Murder in Mount Holly (9 page)

13

“It's all set,” Mr. Gibbon said. He and Mrs. Gneiss had found out many valuable things. They knew exactly where the vault was (it was, as a matter of fact, in full view of all the bank customers, as most vaults are) and they had plotted what movements they would make. It would be an elaborate “quarterback sneak:” the women would be standing by, Mr. Gibbon would sneak in with his gun drawn, wearing a disguise. The women would be dressed in very ordinary clothes (“Oh, gee!” Miss Ball said, and slapped the table), and would arrive early at the bank. Everyone agreed that it was a nifty little plan.

The suitcases were next on the agenda. The bodies—or the parts of the bodies—had started making a terrific reek. It was an ungodly odor, Mr. Gibbon said, and then he began telling the two ladies about how trenches smelled exactly like that—and you had to sleep, eat, load your gun and shine your brass right in the thick of it. You could cut it with a knife, in case anyone was interested.

Miss Ball said that, for goodness sake, it must have been just like what Herbie was putting up with at that very moment! The thought of the decaying limbs and trunks of the two communists in the suitcases upstairs made them all feel quite close to Herbie.

“It kind of makes you stop and think, doesn't it?” said Mrs. Gneiss.

They all stopped, sniffed at the smell that had now penetrated right down into the dining room, and agreed. It was as if Herbie was in the next room.

But what to do with those suitcases? Miss Ball suggested burying them. Mr. Gibbon suggested that they should put them, for practical reasons, into lockers at the bus terminal. Why? Because after the robbery, as they were carried on the shoulders of a screaming mob of grateful patriots, they would ask to be taken to the bus terminal. In full view of the mob and nationwide television they would produce the key and throw the locker open, expose its un-American contents to the mayor; they would exchange the locker key for the key to the city of Mount Holly.

Miss Ball called a taxi. The taxi driver was a bit under the weather.

“Nice to see
some
people get a chance to go away,” he muttered.

“Oh,
we're
not going
any
where!” Miss Ball chirped.

Mrs. Gneiss was given the task of depositing the suitcases into the lockers. Mr. Gibbon had carefully estimated how much it would cost. He gave Mrs. Gneiss two warm dimes when they arrived at the bus terminal, and called a porter to help. “Give the little woman a hand,” he said. “I'll be right back.” He winked at Miss Ball.

They should not be seen together in public, it was decided. There was no telling who might be spying on them. Mr. Gibbon said that it was a favorite trick of spies to let you go on with your activities and then nab you at the least likely moment, red-handed, with the goods.

“Well, you just leave the goods to me,” Mrs. Gneiss said. Mr. Gibbon and Miss Ball went their separate ways after whispering that they would meet back at the “hideout,” as Miss Ball's white-frame house, ringed by nasturtiums, came to be called.

Mrs. Gneiss carried one suitcase, the porter carried the other, heavier one. The porter remarked that it felt as if it were filled with burglar tools.

The moment Mrs. Gneiss lifted the suitcase she knew she had Juan. She felt her nice porous skin turn to gooseflesh as she hurried toward the steel lockers.

“They'll fit right fine in this one,” the porter said as he groaned and heaved his big suitcase before a row of big lockers.

Mrs. Gneiss looked at the sign and sighed.
deposit one quarter only
,
read a sign over a chromium tongue with a quarter-sized circle punched into it. The tongue seemed to be sticking right at Mrs. Gneiss. She examined the two dimes in her palm and said to the porter, “You got anything more reasonable?”

The porter said that at the other end of the terminal there were some cheaper ones, a little cheesier than these.

“Let's have a look,” Mrs. Gneiss said.

They hefted the suitcases once again. Halfway across the floor, near the benches for the waiting passengers, Mrs. Gneiss heard someone say, “What's a lady like you lugging a big suitcase like that all by your lonesome?”

The porter ignored the voice and went on ahead.

