Cat and Mouse by William Campbell Gault Read Free Book Online Page A

a headline hunter. It was a county kill; what interest could Harris have in it? Publicity was my guess.
    Jan, Mrs. Casey told me when I came home, had gone out to visit a former client and possible future client in Slope Ranch. “I tried to talk her out of it,” Mrs. Casey added, “but she said she was going stir crazy.”
    “Aren’t you?” I asked.
    She shook her head. “I want that freak to find me. Anybody who would try to frame sweet Corey is on my enemy list.”
    “Why don’t we have a smidgin of good Irish whiskey while Jan is gone?”
    She nodded. “We’re the sly ones, aren’t we?”
    We sat out in back and discussed the capture of the Valley Intruder. “You notice those Chicanos didn’t run and hide,” she pointed out. “They’re a lot like the Irish, aren’t they?”
    I nodded. “And good Catholics, too.”
    She gave me a baleful look.
    “No comment, please,” I said. “I still have a lot of Catholic in me.”
    “No comment,” she said. “Let’s talk about the Dodgers.”

CHAPTER 6
    I STARTED TO GET nervous at five o’clock. Slope Ranch is on the other end of town from Montevista, but not so far away that Jan shouldn’t be home by five. Mrs. Casey had told me she had left right after lunch.
    She came home at five-thirty, carrying packages. “As long as I was out of the house,” she explained, “I thought it might be a good time to get in some shopping. And Mrs. Casey will have to go to the grocery store tomorrow.”
    “I’ll take her.”
    “Is that our new regime? Are we going to be perpetual hermits?”
    “Please, Jan—!” I said. “We’re all uptight!”
    “I know,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
    Nowicki phoned after dinner to tell me that his conference with Harris and Mallory had gone well. “Mallory,” he said, “was almost reasonable, for a change. Do you think he’s got religion?”
    “No! How did Harris worm his way into the act?”
    “Because one of his officers learned that the man Vogel told him about, the man who asked about you in Los Angeles, was in a city hotel. You’ve finally done Harris a favor. He can get some ink out of the murder. Now that the Valley Intruder has been caught this case could be headline news.”
    “But Mallory wouldn’t believe the man who asked about me was involved.”
    “Until now—when they realized the two of them can get some ink out of it. This could be the new Valley Intruder and that cat gimmick should go over big on the idiot box.”
    “Oh, yes,” I sadly agreed.
    There is nothing you can do about it, Jan had said. That canny bastard was relying on that. There had to be something I could do about it.
    I loaded the old Colt before we went to bed that night and put it back on the shelf in the closet.
    “Wouldn’t it be safer to have a guard outside?” Jan asked.
    “Don’t worry. We’ll be safe.”
    She studied me. “You want him to come in, don’t you? You and Mrs. Casey want him to come in.”
    “Of course not!” I lied.
    The for-sale sign was no longer on the Crider lawn when Mrs. Casey and I went grocery shopping next morning, but the agent I knew was taking a couple into the house. He had a key.
    “I bet they left,” Mrs. Casey said. “The sissies!”
    “Maybe,” I suggested, “they’re living it up at the Biltmore.”
    She made no comment.
    Mrs. Casey is a dedicated comparison shopper; it was eleven o’clock when we loaded the car.
    She had bought some grapes and Brie cheese to take to Corey. “You know how he loves them both,” she said. “You won’t mind driving me there, will you?”
    “I’ll be glad to drive you there,” I told here, “but I’m not sure what their rules are about feeding a prisoner.”
    “Let me handle that part,” she said.
    McClune was there—and cooperative. Corey was reading a tattered paperback reprint of The Maltese Falcon, quite possibly for the twentieth time.
    He was looking less gloomy today. He told us,