Murder — Paid in Advance

Standing, Quinn looked down into her troubled brown eyes.

“Everything is swell,” he told her. He tried to smile. But his mouth felt stiff, and his rigid face muscles wouldn’t relax. You couldn’t find the woman you meant to kill, and then smile lightly.

“Sure,” she said, trying to keep it light and casual, “you’ve found another girl. I bet she can’t even make coffee.”

His voice was suddenly rough and brutal. It surprised both of them. “I haven’t found another girl,” he said harshly. “I never even knew any other girl but you. Do you understand?”

She laughed with sudden relief. “I’ve had men try to kiss me,” she said. “But you’ve certainly got a new approach. Scare-’em-to-death-Norman, he is known as.”

Quinn tried to laugh as he went past her to the door.

Upstairs, in the bleak quiet of his room, he did not bother turning on the light. He stood by the window in the darkness, tasting five years poison. If he wasn’t any good any more, it was Cindy’s doing.

When he had married her, he had been sole owner of one of Miami’s swankiest night spots. Quinn Norman whose friends were columnists and actors, senators and publishers, gamblers and bankers, and all of them big time. He shook his head, unable to believe it himself, any more.

His club, the Casa Mañana, had caught on, and he’d hired two managers who knew all there was to know about swank night spots. Ansel Breen, suave, poised and smooth; women loved his lifted brow and his small mustache, and his quick glittering smile that actually didn’t mean a thing in the world except that Breen had pretty teeth, and knew it. Rudy Mackalvain, the other manager, had been tall, very dark and very quiet, but he was a financial wizard.

Rudy Mackalvain had been a financial magician, too. After the fire that had destroyed the Casa Manana beyond repair, Mackalvain had disappeared from the face of the earth, and with him went most of Quinn Norman’s money.

After the fire, Breen’s body had been found in a storeroom behind the club. All that was left of him was his expensive, charred wrist watch, and a round bullet-hole in his skull. Quinn was accused of the murder. But he had been alone, driving with Cindy.

Except that at the trial, Cindy shook her lovely head. She wanted to lie to save Quinn, she said. But she couldn’t. Knocked cold by the very hugeness of her lie, Quinn heard himself sentenced to five years for manslaughter, the most they could pin on him. With him safely in the pokey, Cindy had sold out his holdings, divorced him, and disappeared...

When Cindy opened the door of her apartment at eleven-thirty that night, Quinn Norman was in a chair facing her. She had closed the door and snapped on the light before she saw him.

What happened to her face was hell to watch when you remembered how lovely Cindy had been. She looked suddenly old, with her rouged cheeks pulled down into shadowed hollows, the corners of her mouth shaking.

Quinn Norman stood up.

“Where — how did you — get here?” she whispered.

“The service entrance. The fire escape. I had to crack a pane in one of your windows to get it unlocked.”

He took a step toward her. “After all, Cindy, you’ve had five years. Five years on my money while I sat in prison. Cindy, even you must have known five years wouldn’t last forever.”

He put his hands on her shoulders. She trembled, sucked in a breath and swallowed hollowly, but she didn’t move.

His fingers closed at the base of her throat. The small pulse, like a tiny heart, pounded out its terror against him. Her throat felt as it had in all his nightmares these five years of waiting for this moment.

His haggard face drawn with hatred, he stared down into her eyes. What was he seeking? Repentance? Regret? Sorrow at what she had done to their lives? None of it was there. Only self-pity, and agony and fear. That was her face.

Suddenly he flung her from him to the floor. She pulled herself back against the wall, trying to dig herself into it, to get away from him. He looked at her. His breathing was a whispered sound.

“I guess the laugh is on me, Cindy. In five years I never stopped to think you weren’t worth the effort it would take to kill you.”

He heard the door latch click, twisted to see the door swing open.

The man at the door was smiling suavely, and his perfect teeth glittered. Then Breen stiffened, mirroring the astonishment in Norman’s face.

Breen was fast. The small automatic was out of his pocket before Quinn could move. Breen stepped into the room and kicked the door closed with the toe of his expensive oxford.

Quinn stood there with his shoulders pulled round, his mouth parted as he stared at Breen. But Breen had died in the nightclub fire five years ago! I ought to know, Norman thought crazily, I paid the penalty for killing him.

“As you can see, Norman, any reports of my death are grossly exaggerated,” Breen said evenly. “I suppose it’s all very clear to you now?”