“I really try, Meester Leensley,” she always said. “I try, but my hosban’ he gets home so late, I har’ly ever get to see heem.”
Even so, Lindsey arrived before Ms. Wilbur. Half the time he had to open the office himself—he’d tried to get a capable girl who was able to arrive punctually, but without success.
This morning Lindsey had looked over the mail—routine—and had put six spoons of decaffeinated Maxwell House in the Mr. Coffee. He’d tried to get Harden at Regional to authorize a new model so they could put in the grinds and water the night before and set it on automatic but Harden had said the old one was perfectly good, so that was that.
There was still the Contra Costa Times to be scanned. The usual scandals and disasters. There was an interesting piece on crime statistics that compared felony rates in various cities in the Bay Area. Oakland and San Francisco and Richmond, as usual, were in a hot race for the dubious honor of most felonies per capita. Especially murders! The little island town of Alameda, as usual, came in dead last. One homicide in the past six months: a retired navy man had apparently surprised a burglar in his living room and paid for it with his life. No clues, also as usual.
Once the coffee was brewing, Bart tossed aside the newspaper and sat down in front of the Answermate. The counter showed three calls overnight. Bart monitored the tape. Mrs. McMartin chattering and jabbering over a fender-bender, old Mr. Candliss, whose wife had passed away, and then the call from Terry Patterson.
First things first. Lindsey returned the calls in order. He phoned Mrs. McMartin and told her to get three estimates and submit them to the office. The usual. Then he looked at the Candliss file. Mr. and Mrs. had full life policies in matching amounts. Mr. Candliss would get about enough to bury her if he did it on the cheap. Lindsey jotted a note to Ms. Wilbur to send Candliss a set of claim forms.
And then the call from Terry Patterson. Lindsey ran the tape again. “This is terrible! They cleaned us out, they took everything! I’m ruined, ruined. Oh, my God, call me back right away, please!”
Well, yes, but Lindsey wanted a look at Terry Patterson’s policy first. Forewarned is forearmed. Knowledge is power. It all sounds corny, but that’s the way to get ahead.
Cleaned out. Ruined.
A household policy? Young married, burglary?
Lindsey queried the computer but there was no household policy in Terry Patterson’s name.
Automobile? Some upwardly-mobile high-techie? They liked to buy expensive cars, BMWs and Nissan 300ZXs, and load them with fancy stereos, tape decks, and CD players.
Nothing.
Lindsey sighed and called up the data base. If Patterson wasn’t the policyholder, it was probably a commercial policy. He told the computer to search for Patterson’s name as responsible party.
Ms. Wilbur arrived.
Lindsey looked up from the display screen, noted the time and waited for the usual explanation about traffic.
Ms. Wilbur said, “I’m sorry I’m late, Bart, I couldn’t help it.” She opened the closet, took off her jacket and hung it inside. She walked over to Mr. Coffee and smiled faintly. “Smells good.”
At least she called him Bart, not Hobo. His mother had named him Hobart, one of the worst names invented in the annals of Man. He’d given up long ago trying to get Ms. Wilbur to call him Mr. Lindsey, but at least she used the preferred version of his first name. He hated Hobo almost as much as he hated Hobart.
She poured herself a cup and sat at her desk.
She rewound the cassette on the Answermate and started through the calls again. “Oh, poor Mrs. Candliss died,” she said. “Don’t you want to handle this yourself, Bart?”
He told her he’d have handled it himself if he’d wanted to handle it himself. Ms. Wilbur sniffed and picked up the phone, presumably to call Mr. Candliss. Well, certainly they were supposed to be warm and human and caring, that’s what the training courses teach and that’s what International Surety’s ad campaigns emphasize. All right. But there’s such a thing as professionalism, too. And if there’s one thing Lindsey took pride in, it was his professionalism.
“Do you know a Terry Patterson?” he asked Ms. Wilbur.
Ms. Wilbur frowned and started murmuring condolences into the phone. Good gosh, the man was going to collect. Let the relatives offer handkerchiefs, International Surety was going to send money.
Without putting down the phone, Ms. Wilbur scribbled Comic Cavalcade on a memo slip and shoved it toward Bart.
Lindsey started to get annoyed. Then he realized that it wasn’t a comment, it was the account that Patterson had called about.
Lindsey looked back at the glowing display. The computer had found Terry Patterson, and the account information appeared on the monitor screen. It was a store called Comic Cavalcade. Terry Patterson was listed as sole proprietor—he hadn’t even incorporated, in this day and age!
There was an address in Berkeley and a phone number. Berkeley! Bart found himself hoping he could settle this pipsqueak claim without having to go to Patterson’s place of business. A comic book store in Berkeley! Lindsey hated comic books and everything to do with them. And Berkeley, well, everyone knows that town and what it’s filled with. Drug pushers, hippies, rich university students, yuppies, homosexuals, and Communists. And then there are the bad guys!
He played Patterson’s message still again. It sounded like an ordinary burglary, and anyway, how much could they get from a store that sold comic books? Lindsey would tell Patterson to call the police and have Ms. Wilbur send him a claim form. In fact, he’d rather have Ms. Wilbur handle the whole thing, only she was still on the phone with Mr. Candliss and Lindsey was in no mood to wait.
He jotted down the phone number for Comic Cavalcade, then dialed. He studied his Timex electric while the phone rang. It was a quarter after nine and the shop had not opened for business. Maybe they sleep late in Berkeley and open whenever they feel like it, he thought.
The reedy voice that matched Terry Patterson’s on the tape said, “Comic Cavalcade, the store is open from eleven A.M. to ten P.M., seven days a week. If you wish to leave a message, please wait for the signal.”
Lindsey snorted. When the sound came over the line he said, “This is Hobart Lindsey at International Surety in Walnut Creek, returning your—”
“Mr. Lindsey!”
Patterson must have been monitoring calls.
“Mr. Lindsey, thank you for calling. You got my message?”
“That’s why I’m calling, Mr. Patterson.”
“Oh, this is terrible. Thank you, Mr. Lindsey. I think you’d better come over here.”
He sounded less distraught than he had on the tape. He’d probably spent the time since he’d left the message putting his thoughts in order, and realized what a penny-ante matter it was.
“I don’t know if that will be necessary,” Lindsey said. “Have you notified the police?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come to the store?”
Lindsey ignored the question and asked again, “Have you notified the police?”
“Yes, sure. First thing. There’s an officer here right now, but I think you’d better come in.”
A police officer—that was a pleasant surprise. Lindsey hadn’t expected that the Berkeley police would bother with something like a burglary at a comic book store. At a jeweler’s or a camera shop or a stereo store, yes—but