The Best American Noir of the Century

“I’m going to have to talk to you like a Dutch uncle, Mr. Kane. As you saw, we’ve got a dead woman down there as the result of what, to all intents and purposes, was an unfortunate accident. Everything points to the victim’s being your wife except for two things, one of them your insistence that you spoke to her on the phone nearly two hours after the accident. That leaves us wondering — and with any one of several answers. One is that you’re lying; that you didn’t speak to her at all. If that’s the right answer, we can’t figure out the reason behind it. Two: your wife loaned a friend the car. Three: somebody lifted it from where it was parked. Four: you drove up here with her, knocked her in the head, and let the car roll over the edge.”

“Of all the goddamn-!”

He held up a hand, cutting me off. “Let’s take ‘em one at a time. I can’t see any reason, even if you murdered her, why you’d say your wife telephoned you afterwards. So until and unless something turns up to show us why you’d lie about it, I’ll have to believe she did make that call. As for her loaning the car, that could very well have happened, only it doesn’t explain why she’s missing now. This business of the car’s being stolen doesn’t hold up, because the key was still in the ignition and in this case.”

He took a folded handkerchief from the side pocket of his coat and opened it. A badly scorched leather case came to light, containing the ignition and trunk keys. The rest of the hooks were empty. I sat there staring at it, feeling my insides slowly and painfully contracting.

“Recognize it?” Martell asked softly

I nodded numbly. “It’s Donnas.”

He picked up the handbag with his free hand and thrust it at me. “Take a look through it.”

Still numb, I released the clasp and pawed through the contents. A small green-leather wallet containing seventy or eighty dollars and the usual identification cards, one of them with my office, address, and phone number. Lipstick, compact, mirror, comb, two initialed handkerchiefs, a few hairpins. The French enamel cigarette case and matching lighter I’d given her on her twenty-fifth birthday three months ago. Less than a dollar in change.

That was all. Nothing else. I shoved the stuff back in the bag and closed the clasp with stiff fingers and sat there looking dully at Martell.

He was refolding the handkerchief around the key case. He returned it to his pocket carefully, took the cigar out of his mouth and inspected the glowing tip.

“Your wife wear any jewelry, Mr. Kane?” he asked casually.

I nodded. “A wristwatch. Her wedding and engagement rings.”

“We didn’t find them. No jewelry at all.”

“You wouldn’t,” I said. “Whoever that is down there, she’s not Donna Kane.”

He sat there and looked out through the windshield and appeared to be thinking. He wore no hat and there was a strong sprinkling of gray in his hair and a bald spot about the size of a silver dollar at the crown. There was a network of fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, as there so often is in men who spend a great deal of time in the sun. He looked calm and confident and competent and not at all heroic.

Presently he said, “That phone call. No doubt at all that it was your wife?”

“None.”

“Recognized her voice, eh?”

I frowned. “Not so much that. It was more what she said. You know, certain expressions nobody else’d use. Pet name — you know.”

His lips quirked and I felt my cheeks burn. He said, “Near as you can remember, tell me about that call. If she sounded nervous or upset — the works.”

I put it all together for him, forgetting nothing. Then I went on about stopping off at the apartment, what I’d found there and what Ruth Feldman had said. Martell didn’t interrupt, only sat there drawing on his cigar and soaking it all in.

After I was finished, he didn’t move or say anything for what seemed a long time. Then he leaned forward and ground out the stub of the cigar and put a hand in the coat pocket next to me and brought out one of those flapped bags women use for formal dress, about the size of a business envelope and with an appliquéd design worked into it. Wordlessly he turned back the flap and let a square gold compact and matching lipstick holder slide out into the other hand.

“Ever see these before, Kane?”

I took them from him. His expression was impossible to read. There was nothing unusual about the lipstick tube, but the compact had a circle of brilliants in one corner and the initials H.W. in the circle.

I handed them back. “New to me, Sheriff.”

He was watching me closely. “Think a minute. This can be important. Either you or your wife know a woman with the initials H.W.?”

“…Not that I…Helen? Helen! Sure; Helen Wainhope! Dave Wainhope’s wife.” I frowned. “I don’t get it, Sheriff.”

He said slowly, “We found this bag a few feet from the wreck. Any idea how it might have gotten there?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“How well do you know these Wainhopes?”