Bethie was Beth Ann Nixon, a tall, striking girl with a poise and maturity remarkable for her age. Or any age, for that matter.
“Okay,” Patti said, appreciating the fact that Ingrid kept her posted on her whereabouts. Not many kid sisters were that thoughtful.
Zeke emerged then, drawn and haggard. He had dozed in fits and starts, to quote him. He stared with something akin to rage at the clear-eyed D.C.
“How do you want your eggs?” Patti asked. He protested, insisting he would get breakfast on his way to the office.
Ingrid pushed him toward a chair. “I’ll get your breakfast. I just love to cook.”
“Would you mind repeating that?” asked Mike.
“She’s a good cook,” Patti said.
Zeke seated Patti, and then Ingrid, at the breakfast table, and Ingrid beamed. Zeke informed them that another agent would report at 8 a.m. to take over the day shift. He was apologetic about disrupting their home. He promised he would slip in and out as unobtrusively as possible. He said he realized that little things might give away the presence of someone in the house, such as the position of the bedroom drapes in the daytime. Patti opened them on rising, but he and his fellow agent would keep them drawn. It was possible, too, that neighbors might hear their movements, although they would remove their shoes and walk about in their stocking feet. He questioned her about the time the postman came, and the milkman, and if any cleaning woman or neighbor might enter.
“You’re wasting your time,” Patti said. “You couldn’t push D.C. out with a ten-ton tractor in the daytime. The mockingbirds stand guard in shifts at the back door.”
“You mean a great big cat like him is afraid of a mockingbird?”
“Not afraid. Paralyzed.”
Blasted cat, he thought. It was a horrible enough fate to draw a cat as an informant in the first place, and even worse to draw a cat that was a coward
.
Shortly after breakfast Patti left the house. She had paused to examine the apricot when Mrs. Macdougall descended on her, all two hundred pounds. “You poor, poor child. I saw the light burning in your bedroom when I got up to take my drops. My heart’s been troublin’ me, I came near to dyin’ one night, and the doctor gave me these drops. And I said to Mr. Macdougall he always wakes up when I get up I said, ‘Wilbur, somebody’s been taken ill over at the Randall home!’ ” She added by way of explanation, “I could hear you and the doctor talking.”
Patti reddened, and detested herself for it. All her life she had acted guilty when under suspicion. “Not the doctor, it was the radio you heard, Mrs. Macdougall. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Oh.” The one word said Patti was a liar.
“Forgive me,” Patti continued, “I’ve got to run. I’m late already.”
She cut swiftly around Mrs. Macdougall, who would have blocked her if given half a chance. Patti kept her eyes straight ahead as she passed Greg’s. Blitzy threatened her as usual from the safety of the picture window. Some day, so help her, she was going to throw a rock through that window.
She was waiting on the corner for the bus when Greg brought his car alongside her. “Patti,” he called. She turned away. He whistled then and heads pivoted for a block. “I’m coming after you,” he said, and started to leave the car.
She climbed in quickly, her blood pressure high enough for a stroke. “I don’t like your tactics, Mr. Balter, but I’m not going to stand there and have you create a scene.”
She grabbed her head as the car’s sudden propulsion pushed her body back until her eyes popped. He said quickly “I know how you feel and I don’t blame you. I don’t know what got into me last night. I know you didn’t set the FBI on me, but I’d surely like to know what’s behind it. What I’m trying to say is that I’m terribly sorry and couldn’t we strike the night off the calendar?”
Her blood pressure leveled off, her pulse advanced, and her anger did an about-face and turned inward. She found herself wanting to forgive him. That old Greg Balter charm. Well, let him save it for a jury. She’d be hanged if she would be swayed by it after the way he had stood her up. And it was only last night. He didn’t even give her anger time to die and be provided a decent burial. But that was because his was a child’s, quick to run away, while hers was mature, slow to arouse and slow to fade.
“You mean,” she asked with a fall chill in the air, “like bury the duck?”
He nodded. “I think we should give him a special funeral. It isn’t every duck that gets investigated by the FBI.”
She muttered, “Huh!” and he shot her a sidewise glance. As the blocks passed, he talked along easily, as if there had been no last night, no hot-tempered accusations. He wanted to know about detergents, and sought her advice on other household matters. He was having trouble with his mother’s old vacuum cleaner, and asked if she would help him choose a new one. She stalled; she had such little time with her parents away and Mike and Ingrid to look after.
Then it was that he braked to a sudden stop, and she almost went through the windshield. “You need seat belts,” she said.
He didn’t hear. The jolt switched his thinking. “Which reminds me, I saw the FBI man who talked with me yesterday leaving your house early this morning.”
She was momentarily stunned, and then the anger crept back in. “He asked me the same questions he did you. He wanted to know where D.C. had been.”
“And that was all?”
“Yes.”
He took the casual approach. “Would you stick to that story if you were under oath on the witness stand?”
“Are you implying ?”
“Now, hold on, Patti “
“You the same as said I was lying. You picked me up because you wanted to cross-examine me. Well, I’m not one of your witnesses to be grilled like a common “
“Patti, please.”
The car had come to a halt at a stop sign, and she burst out the door, almost getting run over in her haste. He slid out and hurried after her, calling to her. A motorcycle officer wheeled in, blocking him, and gave him a ticket for deserting a car in traffic.
As Zeke checked into the FBI office that morning, the receptionist, Dinkie, who could scarcely sit in her tight, plaid skirt, said, “They’re holding a drawing on you back in the steno pool.”
“A what?”
“You know, like a turkey raffle. The one who wins gets to ask you to the picnic Sunday.”
He moaned, and she hurried on. “If you need rescuing, I’m available.”
“I don’t know. I’ll probably be busy. I’ve got this cat I’m running a surveillance on.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Really, Zeke, we don’t refer in the Bureau to a woman in that way.”
“No no I mean well, I mean cat, just cat.”
As he left, he saw she was bewildered. Her expression clearly said, Poor guy, he’s got a crack in the old cylinder block.
15
When Greg came along at dusk that evening, walking Blitzy, Ingrid was sitting Indian style in pink capris on the front porch, her lips moving silently.
“Hi,” Greg said, reining the dachshund to a sharp stop. Ingrid held up her finger for silence, then, after a few seconds, smiled and said, “Hello, Greg.”
“Whatcha doing?” Blitzy pulled on his leash, straining to reach the apricot.
“Counting the cricks a cricket makes so I’ll know how hot it’s going to be tomorrow.”
“Oh.” He ran her words through his mind again for a quick recheck. “Tell me, does this streak of insanity run all through your family?”
Ingrid wrinkled up her nose at him. “Everybody knows that if you count the number of cricks a cricket makes in a minute, that’s what the temperature will be. I counted eighty-three cricks, so it will be eighty-three tomorrow.”
“Blitzy!” He pulled the dog back. “What else are they teaching over at Van Nuys High these days?”
She smiled and rose, and remembered to stretch. A model couldn’t sag. “I better get with my homework. I’m studying so hard it’s pathetic. I’ll probably have a breakdown but my teachers couldn’t care less.”