boxes, the first three would contain books.
They still did. And the ones behind and beneath them still contained the close-packed stacks of green. Nothing had changed. The money still waited for them.
* * *
When they got back to Bosky Rounds, someone was seated in the dark on the porch, in a rocking chair. Rocking forward into the light, Sandra said, “Visiting our money?”
“Your part is still there,” Parker told her.
11
Breakfast at Bosky Rounds was in a room smaller than the communal parlor, an oblong crammed with square tables for two, at the right front corner of the building, with a view mostly of the road out front. Friday morning, Parker and Claire ate a late breakfast, each with a different part of the
The small bell over the entrance tinkled and a woman appeared, stopping in front of Mrs. Bartlett’s desk, her profile to Parker. She was a good-looking blonde in her twenties, tall, slim in a tan deerskin coat over chocolate- colored slacks and black boots, with a heavy black shoulder bag hanging to her left hip. Parker knew her, and she would know him, too. Her name was Detective Second Grade Gwen Reversa.
Quietly, Parker said, “Lift your paper. Read it that way.”
She did so, her expressionless face and the room behind her disappearing behind the newsprint. Out there, Mrs. Bartlett and Detective Reversa talked, pals, greeting one another, discussing something. Parker couldn’t quite hear what they were saying, and then the bell tinkled again, and when he said, “All right,” and Claire lowered the paper, only Mrs. Bartlett was there.
Claire said, “Can I look?”
“She’s gone.”
Claire looked anyway, then said, “She’s a cop.”
“State, plainclothes. You could hear what they were saying.”
Claire shrugged. “She was just checking in. Wanted to know if Mrs. Bartlett had seen anything interesting since last time they talked.” Without irony she said, “The answer was no.”
“Good.”
“But she’d recognize you?”
“She made a traffic stop on me, before the job. She’s the reason you had to report the Lexus stolen and get this rental.”
“I liked the Lexus,” Claire said.
“You wouldn’t have.”
“Oh, I know.” Claire looked around again at the space where the detective had been. “But she was
“She’s part of the search,” Parker said. “She was on that heist from the beginning. She and a bunch more are still around because they know Nick’s got to be somewhere around here and the money’s got to be somewhere around here.”
“You can’t stay here,” Claire said. “Not if she knows what you look like.”
“I know,” he said. “We’ve got to get this over with.”
* * *
There was a low flower-pattern settee in the corner of Mrs. Bartlett’s office, and Sandra Loscalzo was seated on it, looking at local maps and brochures from a display rack mounted on the wall. Mrs. Bartlett was at her desk doing puzzles in a crossword book, and Parker stopped to say to her, “We wondered if you could give us some advice.”
“If I can,” she said, putting down her pencil.
“We thought,” he said, “we’d like to look at the countryside from a height somewhere that we could get a sense of the whole area.”
“Oh, I know just the place,” Mrs. Bartlett said, and took one of the maps from the display rack near Sandra, who did not look up from her own researches. “It was a Revolutionary War battle site. Just wonderful views. Rutledge Ridge.”
With a red pen, she drew the route on the map, naming off the roads as she went. They thanked her and took the map out to the Toyota.
* * *
Sandra drove up to the lookout five minutes after they arrived. Seemingly unbroken forest fell away on three sides in clumps and clusters of bright color, rising only in the north. A few other tourists were up here, but the parking and observation area was large enough for everybody to have as much privacy as they wanted.
Sandra got out of the Honda and came over to the low stone wall that girdled the view, Claire seated on the wall, Parker standing next to her. “You know that cop,” she said, as a greeting.
“She knows me,” Parker said.
“I get that.” To Claire, Sandra said, “Very smooth, with the newspaper.”
“
“Well, I take an interest.” To Parker, she said, “You looked the place over last night. Can we go and get it? How much longer do we wait?”
“I don’t want to wait at all, with that detective around,” Parker told her. “But if she’s still here, that means we’ve still got a lot of law to deal with. The law is looking for a lot of heavy boxes of cash. You rent a truck around here right now, somebody’s gonna stop you just to see who you are.”
“What about three or four cars? You, me, Claire, and McWhitney.”
“Four strangers, all going off the tourist trails, getting together, making a little convoy.”
Sandra frowned out at the view, not seeming to see it. “If I knew where this goddamn stash was —”
“In a church,” he said.
She looked at him, wanting to be sure he was serious. “A church?”
Nick Dalesia found it. Long time abandoned. Water and electricity switched off but still there. The idea was to just hole up overnight, but the heat was too intense, we had to leave the cash behind.”
“In boxes.”
“Up in the choir loft. Already church boxes up there, hymns and things.”
“That’s nice.” Sandra paced, rubbing the knuckles of her right hand into her left palm. “I know you don’t want to tell me where this church is, not yet, but that’s okay. The time comes, we’ll go there together.”
“That’s right,” Parker said.
“Unless,” Claire said, “you just can’t stay here any more.”
“Well, he can’t stay here any more,” Sandra said.
“If I go away and come back when the law is gone,” Parker said, “a lot of things can happen.”
Sandra paced, rubbing those knuckles, then stopped to say, “I tell you what. You and me, we drive down to Long Island, six, seven hours, we talk it over with McWhitney.”
Parker looked at her. “You want to see McWhitney?”
Sandra shrugged. “Don’t worry, I’m no Roy Keenan, I won’t turn my back on him. But we’ll tell him, you and me, we got an understanding, right?”
“Half of Nick.”
“We’ll go now,” Sandra said. “Get there in daylight. Claire can hold the fort, let Mrs. Muskrat know we’re coming back. Right?”
