Lee knew his apprehensions were scaling beyond usefulness, so he tried to refocus on the situation at hand. He and Cy needed to deal with the bodies and come to terms with each other. He loped down to the canoe and grabbed the toolbox; water trickled from the crack between the lid and the base. He carried it back to the kitchen where Cy was waiting in a chair beside the table. An old sheet covered the dead men’s faces and chests.
Cy gestured for Lee to put the toolbox on the table. “I think we need to examine the evidence,” he said, “so we can figure out what happened.” He rose from his chair and knelt alongside Kevin’s body, prepared to search for the toolbox key. Lee pulled the key-ring from his own pocket and jangled the keys.
“Already got ‘em,” he said. Cy mumbled and limped back to his chair. Lee settled on the smallest key, holding it up so Cy could see it but keeping it beyond arm’s reach. In the sallow skin under Cy’s greenish eyes and the sand-colored hair streaked with gray, Lee saw little family resemblance to Katie. It might have been stronger once, he thought. Before Cy drifted into gambling and – his cousins had hinted – drugs. Lee inserted the key into the lock plate and turned it; the lock clicked and the box seemed to exhale. He opened the latches and lifted the lid.
The first thing he saw was silver coins, dripping wet and reflecting the kitchen’s indirect light. It looked like seventy or eighty dollars worth stacked in the rows of a coin rack that occupied the hanging tray. They shared the tray with six drenched sleeves of wrapped coins, silver peeking from their ragged ends. As Lee pocketed the key-ring, Cy laid the coin tray on the table and drained the box’s main compartment in the sink. Back at the table they studied its contents. A small leather-bound ledger with lists of names and numbers. Cy flipped through a few pages, but they were too water-logged and ink-stained to read at a glance. Lee showed no interest, so Cy set it next to the box. Then he placed a money clip holding sodden bills on the table. Next he pulled out a drawstring pouch that made a solid metallic sound when laid down. He dumped its contents on the table and the gleam of wet gold seemed to illuminate the room.
Cy drew a sharp breath and Lee saw that his eyes were riveted on the gold coins. Cy picked up a coin to examine it, turning it over to read both sides. “Twenty-dollar piece,” he said softly. “Mint. And there must be over twenty of ‘em.”
“Twenty-four,” Lee said after counting them with his eyes.
Cy picked up one of the silver dollars, studied its faces, and put it back in the rack. “Your cousins liked their money hard,” he said. “Looks like someone made ‘em pay for that. Though whoever drownded ‘em didn’t seem to have an appetite for money themselves.”
And that’s why I don’t think you killed my cousins, Lee told himself. Cy had done business with the Emorys before and would have known that they used the toolbox as a safe. Anyone who had picked it up and felt its weight – as the killer must have – or heard the rattle of its contents might have guessed there was something valuable inside. So while Lee could imagine Cy using the toolbox and shackles to drown his cousins, he could only see it happening after Cy had opened the box and stolen its contents. Maybe thrown in a few bricks or rocks instead. And just now, hadn’t his interest in the toolbox been obvious?
“Here’s how I see it,” Cy said, fingering one of the gold coins again. “Your cousins are bootleggers. That’s not a judgment, that’s a fact. They might of had a disagreement with a customer… maybe an ex-customer. Maybe they sold someone out and got paid back with interest. We don’t know and we’re not likely to figure it out.” He put the coin back in the pile and looked up at Lee from his chair.
“What we do know is that nobody but us and the killer knows they’re dead. Since they was on a bootlegging run, no one’s going to miss ‘em for a few more days. Maybe even a week. But sooner or later someone’s going to come looking for them. Maybe some other cousins of yours, maybe some business partners, maybe the police. When that happens, we can’t have any evidence around here that points to us. ‘Cause we got nobody else we can point to instead.”
Staring at the coins on the table, Lee said he agreed. Cy was right that members of the Emory clan would come looking. And they would probably find someone at Great Falls who had seen the scow heading upstream and someone above Swains who hadn’t. Bootlegging was a family business, so the clan would wonder what had happened to their money. Anyone flashing silver and gold coins would get looked at funny, since that was how Kevin Emory carried his profit. Lee met Cy’s gaze. “What do you reckon we should do?”
Cy seemed to be measuring Lee with his eyes. “The bodies,” he said. “Bury ‘em somewhere safe. It’s the only thing. Otherwise, we’re the easy suspects, and maybe we spend our lives in jail. If we bury ‘em, only the killer knows they’re dead. Maybe it looks like your cousins just took the money and ran off.”
Lee felt something harden inside him. Maybe it was his skin hardening and forming a new layer or shell. One that was scarred and compromised by time and events in a way it never had been before, but would be irredeemably calloused from now on. “So you must have an idea for the money as well,” he said.
“The coins are too hot to handle,” Cy said. “Whoever comes looking for your cousins will want the gold and silver, too. We got no safe place to put it. I say we put it back in the box and bury it for a while. Until things blow over.” Cy reached for the wad of soggy bills, which he pulled from the clip, unfolded, and laid on the table. “But I got no problem with the paper money. We can split that even right now.”
“How much is it?” Lee caught himself thinking that a few extra dollars would be useful. He’d lost his ride upstream to Harper’s Ferry, so now he might need to buy a train ticket. His lips cracked into a cynical grin at the thought. The new, calloused Lee was a practical man.
Cy leafed through the bills and counted. “Eighty-eight dollars. Plenty of singles.” He separated the bills into two piles and handed one of them to Lee, who stuffed them into the pocket of his wet pants. He touched Katie’s pendant in the process and felt a pang.
“What about the scow and the mules?”
“I can take care of the mules,” Cy said. “Find ‘em a nice home before I set out on Tuesday. But the boat is like an arrow that points right at us. Too big for you and me to drag it out of the canal. I think we should scuttle it.”
“Can’t scuttle it in the canal, unless you turn it into sawdust first. The canal’s too shallow.”
“Not here. Widewater. Below Six Locks and Great Falls. Parts of it are sixty feet deep.”
Lee thought about it for a second. Widewater was the old channel of the river between Bear Island and the Maryland shore that had been incorporated into the canal. “It’s deep enough. But you got more people coming and going down there.”
“We’d have to do it at night,” Cy said. “Late tonight. Pull the scow down there and chop a few holes in the hull. Maybe bring some stones on board. She’s heavy enough to go down.”
“Maybe. Can’t think of anyplace else it would work. What about the bodies?”
“I don’t like sending ‘em down with the scow. If they’re in the canal, they might pop back up. Sooner or later, they’ll get found.”
“I know a safe place we can bury ‘em…along with the money.” Lee gestured with his thumb toward the kitchen window, which looked out toward the apron between the towpath and the river. “Out there on an island,” he said. “We’ll need a canoe.”
“We got a canoe, but it leaks. Can’t hold four men.”
“A second canoe.”
“Jess Swain got a whole rack of canoes, but they’re locked up.”
“I can bring one down from Pennyfield,” Lee said. “Might take me a couple of hours to get up and back.” He thought for a second. “Unless you seen a stray bicycle lying around.”