TRANSVESTIA

"Threatened?"

"Yes, you see Mr. Moxtone only very recently rose to the position of account executive and for some reason or other he questions his worthiness for the job."

I wondered why he'd feel anything like that.

"He seems to think someone is plotting against him," she elaborated. "He gets nervous when he sees people talking. He seems to think they're talking about him.”

"That sounds a bit debilitating," I remarked. "How does he get any work done?"

"Oh, sometimes I help him," she said proudly.

Help indeed. I wondered how much force it would take to stick my spoon in Betty Clapper's nose.

"Those creative types are very delicately balanced," I said.

"Don't you know it. My boss depends on me a great deal. He doesn't like to talk on the phone. He thinks he's being recorded."

The portrait I was getting of her Mr. Moxtone was that of a paranoid field rabbit: Just the type of personality Betty would select. Someone too frightened not to do just what she wanted. Betty talked on. She told me everything I needed to know about Moxtone and then some. Where he lived, what train he took to get there, the bar where he had his after-work drink, the location of his office, when he went to lunch and tons of other information poured out of Betty. Within ten minutes I had all the facts I would need for the next step of my plan.

Having told me all there was to tell Betty glanced at her watch and stood. She dropped the uneaten portion of her yogurt at the base of the dwarf maple at our back. She then turned to me.

"Thanks to you I didn't have a chance to finish that awful yogurt crud. Thanks for the company," she beamed.

"Thank you," I answered in all honesty.

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