Chapter 12

### Melody and the money

Gran came jumping and skipping steps down the staircase from the upper bedrooms, yelling like the house was on fire:

“Buck! Reese! She called! She called! She’s in Montana and she’s alone and she needs help! BUCK!” she yelled from the stair landing on the main floor. She ran into the center of the room, looking up and down the side hallways. Seeing no one and hearing no response, she ran to the front door, flung it open and yelled at the top of her voice:

“Buck, damn you, answer me!” she screamed across the yard towards his cabin. In a moment she saw his door open and he stepped onto the porch, looking in her direction.

“Buck,” she yelled again. “It’s Melody! She called. She needs help!” she shouted. Buck came running at a dog-trot, looking confused.

“My God, woman, what’s the emergency? She called? She’s in trouble? How bad...? Where...?” he panted, catching his breath. “Slow down, woman and lets go sit down and you start from the beginning, nice and easy. Calm down and we’ll sort it out.”

He led her inside the lodge and sat her down, noticing she was hardly able to sit still, her nervous hands clutched together, a half-frightened expression clouding her face. Her voice broke with half-formed words of distress.

Buck poured coffee, set it down, and took both her hands in his to prevent her from twisting her fingers in knots. He’d not seen her so upset since Reese had brought her and the girls into his life.

“Okay. She called. Is she okay?” he asked.

“Yes, she’s okay. She’s in Missoula in a motel.”

“And what did she say?”

“She called the RV park in Nevada. She didn’t know I’d left. She called and we weren’t there, so it took her a lot of arguing and begging but the owner told her that I’d come up here with Reese. She was able to get our number here at the Yankee Girl.”

“Good. So what does she want? What does she need? You said she needed help?”

“Yes. She’s alone. Oh, God! Buck, she said they caught Shoo and she just barely escaped. She’s been riding the buses since then, only stopping once. Now she’s in Missoula and ... Buck, she wants to come here!”

“Okay. So does she know if they’re on to her?” No sooner were the words out of his mouth then Buck realized it was a stupid question. Of course if they were ‘on to her’ she’d be caught and probably dead. He apologized immediately.

“Of course they’re not,” he said. “I think its fine if she comes here. We can go get her. Would she be willing to catch the bus again and meet us in Pocatello? We can meet her there. Why don’t you call her back, and have her do that. We’ll confirm the schedule, and be at the bus station when her bus arrives.”

The Greyhound interstate bus pulled into the station, nosing through clouds of late-night flying insects swarming around the overhead lights. Scattered trash, a few discarded shopping carts laying on their sides at the edge of the broken pavement, and scattered glass from busted bottles appeared briefly as the bus’s headlights swung around making its turn to stop beside the terminal doors. A faint stench of urine and unwashed bodies lingered around the old-town building.

God, what a run-down shithole, Buck mumbled under his breath. This was a proud place when I was a kid, coming over here to catch the Salt Lake City bus.

Gran spotted Melody as soon as the bus door swung open. She was first to jump off, holding a small travel pack. Melody ran to Gran and they clung to each other, sobbing in relief to be together again. Buck stood close by looking around for any strangers acting strangely. He was damned nervous, still not certain that she wasn’t being followed.

As soon as the two let go of each other, Buck hurried them to the waiting Suburban that Reese insisted they drive.

“I’m betting you’re hungry, tired, and need some coffee and a chance to sit and catch up,” he said while pulling out into the downtown traffic. “I know a good all-nite diner nearby. They serve a pretty fair 24-hour breakfast and the coffee’s not bad. We’ll go there.”

Surprisingly hungry after their long road trip, they’d eaten their fill of the breakfast and leaning back, sated, sipped on refills of coffee. Melody, beginning to act nervous again, twisted and spun her half-empty cup, glancing between Gran and Buck as if she had something important to say but was half-afraid to speak.

Buck ended the mystery. “Speak up, girl. We’re alone down at this end, nobody to hear us if you speak quietly. What’s eatin’ you?”

