“I already told you the police aren’t listening.”
We squabbled about it for a few minutes. We would probably have escalated to a full-scale argument, except his signal started fading slightly, and I decided it would be better for all concerned if I pretended we’d been cut off completely. When Michael tried to call back, I turned my cell phone off and left it off for an hour.
I fumed. And then something struck me. I pulled out the tote bag and extracted my copy of Ted’s blackmail list.
“Of course,” I muttered. Jack said he’d told Ted to go to hell. Which was exactly what Ted had written beside the name Professor Higgins on his sheet.
“My Fair Lady,” I exclaimed, recalling the cover of the original Broadway album, with its pen-and-ink drawing of Eliza Doolittle dangling like a puppet from the strings held by Professor Higgins. I’d have bet that Ted, like me, had grown up with a copy of that around the house, and had remembered it when he saw Jack’s Easter egg.
“And if Jack’s Professor Higgins, he’s not the Ninja.”
But it would take more than a copy of the soundtrack of My Fair Lady to convince the chief. I’d need more evidence.
While I had the bag out, I fished out the legal documents that had been in the cache. As I now suspected, they were copies of the agreement the disgruntled Eugene Mason had signed on joining Mutant Wizards, and the yet-unsigned exit agreement. Had Ted stolen Mason’s copy? Suspicious, but slim grounds for murder.
I was still fuming when Doc showed up again around lunch-time, bearing his black vet’s bag and a bag of soy burger bribes.
“Come to see Katy?” I asked.
“Yes, please,” he said. *
Rico didn’t answer when I called his office, so I flipped the phone into night mode and went looking for him.
“That’s odd,” Rico said when I finally tracked him down in Frankie’s cube. “He didn’t mention needing to see her again.”
“You know Doc, always worrying about his patients,” Frankie said, looking up from the computer he and Rico had been assembling. Or disassembling - it was hard to tell which. For all I knew, perhaps they were creating an abstract sculpture.
“Katy’s down in the conference room,” Rico said. “I’ll bring her out.”
When I got back to the reception room, I found that Doc had grabbed George’s perch and had dragged it out into the middle of the room.
“Doc,” I said. “What on Earth are you doing?”
“I am liberating this poor downtrodden symbol of our country’s national bird!” Doc shouted.
“You must have flunked your ornithology classes at veterinary school,” I said. “Or maybe you’re having a flashback to a previous animal liberation adventure. He’s a buzzard, not an eagle.”
Doc glanced at George, who hunched his neck and looked unmistakably buzzardish.
“This poor, downtrodden symbol of… of our society’s callous insensitivity to the environment,” Doc corrected. He took a deep breath, ready to continue orating, but he made the mistake of taking it too near George and began gagging.
“Just leave George alone,” I said over the coughing. “I don’t think he wants to be liberated.”
“You’d be surprised how quickly wild animals learn to fend for themselves again,” Doc wheezed. “His hunting skills will return to him when he returns to his native habitat.”
“Buzzards don’t hunt; they eat carrion,” I pointed out. “Besides. George only has one - “
“He’ll learn to find his own carrion, then,” Doc said, beginning to sound a little irritated. He grabbed George’s perch and began dragging it again. Now I realized that he was heading toward the window at the other side of the room.
“You’re crazy.” I said as I headed for the switchboard to call the police. Giving Doc and George a wide berth, of course.
“Here you go, George!” Doc shouted, flinging open the window and setting the perch upright again beside it. “Independence Day!”
George, who had been scrambling to keep his grip on the moving perch, greeted the outdoor air with as much enthusiasm as if Doc had tried to stick him in an oven. Which, considering that the temperature outside was again in the high nineties, wasn’t too far from the truth. George gave an angry squawk and began sidling away from the window.
“You see, he doesn’t want to return to nature,” I said.