Mrs. Gneiss turned. A sailor stood before her. He was wearing a seaman's uniform: the white inverted sand-pail hat, wide trousers, and a tight shirt. He had tattoos on his hairy forearms. He should have been young. It was the sort of uniform young sailors wear. But he wasn't young. He was about fifty, and his potbelly pressed against his sailor shirt. He looked jolly. He lifted Mrs. Gneiss's meaty hand off the handle and hoisted the suitcase. He asked Mrs. Gneiss if she had burglar tools in it.

He alone laughed at his joke. He asked Mrs. Gneiss where she was going. He said that he was going to Minneapolis. Mrs. Gneiss said that she was going to the lockers at the other end of the terminal. This sent the old salt into gales of laughter.

“I hope you don't mind doing this,” Mrs. Gneiss said, trying to get an impish smile on her fat face. “My Herbie's in the army.”

“Don't say?” the sailor said, interested. “Is he stateside?”

“I don't think so. He's in the front lines as far as I know.”

The sailor whistled. “What's he wanna do a thing like that fer? Get hissel' hurt that way if he doesn' watch it.”

“Not my Herbie,” said Mrs. Gneiss. It hadn't dawned on her that Herbie would get hurt. Now, as she said
Not my Herbie,
it occurred to her that Herbie might get his little brain blown off. She blotted out the thought and grinned at the sailor.

The porter had walked all the way to the end of the terminal and now was walking back to where Mrs. Gneiss stood with the sailor. He looked peeved. “I been waiting for you for about an hour,” he said.

“Don't get yer dander up for nothing,” the sailor said.

“Where's my suitcase?” Mrs. Gneiss asked.

“Back there. You think I'm gonna cart that around all day you're nuts,” he said.

Mrs. Gneiss told the sailor she was in a big rush. She had to get the suitcases into the locker and go right back home (she almost said “to the hideout”).

When they reached the lockers at the other end the porter held his mouth open in astonishment. “'At's funny,” he finally said. “I coulda sworn I left the thing right here . . .”

Mrs. Gneiss wrinkled up her nose. She did not think it was a great loss. The body that was in the suitcase was not only dismembered—it was dead as well. She was, after all, trying to get rid of it. “Someone must have filched it,” she said simply.

The sailor suddenly let loose a wild hoot. He seized the shrugging porter by the shirt and began beating him with his free hand. “Now look what you've gone and done!” he puffed. He shoved the porter up against the lockers with a clang and screamed, “Look what you're making me do!”

Mrs. Gneiss stood quietly and watched. She knew that the sailor would soon get it out of his system. A policeman came by and asked what was going on.

The sailor stopped beating the porter. He was out of breath and could not speak. He shook the porter in the policeman's face.

Mrs. Gneiss explained what had happened. She finished by saying, “I don't see what all the fuss is about. There was nothing very valuable in it.”

“Valuable or not,” the policeman said, “we don't like this sort of thing happening in Mount Holly. Now you just sit tight and I'll round up that suitcase of yours in a jiffy. The culprit couldn't be far away.” He asked for a description of the suitcase and its contents.

Mrs. Gneiss said that it was old, brownish-greenish, and had some personal effects locked in it.

The policeman deputized the sailor and the porter. The three ran out the back door of the bus terminal in search of the suitcase.

Mrs. Gneiss quietly placed the small suitcase (Juan) in a dime-locker and went into the bus terminal Koffee Shoppe and swilled down a huge hot-fudge sundae.

Less than ten minutes later the policeman was back with a rat-faced little bum in one hand and the suitcase (Harold Potts, Jr) in the other. The policeman handcuffed
the bum to a post and joined Mrs. Gneiss in another
sundae. Afterward, he insisted on having his picture taken with Mrs. Gneiss: he presenting the lost suitcase to her, she thanking him. It took an hour for the press photographer to arrive, but finally Mrs. Gneiss got the second suitcase into the locker. The policeman did the heaving and pushing. He remarked as he was doing it that the suitcase felt as if it were filled with burglar tools.

The sailor and the porter were nowhere to be seen. They were, presumably, still looking for the thief.

