Betrayers (Nameless Detective Novels) Read Free Page A

me to take a firm grip on the proceedings.
    “Ladies,” I said, “suppose we concern ourselves with the facts. That’ll make my job a whole lot easier.”
    “I already told you the facts,” Mrs. Alvarez said.
    “I’d like to hear them from Mrs. Abbott as well. I want to make sure I have everything clear.”
    “Yes, all right.”
    I asked Mrs. Abbott, “This late-night harassment started two weeks ago, is that right? On a Saturday night?”
    “Saturday morning, actually,” she said. “It was just three a.m. when the phone rang. I know because I looked at my bedside clock.” She was tiny and frail and she couldn’t get around very well without a walker, and Mrs. Alvarez had warned me thatMrs. Abbott was inclined to confusion, forgetfulness, and occasional flights of fancy. At least there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her memory today. “I thought someone must have died. That is usually why the telephone rings at such an hour.”
    “But no one was on the line.”
    “Well, someone was breathing.”
    “Whoever it was didn’t say anything.”
    “No. I said hello several times and he hung up.”
    “The other three calls came at the same hour?”
    “More or less, yes. Four mornings in a row.”
    “And he didn’t say a word until the last one.”
    “Two words. I heard them clearly.”
    “ ‘Drop dead,’ ” Mrs. Alvarez said.
    “Yes. It sounds silly, but it wasn’t. It was very disturbing.”
    “Can you remember anything distinctive about the voice?” I asked.
    “Well, it was a man’s voice. I’m certain of that.”
    “But you didn’t recognize it.”
    “No. It was as if it were coming from . . . well, the Other Side.”
    Helen Alvarez started to say something, but I got words out first. “A long way off, you mean? Indistinct?”
    “Yes, that’s right.”
    Muffled. Disguised. “Then the calls stopped and two days later somebody broke the back porch window. Late at night again.”
    “With a rock,” Mrs. Abbott said, nodding. “Charley came and fixed it.”
    “Charley?”
    “My nephew. Charley Doyle. Fixing windows is his business, you see. He’s a glazier.”
    “And after that, someone spray-painted the back and side walls of your house.”
    “Filthy words, dozens of them. It was a terrible mess. Helen and Leonard cleaned it up.”
    “Leonard is my brother,” Mrs. Alvarez said, purse-lipped. “It took us an entire day.”
    “Then my rosebushes . . . oh, I cried when I saw what had been done to them. I loved my roses. Pink floribundas and dark red and orange tears.” Mrs. Abbott wagged her white head sadly. “He didn’t like roses any more than he did cats.”
    “Who didn’t?” I asked.
    “Carl. My late husband. And he sometimes had a foul mouth. He knew all those words that were painted on the house.”
    “It wasn’t Carl,” Helen Alvarez said firmly. “There are no such things as ghosts; there simply
aren’t.
”
    “Well, all right. But I do wonder, dear. I really do.”
    “About the poison incident,” I said. “That was the most recent happening, two nights ago?”
    “Poor Spike almost died,” Mrs. Abbott said. “If Helen and Leonard hadn’t rushed him to the vet, he would have.”
    “Arsenic,” Helen Alvarez said. “That’s what the vet said it was. Arsenic in Spike’s food bowl.”
    “Which is kept inside or outside the house?”
    “Oh, inside,” Mrs. Abbott said. “On the back porch. Spike isn’t allowed outside. Not the way people drive their cars nowadays.”
    “So whoever put the poison in the cat’s bowl had to get inside the house to do it.”
    “Breaking and entering,” Mrs. Alvarez said. “That’s a felony, not a misdemeanor. I looked it up.”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “Not to mention the final straw. That’s when I decided it was time to hire an investigator. The police weren’t doing a thing, not a thing.”
    She’d told me all that before. I nodded patiently and asked, “Were there any signs of forced