"We'll work on that part. Maybe World Wide has business in Milford, Pennsylvania. That's on the Delaware river-on the Jersey border."
"Keep going. We don't know, but for the sake of discussion, let's say it's the night the money turned up missing. Then what?"
Fred thought a minute. "Milford's 50 or 60 miles from Scranton. Before you get there, what do you have to do?"
"Fred, you ought to write your mystery books, not just read them."
The old man was undeterred. "Seriously, what do you have to do? I'll tell you-you have to pee! You just had a pitcher of beer or two, right?"
"Remember, Mrs. Byrne said Jeffrey wasn't much of a drinker."
Fred brushed that aside and continued. "But it's late at night and there's nothing along the Interstate. Then there's a sign for a rest area so you start to pull in but it's closed. You're ticked off; your bladder's full, so you drive in anyway."
"If you followed the car making the drop, someone would have shot you."
"Maybe you were in front of it! Maybe you're modest or scared you'll get caught so you pull way up out of sight and while you're doing your business, this other car comes in, leaves a couple of suitcases and drives away!"
Dean held up Mrs. Lincoln and looked her in the eye. "Doesn't Mr. O'Connor have a marvelous imagination, pussy cat?"
Fred was on a roll as Dean knew he'd be. "On the spur of the moment you pick up the suitcases, put them in your trunk, and drive off. Do you open them first?" He answered his own question. "No-you just want to get out of there. Then you start to get worried. You know whatever's in there, it don't belong to you."
"If you're an honest, law-abiding guy, like everyone says Jeffrey Byrne was or is, why don't you just turn it in to the closest police station? There's a State Police Barracks somewhere along that Interstate." Fred thought a minute, but Dean answered his own question. "You've had a snoot full of beer and you're driving. The last thing you want to do is walk into a police station with a couple of suitcases of what's most likely stolen money."
"That's what I was gonna say," Fred muttered. "When you see what you've got, you're in a tizzy. There's no one you can tell. You don't know what to do so you take the next day off when you're sober, find some quiet motel and try and figure out what you've got or what to do with the stuff."
"That doesn't take all day, does it?"