Tight Lines by William G. Tapply Read Free Book Online Page B

had soured long before.
    “She hasn’t been here for a while,” I said.
    “The bedrooms and bath are down this way,” she said, gesturing with a jerk of her head.
    I followed her. In the bathroom the usual array of feminine beauty aids was stacked on the back of the toilet and on a wicker shelf that hung over it. An opened box of Tampax sat on the floor beside the toilet.
    Two towels lay crumpled on the floor. I picked one up and sniffed it. It smelled sour.
    I slid open the medicine cabinet. Aside from one bottle of prescription drugs, the rest was over-the-counter stuff.
    We went into the bedroom. The queen-sized bed was unmade. A pair of jeans, a couple of T-shirts, three pink silk panties, one bra, and about half a dozen white athletic socks were strewn about the floor. There were only a couple of empty hangers in the well-stocked wall-sized closet.
    Jill fingered some of the garments that hung there. “Boy,” she said. “This is all designer stuff.”
    “She has plenty of money,” I said.
    On the floor in the back of the closet sat four matching pieces of leather luggage and an Imelda Marcos collection of footwear.
    “It doesn’t look as if she packed a lot of stuff for a trip,” I said.
    Jill and I had been talking in low whispers, as if we feared being overheard. When the telephone beside the bed suddenly rang, she reached out reflexively and grabbed my wrist. “Shit,” she mumbled. “I nearly wet my pants.”
    It rang three times. Then from another room we heard a muffled click and Mary Ellen’s voice requesting, as it had of me when I tried calling, an “intriguing message.”
    This caller left no message.
    I turned to Jill. “Where’s that machine?”
    “Must be in the other bedroom.”
    The other bedroom contained a sofa and a pair of bookcases and a desk with a Macintosh computer atop it. The room appeared to have served as Mary Ellen’s study. The answering machine, along with a telephone, sat on the desk. The red light on the machine was blinking furiously. Jill and I both stared at it. I turned to her. “What do you think?”
    “Oh, boy. It’s an egregious invasion of privacy.”
    “You sound like a lawyer.”
    She shrugged. “I apologize.”
    “Let’s listen,” I said. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
    “Fair enough.”
    I sat at the desk and depressed the button on the machine. It whirred, clicked, and clanked, and a man’s voice said, “Hey, kiddo. You there? Thought we had a date. Give me a jingle.”
    Click, beep. A different male voice. “Mary Ellen? It’s me. Just checking on tomorrow night. I’ve got the stuff. Talk to you later.”
    The same voice again, essentially the same message, no name or phone number given. Then a woman’s voice, “Just wanted to shoot the shit.”
    There were several hangups. There was one computer-generated recording, a quick-talking high-energy voice that mainly kept repeating an 800 phone number. Each of the two male voices returned a couple of times, neither leaving a name, a time, a date, or what I would call an intriguing message.
    My own voice startled me. Jill looked at me when it came on. I shrugged. At least I left my name and a message.
    Then came a voice that jerked my head back, a heavily accented voice that I recognized instantly. “Mary Ellen,” it said, “I must speak with you. It is imperative. Please call me at the office.”
    He didn’t leave his name or a phone number. He didn’t need to. It was Sherif Rahmanan.
    Each of the two unnamed men called again. I called again. I used the word “urgent.”
    Sherif Rahmanan called again. He repeated the word “imperative.”
    The tape rewound. I held down the button so the recorded messages would not be lost.
    “Lots of people looking for her,” said Jill.
    I nodded. “And not a damn one of them even left a name.”
    “Except you.”
    “I’m well bred.”
    “What do you think?”
    I shrugged. “She’s been gone for a while. Safe to infer that none of these