Black Cat Weekly #70

Chapter 5

byAmos Garrett had switched off his dashboard radio, ejected Willie Nelson, and plugged in Tammy Wynette when he looked up and saw the little white car pulled over on the grassy shoulder of the road just ahead. He was surprised a bit to see an unfamiliar vehicle on this little backwoods two-lane, especially this late in the day, and surprised more than a bit by the tall brunette in sweater and jeans he saw standing there with both fists on her hips, staring down at her back right tire.

Amos pulled over as well, cut his engine, and climbed out of his pickup. Like his truck, Amos had been around awhile—he was pushing seventy-five, and happily married for almost fifty of those years—but he still appreciated an attractive young lady when he saw one. Besides, his mama hadn’t raised him to pass up a damsel in distress.

“Flat tire?” he said to her.

She gave him a sad smile. “I was told this was a shortcut. Thanks for stopping.”

“Name’s Amos Garrett.” He stuck out a hand, and she shook it.

“Wendy Lake,” she said.

Amos grinned. “You’re serious?”

“Sounds like an apartment complex, right? It gets better. Maiden name’s Wendy Valli.”

“Like Frankie Valli?”

Her eyes widened. “You remember him?”

“Sure—The Four Seasons. ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry.’”

“Well, this one did, when she got out and saw this tire.”

Amos chuckled. “It’s no problem. If you’ll pop the trunk I’ll change it for you.”

“Can’t. I don’t have a spare. My no-account brother borrowed it, a month ago.” She stayed quiet a moment, thinking, then said, “Oh well. My cell phone’s in the car, and my insurance includes roadside assistance. I’ll just call them and—”

Amos shook his head. “Not out here, you won’t. No reception.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. It’s the reason my wife and me don’t own cell phones. But we got a landline, and my house is less’n five miles from here. Come on, you can call from there.”

She hesitated. “Well… maybe I better wait with my car.”

“I wouldn’t do that, missy. Not today.” Amos took off his hat and sighed. “Look, I mean you no harm—but there are folks around who might. I just heard on my radio that two guys named Lee Montana and Victor something—Edwards, I think—just escaped from the state pen and stole a lot of money from a real-estate outfit not far from here.”

“Real estate?”

“The Blackthorns. It’s a long story. My point is, it’s almost dark, and you don’t need to be out here alone in the middle of nowhere.”

She studied him a moment in the last rays of sunlight. “That really is a kind offer.”

“It’s my pleasure.”

“Think my car’ll be all right here?”

“For a while. You can make your call and I’ll bring you back when your tire’s fixed.”

“Okay. Thanks.” She fetched her purse from the front seat, locked the car, and followed him to his truck. He got in first, mindful of his bad knee, and cleared a place for her to sit. When they were underway and had gone a few miles she said, “Is that really a cassette-tape player?”

“Yep.”

“I haven’t seen a lot of those, lately.”

“Bet you haven’t seen a lot of those either,” he said, pointing through the windshield. Just ahead was a row of half a dozen mailboxes mounted on a wooden post and a crosspiece like something out of The Andy Griffith Show. He braked to a stop, opened the box that said GARRETT—16 WOODWARD LANE, and took out several letters and a rolled-up magazine. He held them in his lap as they turned onto a dirt road beside the mailboxes and headed north. This road stretched arrow-straight ahead of them for at least three miles. At the very end, high on a wooded hill and tiny in the distance, stood a tall white house.

He glanced at her profile as he drove. “Wendy Lake,” he said. “I do like that name.” After a pause he added, “Like Muddy Waters.”

“Or Stormy Daniels,” she said. That made both of them laugh aloud.

Amos Garrett’s truck roared along the dusty track for several minutes in the glowing twilight before the road angled off to the right, at the foot of the hill below the white house. It circled around through the trees, climbing steadily, and ended in a gravel driveway. Amos parked, looked up at the house, and smiled.

“Welcome to my home,” he said.

