Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 6, May 1963

“Good night, Mr. Norton,” said Benda.

Norton stepped down to the curb. Max climbed into the driver’s seat and the car glided away smoothly. There was nothing left but the mark of tires in the snow to show Norton that he had not been dreaming.

At ten the next morning Norton entered the offices occupied by Kimball and Stacy, lawyers, on the twenty-first floor of Pearson City’s tallest skyscraper.

A clerk showed him into a library walled with calf-bound tomes of the law. Already waiting there was a woman in a long, supple mink coat. She had dark hair turning gray and dark, tragic eyes. She waited restlessly, crossing and uncrossing slim ankles, playing with doeskin gloves, lighting one cigarette after another from a tortoise-shell case.

At last Clement Kimball appeared. He was a big, pleasant looking fellow in his early fifties, with shrewd eyes and a genial mouth. He was surprised to see the woman. “Why, Margaret!” he said.

She crushed her cigarette in an ashtray and crossed the room to his side. “Any news about Marty?” There was deep feeling in her voice.

“No.” Kimball’s answer came soberly.

“Isn’t there anything I can do? Anything?”

“My dear, we’re doing everything we can.” Kimball’s big hand lay gently on her shoulder. “Better go home. Get some rest.”

“I’ll go home. But I can’t rest.” She pulled her coat collar up around her face and left without another word.

Kimball turned to the reporter. “Mr. Norton? That was my wife. Forgive me for not introducing you but she’s in a highly keyed-up state. She couldn’t be more worried if she were Martin Stacy’s own mother. I am ready to leave with you right now.”

“Let’s see Stacy first.”

Kimball drove Norton to the city prison where Martin was being held. An officer led them down a long, bleak corridor with the cool, earthy smell of a cellar. They entered a small room divided by a grille of steel.

On the other side of the grille stood the man Norton had seen in the newspaper picture with Jean. His tumbled hair made him look younger than he actually was. There was still a bruise under his right eye where he had “fallen downstairs.” No wonder he looked dazed and uncertain of himself.

“I have just one question to ask you,” said Norton. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?” He held out the black disc.

Martin strained his eyes through the grille. Police regulations forbade him to approach within ten feet of it. “No,” he said at last. “What is it?”

“Are you sure you saw nothing like this in Diana Clark’s suite when you were there the night of the murder?”

“Quite sure. If it was there I didn’t see it.”

Outside again in the pale winter sunshine Kimball turned his car toward Wickford, the real estate project promoted by Diana Clark’s divorced husband, Daniel Forbes.

Kimball drove in silence until Norton spoke. “Have you any idea who the man was Diana Clark planned to marry?”

Kimball frowned. “The police think it was Martin. They got to know each other when Martin and I handled her divorce from Forbes three years ago. The police claim that they were lovers — that Martin got tired of her and killed her when she threatened suit for breach of promise. Of course it’s nonsense. She was seven years older than Martin. He barely noticed her.”

Wickford was a raw, new development. Tarred roads and asphalt sidewalks divided meadow and wasteland into checkerboard squares. There were only two houses — one finished, the other in the lathe and plaster stage.

Kimball halted his car before the finished house, a naked cube of white stucco without shrubbery or trees. A billboard proclaimed the office of Daniel Forbes, dealer in real estate.

Forbes himself answered the doorbell. He was young, but his face was set in a permanent frown of worry. He wore practical country clothes — shoe packs laced to the knee, an old pair of riding breeches and a mackinaw.

“Oh, it’s you.” His face fell when he saw Kimball. “I thought it was somebody come to buy a lot.” He led the way into a roomy, plainly furnished office.

“How’s business?” asked Norton after introductions had been made.

“Not so good.” Forbes’ grin twisted wryly. “I suppose that gives, me a motive. I could never have paid the lump sum Diana wanted. And I haven’t an alibi either. My wife and I were alone together all evening and a wife’s testimony doesn’t carry much weight in a case like that. Everybody assumes she’ll lie like a lady to save her husband’s life. But I didn’t do it.” His grin faded. “Diana must have got her claws into some other poor guy and he shot her. I don’t believe it was Marty Stacy.”

“Why not?”

“He’s just starting his career. Not enough money for Diana. He’s too much like me. She wouldn’t make the mistake of marrying a poor man the second time.”

When Norton and Kimball rose to go, Forbes accompanied them to the front door. Two people were coming up on the porch — a little girl in a scarlet ski suit and a woman in a shabby old rabbit’s fur coat. Both were pink-cheeked, wholesome and gay. Forbes introduced them with pride. “My wife and daughter.”