Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

“We’re not dealing with a crazed mass murderer here, just a greedy woman who set up a fake corporation that was issued checks for supplying nothing at all, and made it work because she was sleeping with the man who issued the purchase orders and was the secretary for the one who issued the checks. We think that Nelson realized what Humble was doing, but had no idea she was in on it, so when she asked him to meet Humble — give the light of her life a break — Mr. Nice Guy Nelson went along. As nearly as we can figure out, there was a period of about forty-five minutes when no one saw her in the offices. She probably went to the motel, even though no gate guard remembers seeing her leave. They have a bad habit of looking at the bumper parking permit instead of the car and the occupant. She probably wanted to be at the meeting, too. Humble killed Nelson and she very likely slipped out last night and killed Humble so he couldn’t blow the whistle on her before she took off with the money. I don’t think she’ll be any trouble. When you hand her the warrant, she’ll probably faint when she thinks of how close she came.”

“Not her,” she said grimly. “She’s never fainted in her life.”

Abernathy didn’t faint. She didn’t even turn white when Gina told her she was under arrest.

Beckett stepped forward with the handcuffs. “You have the right to remain silent—”

She held up a hand. “Don’t bother reading me my rights. I have to say this. He could have gone along, just let us resign. We’d have gone away and none of this would have happened. If it had been Andrews or Gower or one of the others, that’s what he’d have done. The corporation never prosecutes one of them. They’re simply let go. Bad publicity, they say. Destroys confidence in the corporation. Pushes down the price of shares. Penalizes the innocent stockholder. In reality, they’re simply protecting each other. Never call them dishonest or thieves. They’re guilty of bad judgment. The money wasn’t that important. Spread out over five years, it doesn’t begin to compare with the big bonuses and stock options they give each other and the golden parachute deals they arrange. I couldn’t see why what’s all right for them wouldn’t be all right for us, but no, he insisted he was going to prosecute.”

Gina glanced at Beckett before saying, “Probably all true, but think how much better it would have sounded from the witness stand if you hadn’t killed him. A jury of your peers might have even given you a round of applause. To make it worse, you had to kill Humble—”

“An accident,” she said. “The gun was supposed to be in the briefcase when he gave it to me. I wanted to keep them both in the trunk of my car because no one would ever look for them there—”

Except Gina, thought Beckett.

“—and when it wasn’t, I had to know why. He wanted to get rid of it himself, he said, but a plan is a plan. When I tried to take it from him, it went off.”

Flinty and sharp-edged, her voice suddenly turned dull and soft. “Why do you think I’m telling you all of this? With Millard gone, it no longer matters. I might as well be dead.”

Gina glanced at Beckett again.

“You must have known removing his clothes would fool no one,” he said. “Why bother?”

“Anything to add to the confusion.”

That hadn’t been the reason. Let the psychiatrists probe for the real one — something to do with love or hate she didn’t even realize herself. Want to make a man look ridiculous? Take away his pants — a situation always good for a laugh.

“You’d have been better off not mentioning the briefcase.”

She shrugged. “We all make mistakes. I thought it would add credibility to what I was telling you.”

The jacket to the skirt and blouse she was wearing was lying on the seat of a small chair, as though thrown there when she came in.

Beckett motioned toward it and stepped forward, the cuffs dangling from his hand. “Put it on.”

He’d known the .32 would turn up in the search of the apartment. He didn’t expect it to turn up in her hand as she spun. Damn!

He lunged, underhanding the cuffs toward her head, following through with his fist — hitting home just as she fired — scent she was wearing overwhelmed by burned gunpowder — breath gone in a huge gasp, lungs paralyzed as she catapulted back into the wall — legs suddenly rubbery — thinking as he fell that this might be the answer to everything.

He ended on his hands and knees, straddling her. His breath came back. Pain exploded. He grimaced at a white-faced Gina.

“Remember the gutters of history,” he said.

Fully dressed, he stood at the window. The hospital was new, built on a hill overlooking the valley, green lawn sloping toward a stand of trees beyond which five yellow brick condominium towers rose, the complex so huge that it wasn’t unusual for the people who lived there to have a ten minute walk to their cars. Explain the logic of that for fifteen hundred a month, he thought.

Gina appeared at the door, riding herd on the young nurse pushing the inevitable wheelchair.