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eBook Category: Mystery/Crime
eBook Description: Set in the first 100 days of the Clinton administration, "Strays" is a humorous cat mystery story with a political twist. Picked up for The Year's Twenty-Five Finest Crime and Mystery Stories in 1993.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Danger in D.C., ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Ed Gorman, 1993
Fictionwise Release Date: June 2002

75 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [97 KB], eReader (PDB) [38 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [26 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [24 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [44 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [97 KB], hiebook (KML) [85 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [54 KB], iSilo (PDB) [21 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [27 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [55 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [38 KB]
Words: 7676
Reading time: 21-30 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

It happened during Clinton's first hundred days. D.C. was a changed town. Arkania was in. So were strong women. Wife No. 3 had left me just after the inauguration, and Secretary No. 45 quit, vowing to file a sexual harassment suit. She was a great girl, with legs that wouldn't quit, and I was sorry to see her go. The secretary, that is. Not the wife.

My fancy-shmancy office was cold and empty without her. I no longer needed the front room with its oak desk, cool blue walls, and indoor-outdoor carpet. The phone system was too complicated for me to use, so one afternoon I pulled it from the wall, and reverted to my black rotary. The commissions I got from the Bush people for staking out Democrat parties vanished on November 4, and since Wife No. 3 cleared out half the savings, I couldn't hire Secretary No. 46. I spent January looking for new digs, and February advertising in the Post's classifieds because I couldn't break the lease I had. The cases were few and far between. The money even scarcer. I followed a Democratic Senator's wife for three days before he found out I used to work for the Bush people. The commission wasn't bad, but it didn't make the rent. I scoped out a bunch of women for Senator Packwood, but that job ended when the press got wind of it.

I was reduced to insurance claims investigation when the call came in. Woman's voice, very concerned. Address fell in the middle of an upscale brownstone neighborhood in McLean. Lots of money, well hidden. Real money that didn't need the parade of wealth to prove it was rich. Bush country. Home.

I drove my silver Thunderbird on the George Washington Parkway, glad the car at least was paid off. Can't be a dick without wheels. Still, they don't make T-Birds like they used to. No pick-up in the new models, and the design looks like Sportscars For Suburbia. The baby had speed though once it got going. Sometimes I needed speed. Along the way I passed lots of non-descript blue sedans, most with vanity plates. I stared at one, DAN 1996, all the way into McLean. Some folks never gave up.

The brownstone was in a tree-lined neighborhood that had a hush so deep it seemed like all the occupants had died. I knew they hadn't though. Curtains moved all over the block when the T-Bird parked in front of 1256 (lettering neo-gothic, no name beneath the script). I felt like a cop in a whorehouse: couldn't see a thing, but knew lots of folks were seeing him.

The door chime was three soft tones designed to echo through the house without disturbing the occupants. The dame herself answered the door. Surprised me. I expected a genteel male butler with a voice as soft spoken as the chimes.

She had been a looker once. Still was, if truth be told. Mass of silver hair, expertly styled to curl and fall in a dignified way around her face. Her figure was trim, her undergarments firm so that her breasts poked out like an 18 year-old's. Her legs put No. 45's to shame. Her skin had that papery look brought on by age and good nutrition. She didn't look so much old as softened.

A white cat wound its way around her legs, peeking through at me like a flirtatious child. "Mr. Ransom?" the woman said. "I'm Beverly Conner."