Mrs. Garrett (call me Betty, she ordered as soon as Amos introduced them) was as sweet and gracious as Wendy had expected. In fact, she seemed to be a shorter and less-sunweathered version of her husband—white-haired, lean, and cheerful. Instead of inviting Wendy inside, though, Betty Garrett immediately steered her toward a group of rocking chairs on the front porch, where the three sat and—for a moment—fell silent. Wendy saw the questioning look Amos gave his wife, and the answer came quickly:

“No lights inside,” Betty explained, to both of them. “We lost power a few hours ago. I saw the storm move through, off to the north—it never got here—but it took out our electricity, and the phone lines too.”

Wendy’s heart sank. She badly needed a phone. “Any idea when service’ll be restored?”

“It usually takes awhile, when this happens,” Amos said. “But you’re welcome to stay the night. We got plenty of food and plenty of candles and flashlights.”

“I don’t know, Mr. Garrett. I can’t leave my car there. I’m a paralegal, and I have boxes of files from work—confidential files—in my trunk. I was taking them to Riverdale.”

“You want to bring ’em here for the night?”

“The files? No, there are too many.”

After a moment’s thought Amos said, “How about this? There’s an old deer trail that crosses the road close to where you stopped. If we start your car and drive it, flat tire and all, down that trail about twenty yards into the trees, nobody’d be able to see it from the road.”

Wendy nodded. “That sounds good. I hate to trouble you with all that—”

“No problem,” he said, rising from his chair. “I’ll do it, and be back in thirty minutes.”

“Wait, I’ll go with you.”

“I’ll have supper ready when you two get back,” Betty said. “If you don’t mind cold sandwiches.”

As things turned out, moving/hiding the car didn’t even take half an hour. The trees and underbrush shielding the trail was even thicker than Amos remembered, and the path was wide and dry. Wendy appeared to be much relieved that whatever she considered so vital in her trunk would now be safe from whatever jailbirds and thieves might be roaming the area.

On the way back to the house she seemed almost in good spirits.

“I truly appreciate all you’re doing for me, Mr. Garrett—”

“Amos,” he said. “Glad to help out. Betty and me don’t get much company these days anyway—we’re tickled you’re staying with us tonight.”

He looked away from his driving long enough to see her smile. “I am too,” she said. Then, after a pause: “That prison break and robbery you said you heard about? I noticed you didn’t mention anything about it to your wife. Was that intentional?”

He sighed. “Yeah, Betty tends to worry. We don’t take a paper anymore, and since the power’s out we got no TV news tonight, so I figured I’d let it be. Mr. Montana and Mr. Edwards, whoever they are, will get caught soon enough.”

“I see your point,” she said.

When they reached the row of mailboxes at the turnoff from the main road, he said, “Tell you something funny. If those important things in your car had been small enough, you coulda hid ’em right there.”

“Excuse me?”

“There’s six mailboxes on that post, but only five are used. The box on the end, the one that says DANVERS, belonged to a guy who moved out four years ago. You stash something in that box, it’d be safe forever.”

He heard her chuckle. “This sure is a different world from what I’m used to,” she said. “But I can see why you like it.”

He nodded. “Things are just simpler here. Slower-paced. Besides, I like to hunt and fish.”

“Is that where you’ve been, today?”

“No, I just drove over to Pine County, for a cattle auction.”

“So you own livestock?”

“Not anymore. A bad leg made that too hard. I just like auctions.” That sounded stupid, he realized—but it was the truth.

“What kind of hunting?” she asked.

“Squirrels and rabbits, mostly. Coons, sometimes.”

“What kind of guns?”

Amos turned to look at her, her face green in the glow of the dashboard lights. “You know guns?” he said.

“I do. I collect them.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. My brother and I do. Old ones, mostly. I found an 1873 Winchester awhile back, octagonal barrel, in great condition.” She paused. “What are you grinning about?”

“Nothing. I just got something I want to show you, when we get back.”

The night went well. Wendy and the Garretts had supper on the porch, played cards by candlelight, and turned in early. Her bed in the spare room was as comfortable as her own; she slept like a rock, got up at dawn, and followed a delicious aroma downstairs to find Betty cooking ham and eggs—the electricity was still off but the gas stove worked fine. After breakfast Amos and the new houseguest trudged out to the back fields, Amos limping as always, to try out the surprise he had shown her the night before: a fifty-caliber Sharps rifle, one of the famous buffalo guns from 150 years ago. Wendy was suitably impressed. “If I had enough money,” she said, staring awestruck at the weapon, “I’d try to buy it from you.”

