Murder in Murray Hill (Gaslight Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page B

couple days and sometimes not for a couple of weeks.”
    Probably, Frank thought, it depended on whether he’d successfully lured a woman into “meeting his mother.” Frank pulled out a card and laid it on the counter. “Let me know the next time this fellow picks up his mail. But don’t tell him somebody is looking for him.”
    The supervisor picked up his card and gave the other clerks a baleful glare. “No one will say anything to him, and I’ll notify you immediately if we see him. Now everyone, back to work. We have customers waiting.”
    Frank glanced around to see all the customers staring in gaping amazement. He wondered if any of them were here to place a lonely hearts ad.
    • • •
    S arah was relaxing in the kitchen while Maeve and Catherine prepared their dinner. She watched fondly as Maeve patiently instructed Catherine on each step as they carefully stirred flour into the meat drippings to make gravy for the pot roast they’d just pulled out of the oven.
    The sound of someone knocking on the front door stopped all three of them.
    “I hope it’s not a baby,” Catherine said.
    As a professional midwife, Sarah knew she should hope it
was
a baby, but she couldn’t help thinking how little she wanted to leave just now. “I’ll get it,” she told the girls.
    She hurried out of the kitchen, into the front room that served as her office, then through it to the front hallway. By then she’d seen the familiar silhouette through the glass, and she was already smiling when she pulled the door open.
    “Malloy,” she said.
    He was through the door and pushing it closed before she could blink. “Quick, kiss me before the girls come,” he whispered.
    She did.
    They had three or four delicious minutes before their silence alerted the girls that the caller wasn’t someone summoning Sarah to a delivery. The clatter of tiny shoes running across the floor signaled them in time for Frank and Sarah to be standing demurely apart when Catherine launched herself at Malloy. He picked her up, and she threw her slender arms around his neck.
    “I’m so happy you came!” she said.
    “I am, too,” Malloy said, giving Sarah a wink over Catherine’s shoulder.
    “We’re just putting supper on the table, Mr. Malloy,” Maeve said. “I hope you can stay.”
    “Did you cook it?” he asked Catherine.
    She nodded vigorously.
    “Then of course I’ll stay. What are we having?”
    “Pot roast,” Catherine informed him.
    “My favorite!”
    “Why don’t you and Mrs. Brandt sit down out here, and we’ll call you when everything is ready,” Maeve said. “Catherine, you and I can set the table.”
    When the girls were gone, Malloy got another kiss before they settled into the chairs by the front window. “I’m so happy you’re here,” Sarah said, “but I always feel guilty keeping you from Brian.”
    “I hardly ever got home for supper before, so he doesn’t really expect to see me, and my mother would probably die of shock if I got home early. I’ll see him before he goes to bed. And you don’t have to feel guilty tonight, because I’m here on business.”
    “Police business?” she asked with open skepticism.
    “Of course police business. I need you to write a lonely hearts letter for me.”
    “A what?”
    “A lonely hearts letter. In answer to one of the lonely hearts advertisements in the newspaper.”
    “I don’t think so, Mr. Malloy. One fiancé at a time is all I can handle, I’m afraid.”
    He smiled at that. “It’s for a case I’m working on. A young woman has gone missing, and she’d been answering those ads. I think she went off to meet somebody yesterday, and she never came home.”
    “Do you think she eloped?”
    “I wish I did. So far, I’ve found out that this fellow she was supposed to meet has been seen with several other females, and he places his ad every week.”
    “He doesn’t sound like he’s really looking for a wife, does he?”
    “No, and whatever happened to