Cat In The Dark

24

AT THREE A.M., Max Harper pulled into Sam's All Night Burger up on Highway One. He'd been looking for Mavity Flowers but, spotting Clyde's yellow '29 Chevy, he had wheeled in and parked beside it. He sat a moment admiring the car's gleaming finish and boxy, trim lines. Clyde had been working on this one for two years, and she was a beauty. Not many women had this much attention lavished on them-or turned out as elegant, either.

Clipping his phone to his belt beside his radio, he locked the unit and headed into the restaurant. Stopping at the counter to order cherry pie and coffee, he moved on back, where Damen sat hunched over a sandwich and coffee. Sliding into the booth, he picked up the menu out of habit. "Any luck?"

Clyde shook his head. He looked dead for sleep. "Not a sign of Mavity. And I haven't seen Wilma or Charlie for a while. If either one found her, they'd take her back to Wilma's. Her phone doesn't answer."

"I saw Wilma around midnight, up on Ridgeview. She had hoped Bernine would ride with her, said she guessed Bernine had gone out."

"Only Bernine Sage would party while her latest love interest lies cold in the morgue."

"He isn't her love interest anymore-he's no use to her now." Harper reached for a cigarette, tamped it, stuck it in his mouth unlit. "I wired Atlanta on this Warren Cumming. As Mavity said, charges against Cumming were dropped. His partner, Troy Hoke, was convicted, did a year for theft by fraud against Dora and Ralph Sleuder and five other victims. He's been out just over six months.

"Shortly after Hoke's trial, Cumming left the state. Gave a Florida forwarding address, a private postal box. Forfeited on the lease of his Atlanta apartment, closed his bank account, took the balance in cash."

"Big money?"

"Very small. I'm guessing he had larger accounts in other names and that the Florida move was a red herring."

Billie, the straw-blond night waitress, brought Harper's pie and coffee. She was sixtyish and smelled of stale cigarettes, her thin face dry and deeply lined. Setting the pie down, she spilled cherry juice on the table. Scowling, saying nothing, she wiped it up.

"What's with you?" Harper said.

"Fight with LeRoy," she said shortly. She looked hard at Harper. "What's with these guys? Does he have to mess around with that stupid motorcycle all the time?"

"Better than another woman," Harper told her.

"I don't know, Max. Perfume is easier to get out of the laundry than grease."

Harper tried to look sympathetic. When she'd gone, Clyde said, "Why doesn't she leave him?"

"Never will. She just likes bitching about him." But he looked distressed, too. Despite dealing with the dregs of the world, Harper never got used to people staying in a bad marriage. His own happy marriage had ended far too soon, when Millie died of cancer; he didn't have a lot of sympathy for people who put up with anything less than a completely wonderful union. To Max's way of thinking, it was better to be alone. He tasted his pie, ate half of it before he spoke again.

"After Hoke was released, he received several phone calls to his Atlanta apartment." He glanced up at Clyde. "All were placed from the Sleuders' phone. And a few days after the last call, he left the state. That was four months ago."

Clyde had stopped eating, was quiet.

"Shortly before the Sleuders flew out here on vacation, they placed several calls to a Molena Point pay phone a block from the Davidson Building.

"The way I see it, Dora Sleuder stumbled onto Cumming's whereabouts by chance. Try this: Dora makes a casual phone call to her aunt-evidently they talked once or twice a month, family stuff, keeping in touch. During the conversation, Mavity mentions her new investment counselor, brags about how well she's doing.

"She tells Dora how wonderful Jergen is and describes him- you know Mavity, going on about Jergen's youthful looks and silver hair. The description fits Cumming, and Dora starts asking questions."

Clyde nodded. "Like, how old is he? How does he dress and talk? How he furnishes his office, what kind of car he prefers…"

"Exactly. Now assume that Mavity's description was so much like Cumming that it got Dora and Ralph wondering, made them decide to check up on this Jergen."

"But…"

"They knew that Hoke was just out of prison-they'd kept track of him. And they knew he'd be burning to get at Cumming, for setting him up. Hoke did all the time for that scam. Cumming didn't do a lick.

"Dora and Ralph decide that this Jergen could be Warren Cumming, and they sick Hoke on him, encourage Hoke to come on out here and take a look."

"But how did they find Hoke? Through his parole officer?"

Harper nodded. "We have the parole officer's phone record, and we've talked with him. He remembers a woman calling him, said she was Hoke's niece, that Hoke had some things of her mother's that he'd put away before he went to prison, that she wanted to get them back. Parole officer wouldn't disclose any information, but he took her phone number, passed it on to Hoke-he's obliged to do that. Figures he'll watch developments. This officer keeps good records, the Sleuders' number was there in his logbook.

"So Hoke calls Dora, and she tells him about Winthrop Jergen. According to Hoke's phone bill, they talk for over an hour. The next day Hoke moves out of his apartment, leaves Atlanta."

Harper slipped a photograph from his pocket, handed it across.

The man in the picture was thin and pale. Light brown hair, long and tied back. One low shoulder. A bony face, thin eyebrows.

Clyde stared. "The guy who hangs around the apartments. Mavity calls him 'the watcher.' This is Troy Hoke?"

"Yep. And we have Hoke's prints, from the Atlanta file." He mopped up cherry juice with a forkful of crust.

"Did they match the prints from the murder scene?"

"The only prints we got at the scene were for Jergen himself, and for Mavity and Charlie."

"You didn't get Pearl Ann's prints? They should be all over the place. She cleaned for him regularly, and she did the repairs. Except…" Clyde thought a minute. "Pearl Ann wears gloves. Has some allergy. Gloves to work on the Sheetrock, to clean, to paint."

"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.