“Just like he's doing us,” I said.
“Don't remind me. All right; so much for Ellison. Next we've got this character with the lousy manners.”
“Meaning Albert Miller?” I said.
“Yes. Men with the right kind of upbringing don't jump out bathroom windows and leave their company standing in the middle of the floor with his mouth hanging open. Now, do they?”
“Not often,” I said.
“Okay. Albert Miller. No police record, and BCI is checking him in all departments. I know they are, because I made damn sure of it right after Stan told me how he left you standing around to admire his furniture. That telegram you got said Miller had evidence in a drawer of his desk. There was no evidence in the desk, or anywhere else, and now there's no Miller either. We don't know whether he has motive, but we can assume opportunity; and if ever flight was an indication of guilt, Miller is guilty of everything since Cain. He was so anxious to get away from a cop that he dived twenty feet into six inches of concrete. That, Pete, is what I call flight.”
“Almost literal, in fact,”
He wrote down Miller's name. “You put a stakeout in his place?”
“Yes.”
“Probably a waste of manpower. A guy that anxious to leave somewhere sure doesn't figure to come back.” He thought for a while. “We got anything else in his favor?”
“No.”
“Okay; so much for Albert Miller. Now we've got this Dr. Clifford Campbell and his wife, Susan. We know Nadine threatened him with something, but we don't know what. He admits the threat, but says he's never seen her, doesn't know what she was talking about. What have we got on him beside the threat from Nadine?”
“Nothing,” I said. “BCI is still running an all-out check on him.”
“Nothing negative on him so far?”
“No. So far, he's a model citizen.”
“All right. Now we've got Mrs. Campbell. Susan.”
“Mrs. Campbell, Barney?”
“Stan says she's an eighteen-year-old beauty with a pretty fair temper and a shape that'd charge up a truck battery. Right?”
I shrugged. “Right.”
“And her husband's a man twenty-five years or so older than she is.” He paused. “From what Stan says, this Nadine Ellison was one of the most beautiful women he ever laid eyes on. If she and Campbell were up to any hanky-panky, and Susan tumbled to it, she might've decided to kill her. After all, how could she be sure Nadine wouldn't do her out of her meal ticket?”
“If she married Campbell just for dough, Barney, she wouldn't worry about Nadine one bit. In fact, she'd love her. All she'd have to do is get a little proof, and then she could just sit back and let some lawyer go to work for her. In a very short time she would be dragging in a lot more money in alimony than she ever knocked down as a wife. And even if she took a cash settlement, she'd get a potful.”
“You going to tell me you buy this May-and-December business, Pete?”
“Oh, come off it, Barney. Clifford Campbell is only forty-two or-three years old.”
“All right. Then maybe Susan wanted to keep the money she was getting as an honest wife plus the prestige and position that go with being the wife of a big-wheel medico. Lots of girls go for that other stuff even more than they go for the cash loot. Right?”
“Yes, but—”
“That 'but' of yours keeps rearing up all the time. You know the trouble with you, Pete? You're a natural-born sucker for 'little ladies.'”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “Who's next in the line-up?”
“This Frenchman who knocked off his old lady and buried her in the flower bed. What we know about him is that he can speak any number of languages so well that the native-born folks can't tell the difference.”
“Was that in the clipping Nadine had translated?”
“No. It was in the same magazine along with the pictures we sent over to have copied. Anyhow, he's a pretty solid candidate. Stan says you and he think Nadine might have been blackmailing him. It's an easy idea to buy, and I'll buy a big piece of it.” He wrote on his pad for a while. “So here's Maurice Thibault. No novice in the murder game. Could be talking to you right now and you'd never guess he wasn't a native son. We can assume opportunity; and as for motive, a guillotine doesn't need any assuming at all.” He paused. “And now we come to Iris Pedrick who runs the antique store. She's the one with the boy friend and the sick husband. Right?”
“Yes.”
“And she gave you a line of bull about being real worried about her husband finding out about the boy friend.”
“She sold me, Barney,” I said. “Just because people want to have their cake and eat it too doesn't mean they like to hurt other people.”
“That isn't the point. The point is, who was she doing the real sweating about? Her husband, or herself?”
“Who knows?”
“This Nadine might have been shaking her down a little.”
“The same might go for all the other people who used her place.”
“True. And yet we have to stick with Mrs. Pedrick because she's the only one we know about. She and her boy friend, Eddie Dycer. You run Eddie and Iris through BCI?”
“Yes.”
“Well, keep an eye on those two, Pete. You never know.”
I nodded, thinking how tough it must be for Barney. More and more often of late he had been sitting down with the men on his squad for sessions like this one. It was the closest thing to working a squeal that his command and title permitted; but it was still a long, long way from the real thing.
“And this young guy that Nadine had such a big yen for,” Barney went on, really warming up now. “There's the guy to watch, Pete.”
“Marty Hutchins, Barney,” I said. “I checked him out, Remember?”
He frowned. “Yes, I remember now. Stan said he was shacked up all night with some kid in a hotel.”
“That's right.”
“Now where does that leave us, Pete? Who've we over-looked?”
“If you've overlooked anyone, it must be someone who just hit town five minutes ago.”
“Another one of your troubles, Pete, is that you don't use a wide-angle lens. You're always trying to whittle suspects down to just two or three.”
“I always try to whittle them down to just one,” I said.
“You better watch it, boy. A real smart one like you is likely to make lieutenant in less than five years.” He paused. “You just plain forgot that Bowman girl, didn't you?”
I grinned. “Barney, I didn't forget her. I simply—”
“Well, I haven't. Judy Bowman is the one who found the body — and that gives her a good ten-yard lead on everybody else. Half the time, the murderer turns out to be one of two people: the spouse, or the one who finds the body.”
“All right,” I said. “She lived within fifty feet of Nadine. She had opportunity, but no known motive. She checked clean at BCI. She ran out into the street yelling for a cop. This was at least six hours after Nadine died, and it may have been as many as ten. She was hysterical when we got there, and she very nearly got that way again while I was questioning her.”
“How come you're so sure this Judy Bowman wasn't acting?”
I shrugged. “Hysteria isn't acting, Barney.”
“Never sell the ladies short, Pete. So who else is there? It seems to me we're still missing somebody.”
He sat doodling on the scratch pad awhile, as if trying to think of anything we'd overlooked; then he tossed the pencil aside, glanced at his watch, and stood up.
“Well,” he said, “if I want to get home and eat and shave and clean up a little and still get back to work by eight o'clock, I'd better get a move on.”