“I think I'll just toddle off,” Mrs. Gneiss said.

The policeman wouldn't hear of it. He said he'd give her a lift in the squad car. His pal didn't mind. They were both tired of passing out parking tickets. “The jig's up,” Mr. Gibbon said, when he saw the police squad car arrive with Mrs. Gneiss in the backseat.

“Gosh, the police!” Miss Ball said. She skipped into the kitchen and slammed the door.

Mr. Gibbon pulled out his pistol and flattened himself against the wall behind the front door.

“. . . But just for a sec,” the policeman said as he entered. “Gotta get back to the station house.”

Mr. Gibbon had carefully unloaded his pistol. Now, as the policeman shuffled in and closed the door, he raised the pistol and brought it down on the top part of the policeman's cap where the bulge of his head showed through. Mr. Gibbon had expected a bone-flaking crunch. There was not a sound like that. Instead there was a soft
splok
and the policeman slumped to the floor.

“Charlie!” Mrs. Gneiss said.

“Rope!” Mr. Gibbon hissed.

Mrs. Gneiss looked at the policeman lying spread-eagled on the floor grinning up at her. “You killed the cop, Charlie, and for no good reason at all, you know that?”

“Get some rope, Mrs. Gneiss, and stop sassing me!”

Mrs. Gneiss rummaged through her knitting basket looking for rope. She sighed and mumbled, “I thought it was a bank we were after . . .”

Mr. Gibbon peeked out the little window at the top of the door and spied another policeman in the car. He yelled for Miss Ball.

The kitchen door opened a crack. “Is it okay to come out?”

“Sure, sure,” Mr. Gibbon said.

Miss Ball clapped her hand to her mouth when she saw the policeman on the floor. Her eyes popped over the top of her hand. Mr. Gibbon leaped in back of her and started to tickle her. On the left side he tickled and held her fast; on the right—where most of the tickling was done—he used his pistol. He slipped the ice-cold gun barrel under her blouse and scrubbed her kidneys with it.

“Stoooooop! Paaaalllleeeeeeeeze! Stoooooop it! You're awful, Charlie Gibbon! Stooooo . . .”

Her glee found its way through the door and down the walk, past the nasturtiums and into the front seat of the squad car where another policeman sat reading a magazine.

The policeman blew and whistled, fumbled with the magazine, glanced toward the door, shifted in his seat, and then got out of the car, adjusted his tie in the side-window and hurried up the walk.

During the night another policeman came and asked Mrs. Gneiss if she had seen the two policemen. He described them and gave her the license number of the squad car.

Mrs. Gneiss said yes, indeed, she had seen those nice policemen—they had given her a lift home. But they couldn't stay, they said. They drove off in the direction of Holly Junction to give parking tickets.

When the inquiring policeman returned to his car his partner asked him what he had found out.

“Nothing,” was the answer, “just a nice old lady that doesn't know a thing.”

Mr. Gibbon saw the car leave as he sat upstairs in the darkness and looked through a slit in the curtains. He waited a half-hour and tiptoed out of the house to check the squad car that he had driven around back and covered with lilac branches and heavy canvas.

As he sneaked through the nasturtiums he heard, “Hey, you!” Mr. Gibbon froze. He did not move a muscle, did not even brush at a fly that was strafing his wedge-shaped head. He had forgotten his pistol.

A uniformed man came up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

Mr. Gibbon thought of kneeing the uniformed man and making a run for it. But he knew he didn't have a chance. He started to say something when the man spoke.

“Lady by the name of Gneiss live here?”

“Who wants to know?” asked Mr. Gibbon, finding his tongue.

“Western Union. Got a telegram for her.”

It might be a trick, thought Mr. Gibbon. “I'll take it. She's inside.”

“Okay, okay. As long as she lives here. Just sign the book.”

Mr. Gibbon made every effort to write illegibly in the book. He took the envelope and stayed in the nasturtiums while the Western Union man walked away, glancing back at intervals until he was out of sight.