Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 44, No. 4, April 1980

“No,” Chief Lambert admitted, taking a few notes. “There’s just crimes against things like murder an’ robbery.”

The Chief took Fritz aside to question him further and I found a chance to be alone with Helen. She was starting to pick up glasses and plates, as if sensing the spirit had gone out of the party. “It turned into one hell of a night, didn’t it?” I said.

“I feel sorry for Barbara.”

I watched the last glowing embers of the bonfire out back. “Did you know Andy well?”

She glanced up at me. “As well as any of us, I suppose.”

“I heard something. Gossip. I thought you should know.”

“About Andy and—”

“You were in the back room with him. Something like that.”

She glanced over at Nelse Walker. “I know who you heard that from! With a wife like he’s got, I suppose he’s entitled to invent fantasies about other women.”

“I didn’t think it was true.”

She turned her gaze toward me. “I won’t say there wasn’t a little truth to it. Andy was a handsome guy, and I can have fantasies too.”

“I thought I was the only one with marriage problems.”

“Everybody has them these days. We just react to them differently.”

I left her by the pool and strolled out to the dying fire. The kids hadn’t put it out as their father had ordered, but then I guess kids never like to put out fires. They were standing there watching it, and I took the hose from one of them, turning the nozzle and squirting the smoking embers. “It’s over,” I said to them. “The party’s over.”

Sally Tern appeared from somewhere to join me, and I wondered if she’d been in the house with the other women. “Was he a close friend of yours?” she asked, with the vague sympathy one felt toward the death of a stranger.

“Sure,” I said. “He was one of the crowd. We all knew him.”

“It’s a terrible thing.”

There was a crumpled piece of paper lying at the edge of the charred logs and I stooped to pick it up. Then I shoved it into my pocket before she could see what it was. Charles was starting to turn out the yard lights so we headed back to the house together.

“Do you like working with Charles?” I asked, making conversation.

“Sure. It’s always something different.”

She seemed very young to me just then. As some of the others seemed very old.

Barbara had reappeared, cluthing a handkerchief in one hand and now changed from the bathing suit she’d been wearing when Chief Lambert arrived. He was talking to her by the pool, still making notes in a dog-eared little book.

“I’m trying to establish the time of death, Mrs. Barron. The best the autopsy will show will be within a couple of hours. What time did you leave the store?”

“Just at nine o’clock,” she replied, “He locked the door after me and went back to counting up the money.”

“And I came by at ten to ten. So that leaves a period of fifty minutes when it happened.”

“Nobody saw or heard anything?”

He shook his head. “Appears not.” He looked for someone else to question and lit on Nelse Walker. I glanced around for Mrs. Walker and decided she was still inside.

“How you feeling?” I asked Barbara as she walked away.

“Lousy. I have to go down now to claim the body and make the funeral arrangements. Will you come with me, Mark?”

“If you really want me to. I thought we might talk some first, though.”

“What about?”

I edged her away from the group at the pool, heading out the back again. “I want to find out why you killed Andy,” I said quietly.

“I didn’t—”

“I’m not the police chief, Barbara. You don’t have to lie to me.”

“But that’s crazy! I was here! I was in the pool with—”

“You shot him before you came here, Barbara. I can prove it.”

That stopped her. “Prove it? How?”

“When I went into your purse for cigarettes earlier I found the day’s bank deposit slip for the Liquorium. The slip couldn’t have been made out till after Andy counted his money. It meant he was through counting when you left him and you lied about it.”

“I—”

“He cashed up early so he could come to the party. He was probably going to swing by the night depository on the way here. But you shot him in the back of the head and took the money to make it look like a robbery. You must have remembered the deposit slip at the last minute and stuffed that in your purse, so it would look like he’d still been cashing up when he killed. Now that I think of it, you were pretty startled when I asked what that was in your purse, before you saw me holding the clipping.”

“You’re crazy, Mark. There was no deposit slip.”

I took it out of my pocket. “I’ve got it, Barbara. You tried to toss it in the fire but you missed.”

She made a grab for it, but I was too fast for her. “Damn you, Mark!”

“In Andy’s handwriting, with today’s date. It could convict you of murder, Barbara — or at the very least start Chief Lambert asking some embarrasing questions.”

“All right — I just couldn’t stand living with him any more. Is that answer enough for you?”

“Then why didn’t you simply divorce him?” I couldn’t see her face in the dimness, but I could tell Helen’s tranquilizer was keeping her reasonably calm. “People do it everyday.”