Page 94 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Cat’s Paw

poking through the directories in search of anything resembling a
word-processing version of Lesley’s book. The hard disk contained
the usual potpourri of personal accounting and bookkeeping
spreadsheets, boring computer games and heaps of secondhand
software I would have expected to find in his machine: he wasn’t any
tidier with his electronic storage than with the rest of his house. The
guy had tried his hand at some programming, too: a few BASIC
programs resided in one sub-directory, but my curiosity did not
extend to studying the coding techniques of an amateur.
There were also a few short business letters, but no long text files.
I found one addressed to Fletcher Mallard, thanking him for the
advance and promising delivery of the completed manuscript as soon
as it was ready. Another, with the same date, caught my eye because
of the recipient’s business name. It was to Kurt N. Schauer,
Executive Vice President of Cornish Rock Insurance, on the twenty-
fourth floor of a downtown office tower not far from the Krass
Building. In it Art Lesley thanked Mr. Schauer for his interest but
could not accept his offer—whatever it was; the letter was very brief.
But very tantalizing: I filed the name in the back of my mind and
went on.
After giving up on the PC and sticking a blue dot on its monitor
screen, I attacked the surrounding spontaneous archives. I’m a fast
reader, and I knew that what I was looking for had to be a certain
size: a double-spaced typed manuscript has at least a hundred pages;
anything less I scanned at the speed of light and shifted to another
pile. It was like that old Oriental puzzle with the rings on the posts;
you win by finding the fewest moves required to transfer all of the
rings from one post to another, via a third post, limited to moving
one ring at a time. Efficiency was my middle name that morning; I
wanted to find the prize and get out of there. All thoughts of Hope’s
will, Lola’s marriage certificate and Albert’s suicide note were pushed
out of my brain in its relentless search for the missing book. I could
hear Ruth’s voice in the background, droning on to (I assume) her
girlfriends about the inconsequentialities of life—cosmetics, clothes,
bargains, TV shows, their common acquaintances’ relationships. It
was no more irritating than elevator music.
I finished the study after about an hour and—barely pausing to
catch my breath—hit the hallway. This, I thought, is why the boss

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