Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1999

She pressed a palm against his chest. “Wait now,” she told him, frowning. “Except for slightly fudging the facts about how much I knew, everything I’ve told you this time around has been the truth.”

“Okay, so what’d you do?”

Casey sighed. “Well, I thought that since poor Dick Barnson was dead and gone, his attorneys and heirs and hangers-on would probably be descending on his mansion any minute,” she explained. “So I knew I’d better sneak over there quick and gather up the rest of my belongings that I had to abandon when I moved out in such a hurry.”

“That was stupid,” he agreed.

“True, but the point is...” She gave an annoyed shrug of her shoulders. “I walked in on those same two creeps who tried to chop me up the other night.”

“Jesus, Casey, did they—”

“They didn’t even see me,” she assured him with a very dim smile of triumph. “But I sure as heck saw them. They were ransacking Dick’s den. The big bald one was going over all his papers and files, and the other one was checking through his computer records.”

“Looking for what?”

“This.” From her hip pocket she took a floppy disk and held it up. “It’s the part of his memoirs where he gives the specifics about exactly where Neva’s buried. We even scanned in a little map he drew of the spot.”

“You snuck that out of there today?”

“No, I took it about a week ago and hid it away,” she said. “See, I had a feeling that something—”

“You had a feeling you were going up there and do some grave robbing.”

She gave an angry shake of her head.

“That wasn’t my motive at all,” she said. “I’ve told you that the McLeods have a long tradition in our native Ireland of being gifted with the second sight, don’t you know. I’d been up to having meself a premonition that—”

“You forget that you’ve also told me that McLeod is a name you took when you decided to become an actress,” he reminded her. “What the authentic McLeods over on the Old Sod can accomplish when it comes to seeing the future doesn’t have much to do with—”

“Listen, the point you have to grasp is that these jerks were at Dick Barnson’s mansion today, Wes.” She looked him straight in the eye. “You see what that must mean?”

“They still don’t know where she’s buried,” he answered. “Meaning he died before he told them enough.”

“That’s it exactly,” she said, nodding. “It’s all terribly clear what we have to do next.”

“Hide in the closet?”

“Oh, I only ducked in there when I heard you come stomping up the porch like a flock of elephants,” Casey said.

“All right, what scheme have you come up with now?”

“This isn’t a scheme, it’s a strategy to save both our lives.”

“Our lives — how’d I get on this hit list?”

She made an impatient noise. “When they come up empty at Dick’s place, they’re sure as hell going to come hunting for me again,” she said. “Alan Omony is their boss, and he knows that I know a lot about this whole business.”

She took a step forward to tap Wes on his chest. “Alan is a very persistent man. In fact, persevere is number seven on his list of thirteen steps to wealth and happiness. Or maybe it’s number eight. Anyway, the guy isn’t going to give up short of tracking me down and torturing the truth out of me.” She gave Wes a brief, pitying look. “Naturally, my dearest friend in the world is also likely to get hurt.”

He backed away from her. “I hope I’m wrong about this,” he said, “but I suspect you want to beat them to the treasure. Go up to Tahoe, find the body of this film noir actress?”

“Now you’re acting less like a dummy,” she said encouragingly. “That’s just exactly what we have to do, Wes. We get hold of that locket and the map inside, then we go right straight to the jewels. Once this is all out in the open, Omony’s minions will have no reason to keep chasing us.”

“We could put all this out in the open right now,” he suggested. “Tell what you know and let the police and the insurance companies do the digging and the hunting.”

She shook her head. “We really must have something to show everybody,” she told him. “Otherwise, they’re only going to say that this is another of my nitwit publicity stunts to promote my career. It’s unfair, but there it is, Wes.”

“You’re still figuring to make some money out of this whole mess, aren’t you?”

She held up her hand in a swearing-on-the-Bible gesture. “Absolutely not. I simply want to save our lives,” she insisted. “Granted that one of my essential beliefs used to be, before I mended my ways, that slogan they always put on the front of the sweepstakes envelopes — you may already be a winner. But no more, Wes, honestly.”

“Going up there will be damned dangerous.”

“That’s why I knew you wouldn’t want me to do it all alone,” she said, taking him by the arm.

Heavy rain slammed at the bedroom window, a harsh wind started rattling the panes violently.

Wes sat suddenly up, awake. The bedside clock showed that it was six twenty-five A.M.

“Casey?” he said, noticing that she wasn’t beside him. “Case?”