Cat and Mouse Read Free Page B

Jan.”
    She went back to the kitchen muttering to herself. I went back to my files. Nothing, nothing, nothing…
    The phone rang. It was Larry. He said, “I’ve got a hundred and forty dollars here for you. Do you want to pick it up or should I bring it over?”
    “Not today. Mail me a check. Mail two checks, seventy of it to Jan the other seventy to me.”
    “Mail? What’s with you? Trouble, Brock?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is it connected with that guy asking about you at Heinie’s?”
    “I don’t know. It’s possible.”
    “I’ve still got some friends down there, chum, who are on the shady side. You call me if you think they could be useful.”
    “Thanks. I’ll do that.”
    Occasionally giving me an inside tip on a hot one and booking my bet was Larry’s way of paying the interest I had refused. It was possible, of course, that Larry laid off my bet as he did with his own money down in Los Angeles. Today’s sixth could have been a boat race, but that seemed highly unlikely at Santa Anita.
    Jan came home a little after five o’clock and we gathered in the living room. I related all that had happened, starting with the dead cat and finishing with today’s letter.
    When I had finished, Jan said, “So that’s why you were asking about my cat.” She looked at Mrs. Casey. “Did you know about it?”
    “Not until this afternoon when the Criders’ maid told me.”
    Jan looked at me. “And that’s why Bill Crider wants a neighborhood watch?”
    “No. It’s the burglaries he’s concerned about. What I would like to suggest is that you girls take a suite at the Biltmore and live it up while I watch the house.”
    “No way!” Jan said.
    “I second the motion,” Mrs. Casey said.
    “I was afraid of that,” I said, “so I phoned Corey. He’ll guard us nights, I’ll be home during the day. Could we take a vote on that?”
    Jan looked at Mrs. Casey and she nodded.
    Jan said, “And now I think we should have a quiet drink.”
    “I’ll get my Irish whiskey,” Mrs. Casey said. “It will be nice to have Corey in the house.”
    … where she can finally convert him to the true faith, I thought, and he can learn to play bingo. I didn’t voice the thought.
    The man asking about me at Heinie’s and the dead cat on the lawn might have been only a coincidence. But the dead cat on the lawn and the seven-word letter certainly was not.
    And why had the writer added, “Who is second?” Someone other than Callahan? My Jan? Why hadn’t he written “next”? Had he planned more than two? Trying to analyze the mind of a kook was traveling down a trail too murky for me.
    We played gin rummy after dinner, loser sits out, and Mrs. Casey won, as usual. Jan said she didn’t have any small bills in her purse. Mrs. Casey said she could make change for a large one. Jan said I wouldn’t mind paying for her. I was not consulted on that decision.
    Then Mrs. Casey went up to her room to watch a Bogart rerun and Jan went in the den to watch a PBS program on the Aztec civilization. I went out into the gloom and sat in a deck chair on the front lawn, waiting for Corey to show.
    I could hear the twin tail pipes of his Camaro rumbling long before the car came into sight around the bend of the hill.
    He had brought his lunch box with him, complete with a vacuum bottle in the lid. Night watches were what paid most of the rent in his new one-room office downtown.
    In the living room, the area of my previous seminar, I told him what I had told Jan and Mrs. Casey.
    “A live one for a change,” he said. “I hope the bastard shows up on my watch.”
    “Corey,” I admonished him, “you must remember that we are not the law.”
    “We’re a damned sight closer to it than he is. Stop fretting, Brock. I’m a big boy now.”
    He showed me his revolver, what the local police were carrying since they had switched from Colt, a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson.
    He had brought a box of ammo along and they would fit my ancient Colt. He gave me a