“Well then, it’s a good thing you don’t, ’cause I’d never sell it.” It was one of his most prized possessions, he said, and he made the ammunition for it as well, but confessed that he rarely fired it anymore: it had a kick like a mule, and his shoulder wasn’t up to that. With encouragement, though, Wendy gave it a try, firing half a dozen deafening rounds at a target mounted on a haybale more than a hundred yards away. After she put the last two shots in the center ring, an amazed and impressed Amos Garrett handed her the last of the cartridges and pointed to a tree stump three hundred yards out. She adjusted the sights, took her time, and hit it dead center after two tries. When they headed back to the house, her shoulder throbbed, but otherwise she felt good. She was a little surprised at the warm pride she felt when Amos, seated once more in the rocking chair he’d occupied last night on the front porch, described her marksmanship skills to Betty.

And Betty had some news of her own: the phone was working. Wendy immediately went into the den for some privacy and made her call. She had to leave a message, but that was okay too. She returned to the porch to inform her hosts that someone would arrive soon to pick her up.

It was as she settled again into her rocker that she noticed the outside stairway at the far end of the porch. She hadn’t seen it last night in the dark. “Where do those steps go?” she asked.

Betty grinned. “Come with me. It’s time I gave you a tour of my own.”

The three of them slowly climbed the stairs to a third-floor platform at the end of the house. The residence itself had been built on top of a hill, so the deck—a fifty-square-foot perch containing two chairs and a patio table—was one of the highest points for miles around, taller even than many of the surrounding trees. Wendy stared with wonder at the vast green countryside, and after a moment realized that from here she could look down on the long, straight road that they’d traveled yesterday, after leaving the highway. She searched, squinting in the sun, for the tiny row of mailboxes that marked the turnoff, but it was too far away to see.

“That’s the only road in and out of here,” Betty said, following her gaze. “If we’re up here at the right time, we can see anybody coming to visit us.”

“Plus,” Amos said, “This is the only place she lets me smoke my cigars.”

Wendy smiled. “It’s a spectacular view.” She couldn’t quite believe her eyes.

“I call this the Crow’s Nest,” Betty said. “like the ones on the masts of the tall ships, in olden days. Where they posted lookouts to watch for land, or for whales.”

The wind, strong at this height, rippled Wendy’s loose sweater and made her hair stream behind her like a black flag. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

“I can see plenty of land, from here,” Amos said. “No whales, though.”

“Come on, smart guy, and give me a hand back down these steps.”

Wendy followed behind, giving them time. She felt the beginnings of tears in her eyes, watching these two precious old people inching their way down the stairs, him limping but still holding tight to his wife’s arm to steady her. However all this turns out, Wendy thought, I’m glad I came here.

“Speaking of crows’ nests,” she said, when they were all together on the porch again, “look at my hair.”

“I think the term is rat’s nest,” Amos said helpfully.

“What a charmer,” Betty said.

Two hours later Amos Garrett was watering his wife’s tomato plants in the side yard when he heard an approaching motor and looked up to see a late-model black pickup emerge from the woods and crunch its way up his driveway. He glanced at the kitchen window, saw his wife’s face there, and pointed toward the front of the house.

“Wendy?” Betty called. “I think your ride’s here.”

Amos turned off the water hose and entered the house through the back door. From inside he heard the slamming of the truck doors and saw Wendy go out onto the front porch and down the steps to the yard. He was about to follow when he saw her stop in her tracks. “Who are you?” he heard her say to someone.

Cautious now, Amos stepped outside also, and moved up behind her. The two occupants of the truck, a muscular young man holding a cigarette between his teeth and a middle-aged woman with a gray ponytail, were standing ten feet from Wendy, their faces solemn and their hands in their pockets. Something was very wrong here; Amos just didn’t know yet what it was. Betty had come out of the house too, and was standing off to one side, watching.

