5 Detective Novels Magazine — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

THANKS FOR MURDER asked for Ridgewood 8-940. The bell rang just once, and then Mrs. Byram asked cautiously, “Yes?” . I waited a moment, so the operator could go about her other business, then said, “I checked all the bars and came here. Did Joe—” “For God’s sake,” she said almost hysterically, “get out to Crystal Lake! Joe phoned right after your last call. I told him not to go out there, but he said he was going anyway. Hurry, hurry !” I cradled the phone. I went out, care- ful to wipe my prints off the front door handle, but sure that somebody had al- ready done it for me. Then I remembered I should have asked Mrs. Byram what time Eve Ankins had left the Macon home. Hadn’t Eve told me she would be busy tonight, to call tomorrow night for a date? Busy, yes. With a .22 and other little items, like murder for profit. There was nobody in the upstairs cor- ridor. I met nobody at all on the way to my car. I slid behind the wheel, tramped on the starter. I’d been lucky, meeting nobody. I’d met enough bodies, today. Your wit’s weak tonight, Darling, I thought. IV W nen my headlights picked up the gates into Crystal Lake and I dimmed them as I drove past the water music at the dam. The first cottage was dark, so I parked the convertible off the road, switched off the dimmers, and got out. Distant water music, steady and un- troubled. A rustle overhead, and I al- most jumped out of my clothes. It was only the breeze stirring the leaves. A treetoad piped, loud and shrill. That couldn’t be. It was too early for tree- toads. He piped again to make a liar out of my high school biology. See how smart you are, Darling? See how dumb-smart you are? Get along, Mr. Dumb-feet. Don’t miss the four-car garage under 41 the trees behind the forty-thousand dol- lar cottage, Darling. The only four-car garage at the lake, remember? Remem- ber that dark splotch down there, the cottage where Kitty Watrous lies with a bullet in the smooth, tanned skin just over the bra? I eased the automatic from my coat pocket. It seemed so tiny in my hand, but it could kill somebody—if your hand didn’t tremble and you understood guns. I understood guns. There’d been a war, remember ?.In the next war, that every- body is cooking up, there won’t be guns for you to carry, ‘Darling. There’ll be push buttons to push. Push-button Dar- ling. I didn’t laugh. You don’t laugh at death. You shiver and hide your head under the covers and hope— I almost walked past the only four- car garage at Lake Crystal. Somebody had forgotten to turn off the headlights that glowed behind the closed, front doors of the garage. I feather-footed over to the partly open door at the side and peered in. In the third aisle, stood a cream-colored Cadil- lac convertible. In the front seat, under the raised top, a man was slumped over the wheel. He wore a blue beret, and dark glasses hung from his left ear. There was somebody on the far side of the convertible. Just a vague, bulk, obscure outside the beams thrown by the headlights. I eased off the safety on the automatic and felt better. She was a marksman with that .22 she carried around. She knew exactly where a man’s heart was. She knew there were two ways to a man’s heart and she had the equipment to make it either way. Either with her pretty face and figure or with the .22 gun. The bent shadow eased along the far side of the convertible and was gone for a second. To clear my line of fire, I pushed the door gently, and it swung open and creaked on the hinges just as the shadow rounded the back end of the car. I said, “This is it, little girl,” in a loud voice and went through the open door COMmiclbooks (C