Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

Dolly was a roly-poly woman with wonderfully round face, breasts, and hips. In another ten or fifteen years she would be fat, but now she was cute and cuddly, very cuddly. The middle-aged couples who formed the Tarns’ inner circle found them both irresistible.

Denver had liked them, but had limited contact with either; he was not a middle-aged millionaire.

When he reached their block, he found the area jammed with automobiles, as he had expected. He tried to picture the place at three in the morning. The newspaper account said the murderer had escaped on foot. No sensible person would go through this wealthy suburban neighborhood on foot very far. He would be much too conspicuous. Even in broad daylight, Denver felt out of place walking. In places like this, one’s feet only took one from garage to front door and back again. Where the garage was part of the house, there wasn’t even that exercise.

So the killer either lived nearby or had a car parked at no great distance.

As he turned into the path leading to the house, a small mob of visitors poured out of the front door. He knew most of them and exchanged greetings and conventional expressions of outrage at the murder.

A few visitors had remained, and he was greeted at the door by the cultured and stately Mrs. King, wife of a bank vice president. “I’m so glad you came,” she said. “Poor Dolly needs all the support she can get.”

She led him into a reception room where the bereaved widow rushed up to him as if he were a long-absent relative instead of a casual acquaintance. He found himself giving support in a literal sense, for she threw her arms around him, buried her head on his collarbone, and burst into tears. He was disconcerted, but not displeased, to be holding in his arms an extremely attractive woman with whom he had only shaken hands before. He patted her shoulder tenderly and she responded by squeezing her arms even tighter around him and letting her weeping subside into great slow sobs. No one paid any attention. It appeared to be her usual way of responding to sympathy.

Denver looked down and addressed appropriate expressions of condolence toward a small ear which was wedged against his neck. She responded with several quivers and an attempt to control her sobbing. There was, however, no relaxation of her embrace, and Denver began to feel embarrassed. He looked about for help but found none. He made the mistake of patting her shoulder again and she snuggled even closer, a thing Denver would have thought impossible.

Finally, he caught the eye of the bank vice president’s wife. Mrs. King regarded him with amusement for a moment and then responded to his silent appeal for help.

She came over and babbled a bit, addressing first Denver and then Dolly, saying how nice it was that friends came to comfort her. In order to reply, Dolly had to remove her face from Denver’s jacket and her head from his shoulder. Gradually they became disentangled and he was able to breathe again. The three of them joined two other couples who had come to comfort the widow but who were currently denouncing the police for not doing anything and for subjecting them to several hours of questioning.

Denver knew all four. The elderly man and woman were the Bells, who lived across the street from Dolly Tarn. He was a retired surgeon and she was a dress designer. The middle-aged man and his young wife were Cob and Farah Puckett. He was a computer programmer. Denver listened to them intently.

While demanding that the police find Sam’s killer, they were systematically planning to subvert all their efforts. Denver found that amusing. He was sure that Horn came up against such people all the time and knew how to handle them. But then the conversation took an ugly turn.

Cob Puckett began it by saying with a note of satisfaction, “I understand that they are concentrating on Buck Fine.”

Tod Bell said, “Yes. All of us who were at Fine’s party have been grilled especially hard by the police. Denver here is the latest. How did they treat you?”

Denver replied that Horn had wanted to know about the party but it had seemed fairly routine to him.

“Don’t you believe it, Denver,” Cob replied. “Buck is their best suspect and they are out after him. The rest of us liked Sam. Buck didn’t. You saw the way he tried to keep him out. And he practically accused him of having an affair with his wife.”

Farah Puckett was uncharacteristically silent, but Louise Bell dismissed the suggestion that the police had any one person targeted. “I think it was a burglar who was surprised by Sam and Dolly. He panicked, shot Sam, and ran away. I just wish we had seen him. We didn’t wake up until the police came. All those flashing lights and noise scared us out of our wits.”

“But he didn’t take anything. Sam had a couple thousand dollars on him. He always did. And nothing was taken: no jewelry, no money, nothing! I don’t think robbery was the motive. Someone was out to get Sam and got him.”

“But Sam had no enemies.”

“Except Buck Fine.”