Gordon Kress said slowly: “You have an interesting theory, Corbett. But, as a lawyer, I’m telling you that it’s only a theory. Brockley has admitted that he cashed the check. That clears Keever, but it doesn’t prove Sutton conspired to frame Keever. You cant prove that.”
“Oh, yes, I can!” I looked across at Sam Price. The little lawyer had sat absently through the dialogue, apparently oblivious to it. I knew that he was tom with grief over his daughter’s death. I tried to ease up a bit as I spoke to him.
“Sutton couldn’t have planned a frame as clever as this one all by himself. It would take a lawyer to tell him just how far to go. Otherwise the frame might back-fire. How about that, Mr. Price?”
Price eyed me dully.
“You don’t think that I would admit that, do you?”
“Yes. You wouldn’t protect your daughter’s murderer, would you?”
Very pale, Price said calmly: “If you think Sutton killed her, you’re mistaken. He couldn’t have. It was Sutton himself who called me and asked me to meet him at a bar on the outskirts of Worthington Heights. I met him there, and he told me Pat was at the apartment he’d rented under the name of George Cranston. He said she was terribly drunk and wouldn’t leave when he’d tried to persuade her to.
“He wanted me to ride back with him and pick her up. He said she was too drunk to drive. But I’d done such a thing once before, and Pat had never forgiven me. She said I disgraced her, treating her like a child. So I phoned the apartment and talked to her. I asked her to come home at once, and she said she would.
“Her car was in the drive when I got back. I supposed she was safely in the house. Anyway, Sutton couldn’t have shot her. We had a couple of drinks at the bar before I went home. It was eleven o’clock when I phoned Pat. The coroner says she died between eleven and eleven thirty. It would be a half-hour’s drive from that bar to the apartment. Sutton couldn’t have gone back there and shot her, for it was nearly eleven-thirty when we left the bar. I know that.”
“But he could have shot her before he left the apartment and got a girl to impersonate her on the phone.”
“But the coroner said she was alive at eleven. Sutton was with me then. He couldn’t have shot her before he came to the bar.”
“Oh, yes, but he could have! You’re going on the assumption that your daughter died instantly after she was shot. You know that she was shot under her left eye and that the bullet lodged in her brain. So you’ve taken it for granted that she died instantly. You’re forgetting that many brain wounds, especially those made with small-calibered guns, don’t produce death for days. Some even fail to be fatal.” I turned to Kress. “Isn’t that right, Mr. District Attorney?”
Kress nodded. “Sutton could have shot the girl, all right, but what about the voice on the phone? A father should be able to recognize his own daughter’s voice!”
“Not when she’s as drunk as this girl was supposed to be. Sutton knew the girl would die — he got another girl to impersonate her an the phone. I think I know who the girl was. Millie Martin’s her name — she looks a lot like Kay.”
Kay looked up then. She was taking this all down. I went on. “Sutton palmed Millie off on me. That must have been for effect. He didn’t want Patricia to think there was anything between himself and Millie. But she must have found out the truth. She threatened to tell her father how many times she’d visited that apartment. Sutton got frightened. He thought Sam Price would kill him if he found out the truth. So he lost his head and shot the girl. While she lay dying he and Millie improvised an alibi. Millie drove the Cadillac to Price’s house immediately after her act on the phone. I’m gambling, Mr. District Attorney, that the man you planted at Price’s house will identify her.”
Sutton gambled the same way. He got excitedly to his feet and tore at his collar as sweat streamed down his face.
“I didn’t do it! I tell you Sam, it wasn’t me! It was Millie! Yes, that’s right, it was Millie! She was jealous! She did it. Don’t believe anything she tells you!”
Price said very quietly. “You’ve got it wrong, Phil. I’m not to believe anything you tell me!”
He got out a small automatic and shot Sutton. The funny thing was, he got Sutton right under his left eye. It had to be accidental, for it turned out Price had never fired a pistol before in his life.
Of course I could have cut Price down, but I might have killed him, and I wanted him to confirm my story of how he had worked out the frame on Keever. He did this very satisfactorily.
At least Keever was satisfied. He was so grateful for the way I cleared him that it was pretty close to a full week before he called me an idiot.
Hot Ice
by William Rough
Tommy Rex was the best-dressed jewel thief in seven states, but like many a smoothie, he caused a lot of trouble. He left a trail of blood on the boulevard and a corpse in every closet. Four detectives, including that beer-drinking behemoth, B. Slabbe, found that he was an easy man to follow — but a hard one to get away from.
Chapter One
Rubies on the Run
About ten minutes after the two-thirty train from Philly whistled behind Slabbe’s office building that September afternoon, his telephone rang.
He was tilted back in his chair, a quart bottle of beer to his lips, and he hauled in the phone without missing a swallow.
“Yeah?”
“You Slabbe?” a man’s voice asked.
“Yeah.”
“Gage is the name, Al Gage. I’m a Zenith op. Just got off the train from Philly.”
“That so?” Slabbe murmured. “How’s my friend, Mr. God Almighty Enoch Oliver?”
“Oh. You know the boss?”
“By long distance,” Slabbe said. “He told me how slick you Zenith guys are and how dumb us guys are when I was protecting you slick guys on the Max Lorenz thing, last month.”
Gage made a deprecatory sound over the wire. “The Old Man’s O.K. It’s just that he expects results and chews you till he gets ’em.”
“You getting some?” Slabbe asked.
“M’m,” Gage murmured guardedly. Then he sighed. “Well, hell, I guess I have to tell you if I use you, huh?”
Slabbe agreed placidly: “And you knew before you rang me that I’d done a chore for Zenith, and so had been checked up.”
Gage said, without apology: “Yeah. I wanted to hear the sound of you, though.”
“I sound O.K.?”
“Sure. You got a man’s voice and you don’t soft soap me right off or get excited. You know Tommy Rex, Happy Lado and Silk Flaim?”
“We got newspapers and radios in the town,” Slabbe replied.
“O.K. Don’t ride me, pal. I’ve been up all night a couple of nights now. One of the reasons I want you quick is I’m so damn tired. I just put Tommy Rex in your town. He’s in the washroom down here at the station. He’ll be on the move again in a couple seconds and I’ll stick along; but I want you to be handy for me to call back to when I put him down again. O.K.?”
“Check. You want me to line up a cop to make the pinch?”
“It ain’t going to be a pinch right off,” Gage said. “We want Tommy to connect with somebody, first. You can tell your cop pal to be handy, though, when we want him, and while you’re waiting for me, you can put out a line to see if there’s any other new arrivals in your hunting grounds.”