Oddments (12 page)

After a while she became aware that she still gripped Tanner's automatic. She set it down on an end table; hesitated, then picked it up again. The numbness was finally leaving her mind, a swift release that brought her thoughts into sharp
ening focus. When the wind and rain lulled again she stood, walked slowly down the hall to her bedroom. She steeled herself as she opened the door and turned on the lights.

From where he lay sprawled across the bed, John's sightless eyes stared up at her. The stain of blood on his bare chest, drying now, gleamed darkly in the lamp glow.

Wild night, mad night.

She hadn't been through hell just once, she'd been through it twice. First in here and then in the kitchen.

But she hadn't shot John. She hadn't. He'd come home at nine, already drunk, and tried to make love to her, and when she denied him he'd slapped her, kept slapping her. After three long hellish years she couldn't take it anymore, not anymore. She'd managed to get the revolver out of her nightstand drawer . . . not to shoot him, just as a threat to make him leave her alone. But he'd lunged at her, in almost the same way Tanner had, and they'd struggled, and the gun had gone off. And John Clifford was dead.

She had started to call the police. Hadn't because she knew they would not believe it was an accident. John was well liked and highly respected on Salt Cay; his public image was untarnished and no one, not even his close friends, believed his second wife's divorce claim or that he could ever mistreat anyone. She had never really been accepted here—some of the cattier rich women thought she was a gold digger—and she had no friends of her own in whom she could confide. John had seen to that. There were no marks on her body to prove his abuse, either; he'd always been very careful not to leave marks.

The island police would surely have claimed she'd killed him in cold blood. She'd have been arrested and tried and convicted and put in a prison much worse than the one in which she had lived the past three years. The prospect of that was unbearable. It was what had driven her out onto the terrace, to sit and think about the undertow at Windflaw Point. The sea, in those moments, had seemed her only way out.

Now there was another way.

Her revolver lay on the floor where it had fallen. John had given it to her when they were first married, because he was away so much; and he had taught her how to use it. It was one of three handguns he'd bought illegally in Miami.

Shea bent to pick it up. With a corner of the bedsheet she wiped the grip carefully, then did the same to Tanner's automatic. That gun too, she was certain, would not be registered anywhere.

Wearily she put the automatic in John's hand, closing his fingers around it. Then she retreated to the kitchen and knelt to place the revolver in Tanner's hand. The first-aid kit was still on the table; she would use it once more, when she finished talking to the chief constable in Merrywing.

We tried to help Tanner, John and I, she would tell him. And he repaid our kindness by attempting to rob us at gunpoint. John told him we kept money in our bedroom; he took the gun out of the nightstand before I could stop him. They shot each other. John died instantly, but Tanner didn't believe his wound was as serious as it was. He made me bandage it and then kept me in the kitchen, threatening to kill me too. I managed to catch him off guard and throw coffee in his face. When he tried to come after me the strain aggravated his wound and he collapsed and died.

If this were Miami, or one of the larger Caribbean islands, she could not hope to get away with such a story. But here the native constabulary was unsophisticated and inexperienced because there was so little crime on Salt Cay. They were much more likely to overlook the fact that John had been shot two and a half hours before Harry Tanner. Much more likely, too, to credit a double homicide involving a stranger, particularly when they investigated Tanner's background, than the accidental shooting of a respected resident who had been abusing his wife. Yes, she might just get away with it. If there was any justice left for her in this world, she would—and one day she'd leave Salt Cay a free woman again.

Out of the depths, she thought as she picked up the phone. Out of the depths. . .

I
was standing beside the tellers' cages, in the railed-off section where the branch manager's desk was located, when the knocking began on the bank's rear door.

Frowning, I looked over in that direction. Now, who the devil could that be? It was four o'clock and the Fairfield branch of the Midland National Bank had been closed for an hour; it seemed unlikely that a customer would arrive at this late time.

The knocking continued—a rather curious sort of summons, I thought. It was both urgent and hesitant, alternately loud and soft in an odd spasmodic way. I glanced a bit uneasily at the suitcase on the floor beside the desk. But I could not just ignore the rapping. Judging from its insistence, whoever it was seemed to know that the bank was still occupied.

I went out through the grate in the rail divider and walked slowly down the short corridor to the door. The shade was drawn over the glass there—I had drawn it myself earlier and I could not see out into the private parking area at the rear. The knocking, I realized as I stepped up to the door, was coming from down low on the wood panel, beneath the glass. A child? Still frowning, I drew back the edge of the shade and peered out.

The person out there was a man, not a child—a medium-sized man wearing a mustache, modishly styled hair, and a business suit and tie. He was down on one knee, with his right hand stretched out to the door; his left hand was pressed against the side of his head, and his temple and the tips of his
fingers were stained with what appeared to be blood.

He saw me looking out at about the same time I saw him. We blinked at each other. He made an effort to rise, sank back onto his knee again, and said in a pained voice that barely carried through the door, "Accident . . . over in the driveway . . . I need a doctor."

I peered past him. As much of the parking area as I could see was deserted, but from my vantage point I could not make out the driveway on the south side of the bank. I hesitated, but when the man said plaintively, "Please. . . I need help," I reacted on impulse: I reached down, unlocked the door, and started to pull it open.

