One
It was a fourplex out near the beach. I stopped the
car, looked at the ad again, and went up the walk.
Only two of the mailboxes had names on them, and
neither was the one I wanted.
This was the right address, though, so it had to be
one of the others. I picked one at random and
pressed the buzzer. Nothing happened. I tried again,
and could hear it faintly somewhere on the second
floor.
I waited a minute or two and tried the other. No
one answered. I lit a cigarette and turned to look
along the street. It was very quiet in the hot
afternoon sun. A few cars went past on the sea wall,
and far out in the Gulf a shrimp boat crawled like a
fly across a mirror.
I swore under my breath. It had looked like a good
lead, and I hated to give up. Maybe one of the other
tenants would know where he was. I tried the buzzer
marked Sorenson first, and when it came up nothing
I leaned on the one that said James.
The whole place was as silent as the grave.
I shrugged and went back down the walk. I was
about to get into the car when I saw the patio wall in
the rear of the place. A walk ran past the side of the
building to a high wooden gate, which was closed.
A Touch of Death — 2
There might be somebody back there. I stepped
across the front lawn and went back to the gate and
opened it.
“Oh. Excuse me,” I said.
The girl was a brunette and she was sunbathing in
the bottom part of a two-fragment bathing suit. She
was lying face down on a long beach towel with a
bottle of suntan lotion beside her and a book open in
front of her on the grass. She turned her head
casually and looked at me through dark glasses.
“Were you looking for someone?” she asked.
“Man named Winlock,” I said. “He gave this
address. Do you happen to know if he’s around?”
“I’m new here,” she said. “But I think the people in
the other upstairs apartment are named Winlock or
Winchester, or something like that. I suppose you
tried the buzzer?”
“Yes. No dice.”
She shrugged a satiny shoulder. “They may have
gone out on a boat. I think he fishes.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well. Thanks a lot.”
I started to turn away, and noticed she was staring
at my face. Or at least I felt she was. The glasses
were so dark I couldn’t see what her eyes were
doing.
“You could leave a note under the door,” she said.
“I think it’s the third one from the left.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I’m probably too late. I
mean, since he’s not home. The ad was in
yesterday’s paper.”
“Ad?”
“He wanted to buy a late-model car.”
“Oh.”
She lay with her face turned toward me, her cheek
down against the towel, very relaxed but still
watching me. The brassiere part of the bathing suit
was under her, but she had untied the strap across
the back. Tall, I thought, if she stood up. Not that
she was likely to, with that thing untied.
A Touch of Death — 3
“It sounds like a funny way to buy a car,” she said.
“Lots of people do it,” I said. “Saves a dealer’s
commission.”
“I see. And you’ve got one for sale?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not a dealer?”
“No,” I said. I wondered what she was driving at.
The cigarette in my hand was burning short. I turned
and tossed it through the gate onto the walk.
When I looked back she was working the strap of
the halter gizmo up between her arm and side. She
clamped it there and started to turn on her side,
facing me, until it became obvious to both of us that
the thing wasn’t big enough to allow any leeway if
she didn’t have it straight. It was missing the mark.
And there was quite a bit of it to miss.
“Would you mind?” she asked calmly. “Just for a
moment.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sure.” I turned and stared out the
gate, but I could still see her in my mind. I’d called
her a girl, but she was probably near thirty.
In a moment she said, “All right,” and I turned
around. She was sitting up on the towel with the
long legs doubled under her. The halter was tied.
“What kind of car is it?” she asked.
“Fifty-three Pontiac. About fourteen thousand
miles on it.” I wondered again what was on her
mind.
“How much do you want for it?”
“Twenty-five hundred,” I said. “Why? You know
somebody in the market for one?”
“Wel-l-l,” she said slowly, “I might be. I’ve been
thinking of buying a car.”
“You could go farther and do worse,” I said. “It’s a
two-tone job, white sidewalls, radio, seat covers—”
She was studying my face again with that curious
intensity. “Is it worth twenty-five hundred dollars,
really?”
A Touch of Death — 4
“Every nickel of it,” I said, ready to go into a sales
pitch. Maybe we could make a deal. Then I got the
impression that she wasn’t even listening to what I
said.
She took off the glasses and stared thoughtfully at
me. Her eyes were large and self-possessed, and jet
black, like her hair. The hair was long, drawn into a
roll at the back of her neck. She looked Spanish,
except that even with the faint tan her skin was very
fair.
“There’s something about your face,” she said. “I
keep thinking I should know who you are.”
So that was it. It still happens once in a while.
“Not unless you’ve got a long memory,” I said.
She shook her head. “Not too long. Four years?
Five?”
“Make it six.”
“Yes. That’s about it. I was quite a football fan in
those days. Scarborough, wasn’t it? Lee
Scarborough? All-Conference left half.”
“You should be a cop,” I said.
“No. You were quite famous.”
“They get new ones every year.” I wished we could
get back to the car trade. You can’t eat six-year-old
football scores.
“Why didn’t you join the pros?” She took a puff on
the cigarette she was smoking and tossed it into a
flower bed without taking her eyes from my face.
“I did,” I said. “But it didn’t jell.”
“What happened?”
“Bum knee.” I squatted on my heels. “How about
the car? You really want to buy one?”
“I think so. But why do you want to sell it?”
“I need the money.”
“Oh,” she said.
“It’s out front, if you’d like to drive it.”
“All right,” she said. “But I’d have to change.
Would you mind?”
A Touch of Death — 5
“Not at all. I’ll wait in the car.”
“Oh, come on up. It’s cooler inside.”
“O.K.,” I said. We stood up. She was tall, all right.
I picked up the suntan lotion and the book and
towel.
“I’m Diana James,” she said.
She saw me glance down at her left hand, and
smiled. “You’ll only have to make one sales talk. I’m
not married.”
