A Great Day for the Deadly(44)

She must have taken the phone away from her ear, because the next time Sam heard her voice it sounded faint and very far away. “Those go in the science section,” she was telling someone he couldn’t hear. “They’re not fiction, no matter what they look like. Put them there.” There was a pause and then, “Yes, I understand that, but I’m busy right now—yes, I’ll be out as soon as I’m done—yes, I do understand, I just don’t think this is the kind of crisis you seem to. I’ll be out in a little while.

“They’re going to drive me insane,” she said, back into the phone. “I don’t know what it is with people these days. They can’t do anything you don’t tell them to do right down to the last detail. I’m sorry. You’ve been so patient listening to me and now as soon as you start talking, I’m going to have to get off the phone.”

“I forgive you,” Sam said magnanimously, “just don’t go quite yet. Hear me out. All right?”

“All right.”

“Fine. Now, Demarkian will go back to his room and Donovan will go back to his office. You’ve already talked to Donovan, so I presume you’d prefer to talk to Demarkian from here on out—”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Well,” Sam said, “you never told Donovan what Don Bollander said to you, did you?”

“Of course I didn’t,” Glinda said. “Why should I? I told you last night how many people came in saying the same sort of thing—”

“Almost as many as came into Donovan’s office seeing ghosts,” Sam finished for her. “But Don Bollander’s dead now. What he said might be important.”

“Do you think so?” Glinda sounded doubtful.

“No,” Sam told her. “But I do think Demarkian and Donovan will both think it’s got to be important, and that’s why you’ve got to tell them. On your own initiative. Right away. Then, if it is important, you don’t have to worry about someone murdering you to keep your mouth shut.”

“Don’t be silly,” Glinda said. “Don wasn’t the kind of person to keep his mouth shut. He must have told half the town.”

“Even so.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Sam said. “I’m so sure, I’m going to come down and pick you up and take you over there, just so I’m satisfied you’re safe. And that you go along and do what I tell you to do. All right?”

“All right,” Glinda said. “I get off at three.”

“I’ll be there at quarter to.”

There was a pause on the line that went on so long, Sam almost thought she’d hung up without saying good-bye. Then she cleared her throat and said, “Sam? I had a very good time at dinner last night. I enjoyed myself very much.”

This time, she did hang up without saying goodbye. The phone went to dial tone hardly a breath after the last of her words, leaving Sam Harrigan stunned.

He was still stunned fifteen minutes later, when he heard all-too-human rustling in the brush beyond his screens and stood up to see who it was. He was so befuddled he forgot he’d put another pot on his lap just after he’d hung up. The pot crashed to the floor of the porch as soon as he got out of his chair, breaking into six pieces and scattering dirt everywhere.

“Who is it?” he demanded, listening to the shaking and screeching of frozen shrubbery. “This is posted property you’re on.”

The shrubbery shook and screeched a little longer, and then a man emerged from it, looking cold and petulant and sour. He was one of the few men anywhere that Sam Harrigan had ever disliked on sight. Sam had had several sights of him before this one, and what he had picked up from those told him his dislike was justified. The man was a gigolo—but that could be excused, Sam thought, under the proper conditions. The problem was, this man wasn’t even an honest gigolo. Sam had seen him with his own eyes, putting it to a young lady with nothing in common with his aging wife in the backseat of an expensive car he couldn’t have bought with his own money.

“What do you want?” Sam asked him. “Why didn’t you come to the front door and ring?”

The man had fought himself free of clinging branches at last. He was standing right in front of Sam’s screen, with his arms at his sides and the wind in his hair. Sam, protected by a roof and half-walls on all sides, was wearing a hat with earflaps and keeping his toes next to an electric space heater. It was some kind of lethal vanity that was willing to risk a frostbitten head to preserve itself from wearing something so unfashionable as a hat.