Nada (6)

…too connected to either of us.”

“That’s way to Law and Order for me,” Ransom said, tossing the drug bag into the fire pit after gazing longingly into its empty depths.

“But if we were seen and the cops search our houses or work we’ll be SOL.”

“We were SOL when we crossed the road with our cell phones still in our pockets,” Ransom pointed out, “and by experience, when you hide something in a place that is not connected to you, sometimes that something is found by somebody else and you lose your something to the other somebody and they won’t even give up a little of the something.”

“Huh?”

“If we stash the money under a rock on somebody’s farm, the farmer’s daughter might find the money, and even though we would have the start of a bad joke, we would be out…how much was there again? Oh, that’s right, you didn’t want to count it.”

“Linda could come up the drive at any minute,” Joe pointed out.

“And when we finally count it, how will you explain it to Linda?”

“The same way you explain your stripper money to Jane.”

“You mean my ‘used to be stripper money’; I use it for gas more often than not these days,” Ransom corrected Joe. “But back to where to stash it. I say we quick mix a batch of mud, wrap the Pokémon bag in a couple of trash bags, and stick it in the wall we’re building out back.”

“How would we get to it?” Joe asked.

“We’re smart feller’s,” Ransom pointed out, “we’ll figure it out as we build. It wouldn’t be the first time we worked on the wall after a ride and it would explain why we finished early…other than a very slight concern for my continued use of the Earths oxygen for something other than decomposition.”

Joe tossed the other black gym bag on the fire, added another two logs from the pile, and grabbed the Hello Kitty bag.

“I’ll stash this in the rock pile over there,” he said, pointing to one of the piles he and Ransom had collected over the past few years in anticipation of building a large retaining wall, “the disturbed stones won’t draw attention if we are working on the wall.”

“And I’ll go spin a batch. Is there water in the barrel?”

“Yeah, but I wrapped up the cord, you’ll have to drag it back down to the front door.”

Ransom grabbed the bag full of money and started up the hill. The parkland to his left was quiet and as the warm smell of burning poplar followed him up the hill he thought: this might not be so stupid after all.

“While you’re in the house grabbing the trash bags can you get me a water please?” he called to Joe, “and bring the speakers and your iPod, we have a couple of hours of light left, might as well use it all.”

“Okay,” Joe replied.

When he got to the work in progress, Unfinished Wall he liked to call it, much to the dismay of Linda, he set the Pokémon bag down next to the mixer and grabbed the extension cord. After he took a couple of steps, he realized how silly the bag looked; very out of place. He stopped and pondered the situation. After dismissing several ideas, he settled on covering the bag-full-o-money with one of the half mortar bags that had not yet been loaded on his truck for disposal. He moved the Pokémon bag to a spot next to the pallet of ‘Nancy’, grabbed a couple of empties, and after slipping one over the riches, spread the rest out over and around. He then pulled the tarp off of the full bags and let it fall, seemingly randomly, over the pile of ‘trash’.