“I take it we’re not who you were expecting,” the young man said, his cigarette bobbing as he spoke.

“I was expecting a friend of mine,” Wendy said. Directly behind her, Amos couldn’t see her face, but he could hear the tremble in her voice. Who were these people?

“Oh, we found your friend,” the woman said. She took a cell phone from her pocket and held it up. “Does this sound familiar?”

When she pressed a button, a female voice—Wendy’s voice—said, “Edmonds? I had some car trouble. I stayed the night with a Mr. Amos Garrett and his wife. 16 Woodward Lane, about three miles north of County Road 23. Come get me and we’ll pick up the package.”

“What did you do to him?” Wendy asked, so low Amos could barely hear her.

“Same thing Blackthorn’s going to do to you, when we take you in.” The woman paused then, probably to let that sink in.

“So you work for Lou Blackthorn?” Amos asked.

The ponytailed woman focused on Amos for the first time. “Keep quiet, old man. I’ll deal with you in a minute. The missus too.” She turned again to Wendy. “Get in the truck, Montana.”

Montana?

“You leave them alone,” Wendy blurted. “They aren’t a part of this.”

“We’ll do what needs doing,” the woman said, and grinned suddenly. “Somebody tough as you, I figured you might want to watch.”

Amos felt his heart pounding. The meaning was clear. He and Betty knew too much.

Wendy was breathing hard, her eyes flashing. “What did you do to Edmonds?” she asked again.

The woman replaced the phone and took something from another pocket. She tossed it to Wendy.

Amos saw that it was a class ring, gold and heavy. Wendy examined it closely, turning it in the sunlight, and gasped. She clapped her free hand over her mouth.

Ponytail smirked. “His initials, right? V. J. E.” And, in a cold voice: “Get in the truck.”

Amos saw Wendy’s back tense up, and stepped to one side so the two visitors could see him clearly for the first time. And raised the Sharps rifle he’d picked up before coming outside.

Both the man and woman stiffened.

“Show me your hands,” Amos said.

The young man said, around his glowing cigarette, “You’re making a mistake, mister.”

“You made the mistake. Hands out so I can see ’em. Then get in your truck and leave.”

The two exchanged a glance. “You can’t get us both,” the smoker said.

“No, but I’ll get whoever pulls a g*n first. You know what a fifty-caliber rifle can do?”

They looked as if they could imagine it. The woman’s face had gone pale. Slowly they took their hands from their pockets. A long silence passed.

Wendy seemed to have recovered. In a tiny voice she hissed, “Amos—”

“Get out of here, both of you,” Amos said. Slowly he moved the huge barrel of the buffalo g*n from one to the other. “Right now.”

More silence. Everyone was looking at everyone else. No one seemed to be breathing.

Then, very slowly, the ponytailed woman took her hands from her pockets, backed to the truck, opened the driver’s door, and climbed in behind the wheel. The young man followed. Seconds later they were gone, rumbling back down the circular drive toward the road.

Amos felt the strength drain from his arms. He lowered the rifle and said to Wendy, “The name wasn’t Victor Edwards I heard, on the news yesterday. It was Victor Edmonds. Wasn’t it.”

She nodded dully. She seemed to be listening to the noise of the truck, heading down through the trees to the dirt road.

“And you’re Lee Montana,” he said. “The two of you robbed the Blackthorns.”

“Yes. After I helped Edmonds escape from prison.”

“Montana. Is that your real name?”

“Yes.” She looked him in the eye. “I’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Amos. I know that. A lot of apologizing. But right now, we’re in serious trouble. You saved us just now—but if those two get back to town, Blackthorn’ll send ten men here, to kill us all. You understand?”

Amos didn’t, not completely. But he believed her. And he knew the cops would be no help. The Blackthorns owned the police here. “I wish I could’ve shot ’em,” he said.

“What?”

He held up the Sharps. “It ain’t loaded, missy. We used up all the shells, this morning.”

She blinked, and then her eyes widened. “No we didn’t,” she murmured. Holding his gaze, she reached into her jeans pocket and removed two three-inch-long cartridges. Both she and Amos stared at them.

