Sitting motionless on the couch, Frank Legrand looked like he’d just taken a shot between the eyes with a poleax.
While the Legrand family talked themselves into deeper trouble, I got out of there. I wasn’t helping anybody, and there were some unformed ideas in the back of my head that I wanted to pull up front and examine.
It was the middle of the morning, and I was on my third pot of coffee and the last of my cigarettes when I figured it out. All I had to do was prove it, and I thought I knew how.
I drove out to the Bowmar Talent School. The death of the boss hadn’t slowed the operation. I found the lobby as full of applicants as the day before. I walked past the reception desk to the office area. Through her open door I saw the plastic Miss Kirby in worried conversation with the mumbling speech teacher. As I continued along the hall, the big blond sap expert rounded a comer in front of me. He put on a weak grin and stuck out his hand.
“Hey, no hard feelings, Dukane. Okay?”
I hit him twice in the belly before he could tense his muscles. The big man’s mouth flopped open and he turned the color of raw modeling clay. I stepped back and planted my feet for leverage, then let him have my best shot on the hinge of the jaw. His face jerked out of shape and he hit the floor like a felled oak.
“No hard feelings,” I said.
Lou Markey looked up from behind the desk when I walked into Bowman’s office. His hair was uncombed and his cheeks were sprinkled with orange stubble. The ever-present cigarette smoldered in his hand. It took him a moment to place my face.
“Oh, hello, Dickens. Were you looking for someone?”
“My name isn’t Dickens,” I said. “It’s Dukane. I’m a private investigator.”
“Are you here about Rex Bowman?” he asked.
“You know what happened last night?”
“I heard it on the radio early this morning,” he said. “I thought I’d better come in and start getting our papers straightened out. There’s a lot to be done.”
“Does that include changing the name back to the Markey School of Acting?”
“How did you know that?”
“I ran across it in some of Bowman’s papers. It looks like he kind of took over your operation.”
Markey shrugged. “Rex knew how to make money, I didn’t. The new name, Bowmar, was supposed to be a combination of his and mine, but most people thought it just came from Bowman.”
“What was he going to do next, phase you out completely?”
Markey’s forgotten cigarette singed his fingers and he jumped to light another. “It doesn’t make any difference now, does it? As the surviving partner I’ll take over the school.”
When he had his lungs full of smoke I snapped, “Give me the gun, Markey.”
“What gun?” The words popped out immediately, but Markey’s eyes flickered down and to his right.
I got to the desk drawer before he moved, and lifted out the .32 automatic that lay inside. Markey sagged back in the chair and aged ten years before my eyes.
“I didn’t go there planning to kill Rex,” he said. “But I couldn’t let him push me out of my own school the way he planned. I hated what he turned it into, anyway. Sure, he made money, but all the lies he told the kids who came to us. I told him it was wrong to lead them on like that, but Rex wouldn’t listen to me. He wouldn’t give an inch.” He blew his nose, then looked up at me. “Where did I slip up, Dukane? How did you tumble?”
“It was the way you left things in Bowman’s livingroom after you shot him. Something was wrong, but I didn’t pin it until this morning. Bowman was smoking a cigar when he was shot — it went out in his hand. Yet the big ash tray in front of him was empty. Wiped clean. It had to be the killer who cleaned it — not to get rid of Bowman’s ashes, but his own. Neither Esther nor Tina Legrand is a smoker. Frank Legrand either, for that matter. But you light one after the other, a distinctive cigarette that would point straight to you.”
He stared down at the desk top for a long time, then looked up with the ghost of the crooked smile that belonged to Beano Markey, the comical kid in the high school movies. He said, “You didn’t really know I had the gun here, did you?”
“No,” I admitted, “but I figured you came straight here, not even going home to shave.”
“And you tricked me.”
“I just counted on your honesty. You told me you never could fake reactions.”
“The critics were right,” Markey said. “I’m a bad actor.”
The Duty of Every Citizen
by James Holding
Avoiding involvement is often a matter of good timing.
I suppose it established some kind of a record for solving crimes in a hurry. It was no thanks to me, however, even though I’m the sheriff of Penton County and officially got the credit for it.
I was having my “wake-up” coffee at my desk early Monday morning when I got the first call.
It was from Bud Clinton, manager of the BeeBee Supermarket in our shopping center. “Harry,” he said, very excited, “we’ve been robbed! Over the weekend, somebody took the safe out of my office!”
“Ouch!” I said. “You mean the safe itself is missing?”
“Absolutely. Somebody broke in at the back of the store, picked up my safe, and carried it off.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You don’t just pick up a three-thousand-pound safe and saunter off with it under your arm.”
“I know that,” Bud said. “But with the help of my stock-room forklift, that’s exactly what somebody did.”
“Anything else missing?”
“No. Only the safe.”
“What was in it?”
“Eleven hundred in cash and about three million trading stamps, I guess,” Bud said with a sigh.
“Okay. We’ll get right on it, Bud,” I said. “Somebody from my office will be over to have a look at things in a few minutes.”
That was at 6:31. I hung up, and immediately my phone rang again. It was Lonnie German from the German Roofing Company, reporting that one of his trucks had been stolen over the weekend.
“Give me its license number, Lonnie,” I said, “and I’ll send out an all-points on it. Does the stolen truck have your company name on it?”
“Yeah,” Lonnie said. He gave me the license number.
“Insured?”
“Of course. But I need that truck on the job today, so I’d appreciate fast action, Harry. Extra fast.”
“We’ll do our best to give it to you,” I said. “Our fast sleuthing.”
“Thanks,” Lonnie said. “I guess it helps to know the sheriff personally, eh?”
“All our citizens get the same fast, dependable service from the Sheriff’s Department,” I said. We both laughed and I hung up.
That was at 6:34.
At 6:36, just as I got the description and license number of Lonnie’s truck on the air, my phone rang again. This Monday morning was busier than most Saturday nights. I picked up the phone.
A man’s voice asked, “Is this the sheriff’s office?”
“Right,” I said. “Sheriff Boyle speaking. What can we do for you?”
“I want to ask you something, Sheriff.”
“Ask away,” I said impatiently. I had to get over to the BeeBee Supermarket.
“Did somebody steal a big iron safe out of the BeeBee Supermarket?” this guy asks me.
I gulped and sat back in my chair. “Maybe,” I said cautiously. “Why?”
“I got it for you,” said the voice. “Ran across it just now on my way home from work.”