Shirley Murphy - Cat in the Dark

"Charlie told me that. Rubber gloves or sometimes a soft leather pair."

Clyde nodded. "She takes them off several times a day, to put on some kind of prescription hand cream."

He looked intently at Harper. "Sounds like this will nail Hoke-but what about Mavity? It won't help us find Mavity." They were speaking softly. At three in the morning, the restaurant was nearly empty. Down at the far end of the counter two men in jeans and plaid shirts sat eating, intent on their fried eggs. In a booth near the door, an elderly couple was drinking coffee, each reading a section of a newspaper. At the counter near them, a striking blond was nibbling at a sandwich and sipping orange juice. As Harper signaled for a refill of coffee, his cellular phone buzzed. Picking it up, he started to speak, then went silent.

Watching him, Clyde thought the call was being transferred. The blond got up from the counter, wrapped her unfinished sandwich in a paper napkin, paid her check and left. Clyde watched through the window as she swung into a Chrysler van with the windows open and a huge white dog hanging his head out, watched her feeding the dog little bites of the sandwich. Across from him, Harper had stiffened.

Harper felt his blood go chill. The voice on the line was female, a smooth voice, a velvety, insinuating voice that made the hackles on his neck rise. He could never get used to hearing this woman. He didn't know her name, had never seen her, didn't know anything about her, but every time she called, the nerves in his stomach began to twitch.

"Captain Harper? Are you still there?"

He said nothing.

"Captain Harper, you have just sealed the scene of a murder up on Venta Street."

"Have I?"

"Your men didn't touch the computer. You left it on, and you have a Bureau man coming down early in the morning to check it out."

Harper remained silent. The pie in his stomach had turned sour. No one could know about the Bureau man except his own people and Charlie Getz. He tried to figure who, in his own department, would breach security, would pass along such information. The officers at the scene had been Brennan, Wendell, Ray, and Case. The two medics had left before he called the Bureau.

The caller was waiting for him to respond. He motioned for Clyde to listen. Clyde came around the table and sat down, shoving against Harper, jamming his ear to the phone.

"Captain Harper, there are two code words for the computer that your Bureau man will want. Jergen's code, to open his financial files, is Cairo.

"The second code word was used by Pearl Ann Jamison. It should open a set of files that Pearl Ann seems to have hidden from Jergen, on his own computer. That word is Tiger. I believe those are both Georgia towns; I looked them up on the map.

"In looking for suspects," the caller said softly, "you need to be looking for a man. Pearl Ann and he are…"

She gasped, Max heard a faint yelp of alarm and the line went dead.

Harper sat frozen, staring at the phone. Clyde exploded out of the booth like he was shot, threw a five-dollar bill on the table and fled out the door.

"Hold it," Harper shouted. "What the hell?" He stared after Clyde perplexed, watched the yellow roadster scorch out of the parking lot moving like a racing car and disappear down the hill toward the village.

He wanted to go after Clyde. Instead, he sat thinking about that soft voice.

You need to be looking for a man, Pearl Ann and he are… And then the gasp or yelp, a strange little sound, and then silence.

The two are what?

Working together? Pearl Ann and a man are working together? Involved? Involved in Jergen's death? Pearl Ann and who? Troy Hoke? And then that startled yelp, and Clyde taking off like his boots were on fire.

He motioned for more coffee, and dug in his pocket for some antacid. He didn't want to know where Clyde was headed. He didn't want to follow the yellow car. He didn't want to know who the caller was, with the soft and velvety voice.

IN THE DARKEST CORNER beneath Wilma's bed, Dulcie crouched, listening to the footsteps coming down the hall, ready to run if Bernine looked under and found her. At the first sound of someone approaching she had abandoned the phone and dived for the shadows, leaving Max Harper shouting through the receiver. If Bernine heard him and picked up the phone and started asking questions-and Harper started asking questions- all hell would break loose. There was no one else in the house, to have made the call.

But she daren't leap onto the bed again and try to hang up, there was no time, Bernine was nearly at the door…

She'd waited all night to make this call, waited for Bernine to get off the phone and now here she came when she should be in bed drifting off to sleep.

It had been nearly one A.M. when Dulcie slipped in through her cat door exhausted from listening for hours to drunken Greeley Urzey and breathing his stink of rum in Pearl Ann's pokey little room. They'd had to listen to him agonizing over Mavity and to his wild plans for finding her, which amounted to nothing, because by midnight he had drunk himself into a stupor. Azrael had looked intensely pleased that Mavity might have met with foul play, his amber eyes gleaming with malice. Pure hatred, Dulcie thought. The cat was filled with hate, that was his nature- loathing for anyone who didn't worship him.

Racing home, bolting in through her cat door, she'd realized that Wilma wasn't home; her car wasn't in the drive or in the open garage. She'd pictured Wilma still cruising the dark streets searching for Mavity, looking for Mavity's little VW.

Bernine's car was at the curb, but Bernine had gone out to dinner with a real estate broker. Dulcie hoped she was still out. But then, heading for the phone, she'd heard Bernine's voice.

Slipping through the dark dining room, she'd caught the scent of Bernine's perfume and seen her sitting at Wilma's desk talking on the phone. She'd listened for only a few minutes before she decided Bernine was making up with her estranged live-in. She slipped on into Wilma's bedroom, wishing they had two phone lines.

The curtains had not been drawn, and the faint light from the distant street lamp bathed the room in soft shadows. The bed was smoothly made. Leaping up onto the flowered, quilted spread, she had settled down to wait.

She'd waited for nearly two hours for Bernine to finish, had slipped periodically out into the hall to listen as the conversation swung from mushy love talk to angry argument to sweet words again in a sickening display of human indecision and female guile. Bernine had moved the phone to the couch, lay curled up on her patch of velvet, sweet-talking this bozo.

On the bed she'd dozed, waked to listen to Bernine going on and on, to see the light still burning in the living room and beneath the guest room door and feeling her stomach churn with impatience at the delay.

But then at last she heard Bernine leave the living room, head down the hall, and from the guest room she could hear little rustling sounds. Either Bernine was packing to leave or she was getting ready for bed.

Easing Wilma's bedroom door closed, catching it with her paw just before it latched, she'd leaped to the night table, nosing at the phone.

Her sensible self said, Wait until Bernine's light goes out - don't do this while she's awake.

But she'd waited too long. Her impatient self said, She won't hear you. What are you afraid of? It's practically morning, let's get on with it.

Lifting the headset by its cord, she had dropped it on the pillow, squinched up her paw and punched in Harper's number, cocking her head to the receiver. Joe was an old hand at this, but she still got nervous. The first time she'd dialed and heard a voice at the other end, she'd felt as weird as if she were communicating with someone on Mars.