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“My superiors are cruel to me. You wouldn’t believe what they’ve had me doing all day. And all day yesterday.”

The man smiled.

“The tapes?”

“The obscenity-deleted tapes,” Matt agreed.

“Getting anything?” the man asked.

“Stop right there, the two of you,” the woman ordered firmly. “No shop talk! Really, precious!”

Precious was also known as Captain David R. Pekach. He was commanding officer of the Highway Patrol, and one of the two captains in Special Operations. The lady was his fiancée, Miss Martha Peebles.

In the obituary of Alexander F. Peebles in the Wall Street Journal, it was reported that he had died possessed of approximately 11.5 percent of the known anthracite coal reserves of the United States. Six months later, the same newspaper reported that Miss Martha Peebles’s lawyers had successfully resisted efforts by her brother to break her father’s will, in which he had bequeathed to his beloved daughter all of his worldly goods of whatever kind and wherever located.

One night six months before, Captain Pekach had twice gone, at the “suggestion” of Mayor Carlucci, to 606 Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill to personally assure the citizen

resident therein that the Philadelphia Police Department generally and the Highway Patrol in particular was going to do everything possible to apprehend the thief, or thieves, who had been burglarizing the twenty-eight-room turn-of-the-century mansion set on fourteen acres.

On his first visit that night, Captain Pekach had assured Miss Peebles that he would take a personal interest in her problem, to include driving past her home himself that very night when he was relieved as Special Operations duty officer at midnight. Miss Peebles inquired if his work schedule, quitting at midnight, wasn’t hard on his wife. Captain Pekach informed her he was not, and never had been, married.

“In that case, Captain, if you can find the time to pass by, why don’t you come in for a cup of coffee? I rarely go to bed before two.”

During Captain Pekach’s second visit to 606 Glengarry Lane that night, Miss Peebles had gone to bed earlier than was her custom, and for the first time in her thirty-five years not alone. Their engagement to be married had been announced three weeks before by her attorney, and her father’s lifelong friend, Brewster Cortland Payne, Esq., of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester, at a dinner party at 606 Glengarry Lane.

“There’s something there, captain,” Detective Payne answered, ignoring her.

“Matt, please!” Miss Peebles said.

“Matt, I worked Narcotics for four years,” Captain Pekach said. “If there was something, I would know!”

“Matt, go away,” Miss Peebles said.

“Well, I hope you’re right,” Matt said. “But . . .”

“Precious!” Miss Peebles said firmly.

“Nice to see you, Matt,” Captain Pekach said.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Matt said, smiling, “I think I’ll mingle.”

“Why don’t you?” Miss Peebles said, smiling.

Matt looked around the room for his parents, and when he didn’t find them, climbed the stairs from the game room to the dining room on the floor above. There he saw them, at the far end of the room. Talking with Penny’s parents.

Christ, I can’t handle that!

Penny’s mother pities me, and her father thinks I’m responsible.

He turned so that they wouldn’t see him.

And found himself looking at the rear end of a good-looking blonde and then the reflection of her face in the huge sheet of plate glass that offered a view of the Delaware River and the Camden works of Nesfoods International.

He walked to her.

She looked at him, and then away.

“Hi!” he said.