Then she turned, to look up past the yard and the porch and the roofline.

Quick as a snake, she snatched the buffalo g*n from Amos’s grasp and sprinted toward the stairs leading to the Crow’s Nest. Up them she dashed, two at a time. Betty stood there on the porch, watching with a dazed expression.

Amos limped past his wife, grabbed a pair of binoculars from a hook inside the door, came back outside, and hurried for the stairs as well. Oh to be young again, he thought.

When he finally made it to the top, Wendy had dragged the patio table over to the edge of the deck and was lying on her stomach on the tabletop, the barrel of the now-loaded Sharps resting on the wooden railing. Her cheek was pressed tight against the rifle’s stock, one eye squeezed shut, the hammer c****d, her finger curled around the trigger. Amos stood beside her and lifted the binoculars. The truck was well out onto the dirt road now, headed south on the long straight stretch to the highway. Getting farther away with every passing second.

Thankfully, the wind had died down. The only sound Amos could hear was his breathing.

“I don’t want to do this,” she whispered to him, adjusting the sights, “but I have to try. They murdered my friend, and they’ll come back and kill us too if I don’t try. You understand that?”

“I understand,” he said. He could see the two heads through the back window of the pickup. They were at least three hundred yards out, and growing smaller and smaller.

“Okay,” she said. She took careful aim, drew a long, deep breath, let it out—and fired.

Amos, watching through the glasses, saw the huge bullet punch a spiderwebbed hole through the back window, and saw the driver’s—the woman’s—head explode. Then, as if in slow motion, the truck left the road, plunged into a hollow, and smashed directly into the trunk of one of the bigger pines lining the roadway.

Then, dead silence. Seconds passed. The wind had picked up again; he felt it in his hair.

Beside him, Wendy was still lying flat on the table, staring at the wrecked pickup. She looked as calm as if she’d decided to stretch out and take some sun. With steady hands she ejected the spent cartridge and loaded the second one. In the distance, steam had begun to rise from the hood of the pulverized truck.

“Gas has to be leaking from the tank,” she said, aiming again. “Right?”

“After a crash like that? Oh yeah.”

She said nothing more. Just lay there watching.

“What are you thinking?” he asked her.

“I’m thinking about his cigarette.”

Amos frowned, then understood. The young guy had still been smoking when they left.

Five more seconds. Ten. Neither of them spoke.

Then the view through Amos’s binoculars went bright yellow, and a second later a thundering BOOM seemed to shake the deck railing. The already-destroyed truck disappeared in a pulsing red-orange ball of fire. The flames raged, igniting the bottom of the tree and the underbrush for several yards all around, and black smoke billowed hundreds of feet into the sky. So much for the guy in the passenger seat.

“Bad habit, cigarettes,” Amos said, lowering the glasses. He found that his hands were shaking.

Wendy eased her grip on the rifle, her hair rippling in the wind. Without turning, she said, “You said you smoke cigars, right?”

He looked at her. “Sometimes.”

“You got any matches on you?”

“In the house. Why?”

She raised her head and focused on him. “Get ’em,” she said. “We need to hurry.”

Three minutes later they arrived at the scene. Wendy had fetched her purse from the bedroom before leaving, and during the short drive she’d used Amos’s matches to blacken all four edges of her wallet. It had taken three matches and she’d burned her fingers twice in the process, but she thought it would work.

“How long,” she asked, “before folks’ll show up to check out the accident?”

“There’s only four other families anywhere near here except us,” Amos said, “and two of them are off visiting. But that was a big bang, and a lotta smoke. I doubt we’ll have long.”

“I won’t take long,” she said.

When Amos parked twenty yards from the killers’ pickup, it was still burning, but not with the white-hot intensity of a few minutes ago, which was just what Wendy had hoped for. She jumped out, hurried around to the far side of the wreckage, wiped her singed wallet clean of prints, and dropped it close enough to be believable and far enough away not to catch fire again. Then she dug Victor Edmonds’s class ring from her pocket and tossed it through the open passenger window and into the lap of the charred mess that used to be the young smoker. She was back up the hill and sitting in the truck beside Amos in less than a minute.

