Chill Factor by Chris Rogers Read Free Book Online Page B

occurred in Richmond this morning engaged police from four jurisdictions in a twenty-two-mile pursuit that ended in Houston. The suspect was pronounced dead after police returned gunfire. The stolen money has not been recovered.”
    “Branch that size wouldn’t have but sixty, seventy thousand on hand,” Carl commented. He fancied himself another Rukeyser when it came to money. “Not enough cash to go to jail for, let alone get yourself killed. Common crook, maybe, needing his heroin ix, might risk it. A woman
might
, I suppose, if she’d let the taxes run up on her property and expected to be put on the street. What I’m saying, a
desperate
woman. You were there, Dixie. Did Edna look desperate? And what happened to the dough?”
    Having been on the scene, Dixie was naturally expected to know such things.
    “I saw her carry the bags out. I guess she got rid of them somewhere.”
    “When?” Carl pointed to the television. “Said they caught sight of her a mile from the bank, stayed behind her all the way into Houston. Richmond’s not a big town. If she stopped off, someone would’ve noticed.”
    “Would they? People drive around locked in air-conditioned vehicles behind tinted windows.”
    “Amy, didn’t the woman live right in the neighborhood all those years? I’m saying people
knew
her, knew her car. In small towns, people still howdy their neighbors.”
    A phantom of guilt edged into Dixie’s thoughts as she recalled the night Barney and Kathleen brought her home from a halfway house. Edna, Bill, and Marty had immediately bustled over to meet Dixie. Fresh from a sexually abusive environment,Dixie’d found love and healing among the Flannigans and the Pines. Now that she’d moved back into the Flannigan farmhouse, Dixie once again lived next door to Edna, yet she’d howdied her neighbor no more than a half-dozen times in the past two years.
A woman you loved like an aunt… and that’s all you could manage?
    “Carl, these days most Richmond residents are busy driving to and from Houston,” she muttered. Besides, what did he know? Semiretired, her brother-in-law spent most of his time on the golf course or at home playing the stock market on his personal computer.
    “The dough from that second robbery in Webster,” Carl persisted. “They haven’t found that, either. And that Ames woman
worked
at Texas Citizens. She and Edna must’ve been in cahoots.”
    Dixie couldn’t disagree with his reasoning. If both women managed to dump the money bags before police caught up with them minutes later, it must’ve been part of the plan all along.
    “I’d wager the cops are swarming all over Edna’s house right now,” Carl continued. “Searching for the loot.”
    “They wouldn’t!” Amy looked horrified. “Tramp through her home?” She swept a frantic gaze around her own den, as if expecting to see storm troopers crashing through.
    “If they’d found any money at the Ames house,” Dixie mused, “we’d have heard about the recovery. Which means there must be at least one other person in the—”
    “Don’t say it!” Amy slapped Dixie’s thigh.
    “Ow! Say what?”
    “That awful name the newspeople are using.”
    “Granny Bandit Gang.” Carl chuckled.
    Amy batted his arm. “It’s not funny!”
    “You thought it was funny yesterday, couple of aging female gunslingers making off with a bundle. What I’m saying, it’s like that
Apple Dumpling Gang
, only women.”
    “No, it isn’t,” Amy insisted. “Women have better sense than men.”
    Her husband cocked his head down to peer at her throughthe tops of his trifocals. “The hell they do. What’re we talking about here if not
females
robbing
banks?”
    “Well, then—they must have good reason!”
    What
reason? Carl’s property-taxes scenario made as much sense as anything.
    “Bill Pine had insurance, didn’t he, Carl? And I don’t recall Aunt Edna being a big spender. Why would she need to rob a bank?”
    “Here’s what I’m