The man came upright in one fluid motion, drove a shoulder against the door, and crowded inside. The door edge cracked into my forehead and threw me backward, off-balance. My vision blurred for a moment, and when it cleared and I had my equilibrium again, I was looking not at one man but at two.

I was also looking at a gun, held competently in the hand of the first man.

The second one, who seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, closed and re-locked the door. Then he too produced a handgun and pointed it at me. He looked enough like the first man to be his brother—medium-sized, mustache, modishly styled hair, business suit, and tie. The only appreciable difference between them was that One was wearing a blue shirt and Two a white shirt.

I stared at them incredulously. "Who are you? What do you want?"

"Unnecessary questions," One said. He had a soft, well modulated voice, calm and reasonable. "It should be obvious who we are and what we want."

"My God," I said, "bank robbers."

"Bingo," Two said. His voice was scratchy, like sand rubbing on glass.

One took a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped
the blood—or whatever the crimson stuff was—off his fingers
and his temple. I realized as he did so that his mustache and hair, and those of the other man, were of the theatrical makeup variety.

"You just do what you're told," One said, "and everything
will be fine. Turn around, walk up the hall."

I did that. By the time I stopped again in front of the rail
divider, the incredulity had vanished and I had regained my
composure. I turned once more to face them.

"I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed," I said.

"Is that right?" One said. "Why?"

"You're not going to be able to rob this bank."

"Why aren't we?"

"Because all the money has been put inside the vault for
the weekend," I said. "And I've already set the time locks; the
vault doors can't be opened by hand and the time locks won't
release until nine o'clock Monday morning."

They exchanged a look. Their faces were expressionless,
but their eyes, I saw, were narrowed and cold. One said to
Two, "Check out the tellers' cages."

Two nodded and hurried through the divider gate.

One looked at me again. "What's your name?"

"Luther Baysinger," I said.

"You do what here, Luther?"

"I'm the Fairfield branch manager."

"You lock up the money this early every Friday?"

"Yes."

"How come you don't stay open until six o'clock?"

I gestured at the cramped old-fashioned room. "We're a small
branch bank in a rural community," I said. "We do a limited b
usiness; there has been no need for us to expand our hours."

"Where're the other employees now?"

"I gave them permission to leave early for the weekend."

From inside the second of the two tellers' cages Two called, "Cash drawers are empty."

One said to me, "Let's go back to the vault."

I pivoted immediately, stepped through the gate, entered the cages, and led the two of them down the walkway to the outer vault door. One examined it, tugged on the wheel. When it failed to yield he turned back to me.

"No way to open this door before Monday morning?"

"None at all."

"You're
sure
of that?"

"Of course I'm sure. As I told you, I've set the time locks here, and on the door to the inner vault as well. The inner vault is where all the bank's assets are kept."

Two said, "Damn. I knew we should have waited when we saw the place close up. Now what do we do?"

One ignored him. "How much is in that inner vault?" he asked me. "Round numbers."

"A few thousand, that's all," I said carefully.

"Come on, Luther. How much is in there?"

His voice was still calm and reasonable, but he managed nonetheless to imply a threat to the words. If I continued to lie to him, he was saying tacitly, he would do unpleasant things to me.

I sighed. "Around twenty thousand," I said. "We have no need for more than that on hand. We're—"

"I know," One said, '"you're a small branch bank in a rural community. How many other people work here?"

"Just two."

"Both tellers?"

"Yes."

"What time do they come in on Monday morning?"

"Nine o'clock."

"Just when the vault locks release."

"Yes. But—"

"Suppose you were to call up those two tellers and tell them to come in at nine-thirty on Monday, instead of nine o'clock. Make up some kind of excuse. They wouldn't question that, would they?"

It came to me then, all too clearly, what he was getting at. A coldness settled on my neck and melted down along my back. "It won't work," I said.

He raised an eyebrow. "What won't work?"

"Kidnapping me and holding me hostage for the weekend."

"No? Why not?"

"The tellers
would
know something was wrong if I asked them to come in late on Monday."

"I doubt that."

"Besides," I lied, "I have a wife, three children, and a mother-in-law living in my house. You couldn't control all of them for an entire weekend."

"So we won't take you to your house. We'll take you somewhere else and have you call your family and tell them you've been called out of town unexpectedly."

"They wouldn't believe it."

"I think they would. Look, Luther, we don't want to hurt you. All we're interested in is that twenty thousand. We're a little short of cash right now; we need operating capital." He shrugged and looked at Two. "How about it?"

"Sure," Two said. "Okay by me."

"Let's go out front again, Luther."

A bit numbly I led them away from the vault. When we passed out of the tellers' cages, my eyes went to the suitcase beside the desk and lingered on it for a couple of seconds. I
pulled my gaze away then—but not soon enough.

One said, "Hold it right there."

I stopped, half-turning, and when I saw him looking past me at the suitcase I grimaced.

One noticed that, too. "Planning a trip somewhere?" he asked.

"Ah . . . yes," I said. "A trip, yes. To the state capital—a bankers' convention. I'm expected there tonight and if I don't show up people will know something is wrong—"

"Nuts," One said. He glanced at Two. "Take a look inside that suitcase."

"Wait," I said, "I—"