Breathless
side.
Nevertheless, Merlin abruptly galloped up the stairs two at a time. He disappeared into the second-floor hallway before his master had climbed three steps behind him.
In the upper hall, Grady switched on the ceiling light. Past a half-open door, he found the dog standing in shadows in the master bedroom. The wolfhound was at a window that faced onto the roof of the front porch, alert to something beyond the glass.
Grady left the lamps unlit. With its secondhand light, the moon painted the peeling white bark of the spreading birch that overhung the house, and silvered the autumn leaves that would be sovereign-gold in sunshine.
As Grady moved toward Merlin, before he could lean close to the window, a tom-tom and pitter-patter quickened across the porch roof. Several racing feet, by the sound of them.
Although Merlin was tall enough to see out of the lower panes, he put his forepaws on the windowsill and rose to a better view.
By the time Grady insisted on a place beside the window-hogging wolfhound and put his forehead to the cool glass, the noise stopped. Whatever once prowled the porch roof had now gone vertical.
In the windless night, the lower branches of the lacy birch first tossed but then merely trembled as the principal agitation shifted to higher realms. As something ascended, the tree opened its autumn purse and paid out a wealth of leaves.
Grady disengaged the window lock, but before he could raise the lower sash, the climbers sprang from tree to house roof: one thud, immediately another. Judging by their footfalls, they seemed to be exploring this way and that, up the slate slope toward the ridgeline.
Paws still on the windowsill, Merlin tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling.
“Maybe raccoons,” Grady said.
Snorting dismissively, the wolfhound dropped from the window, turned toward the bedroom, and cocked his head to listen.
The master-bedroom fireplace stood directly above the fireplace in the living room. A metallic rattle and creak echoed down the shared flue, drawing Merlin to the hearth.
Something on the roof was testing the copper spark-arresting hood atop the chimney. Having installed it himself, Grady knew that it couldn’t be easily removed.
Because no fire currently burned, the damper was engaged between the smoke chamber and the firebox. If something got into the flue, it could not penetrate the steel-plate damper and enter the bedroom.
Abandoning the chimney hood, the roof-travelers scurried down the west slope.
As the noises faded toward the back of the house, Merlin hurried out of the bedroom. Grady reached the top of the stairs just as the wolfhound arrived at the bottom.
Descending, he wondered if he had locked the back door after they had come in from the dog’s late-afternoon exercise. Then he wondered why he was apprehensive.
He could not deny that something less than fear but more than mere disquiet gripped him as he sought Merlin through the first floor and found him in the kitchen. The dog stood at the door. He wanted to go outside.
Grady hesitated.
Nine
T he potatoes were stored in a walk-in room within the windowless cellar, behind a stout oak door with iron hardware, as if they were a treasure worth guarding.
Deep shelves lined the smaller room. On the shelves were many well-ventilated baskets that each contained three layers of spuds.
The highest shelves held only a few baskets. Standing on a step stool, Henry Rouvroy put the two suitcases full of currency on a top shelf, flat on their sides and against the wall.
After climbing off the stool, he could not see the precious luggage overhead. He returned to the kitchen. In a day or two, he would find another and better hiding place for the money.
Because he didn’t care for potatoes, he would throw away that starch stash and rip out the shelves. Properly refitted, the potato cellar would be an excellent place to keep a woman when eventually he got one.
In Jim and Nora’s bedroom, he selected underwear, socks, jeans,a flannel shirt, and work boots from Jim’s limited wardrobe. Although Henry was less work-toned than his twin brother, everything fit him.
The shirt was from Walmart, not from L.L. Bean. The jeans were cut for working and for horseback-riding, not for Sunday in the park. The boots had no style whatsoever. The disguise was perfect, but for a moment he felt displaced, cast down from his rightful position.
Leaving his shoulder rig and pistol on the bed with a spare magazine of
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