Rainbow's End by James M. Cain

back.”
    â€œAbout the money? Or what?”
    â€œWhy the money?” asked Bledsoe. “How did that get in this?”
    â€œIt’s what Mrs. Howell said she was thinking about at the time.”
    â€œRepeat the question.”
    â€œWhat was she hollering about?”
    Jill looked at Bledsoe, at York, and at me, at me the longest, then said: “Sergeant, with a gun jammed to your head and your teeth chattering from cold, you don’t pay too much attention to what’s being said by a woman you can’t even see a hundred feet off in the dark. She was arguing with Shaw, that’s all I remember now, but what about, I have no idea.”
    She made the rest of it short, how the voice said “drop that gun,” how Shaw had whirled and fired, how a rifle spoke, how Shaw had dropped at her feet, “his brains running out of his head.” She told then how she’d started for me, “and fell on account of my feet,” and how I’d come “piling through the bushes, put his coat on me, and carried me to his boat. I’d been praying to God, and I don’t mind saying right here that he looked to me like God. How do you like that, he still does.”
    She put her hand in mine and there was a kind of pause. Then Edgren asked: “What then?”
    â€œHow do I know, what then?”
    There was another pause, and she said: “He carried me to the house, and this lady mentioned the money, said she meant to start looking for it. I think that’s what she said. I had my mind on that coat, Mr. Howell’s heavenly coat—though it left him bare to the waist.”
    She mentioned the bed, the bath, and my call to the sheriff’s office, then remembered her call to Chicago, but didn’t say anything about the brawl we had had when Mom came in with the rifle. Edgren pressed her about how much time had gone by between Shaw being killed and my phone call, and she guessed a half hour. “Long as it took to roll me into that bed, then put a blanket on me and carry me up to the bathroom, then dunk me in the tub.”
    â€œOne other thing,” said Edgren. “How did this man, this Shaw, get his gun past the metal detector? Did he mention that while you were with him on the plane?”
    â€œYou’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”
    â€œI think everyone would.”
    â€œWell, you work on it, mister. You won’t get it from me. If I tell you that and you tell everyone because they want to know then we start all over on this hijacking thing. How he did it was so simple anyone who has 10 dollars could do it. Yes, he mentioned it, he bragged about it. But he’s dead now, and I’m not telling you or anyone.”

8
    T HAT SEEMED TO BE that, and York came over to give her a pat on the cheek. Edgren asked if I had anything to add to what I’d said that morning. Then he turned to Mom who said: “I got plenty to add, to officers who I try to give some help and they treat me like a thief. But outside of that, nothing. Not at all.” Mantle cut in to say that she hadn’t been treated like a thief or any other particular way, and she said: “It’s what I’m talking about—and especially, nobody’s thanked me for the help I’ve tried to give.”
    â€œThanks a lot,” Edgren said.
    But Knight cut it off by motioning the officers over for a huddle. That’s when Bledsoe knelt in front of Jill, beckoned to Mom, and whispered to the three of us, but with York still standing behind Jill. “I think,” he whispered, “the officers want all three of you held. That time lag after the shooting still sticks in Mantle’s mind, and that, coupled with Mrs. Howell’s acknowledged interest in the money, must set up the possibility in his mind that Dave Howell plugged him for the money while his mother and Miss Kreeger cooperated. I think that’s what they’re whispering