Once the detective was gone, the salon started buzzing and going forward with another day. As far as Lucy could tell, Wanda wasn’t too saddened by the news, but Lucy went through her day working in a fog. Still, she wasn’t surprised her father had ended up dead in the street. Wanda and Lucy only pulled small scams, petty stuff people didn’t bother to report to the police, but Edgar was different, always going for the big score.
Still, she hadn’t known he was pulling bank jobs. He’d kept that little tidbit to himself. As well as the money.
Something he’d said to Lucy before she left Tupelo kept surfacing in her mind. She couldn’t shake it.
When Wanda took a smoke break, Lucy followed her to the alley. Halfway through Wanda’s roll-your-own cigarette, Lucy broke the silence.
“When we left Tupelo, Dad said he would always remember the good times we had fishing.”
“After all his drinking and raising his hand to me, I’ve forgotten any good times.” Wanda dropped her smoke to the pavement, then ground her foot on top.
“That’s not my point,” Lucy said to Wanda’s back as she walked inside.
I know where he hid the money.
CHAPTER NINE
Nine o’clock the next morning, Lucy jumped into Vivien’s old Buick Regal and headed to Tupelo to claim her father’s body. The Buick burned more oil than gas and forced her to stop every two hours for an attendant to check her oil and top off the tank. She planned to hit Fourth Street in Tupelo by dark.
It was well past dusk by the time the Buick rolled up on the house they’d lived in for the last ten years, until their eviction. There’d been a few happy times in the house for her, though even less for Wanda. The house lights of the elderly neighbors on the street were all dimmed; they got up early and were in bed by nine every night.
A few houses down, a walkway opened to a dirt path leading to the Tombigbee River. As kids, Lucy and her friends had followed the path to the river to fish, and during the summer, it was the most popular place to swim.
Lucy eased out of the car and took a duffel bag from the trunk. Walking briskly to the walkway, she stopped at the final lamppost before the dirt trail. She pulled out a hat with a light attached to the top. The man at the last gas station had said it was used for frog hunting. She’d bought one, though she wouldn’t be hunting any frogs.
In the dark, the light illuminated the path, making it easy to get to the riverbank. It was quiet except for the chirping of locusts and the occasional rustling of bushes where various critters were taking cover.
At the riverbank, she looked for a small pier. That was her landmark and starting point. The dock had been severely beaten up by the river tides but was still standing. Under the pier, Lucy pulled on a rope attached to a piling. Three feet under the water, her dad had buried a closed crab trap. It was where he’d kept his pint of Old Crow, his drink of choice, well away from the house and Wanda. The crab trap was still there, but there was no whiskey or money in it.
Lucy spent most of the night looking for the money, until there wasn’t much time left before the morning sky would light up and the early fishermen would come out. Freshwater catfish was a biggie in that country town.
Exhausted, Lucy sat on the riverbank and threw rocks at the water as she had often done during her childhood. The plopping of the stones into the water made her think of her father casting his line into the river over and over, hoping for a big fish to take the bait. A memory of another pier suddenly struck her. Her father had called it his lucky dock and had gone to it whenever the fish weren’t biting. He’d always caught catfish there.
And he’d kept another stash of Old Crow close by that dock too.
The lucky dock was about twenty yards from a water well that had dried up years ago. The grass was overgrown, but Lucy could see the well in the distance. The well’s faded red roof peeked over the weeds. As she recalled, on the third step of the ladder going down into the well, a rope would be tied.
Lucy pointed her head down the shaft of the well. The light on her hat illuminated deep inside. There it was—a dirty rope tied to the third step of the ladder. She pulled the filthy line up. At the end of the thin cord was a small cage she recognized. Her father had used it to catch mice. Sadly, the only thing she found in it was an empty bottle of Old Crow.
“Why the hell save an empty bottle?” she mumbled to herself, throwing the cage back down the shaft. That’s when she heard a thump—the crate had hit something, and the noise had come way too quick for the trap to have hit bottom. She looked down the shaft again, and there on the seventh step of the ladder was another rope. Climbing down the steps in the cobweb-infested well, she carefully reached for the line. She pulled, and it gave a little but not enough for her to bring it up one-handed. She climbed out and dug into her duffel bag, then pulled out a thin rope. Attaching it to the pulley on the roof of the well, then tying the other end to a nearby tree, she dropped the line into the well. Then she followed the cord down to the seventh step of the ladder. With a cigarette lighter, she burned off the spider webs, clearing the way. A green bag attached
