The other suitcase was much the same. The clothing was fresh and fragrant with perfume. It was perfume that was not musky. It had a clean flower scent. I could understand how this was important to her. I remembered her speaking of the charity gifts of clothing, of the dirt in which she had grown up. She would want clothing, a great deal of it, and all fresh and clean. I found the black leather box in the bottom of the second suitcase. I opened it. Jewelry lay against a black velvet partition. Bracelets, rings, clips. I could not tell if the white and green and red stones were real. They were lustrous. They caught fire in the light. But I could not tell. I lifted the partition. There was money under it. Money in fifties and twenties and hundreds, a sizable stack of bills. I counted it. There was six thousand and forty dollars. When I replaced the partition the stones looked more real.
After the suitcases were back in the closet, I wondered what her thinking had been when she had packed the money in there. Perhaps she assumed I wouldn't search the bags. I hadn't intended to. Maybe she thought that even if I did search them and did find the money it would be safer with me than it would in the apartment. She could have been right. It was safe with me. Even had I been the sort of person to take it and leave, that sort of person would have waited for the chance of acquiring much more—a chance only Antoinette could provide.
I found the bird woman cleaning one of the rooms. I paid her another two nights in advance for myself and asked her to save the room next to mine for a friend who would check in on Thursday. I gave her one night rental on the second room.
As I drove toward town I found myself wondering if what Antoinette had proposed might be the best solution for me. It was tempting. I thought of the ripeness of her, the pungency of her personality, the very startling impact of her lips. There would be no illusions between us. She would make it easy to forget a lot of things. We would have no claims on each other—and would be wedded only by the money, and divorced when it was gone.
After I ate I went to the hardware store. I parked a half block from it. I wanted to talk to George again. I wanted to see if I could steer the conversation toward Eloise and Mr. Fulton. I wanted to see if he would say anything that would make more sense out of the Grassman death. Obviously Fitz hadn't contacted Antoinette. And she seemed confident that no one else could find the money. So it began to appear less logical that Grassman's death had anything to do with the sixty thousand. Then why had Grassman been killed? He could have gotten into some kind of argument with Fitz. We had seen Grassman at the lake on Saturday. Somehow I had spoiled things with Ruth and so I had gotten drunk on Saturday and again on Sunday. Fitz could have killed him on Sunday, not meaning to do so. He could have loaded the body in his car and gone looking for some place to put it, and spotted my car. The California plates would be easy to spot. But by putting the body in my car, he would be eliminating any chance of my leading him to the money Timmy had buried.
But maybe Fitz was convinced that with the clue in his possession, with the name Cindy, he could accomplish as much or more than I could. He was a man of great confidence in himself. And not, I had begun to believe, entirely sane.
If Grassman had contacted Fitz, perhaps George could provide me with some meaningful clue as to why.
But there was a sign on the door. The store was closed. The sign gave no additional information. It was crudely printed on paper Scotch-taped to the inside of the door: Closed. I cupped my hands on the glass and looked inside. The stock did not seem to be disturbed. It could not mean closed for good.
It took me several minutes to remember where George lived. I couldn't remember who had told me. White's Hotel. I found it three blocks away. It was a frame building. It was seedy looking, depressing. It had once been painted yellow and white. I went into the lobby. Old men sat in scuffed leather chairs and smoked and read the papers. Two pimpled boys stood by the desk making intense work out of selecting the right holes to punch on a punchboard while the desk man watched them, his eyes bored, his heavy face slack, smoke curling up from the cigarette between his lips.
"I want to see George Warden."