10-Story Detective Magazine, April 1946 — page 30: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

23- .& pair of earrings—little hammered sil- ver frogs with a strand of her golden hair caught in one of the turnscrews; a shirt; an oiled silk windbreaker; silk underwear; tan woolen slacks; and a pair of jodhpur boots, I looked at the boots carefully, River bottom sand had worked in where the soles met the uppers. Yellow stable straw had stuck to the bottoms of the imsteps. They had the stable smell, too. . “What time did she come in?” I asked. “Just before daylight.” The cops must have given up on Lily about this time. They were trampling around the house, bellowing. “Get out there and keep them busy,” I snapped, “Don’t say anything about this, understand?” Emily Hayden nodded, She’d gone to the mirror and put her hair back in order, She shut the door. I opened Vanessa’s big wardrobe closet. Out of a dozen pairs of slacks on hangers 1 found one pair . with cuffs wet around the edges. ] got down on my knees at her shoe rack, First I tried all the walking shoes, looking at the soles and smelling them, Women do crazy things. It was a pair of gold sandals without any toes that had the stable smell and the stable straw sticking *o them. ] went to the bedroom door and flagged Emly Hayden away from the cops. “Get your purse and gloves,” I whispered. “We’re going to give these flatfeet the - slip.” “Leave them, you mean? But, what for?” “So we ean get over to Johnny Cook’s riding stable and nail Turrentine to the cross. You’re going to help me!” WE DROVE over to the riding stable in silence. I didn’t open my mouth until my tires began to hiss in the sand along the river bottom road, Johnny Cook’s corrals loomed ahead. “What time is it?” I asked Emily Hayden, “Six minutes before seven.” “Turrentine will be back any minute now, if your watch is right.” “Of course it’s right,” she said furi- ously. “Now will you please tell me what this is all about?” “t found horse tracks outside the garden wall.” _. 10-STORY DETECTIVE She gasped. “You mean Turrentine came there this morning?” “Yes. Now listen. What we’re going to do is jar an admission out of him. Not that he killed Vanessa or anything. Just that he was there.” “Why don’t we tell the police and let them do it?” I shook my head, “He’s big enough to wiggle out of it. But if you catch him unawares, and say you saw him go in that gate through the wall...” “But I didn’t!” “You’re going to say yeu did, and you’re going to make it stick. | know Turrentine, If you hustle him he’}) just laugh and admit it and defy you to prove it.” “Then how will we prove it?” “T’m going to be listening to the whole thing.” “Oh,” she said coldly. “That way.” “Yes, that way.” I parked the car and . snapped off the ignition as Johnny Cook came to meet us, a grin on his cheerful faée. “One more thing,” | Be tenes “Not a word to Johnny about Vanessa. Savvy ?” The long hay loft, full of beams and daneing dust motes, had a low ceiling. I could bear the horses down below, rattling their halter chains in the stalls or chewing at the wood of their mangers. Every time one of the sagging, rotten planks of the loft floor cracked under- foot, the sweat popped out on mre; under my clothes. I don’t like horses much. They don’t like me, either. They ean smell my phobia of them. Emily Hayden’s drifted up from below. Mark,” she informed me. Johnny had téld us how Turrentine liked to stable his own nag after riding. It was the farm boy coming vut in him. “I—Il’m afraid,” she added. “Don’t worry,” I assured her. “The minute I hear the payoff, I’ll cough and shuffle my feet up here. He’! know there’s a witness.” She didn’t answer. A minute later I heard spurs.clink and Turrentine’s boom- ing voice talking to his horse. He broke off suddenly. “What're you doing here?” he grunted. Emily Hayden answered. “What were you doing riding up te that garden wall this morning?” low-pitched voice “He’s coming, Comiuircbooks (©