“Go,” she said.

The three of them—Wendy, Amos, and Betty—sat silently around the kitchen table. No porch chairs this time; it was as if they didn’t want to be outside and visible while discussing the subject at hand. Besides, the lights were on again; power had been restored sometime during the tense standoff in the front yard.

“You think the cops, and the Blackthorns, will really believe that was you and your friend in that truck?” Amos asked.

Wendy shrugged. “Maybe not. But they’ll want to believe it, because they’re looking for us, and my wallet and the initials on Edmonds’s ring should throw them off long enough for me to get clear. And since the real victims are out of the picture now—and Edmonds too—no one knows the two of you are involved with me.”

“What if they’d already reported it?”

“To Lou Blackthorn? I don’t think they did. I think the ponytailed woman and the kid with the cigarette killed Victor Edmonds because he didn’t yet know where stolen money was, and then, because they didn’t know where it was, they came here to force me to lead them to it. They would’ve either delivered me to Blackthorn eventually, as they threatened to do, or they would’ve made me show them where the money was, killed me, and took off with it. Either way, I don’t think the Blackthorns know about you. And because their two henchmen are dead, they won’t find out.”

“How’d your friend receive your message at all, on his cell?” Betty asked. “Was he in town at the time?”

“Edmonds? He must’ve been. Or somewhere where there’s cell coverage. He and I were supposed to meet in town, later last night. They found him, and after they did, my voicemail on his phone put them onto me.”

“How do you figure they located him at all?”

“That was our fault,” Wendy said. “Edmonds stole one of the Blackthorns’ vehicles from outside their office, just because he wanted to, and the two of us split up. It must’ve had some kind of tracking device on it.”

Amos took a while to mull that over. Then he said, “I can see how the news media would know about the jailbreak—but how’d they know you stole the money?”

“There must’ve been cameras we didn’t see, in the Blackthorn offices. Lou Blackthorn knows my face, from way back.”

Amos stayed quiet another minute, thinking. “How’d you help Edmonds escape? Or do I really want to know?”

“You don’t. But I’d like you to understand that Vic Edmonds wasn’t a bad man. He did some stupid things, like getting involved with the Blackthorns, but they framed him for the embezzlement that sent him to prison. They—Lou and his brothers—were the guilty ones. And guilty of a lot more than that. Their real-estate business is just a front for the real cash producers—gambling, drugs, p**********n, you name it. You probably know that already.”

“So you decided to teach ’em a lesson?”

“Not really. We just wanted to hurt them. Edmonds knew where they kept their accumulated d**g money and knew how to get to it. And I agreed to help him.”

“So you two were…”

“We were close. For a long time. Let’s leave it at that.” Wendy wiped her eyes roughly and sat up a little straighter in her chair. Amos couldn’t help thinking of her as Wendy.

After a moment she said to him, “You mentioned the Blackthorns yesterday, when you stopped to help me on the road—and you said it was a long story. How do you know them?”

“Lou Blackthorn cheated Betty’s brother out of his land and his life savings,” Amos said. “They wanted his property and he wouldn’t sell, so they did everything you can imagine—shot his cattle, cut his fences, burned his sheds, poisoned his water, lied about him to inspectors and the bank and the law and his neighbors—and kept it all up until he had nothing left.”

“He committed suicide,” Betty said. She usually cried when she talked about Martin, Amos thought, but this time she didn’t. Maybe the tears were done; that was a long time ago. But the scars remained.

“There’s no love lost between us and the Blackthorns,” he said.

Wendy nodded. For a while they all fell silent. Amos could hear birds chirping in the trees outside the window.

“Question,” she said. “How many people know about that Sharps rifle of yours?”

“Nobody. Just us and Betty’s brother, and he’s gone.”

“You still ought to hide it. Wrap it up well and bury it on the property, or something—but get it out of the house. I don’t know how thorough the investigation’s going to be, into those two bodies in that truck, but if they find a fifty-caliber slug in the dashboard…”

“I understand,” Amos said. “I’ll hide it.”

