for him, so he went to Keegan to find out why. He found this phone number there, so he came here to find out if you knew what was going on.”
“What about the other two?”
“One of them is named Manny Berridge.
He’
“Berridge?”
“You didn’t tell me about the man who was killed. He was supposed to do the robbery with you, wasn’t he?”
“That’s right. Manny’s his son?” That was the one Parker had wounded, the one called Manny.
“Grandson.” She went on to tell him what Morris had said, and he sat and listened to it, frowning at the rifle in front of him on the table.
When she was done, he said, “What about the other one? Jessup, you say? What’s his connection?”
“I don’t know. I suppose he’s just Manny’s friend. He’s the brains of the two, but Manny can be much meaner. He’s like an insane little child.”
“All right.” He got to his feet, pushing the chair back from the table.
She looked at him, her expression apprehensive. “You’re going after them? But they won’t bother us any more, will they?”
“Yes. They strike me as the kind to hold grudges. In the meantime, I want you to do something for me.”
She had finished with the mop, had emptied the bucket into the sink and put mop and bucket both away in the narrow closet in the corner. Now she’d started cleaning the sink. Holding the cleanser in her hand, she said, “What do you want me to do?”
“Take Morris’ Plymouth to New York and lose it.”
“No.” She turned her back and sprinkled cleanser into the sink.
“It’s not to get you away from here.”
“It is.” She started scrubbing the sink.
“Partly. The rest is, we can’t have the car found around here. In New York it won’t raise any questions, but here it would.”
“I’ll take it tomorrow.”
“It would be best to do it now, at night.”
She faced him again, leaning against the sink. “I suppose you’re right,” she said, “but I’m not going to do it. I have something else I have to do first. When I’m finished I’ll take the car in, if I’m not too tired.”
“What do you have to do?”
“Get my house back. When I finish here, I have some things to do in the bedroom and the bathroom, and then the porch floor has to be mopped. And then I want to make a list of the people I have to call tomorrow. Someone to fix the glass in the door. Someone to fix the bathroom door.”
He looked at her, and understood vaguely that there was something in her head about the idea of borne that wasn’t in his head and never would be. The world could go to hell if it wanted, but she would put her home in order again before thinking about anything else.
He tried to find something in his own mind to relate that to, so he could understand it better, and the only thing he came up with was betrayal. If someone double-crossed him in a job, tried to take Parker’s share of the split or betray him to the law, everything else became unimportant until he had evened the score. And like the two tonight, Manny and Jessup; there was no way that Parker was not going to settle with them for the insult of their attack. In some way, what Claire was into now had to be something like that, with a sense of home instead of a sense of identity.
“All right,” he said. “Just keep the rifle in the same room with you.”
