“Don’t make me wait, sugar-pie.” She hung up. Before I did, Ruth Moore was hanging on my arm. Trying to get the phone away from me.
Chapter nine:
Plushy couple
“It’s my job to handle his phone calls.” Ruth Moore was disturbed. “Who was that?”
“Not your boss. Or his wife.”
“Tildy?” The cat-green showed in her eyes.
“No.” Seemed to me, no matter how private a secretary she was, there’d be no need for her to know about a call like that. “Why’d Crew Cut have to call in person? Couldn’t he have phoned?”
“Roy Yaker?” She gestured, annoyed. “That false alarm! He’s staying here — floor below, I think. He said he had telephoned from the Crystal Room but there was no answer. He thought Mister Lanerd might have been — taking a shower — so he came on up here.”
I wondered, out loud, who Yaker was.
“Secretary of this new association; he’s only using Mister Lanerd as bait to get members to his dinner. I told him the boss was unavoidably detained — crucial conference.”