Murder at the Library of Congress - Margaret Truman [54]
“Look you creep, you’d better—”
“Sex and beauty are inseparable, Ms. Gomara, like life and consciousness. The intelligence that goes with sex and beauty, and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition.”
She was about to slam the receiver into its cradle when he said, “Let care kill a cat, we’ll laugh and grow fat,” and laughed.
Shakespeare? My obscene caller is quoting Shakespeare?
“Cats are such a female thing,” he said, and then used a crude sexual term in describing what he wanted to do with Sue.
She hung up and stood shaking, staring at the phone. It rang.
Sue left the apartment and walked quickly to the restaurant. As she passed a phone booth, she stopped, turned, and tried to see the man in it. His back was to her. Two other men walked by, and she stared at them, too.
Who are you?
No more waiting for the calls to “persist.” In the morning, she’d demand that the police do something.
She told her friend Hope about the latest call as they sat on the cafe’s patio. “Don’t wait for the police,” Hope said. “Buy one of those recorders that activate whenever the phone is lifted. Get the bastard on tape.”
“I will,” Sue said. “First thing tomorrow. He quoted Shakespeare.”
“The creep?”
“Yes. I think it was Shakespeare, something about killing a cat.”
“Your cat, Wendell?”
“Don’t even say it.”
She returned to the apartment at nine-thirty. The message light on her machine was blinking.
“Sue, it’s Rick. Sorry I missed you. Hope you’re out having fun. Forgot to give you the hotel I’m staying at in Cleveland.” He reeled off the number. “Love you, baby. Pleasant dreams.” He ended with a loud kiss.
She tried him at the hotel but he wasn’t in his room. She then called the MPD and reported the most recent call.
“We really can’t do much tonight,” the desk officer said. “Come on by tomorrow and talk to the officer handling your case.”
“And what if this creep decides to break in here tonight and rape me, kill me?”
“Unlikely, Ms. Gomara. These phone stalkers are generally passive types and—”
She yelled at him.
“Okay, okay, calm down, ma’am. We can have a car make a couple of passes by your house tonight, but that’s about it. Why don’t you buy one of those tape recorders that records phone conversations? They’re not expensive. But your best bet is to come in here in the morning and …”
The night was spent curled up with Wendell watching old movies on TV and drinking wine. She called in sick in the morning, bought a tape recorder, stopped at MPD headquarters and filed another complaint, which resulted in her case officer promising to put into motion a means of tracking the calls, and spent the rest of the day in bed waiting for the phone to ring.
It didn’t. Which was worse than if it had.
Chapter 21
Cale Broadhurst entered the Beaux-Arts Willard Hotel, a block from the White House, and paused in its opulent galleried lobby as he always did when there, to admire the huge chandeliers and elaborately carved ceiling. The hotel’s grand reopening in 1986 after eighteen years of being shuttered was cause for celebration in Washington. The Willard, with a rich 150-year-old history, was one of the city’s enduring monuments, like the Washington and Lincoln memorials, but providing more amenities.
David Driscoll’s suite was on the seventh floor, one floor above the State Department–vetted suites reserved for visiting heads of state.
“Good morning,” the patrician businessman said to Broadhurst as he opened the door for his visitor and led him to the living room, where a coffee service had been delivered by room service. “Right on time, but no surprise.”
“I find people who are late to be bores, don’t you agree?” Broadhurst said.
“Or worse. Coffee? The melon is fresh.”
“Just coffee.”
The Librarian sat in an upholstered, mahogany reproduction Queen Anne chair.
“They say this was the suite Julia Ward Howe stayed in when she wrote ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic,’ ” Driscoll said absently. “Supposedly inspired by Union soldiers marching beneath the window singing ‘John Brown’s Body.’ Apocryphal?”
Broadhurst