Old Sinners Never Die by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

red eyes were visible in the distance. “That was the Key Bridge we just went over,” he said. “I was fearful he’d stop.”
    “I’m glad I didn’t know,” Mrs. Norris said.
    The car ahead, turning into a residential area, mercifully slowed down. He seemed to be trying his lights, or else there was something wrong with them.
    “That’s a signal,” Mrs. Norris said. “He’ll be meeting someone or someone will follow him from here.”
    “We’ll make a hell of a sandwich, won’t we?” Tom said. “I’m going to drop back a block, in case there’s someone waiting for him on a side street.”
    There was a park to the left, fairly nice spacious homes to the right. Tom braked Sophie. Then he stopped. Far ahead the car they were following had stopped.
    “If I can get into the park,” said Tom, climbing out of Sophie, “I might get close to him unbeknownst. You stay here, Mrs. Norris, and cover me.”
    “With what, man?”
    “Sophie’s horn if you have to. If there’s anybody crawling in behind me you think, give it a touch. But don’t bring me back if you don’t have to.”
    “I hope,” Mrs. Norris said, “you’ll be able to bring yourself back.”
    She watched him lope across the street and take the park fence with the lightfooted leap of youth. Then she took the measure of the distance between her and the next block. She decided to have a look about for herself on foot. She needed to be a bit closer in any event in order to see. She had reached the age in life where her vision was no longer match for an owl’s though once it had been.
    Quite elegant houses, really, she observed. Lots of money, and the carelessness typical of America—toys left out, expensive things … Ahead of her then, she saw that the man they were following had got out of the car and crossed quickly into the park. Mrs. Norris stood stock still as close as she could get to the trunk of a great tree near the curb. She bent her whole concentration on the sounds and movements of the night. The frogs were still at it here, curdling the silence. No other sound reached her, not even the motors of distant cars, until the running footfalls of Tom. She had not seen the other man return to his car.
    She hurried back to the car herself. “I’d swear there was nobody in the park but the two of you,” she said.
    “Now listen to me,” Tom said. “He’s in there hiding something in a tree trunk like a bloody squirrel. It might be whatever it was you saw him take out of the post. Do you know where we are?”
    “Where?”
    “I mean, have you any notion what part of town?”
    “None.”
    “We’re in Arlington, no more than a mile or two from the Key Bridge. Would it trouble you terrible to part with me, Mrs. Norris?”
    “It wouldn’t have troubled me never to have met you,” she said. “Say what you have in mind.”
    “I think one of us should stay here and see who comes for whatever it is he’s putting in the tree, and the other of us should keep him in sight. I’m sure that must’ve been a signal of some sort he gave with the car lights.”
    “And how am I expected to keep track of whoever it is that comes?”
    “You could get their licence number and see if they leave anything in its place. And if I’m alive, I promise to come back here for you.”
    And, Mrs. Norris thought though it was a bit too grim to say, if she wasn’t alive, she’d be here. “What direction is the bridge, did you say?”
    He pointed.
    “If I have to, I’ll try to get there.” She was remembering that among the expensive toys so carelessly left outdoors a few houses away was a bicycle. She hadn’t been on one in years. But there were a good many things she hadn’t done in years, that she would not admit for a moment she was past doing.
    “Where’s the tree—can you tell me exactly?”
    “I can. It’s a few feet to the right of the drinking fountain as you go in the park through the gate, and I’ll tell you how you’ll know it.