The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK TM(16)

                If we were cops. If someone was going to investigate this. I didn’t know if Kaplan could do it. Groups, gangs, rings of organized anything were often the hardest thing to defeat.

                “Did they know she was investigating them?” I asked.

                “Someone—a E.N.—thought she was asking a lot of questions. She was scared,” Susan said. Then she added, “I got that from the journal, not from her notes.”

                “Can you give me what you translated?” I asked. “Not the journals, but the notes themselves?”

                “I wish we had one of those expensive copiers,” Louise said. “I really don’t want to write this stuff out again.”

                I empathized.

                “Just set the papers in a pile right here.” I moved a metal outbox onto the table. “I’ll pick them up if I need them. Don’t copy right now. Keep translating, if you can. If you can’t, I understand. But I sure would like names.”

                Susan picked up her pen. Then her gaze met mine. “How do people stay sane in the face of all this crap?”

                I thought of the cops I’d known, good and bad, as well as the people I knew who were trying to make things right in the world.

                “I’m not sure they stay sane,” I said. “Hell, I’m not even sure they were ever sane.”

                I wasn’t sure I was either. But I didn’t say that. I figured both women knew that already.

                * * * *

                I was halfway down the stairs when I met one of the volunteers coming up. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her nose was red.

                “Call for you,” she said in a thick voice.

                “You okay?” I asked.

                She nodded. “Just taking a break.”

                She was trying for jaunty, but she failed miserably. A lot of the volunteers took breaks after a particularly tough phone call. Often those breaks took place in the ladies room, and involved lots of Kleenex.



                             I hurried down the stairs to my desk. Kaplan was on the line.

                “I’m coming over there,” he said. “But I figured, given the nature of your business, that you’d want me to let you know first.”

                I did appreciate it, but knew better than to thank him. In the past when I noticed him being sensitive, he got offended.

                “Do you know where the old rectory used to be?” I asked.

                “Yes,” he said.

                “Go to that door.”

                I hung up and hurried back through the walkway into my tiny living room. I had just switched on the lights when I heard a car pull up. I didn’t look through the curtains. I waited, tense, listening to the car engine shut off, the door slam, and footsteps on the gravel. I anticipated the knock on the door, but it still made me jump.

                “It’s me.” Kaplan’s voice. I appreciated that he didn’t identify himself. He probably had no idea that I was alone.

                I checked the peephole, then unlocked all of the dead bolts. I pulled the door open.