Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1999

“It’s really touching the way you remember all the little details like that.” Smiling, she reached out to pat his hand. “But, no, actually, I was overcome with wanderlust before I ever got around to thinking about getting involved with another film after Death Virgins of the Amazon. I simply bummed around the world for awhile and ended up in the Bahamas. That’s where I met Richard Barnson. Do you know who he is?”

Wes thought. “Movie actor, long time ago?”

“Yes. For about ten years there, starting right after the end of the Second World War, he was very successful in the movies, specializing in what they call film noir,” she said. “Dark Alley was his biggest hit, also Weep Not, My Wanton and The Big Double Cross. Well, the point is that, unlike many washed-up actors, Dick held onto his money.”

“Ah.”

“No, I didn’t try to talk him out of any money,” she said. “He wanted to write his autobiography, and he hired me to help him.”

“You’re not a writer, Case. You’re a part-time actress who specializes in television commercials and a part-time cartoonist.”

“That’s not fair. Do I accuse you of being a part-time animator?”

“No, because animation is my profession and I work at it full time.”

“You’re simply splitting rails.”

“Splitting hairs.”

“Anyway, I came back here to Southern Cal with Dick Barnson, and I’ve been living in his place in Bel Air and working very hard on his memoirs with him.”

“Is his the mansion you jumped out of?”

“No, and stop interrupting,” she warned. “Dick, by the way, is eighty-two years old, so there’s no reason for you to be jealous of him. The important thing is that he knew Neva Maxton.”

Wes looked blank. “Who is?”

“She was that sexy blonde actress who disappeared without a trace way back in 1953,” explained Casey. “Neva and Dick costarred in Dark Alley, which they run on American Movie Classics just about every week. It’s a noir classic.”

“What does any of this have to do with your jumping out a window?”

“I’m giving you the back story first,” Casey told him a bit impatiently. “It turns out, you see, that Dick Barnson knows what really happened to Neva Maxton. She didn’t run away at all.” Casey shook her head. “Her husband, much like you, was inordinately jealous. He trailed her to one of her rendezvouses up near Lake Tahoe. Then, in a fit of passion, he strangled her. He buried her in a remote spot in the woods, and because he could afford to establish an ironclad alibi, he was never even suspected of having anything to do with it.”

“How does this old actor of yours know that?”

“Because Dick was the one she was shacked up with that fatal weekend. Luckily for him, he’d gone out to do some birdwatching that afternoon. But as fate would have it, he was puttering around, unseen, in the very stretch of woods that Dewitt Clannahan, that’s the irate husband, chose for his burial plot. Hunkering down behind some handy shrubbery, Dick Barnson witnessed the whole burial ceremony and he also got a close enough look at the poor woman’s body to realize she’d been throttled.”

“How come he didn’t call the police or the sheriff?”

“Well, he couldn’t, dummy,” she said. “He was married himself at the time, and getting involved with a front page scandal — murder, adultery, burial in the woods — that would’ve ruined his career. It was a much more conservative era.”

“So Barnson is planning to include the truth about this in his bio?”

“Yes, exactly. Neva Maxton is dead after all. Clannahan, her dippy husband, moved to Europe right after the murder and died there years ago,” she said. “It’ll make a great chapter, and it’s sure to get picked up for serialization in one of the supermarket tabs.” She sighed, and slumped.

“But?”

She said quietly, “During this same period I’ve been consulting Alan Omony.”

“The self-help guru who wrote How to Succeed at Success?”

“That Alan Omony, yes.”

“I saw a couple of minutes of one of his infomercials one night when I had insomnia, Case. He’s a complete fraud, a con man who—”

“No, he’s really quite good at helping people with their problems,” she insisted. “Since I had a very nice financial arrangement with poor Dick, I was able to afford to see Alan for two fifty-minute sessions each and every week. He’s the one who cured me.”

“Cured you of what?”

“My compulsive tendency to fib.”

“If you’re cured, Casey, why are you telling me this fantastic—”

“Every dam word is true.” Mad, she gave a sudden quick jab to his upper arm. “Oh, I know I’m like the boy who cried woof. Nobody will—”

“Wolf.”

“It turns out it was a mistake to mention to Alan what Dick had told me about the circumstances of Neva’s death.”

“Why?”

“Dewitt Clannahan, during the period when he didn’t doubt the faithfulness of his wife, showered her with jewels and baubles. The collection was estimated at being worth half a million dollars. Lord knows how much the stuff has appreciated since the 1950’s.”