The police may check the place once a night when nobody’s home, but you don’t have to tear off a door and leave it lying on the lawn for them, just to get in. The drapes and curtains will all be drawn. There’ll be food in the kitchen. You could set up housekeeping. How about it?”

“It sounds safe enough, for the price,” I said. I got up and walked across the room. “But I still don’t see it. All that stuff about her leaving there in the car doesn’t prove anything. Hell, maybe she was in it with him, and was just covering for him by ditching the car while he got out of town some other way.”

She shook her head. “No. I tell you he’s dead. And she killed him. That money’s still there.”

“I can’t see why you’re so sure,” I said.

“Then you don’t believe I’m right?” she said. “You don’t want to tackle it?”

I thought about the money. A hundred and twenty thousand. You couldn’t get hold of it all at once. It was too big. It had to grow on you.

I let it grow.

But, hell. She was crazy. In that whole story of hers there wasn’t one shred of evidence that Butler hadn’t got away with it. A lot of good guesses, maybe, but no concrete evidence. And if you were going to take a chance and start breaking laws like that, you had to have something more definite than a guess to lead you on. I

couldn’t see it.

“Well?” she asked. “How about it?”

“The whole thing’s a pipe dream,” I said.

“You’re passing up a fortune.”

I shrugged. “I doubt it.”

I tried another pass but she wasn’t having any, so I said, “See you around,” and shoved off.