“Good morning, Mrs. Cool.”

Chapter XXX

It was not until Wednesday morning that Bertha Cool returned to her office.

“Where,” Elsie Brand asked, “have you been?”

Bertha Cool’s sun-bronzed face twisted into a grin. She said, “I’ve been doing the one thing I’m good at.”

“What’s that?”

“Fishing.”

“You mean you were fishing all day yesterday?”

“Yes. I got so damned exasperated I darn near blew up. I decided to hell with it. I was running a blood pressure of about two hundred and eighty. I climbed in my car, drove down to the beach, rented some fishing tackle, and proceeded to enjoy myself. Do you know what happened? It’s an uncanny combination of circumstances, a coincidence that wouldn’t happen once in ten million times.”

“What?” Elsie Brand asked.