“Next time,” Bertha said, “let me run things my own way.”
She didn’t even wait to say good-bye, but slammed the receiver into place with a jar that all but broke the instrument.
Sergeant Sellers folded the two letters, dropped them into his pocket, zipped Bertha Cool’s purse shut. He either hadn’t found, or hadn’t considered important, the memo that Bertha had filched from Belder’s office.
“What the hell gave you the idea you could do that and get away with it?” Bertha demanded, her face dark with anger.
Sellers looked smug. “Because I knew you wouldn’t mind, old pal.”
“Mind!” Bertha screamed. “Goddamn you, I could beat your brains out — if I thought you had any! Of all the nerve! Of all the consummate, high-handed, dastardly—”
“Save it, Bertha,” he said. “It isn’t getting you anywhere.”
Bertha stood glowering in indignant silence.
Sellers said, “What the hell, Bertha. You wouldn’t have held out on me, anyway. I asked Belder where the letter was he told me about, and he said that you’d taken it. The last he saw of it, you had put it in your purse. So I thought I’d take a look at it.”
“Then why didn’t you ask me for it?”