"Hoffman-HauntedHumans" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Abbie)

NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN

HAUNTED HUMANS

ONE

Dorothy jean demain, presently known as Dorothy Jean Hand, sometimes called Dot
by people who didn't know her and almost always D.J. by those who did, gripped
the phone handset between her ear and shoulder. Her right hand held a pen poised
over a carbonless message pad; her left hand sorted the Mental Healing Center's
mail. The four office hours following Friday's lunch break stretched ahead,
aggravated by dealing with the operator who had picked up when D.J. rang the
answering service.

"Sandy, have you checked account 551 for me yet?" D.J. said as patiently as she
could, breaking in on two minutes of inane chatter.

She listened to Sandy splutter through a message for Dr. Arlene Bollings, D.J.'s
boss, managing to extract relevant information with great difficulty. She was
just about to demand the phone number of the person leaving the message when
Sandy broke in with, "Uh, but-- hey, Dot, there's a message here for you, too."

"Let's finish with the first one, please." D.J. could hear her voice tightening.
She wanted to grab Sandy and shake the information out of her like salt. But she
was in secretary mode right now, level, efficient, no matter what the
circumstances. She hunched her shoulders, then took a calming breath.

"But the one for you is creepy." Sandy's voice was high, her words slow. D.J.
wondered what she looked like; all she could tell was that Sandy chewed gum
loudly and snappingly, and occasionally smoked; the small sucked intakes of
breath were a giveaway.

"I still need the phone number on this one, Sandy." Sandy had purged vital
information from the files without communicating it before. D.J. had learned the
hard way to persist with her.

After three tries, Sandy managed to tell her the phone number. D.J. wrote,
sighed, and said, "Is that it for this message?"

"Yeah, I guess. There's one from that psycho nutcase Dr. Kabukin's seeing--"

D.J. resisted an urge to ask just which psycho nutcase. Dr. Kabukin handled
therapy cases, while Dr. Bollings did divorce, custody, and criminal evaluations
for the courts. D.J. generally liked Dr. Kabukin's patients better. Most of them
were interested in changing. Most of Dr. Bollings' patients were interested in
fooling the doctor.

"-- a couple real boring messages for the other doctors, and then this one for