A Touch of Death Read Online Free Page B

“Here’s the way we work it. You drive me up there, drop me off in back somewhere where there s no street light, then come back and keep an eye on Mrs. Butler. This is Tuesday night. If the house is as big as you say it is, I’ll want two full days. So at exactly two o’clock Friday morning you ease by in back of the place again and I’ll be out there waiting for you. We’ll either have the money, or we’ll know it’s not there.”
    “Right.” She leaned back in her chair and stared at me with her eyes a little cool and hard. “And just in case you haven’t thought of it yet,” she said, “don’t get any brilliant ideas about running out with all of it if you find it, just because I’m not there. You know how far you’d get as soon as the police received an anonymous phone call.”
    She had it figured from every angle. “You’re sweet,” I said. “Who’d run off from you?”
    “For that much money, you would. But don’t try it.”
    “Right,” I said. “And while we’re on the subject, don’t try to double-cross me, either.”
    I held my wrist under the dash lights and looked at the watch. It was three-ten.
    We had left Sanport at midnight, after I had put my own car in a storage garage and bought a few things I’d need. I checked them off in my mind: flashlight with spare batteries, small screwdriver, Scotch tape, half a dozen packs of cigarettes. It was all there.
    She was driving fast, around sixty most of the time. There was very little traffic, and the towns along the highway were asleep. We came into one now, and she slowed to thirty-five as we went through.
    “It’s the next one,” she said. “About thirty miles.”
    “You won’t get back until after daylight.”
    “It doesn’t matter. Nobody knows me there. And Mrs.
    Butler probably won’t be up before noon.”
    “The police may be tailing her. Just on the chance she might be meeting Butler.”
    “I know.” She punched the cigarette lighter and said, “Give me a cigarette, Lee. But what if they are? They don’t know anything.”
    When the lighter popped out, I lit the cigarette and handed it to her. We were running through a long river bottom now, with dark walls of trees on both sides. I looked at her. She had put on a long, pleated white skirt and maroon blouse. She was a smooth job, with the glow of the dash highlighting the rounded contours of her face and shining in the big dark eyes.
    I lit one for myself. “There’s one thing I still don’t like,” I said. “There may be a lot of that money in negotiable securities instead of cash. I mean, he was a banker and he’d know how to convert ‘em without getting tripped up, but we wouldn’t.”
    “No,” she said. “He was going to get it all in cash. He was going to pick the time when he could get it that way.”
    “Good,” I said. “God, that’s a wad of dough.”
    “Isn’t it?”
    “It would be a pretty good-sized briefcaseful, figuring a lot of it would be in tens and twenties. What kind of hiding place would you look for, if you had to stash it around a house?”
    “It’s an old house,” she said. “A very old house, and a big one. The only thing to do is start at the attic and work down, taking it a room at a time. Look for places that appear to have been repapered recently or where there’s been some repair work, like around window sills and doorframes. Trap doors above clothes closets, in the floors or walls. And remember, she’s plenty smart. She’s just as likely to wrap it in old paper and throw it in a trunk or a barrel of rubbish. Take your time, and tear the house apart if you have to. She’s in no position to call the police.”
    “We hope,” I said.
    “We know.”
    “All right,” I said. “But I still don’t want her to catch me in there just to see if we’re right. So I’ve been trying to figure out some way you can tip me off if she gets away
    from you and you think she’s on her way home. I think I’ve got it. Call the