“It’s the ... what Shoo stole ... I mean, most of it ... I sent it and it was the right address but nobody was there, and it’s just sitting waiting, and he doesn’t know what’s in it or where to send it. I’m not sure what to do about it.”

“Slow down, honey,” Gran interrupted. “Calm down. What did you send? Did you send it to the RV park, and it’s waiting there? Is that what you’re saying?”

After many minutes of nervous fits and starts Buck and Gran were able to get the story. Melody had fled the hotel room with the gym bag of money when Shoo was being taken down. She’d shipped it to the only address she had: the RV park in eastern Nevada.

“So I can’t decide,” a much calmer Melody said. “If I should call and have the box sent to your place, or if we should go get it.”

Buck thought it over. He was concerned that arriving at the RV park might trigger an alert to the pursuers, but he quickly thought better of it. Hell, they already know where we’re at. Those idiots trying to crash the gate, somebody sent them!

“How about this: we drive down. We head over to Twin Falls and go south from there. Just in case somebody’s got an eye out for this Suburban — after all, that’s the rig Reese had down there, and used to haul you folks and the trailer out of there — we’ll park this rig in Twin Falls and rent a car. We’ll go down, you can identify the package, and we’ll leave. I figure a day over and down and back up again, if we leave in the morning. We’ll overnight in Twin and then half a day up to the Yankee Girl. Simple! You gals up for the trip?”

And that’s what they did.

Once back at the Yankee Girl, Gran and Diane kept the kids busy at their desks while Buck and Reese shut themselves away in Reese’s office and opened the box. Reese pulled the dirty gym bag out, unzipped it, and began stacking banded packets of bills on his desk.

“I count 26 packs. Melody said there were 30 of them. They used part of one while running. She had some of it in her purse; he had the rest when they caught him. She sewed two in Bug’s ‘Tiggr’ and we’ve got those. And she opened another pack and was using that while she came across country. All told, we’ve got most of the $300,000 here,” he mumbled.

“Yeah. Notice something funny?” Buck asked. He pointed to the shipping label on the carton. “There’s no insurance sticker! She sent it uninsured,” he laughed.

“Well, yeah!” Reese slapped him on the shoulder. “What did you expect her to do? Stand at the shipping counter and say, ‘Excuse me, mister. I’d like to insure this bag of cash for $260,000?’”

Reese spun the hulking floor safe open, a relic of many years service in the mining district. He found it at an auction and bought it. It took three men to load it and himself, Buck, and a helper to unload it and wheel it into his office. He cleared room on the upper shelf, stacked the 26 bundles of cash and pushed the heavy door closed. He spun the big brass locking cylinder and stood running nervous fingers through his hair.

“Buck, what are we ever going to do with all that dirty cash? We can’t legally keep it, we can’t spend it, and we sure as hell don’t dare turn it in! And the last time I brought it up with Clarence Reeder he threatened to shoot both of us just so he could stay out of jail! He’s so damned rattled about it he didn’t even see what a ridiculous thing that was to say!”

“Leave it right there, locked up,” Buck said. “Out of sight, maybe out of mind. It can’t hurt anybody locked away like that. You, me, Happy, and her daughter know we’ve got it. Let’s just leave it like that and as for what happens to it later ... well, we’ll deal with it then. Okay?”

### Domestic Affairs

The arrival of Melody led to a significant housing adjustment at Yankee Girl. Gran moved out of her room and into the spare bedroom at Buck’s cabin. Melody took Gran’s former room to be with her daughters. Everyone was delighted with the arrangement, especially Gran and Buck. It wasn’t surprising, really. The elder two had become quite close in their short time together.

Buck and Gran, Happy as she insisted he call her, were frequently off together in his pickup, fishing or visiting Buck’s friends to introduce her around, or just ‘going shopping’, sometimes over the pass to Sun Valley and fancy dining and upscale shopping.