THERE WAS NOTHING IN the big room but moonlight. The bare walls, the high unpainted ceiling, the dusty floor all glowed a pale white.
Danny walked across the room, her feet stirring up chalky dust, and stopped near the large curving bay window. “Nostalgia,” she said, looking out at the gabled roofs of the other mock Victorian houses. “What a lot of crap.”
Easy stopped in the center of the room. “Who was buried at the ranch?”
The girl twisted a strand of her auburn hair around her forefinger. “What ranch?”
“Thorpe Ranch,” he said. “Who was in the hole?”
“Some amusement park this is,” Danny said, her back to him. “Not a drop to drink in the whole frigging place.”
“It was Bill Goffman, wasn’t it? He never ran anywhere.”
“What difference does it really make? So he got a small headstart on the rest of us.”
“It matters because somebody gave him that headstart, because somebody probably cut his throat.”
Slowly Danny turned around. “I didn’t have anything to do with it. Not anything directly to do with it.”
“Bill knew Gary’s father had buried the dough there at the ranch.”
The moonlight turned her a harsh blue-white. “Yeah, Bill knew,” she said. “He knew and I knew. Bill worked there, you know, and we stayed there at night sometimes. We’d buy a half-gallon of the cheapest red wine you could get and then we’d make love. Sometimes in the back of the livery stable, sometimes in the jail and, once, on top of the bar in the Yellow Dog Saloon. Kid stuff.”
“And one of those nights Marquetti went out there to hide his money,” said Easy.
“That’s right, Easy. He didn’t see us but we saw him. Old Marquetti went up to boot hill and then he climbed up into the woods, all the time carrying this cardboard carton,” said Danny.
“Bill followed him, saw where he buried the stuff?”
She looked out into the night again, touching the glass with her fingertips. “Not then, but the next day Bill went up and found the place in the woods where the old man had buried something. But we were afraid at first, didn’t want to poke around too much.”
“After they put Marquetti in prison,” said Easy, “then you could do something.”
“Yeah, Bill figured out what must be buried there. The papers were full of it there for awhile, a couple million dollars that had sort of vanished.” She took her fingers away from the glass, pressed her hands against herself just below her breasts. “Bill told me about what he’d guessed. By that time of course Bill wasn’t working there anymore. So we made a plan … we planned to go there to the Thorpe Ranch late at night and dig up the money.”
“But you told someone else.”
Danny said, “Yes, but I didn’t expect …”
“You told Bill’s father, Jacob Goffman.” Her head nodded up and down once. “Yes, I was … I was seeing him at the same time. Bill didn’t know anything about that. I mentioned it to Jake. I really didn’t have any idea he’d …”
“Cut himself in.”
The girl lowered herself to the dusty floor. Sat with her slim back pressed hard against the wall. “When Bill and I went there that night … that night Jake was there. He was waiting in the woods,” she said. “After Bill and I had done all the digging … that’s like Jake, let somebody else do the dirty part … after we did the digging and found the money …”
She stopped talking, ran a hand back and forth across her stomach. “You should have seen that money, Easy. Jesus, there was so much of it … wads of cash. Big thick rolls of bills, wound with fat rubber bands. All of it stuffed in mason jars. You know, the kind of jars your grandmother used to put up pickles in … there was over a million in cash in those silly god damn jars.”
“Then Jake killed his son.”
“He … he came out of the woods from behind Bill … I don’t … I don’t think Bill ever knew who it was,” she said in a low faraway voice. “He … he cut him … cut his throat. Then he dumped him in the hole where the money’d been.”
“While you watched.”
“What the hell did you expect me to do?” She pushed herself up, stood facing him. “Your god damn right I watched. Shit, I even helped him shovel in some of the dirt. You think I was going to run for the cops? Jake could just as easily have killed me, too. That was a big hole.”
“And if you’d made it to the cops you wouldn’t have got to keep any of the money.”
“Yeah, right, Easy. I wasn’t going to say goodbye to a million bucks,” said the girl. “How many people live long enough to make that kind of money?”
“So you said goodbye to Bill and married his father,” said Easy.
“Jake used the money, very carefully, to start his toy business,” said Danny. “He’s worth three million now.”
Easy didn’t say anything.
Danny took a step toward him. “Stop looking at me like I was a piece of shit you didn’t want to step on. I don’t really care what you think of me.”
“What do you think of you?”
“Thank you, R. D. Laing.”
Easy said, “Sandy Feller contacted Jake Goffman last night, didn’t he?”
“I don’t know.”
“That has to be why Feller’s dead,” Easy told her. “Why they found him down by the ocean this morning with his throat cut.”
“You mean … Jake did it?”
“Feller hung around with all you people,” said Easy. “From the time you were all kids. When Gary told him the message his father left Feller put it together faster than we did. He went out to the Thorpe Ranch last night.”
“Too late to find any money.”
“But he found a skeleton in that hole. Bill Goffman’s skull and bones,” continued Easy. “Again Feller put things together, because he knew all of you. He knew about your husband’s sudden rise a few years ago. A sudden rise that coincided with the disappearance of Bill Goffman. Feller wanted to make money and he figured that, even though he was too late for Marquetti’s dough, he had something pretty valuable to sell. He figured your husband wouldn’t want that skeleton found. He called your husband and offered to sell him his son back.”
“Oh, Jesus,” said the girl. “Please, Easy, I don’t want to hear any more.”
“We haven’t even gotten to why Feller’s wife was killed, too,” said Easy.
“Just stop it,” said Danny. She came up to him, took hold of his arm. “Please, just get me away from here. Now.”
“Where’s Jake Goffman now?”
“He told everybody he was going up to SF for a Few days,” she said, still holding tight to his arm.
“But he’s really holed up at the Goftoy plant down in Hawthorne. He’s got a suite of apartments there up above the Research & Design building. Ennis called him there twice since we’ve been here.”
“I’ll go see him.”
“He’s got guards at night.”
“He had guards here,” said Easy.