Bernine gave Mavity her full attention. "You have someone helping you with your-savings?"
"Winthrop Jergen," Mavity said. "My investment counselor. Doesn't that sound grand? He lives right there in Clyde's upstairs apartment, was living there when Clyde bought the place."
"Oh," Bernine said. "I see." As if Mavity had told her that Jergen meted out his financial advice from the local phone booth.
"He has clients all over the village," Mavity said. "Some of Clyde's wealthiest customers come to Mr. Jergen. They pull up out in front there in their Lincolns and BMWs."
Bernine raised an eyebrow.
"He moved here from Seattle," Mavity continued. "He's partly retired. Said his doctor wanted him to work at a slower pace, that his Seattle job was too frantic, hard on his blood pressure."
She gave an embarrassed laugh. "He talks to me sometimes, when I'm cleaning. He's very young-but so dedicated. That conscientious kind, you know. They're hard on themselves."
"And he does your-investments," Bernine said with a little twisted smile.
"Oh, yes, the bit of savings we had before my husband died, and part of my salary, too." Mavity launched into a lengthy description of the wonders that Winthrop Jergen had accomplished for her, the stocks he had bought and sold. "My account has almost tripled. I never thought I'd be an investor." She described Jergen's financial techniques as if she had memorized, word for word, the information Jergen had given her, passing this on with only partial comprehension.
Bernine had laid down her fork, listening to Mavity. "He must be quite a manager. You say he's young?"
"Oh, yes. Maybe forty. A good-looking man. Prematurely silver hair, all blow-dried like some TV news anchor. Expensive suits. White shirt and tie every day, even if he does work at home. And that office of his, there in the big living room, it's real fancy. Solid cherry desk, fancy computer and all."
Bernine rewarded Mavity with a truly bright smile. "Your Mr. Jergen sounds most impressive."
Dulcie, watching Bernine, envisioned a fox at the hen coop.
"But I do worry about him." Mavity leaned toward Clyde, her elbows comfortably on the table. "You know that man that watches your apartment building? The one who's there sometimes in the evening, standing across the street so quiet?"
"What about him?"
"I think sometimes that Mr. Jergen, with all the money he must have-I wonder if that man…"
"Wonder what?" Clyde said impatiently.
Mavity looked uncertain. "Would Mr. Jergen be so rich that man would rob him?"
Clyde, trying to hide a frown of annoyance, patted Mavity's hand. "He's just watching-you know how guys like to stand around watching builders. Have you ever seen a house under construction without a bunch of rubberneckers?"
"I suppose," Mavity said, unconvinced. "But Mr. Jergen is such a nice man, and-I guess sort of innocent."
Bernine's eyes widened subtly. She folded her napkin, smiling at Clyde. "This Mr. Jergen sounds like a very exceptional person. Do you take care of his car?"
Clyde stared at her.
Dulcie and Joe glanced at one another.
"Of course Clyde takes care of his car," Mavity said. "Mr. Jergen has a lovely black Mercedes, a fancy little sports model, brand-new. White leather seats. A CD player and a phone, of course."
The little woman smiled. "He deserves to have nice things, the way he helps others. I expect Mr. Jergen has changed a lot of lives. Why, he even signed a petition to help Dulcie-the library cat petition, you know. I carry one everywhere."
Wilma rose to fetch the coffeepot, wondering if Mavity had forgotten that Bernine sided totally with Freda Brackett in the matter of Dulcie's fate.
This was the second time in a year that petitions had been circulated to keep Dulcie as official library cat, and the first round had been only a small effort compared to the present campaign. At that time, the one cat-hating librarian had quit her job in a temper saying that cats made her sneeze (no one had ever heard her sneeze). The furor had been short-lived and was all but forgotten. But now, because of the hardhanded ranting of Freda Brackett, all the librarians, except Bernine, and many of the patrons had been walking the village from door to door getting signatures in support of Dulcie. Even Wilma's young friend, twelve-year-old Dillon Thurwell, had collected nearly a hundred signatures.
Mavity busied herself picking up her dishes, and she soon left for the airport, her decrepit VW ratting away through the thinning fog. Strange, Dulcie thought, that at breakfast no one had mentioned the two burglaries. Usually such an incident in the village was a prime topic of conversation.
She guessed Bernine had been too interested in Winthrop Jergen to think about burglaries, and certainly Clyde wouldn't mention them in front of her and Joe; Clyde hated when they got interested in a local crime. He said their meddling complicated his life to distraction, that they were making an old man of him-but Clyde knew he couldn't change them. Anyway, their interests gave him something to grouse about. As she and Joe slipped out into the fog through her cat door and headed up the hills, their thoughts were entirely on the burglaries and on Mavity's brother, Greeley, and his traveling tomcat.
"If Greeley is the burglar," she said, "we need some hard evidence for Captain Harper."
He looked at her quizzically. "Why the change of mind? You were all for keeping this from Harper."
"I've been thinking-if Harper doesn't find the burglar and make an arrest, he'll set up a stakeout. And what if they see Azrael break into a shop? That would really tear it. What if the Gazette got hold of that?"
"Harper isn't going to tell the press that kind of thing."
"But one of his men might. Maybe the uniforms on stakeout would tell someone. What if Lieutenant Brennan or Officer Wendell sees Azrael open a skylight and slip in, and then there's a burglary and they start blabbing around the department?"
Joe sighed. "You're not happy if we finger the old man, and you're not happy if we don't. I swear, Dulcie, you can worry a problem right down to a grease spot. What is it with females? Why do you make things so damned complicated?"
"We don't make things complicated. We simply attend to details. Females are thorough-we want to see the whole picture."
Joe said nothing. There were times when it was better to keep his mouth shut. Trotting across the grassy park above the Highway One tunnel, they headed up a winding residential street, toward the wild hills beyond.
"And," she said, "if Brennan and Wendell did see Azrael break in, they'd start putting things together-remembering the times we've been under their feet at a crime scene."
"Dulcie, who would believe that stuff? If a cop talked like that, they'd laugh him out of the department. No one would believe…"
"People would believe it," she said impatiently. "The story's so bizarre, the press would love it. The papers would have a field day. Every tabloid would run it, front page. And every nut in the country would believe it. People would flock to Molena Point wanting to see the trained burglar-cat. Or, heaven forbid, the talking cat. If that got in the news…"
"Dulcie, you're letting your imagination go crazy."
But he knew she was right. He cut a look at her, kneading his claws in the warm earth. "If we can find the stolen money and get it to Harper, and if the guy's prints are on it, Harper will make the arrest without a stakeout. And the cops will never know about Azrael."
"If there are any prints on the money, with those gloves the old man was wearing."
"Likely he'd count the money after he stole it," Joe said. "Why would he wear gloves then? Harper gets the prints, arrests the old man, and you can bet your whiskers that tomcat won't hang around. He'd be long gone. And good riddance."