The Burglar on the Prowl - By Lawrence Block Page 0,82
and by the time everybody was present and accounted for, the honeymoon fund came to almost nine thousand dollars.”
“That’s impressive.”
“Most people gave me checks,” she said, “but more people than I would have guessed gave me cash, and the cash amounted to over twelve hundred. I put the checks in the bank, and I don’t know why I didn’t do the same with the cash, but there’s something about cash, do you know what I mean?”
“Definitely.”
“It’s like having a secret, or a concealed weapon, or something. It fit neatly into this brown envelope, and I tucked it away in the freezer, and I liked having it there.”
“It beats Pop Tarts.”
“And it’s less of a temptation in the middle of the night than a pint of Häagen-Dazs. I suppose I would have put it in the bank eventually, but for the time being I figured it was fine where it was. And I sort of forgot about it. When I first started checking things to see what was missing, when I checked my wallet and counted the cash in it, I didn’t even think of the money in the freezer. Maybe that’s a sign all by itself that there was something wrong with me.”
“Doesn’t sound alarming to me. It slipped your mind, that’s all.”
“Or maybe it was my mind that was doing the slipping. Anyway, yesterday after I checked my jewelry drawer I thought about the wedding. The way we worked it, I was supposed to write one big check to cover everybody’s contribution, and I’d done that, and mailed it in plenty of time so that they’d have it in the bank before the wedding and honeymoon. But getting packed for the wedding made me think about the check, and that made me think of the cash, and I got this sinking feeling in my stomach and went to the freezer.”
“I guess it wasn’t there, or you wouldn’t be telling me about it.”
“I took everything out of the freezer, including a beef brisket I never get around to cooking, and it’s probably like frozen mastodon meat, it’s been in there so long. I really searched, because I so much wanted the money to be there. I mean, I was probably ready for a new electric shaver anyway, and when am I ever going to wear a class ring from Bennett High? But twelve hundred dollars is a lot of money.”
“Sure it is.”
“And I felt really stupid for keeping it there in the first place. I’d put the checks in the bank right away, and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to do the same with the cash. But no, I had to hang on to it. Cold cash, frozen assets—God, I was so damn stupid.”
“Cut it out,” I said. “You know what you’re doing? You’re blaming the victim. You didn’t do anything wrong. Some unprincipled son of a bitch”—Bernie by name, I thought—“stole something from you, and you think it’s your fault. It’s not. It’s his.”
“If the money hadn’t been there—”
“But it was, and it had every right to be, and he had no right to take it. If you’d left it in plain sight on the kitchen table you could blame yourself, maybe, but you didn’t. You put it in the freezer where he had no business looking, and he poked around and found it and took it. Barbara, it’s really not your fault, and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re losing your grip on reality.”
“I know,” she said, and swallowed. “There’s more.”
“Oh?”
“When I got home this afternoon,” she said, “I opened the freezer. Don’t ask me why.”
“Okay.”
“No, I know why. I had the harebrained thought that maybe it would be there this time. So I opened the freezer.”
“And?”
“And there it was.”
Right where I’d left it the previous afternoon, while she was out on Long Island. “You’re kidding,” I said. “So it had been there all along, huh?”
“Bernie, I swear I took everything out of the freezer. Everything.”
“Even the mastodon meat.”
“Everything. I stood there looking into this completely empty compartment, and it even crossed my mind that it would be a good time to defrost it, but instead I put everything back. That money wasn’t there, Bernie.”
“Okay.”
“Do you believe me?”
“Sure.”
“And it’s there now. Do you want to see it?”
“No, why would I want to see it?”
“So you’ll know I’m not crazy. Except you’ll know the opposite, that I am crazy. Here, I want to show you. See? Do you want to count it?”