The Mole in His Bed novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Recordings

Crane laughed so hard when he heard that the handbag was gone that the guard had to steady his chair.

"She took it?" he said. "My own voice, in her purse? Oh, that's lovely."

It was Saturday afternoon, and I sat across a steel table in the county jail, with Judith beside me.

My left cheek was still stinging from stone dust.

Neil was in surgery at Hopkins with my mother in the waiting room, and I had not decided how I felt about that.

"There is a second copy," I said.

"There are three," Crane said. "My lawyer keeps one in a safe-deposit box, one at his house, and one in a very dull place I'll never tell you."

"Then why did you lend us one?"

"To see what you would do with it, Barrow."

He leaned back, and the chain on his wrists clicked.

"You gave it away to get your mother. A bookkeeper would have kept the drive and let the old lady fend for herself. I like you better now."

"I'm not your bookkeeper."

"You balanced my books for five years without once being wrong," he said. "I'd call that a character reference."

Judith opened her laptop.

"Mr. Crane. You said you'd tell the detective what's on the tape before we go any further."

"I said I would play her one thing."

He nodded to Judith, and she pressed a key.

A kitchen's hum filled the room, then a refrigerator door, then footsteps, one heavy and one light.

Paula's voice came out of the speaker, low and a little amused, speaking into a phone.

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