“Just for a while. Not forever.”

“Okay.”

“And the ammunition? You said you make it yourself?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have any more shells in my workshop—and I found the shell case you ejected today up in the Crow’s Nest, and the cartridge you didn’t use too, and threw ’em both away. We should be safe, there.”

“Okay.”

“I have another question for you,” he said. “The stolen money.”

“What about it?”

“It’s in your car trunk, isn’t it. That’s why you didn’t want me looking in there, yesterday.”

Wendy sighed. “Yeah. I do have a brother—and he and I really do collect guns—but he didn’t borrow my spare tire like I said.”

“How much?” Amos asked.

“How much money? That’s something else you don’t want to know. But I’ll tell you this—the Blackthorns are going to have a hard time staying in business without it. If some of it’s borrowed, which I suspect, they might have a hard time staying alive without it.”

“Good,” Betty said.

Amos leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “One more thing,” he said. “This morning wasn’t really the first time you’d fired a g*n like mine, was it.”

Wendy stayed quiet awhile, then smiled. “Montana’s not just my name, Amos, it’s my home. I grew up north of Missoula, near Flathead Lake, and my dad taught me to shoot almost as soon as I could walk. I also spent four years in the military. I’ve fired most kinds of weapons, at almost everything.” She paused, still watching his face. “Do you find that hard to believe?”

He smiled. “I find that very easy to believe.”

Three days later, when Amos was driving back from town, he passed the place where Wendy Lake, a.k.a. Lee Montana, had her flat tire, and thirty yards farther down the road, the deer trail where the two of them had steered her car into the thicket to hide it from thieves, imaginary and otherwise. Nothing was there now, of course. After dyeing her hair and borrowing a red marker from Amos and a straw hat from Betty, Wendy had ridden with him back to the disabled car and watched him change her tire. When he was done she gave him a long and fierce hug, looked him in the eye, and said, “Remember the things we talked about, Amos. Okay?” He said he would, though he wasn’t quite sure what she meant, and they parted ways—she’d driven west and he’d driven east, to attend another cattle auction. Her plan, she’d told him, was to ditch the car in a day or two, buy another vehicle with some of the Blackthorns’ money, and take herself and her new name back to Montana (that much of her story, she assured him, was true). What she’d be doing and where she’d be going after that…well, she hadn’t said, and Amos hadn’t asked.

These past three days had been busy, for Woodward Lane. A lot of police, a lot of questions. Nothing about the deaths, on the TV news. And now things were back to normal.

Two miles past the deer trail, Amos stopped at the turnoff to check his mail. Two measly items were in his box: a water bill and an advertisement from Office Depot. He tossed them onto the seat beside him and headed up the dirt road for home.

And frowned.

He slowed down, pulled to the side of the road, and stopped the truck. Thoughtfully, he looked at the rearview mirror, staring for a long time at the six mailboxes lined up side-by-side on the crosspiece. Finally he got out and walked back to them.

Remember the things we talked about, Amos.

Slowly he opened the box on the end—the one marked DANVERS—and looked inside. A package was there, a heavy, bulging envelope that completely filled the box; it took an effort to pull it out. On its side, handprinted in red ink, was the message FOR A & B.

He took it back to the truck, climbed in, shut the door, and opened the package. Inside it he found stacks of bills, all of them twenties. Hundreds and hundreds of twenties. A small part of what must’ve been the total, but a lot just the same.

When he started breathing again, he thought of the Blackthorn brothers and their sudden financial problems and the look Betty would have on her face when he showed her this. Like the Sharps, he would of course have to bury this too, for a while. But not forever.

His mama had been right: always help a damsel in distress.

He was smiling as he plugged Elvis into the tape player.

John M. Floyd’s work has appeared in more than 350 different publications, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Strand Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and four editions of Otto Penzler’s best-mysteries-of-the-year anthologies. A former Air Force captain and IBM systems engineer, John is also an Edgar finalist, a Shamus Award winner, a five-time Derringer Award winner, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and the author of nine books. In 2018 he was the recipient of the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s lifetime achievement award. “Crow’s Nest” was first published in the January/February 2020 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.