As the two officers drove back toward Sandhill a short time later, Sheriff Martin said optimistically, “We’re coming along pretty well, at that. If this sample of Mrs. Waring’s lipstick checks with what’s on Petty’s mouth, we’ll get a sample of her handwriting and see if she wrote this note. That may clear it up.”
“Suppose the lipstick and the handwriting don’t check?”
“Then we’ll have to start all over again,” the Sheriff admitted. They were pulling into the environs of Sandhill, and he turned along a tree-lined street in the direction of the deputy’s home. He slowed the car and seemed to be thinking deeply, then suddenly struck the steering wheel a blow with his fist. “I’m a fool, Lem!”
He pulled over to the curb in front of Whitaker’s house and asked intently, “It was just ten o’clock when we left the office, wasn’t it?”
“Not more’n a minute or so after. We listened to the end of that hour-long newscast over KFEL and went right out.”
“And we heard Morris’s car coming down the hill when we got to the front door,” Martin went on, thinking aloud. “That couldn’t have been more than five minutes past ten at the most.”
“That’s right.”
“Even a young fellow like Nate Morris couldn’t climb down that slope and back up again in five minutes,” mused the Sheriff. “That sets the time exactly.”
He put his car in gear again and swung in a U-turn to go back up the street. “I’m going to ask Mr. and Mrs. Morris just one question and then I’ll know who murdered William Petty without waiting to get this lipstick analyzed or this handwriting checked.”
“It’s pretty late to rouse somebody out now,” the deputy objected.
“Not too late to put the finger on a murderer. And Morris can do it for us. He lives out on Elm Street, doesn’t he?”
Martin drove another block and swung to the right. As the houses along Elm Street became more scattered, Whitaker leaned out of his window to look ahead, and said, “It’s the middle of the next block, I think. A white stucco house.”
“They’re still up.” Martin indicated the lighted windows of the neat bungalow as he stopped in front.
The two men went up the path and the Sheriff pressed the electric button. They heard footsteps inside. Morris opened the door. He flung it wide open when he recognized the Sheriff and his deputy. “Come in. Glad you stopped by. Sally and I have been wondering what you’ve found out.”
They entered a long, comfortable living-room with Indian rugs on the floor and deep, restful chairs arranged cozily. Sally Morris was seated in an overstuffed chair in front of a low coffee table. A silver percolator was bubbling on the table and a tall bottle of brandy stood beside it. She looked up, but there was no welcoming smile. “We are about to make ourselves a coffee royal, Sheriff. Will you join us?”
She was quite young, with freckles splashed across her nose.
Martin said, “The coffee smells mighty good. Wouldn’t mind having a shot of royal first, I reckon, and then coffee on top of it.”
“Get some glasses,” the girl told her husband, and asked the deputy, “How about you?”
“I reckon I’ll wait for the coffee, Mrs. Morris,” he decided.
Morris brought two glasses from the sideboard. He stopped beside his wife and held them out while she poured the brandy. He handed one to the Sheriff, saying, “I’ll drink one with you. How’s the investigation been going?”
“Good.” Martin gulped down the brandy and smacked his lips. “Just about got the whole thing tied up in a knot and all I need is to check one thing with you.”
“Go ahead. If there’s anything we can tell you, we’ll be glad to help.”
“It’s the exact timing,” the Sheriff explained. “That’s the most important point right now. I want you both to think hard. You figure you reached the Point a little after nine-thirty?”
“It couldn’t have been much later than that.”
“And you sat there awhile and waited for the moon to come up and then heard soft music and couldn’t figure where it was coming from. That right?”
“I imagine we were parked about ten minutes before I noticed the two guard rocks were gone. Then I realized the music must be coming from the radio of a car that had gone over and I told Sally to wait while I went down to investigate.”
“That makes it about right,” Martin agreed. “You were back in town by five minutes after ten. Give you three or four minutes to make the run — that’d give you ten or fifteen minutes to’ve got to the bottom and back up after hearing the music.”
“That’s about right,” the rancher agreed. “It’s a steep climb back up the cliff.”
“Which sets it pretty definite as being between nine-thirty and ten o’clock when you heard the music?”
Nate Morris nodded. “That’s a safe enough guess.”
Sheriff Martin shook his head slowly. “It’s a plumb bad guess, Nate. That car radio was tuned to Station KFEL. You forgot that KFEL has an hour-long news program without any music between nine and ten.”
“But — we heard it, I tell you.”
“You didn’t hear any music and I’ll tell you why, Nate. You were busy knocking Petty cold after finding him there kissing your wife — and then prying out those boulders and kicking his car in gear and guiding it over the edge from the runningboard. But couldn’t take a chance on him still being alive, so you slid down the slope to check. Then you got scared we might find your footprints or something to indicate that you’d been there and you tried to think up some good story to explain how you’d been attracted to the wreck that couldn’t be seen from above.
“The motor was dead and the lights were shorted out, and you thought of the radio. You turned it on, and by golly, it played. So you hiked back up to the top and listened for a moment, and that’s when you heard the music. Right after the program changed at ten o’clock. I’m sorry, Nate. That’s the only answer that fits the lie you told about hearing the music.”
Morris was breathing hard. His wife leaned forward to put her face in her hands, elbows propped on her knees.
“It’s absurd,” Morris protested. “There must have been music. We heard it.”
Martin said, “We’ll need a sample of your wife’s lipstick to compare with that on Petty’s mouth. And you’d better write us a note, Mrs. Morris. Just write: Meet me tonight the same place. Must see you. And sign it: Your kitten.”
Morris stepped forward with an angry exclamation, clenched fist upraised.
Sally leaped up with a cry of terror. “Don’t, Nate! They know everything. It won’t work. I told you it wouldn’t work. Oh, God help us!” She buried her face in her hands and wept hysterically.
Morris said, “All right, Sheriff. I killed him. I went crazy when I drove up and saw Sally in his arms. I jumped out of my car and hit him. When I saw he was unconscious, saw how easy it would be to run his car over the edge and make it look like an accident. But I had to be sure he was dead. And after I’d gotten down to his car, I realized the police have ways of tracing footprints and things. And someone might have seen me driving up there.
“I read in a book once about a radio that kept on playing after a car was smashed up, and I reached in with my gloved hand and turned the knob. An announcer came on. I didn’t think about what station it was. I just thought it would make a plausible explanation for me being down there.”
Later that night in the Sheriff's office, Morris repeated his confession before both officers, Assistant County Attorney Albright and a court reporter. He willingly signed a typewritten transcript of his statement, which told in detail how he had suspected his wife of secretly meeting a certain Denver man whose name need not be mentioned here and how he had followed them to their fatal tryst that night.