“I’d have given you odds the other way.”
“I was, once. But, as you say, it didn’t jell.”
We went up the outside stairs at the rear of the
building and in through the kitchen. She pulled a
bottle of bourbon out of a cupboard and set it on the
drain.
“Mix yourself a drink, and go into the living room.
Soda and ice cubes in the refrigerator.”
“I hate to drink alone this early in the day,” I said.
“It scares me.”
She smiled. “All right. If you insist.”
I mixed two and handed her one. We went on
through to the living room, looking out over the Gulf.
She took a sip of her drink and put it on the coffee
table.
“Just make yourself at home,” she said. “I think
this month’s True is in the rack there. I won’t be
long.”
I watched her walk back across the dining room to
the short hall that led to the bedroom and bath. It
seemed to take her a long time.
The car, I thought. Remember? Don’t louse it up.
I sat down and glanced around the room. It had
the anonymous look of any furnished apartment, but
it wasn’t cheap. Hundred or a hundred and fifty a
week during the season, I thought. It was odd she
didn’t already have a car, and that, not having one,
she wanted to buy a secondhand one.
Her purse was on the table at the end of the
couch. I glanced at it, thinking she must be careless
A Touch of Death — 6
as hell or convinced all ex-football players were
honest, and then I shrugged and started to take
another sip of my drink. I stopped, and my eyes
jerked back to the table.
It wasn’t the purse. It was the alligator key case
lying beside it. The zipper was open and the keys
dangled loose on the glass. And one of them was
that square-shouldered shape you recognize
anywhere. It was the ignition key to a General
Motors car. Just who was kidding whom?
Well, I thought, she didn’t say she didn’t have one.
Maybe she wanted two, or she was selling the other
one. It was her business.
When she came out she had on a short-sleeved
white summer dress and gilt sandals without
stockings. She was tall and cool and very easy on the
eye. Taking another sip of the drink she’d left, she
gathered up the purse and keys and we went out to
the car. She slid in behind the wheel.
I was deliberately slow in handing her the keys to
it, and she did just what I thought she’d do. She
opened the alligator case and started to stab at the
dash with her own. She caught herself, and glanced
quickly at me. I didn’t say anything, but I was
beginning to wonder. She was trying to cover up the
fact that she already had a car. Why?
We cruised to the end of the sea wall and out the
beach, not saying much at first. The sand was firm,
and when we began to get clear of the traffic and
the suntan crowd she let it out a little, to around
fifty-five.
“It handles nicely,” she said.
“You’re a good driver.” I lit two cigarettes and
handed her one.
“What do you do, Mr. Scarborough?” she asked,
keeping her eyes on the beach ahead.
“This and that,” I said. “I sell things. Or try to.
Real estate was the last.”
“I don’t mean to pry,” she said. “But I take it
you’re not doing anything at the moment?”
A Touch of Death — 7
“That’s right. I’m thinking of going to Arabia with
a construction outfit. That’s one reason I want to sell
the car.”
“How soon are you going?”
“Probably sometime next month. Why?”
“Oh, I just wondered.” She didn’t say anything
more for a minute or two; then she asked, “Are you
married?
“No,” I said.
“Did you ever think of making a lot of money?”
“Who hasn’t?”
“But did you ever actually think of doing anything
about it?”
“Sure. Someday I’m going to invent the
incandescent lamp.”
“A little soured, Mr. Scarborough? You surely
haven’t run out of dreams already? At—twentyeight?”
“Twenty-nine. Look, with a dream and ten cents
you can buy a cup of coffee. The only thing I was
ever any good at was moving a football from one
place to another place, with ten guys helping me.
And you need two knees for it. Does this car look like
twenty-five hundred bucks to you?”
“A little tough,” she murmured. “That’s nice.”
“Why?”
“I was just thinking again. And I do like the car.”
“Then it’s a deal?”
She turned her head then and smiled at me.
“Maybe,” she said. “We might make a deal.” She
didn’t say any more. We drove on down the beach.
When we came back and parked in front of the
apartment house she turned off the ignition and
started to drop the keys in her purse. I held out my
hand for them, saying nothing. Our eyes met, and
she shrugged. We got out.
I looked back along the curb, and ahead. “Which is
it?” I asked. “The Olds, or that Caddy up there?”
A Touch of Death — 8
She smiled. “Neither. Its in the garage back in the
alley. You notice things, don’t you?”
“What’s the gag?”
“What makes you think there is one? Maybe I want
two cars.”
“Do you?”
She looked me right in the face. “No,” she said.
I was burning. “What’s the idea of wasting my
time?”
“Maybe I wasn’t.”
“No?”
“That’s up to you. I said we might make a deal.
Remember?”
She went up the stairs and I followed her,
remembering the long, relaxed smoothness of her on
that towel. She put her purse on the table and tilted
the Venetian blinds a little against the light. It was
cooler in the apartment and almost dim after the
glare in the street. When she turned back I was
standing in front of her. I pulled her to me and
kissed her, hard, with my hands digging into her
back. But she wasn’t wasting my time then. I was.
It was all nothing. She rolled with it like a passedout
drunk and didn’t even close her eyes. They just
watched me coolly. She broke it up with her elbows
without seeming to move them, the way they can,
and said, “That wasn’t quite the deal I had in mind.”
“What’s wrong with it?” I said.
“Nothing, I suppose, under the right
circumstances. But I asked you up here to talk
business. Why don’t you sit down? You’d probably be
more comfortable.”
I was still angry, but there was no percentage in
knocking myself out. I sat down. She went into the
kitchen and came back in a minute with two drinks.
She sat down in a big chair on the other side of the
coffee table and crossed her legs. She put a
cigarette in her mouth and waited for me to leap up
and hold the lighter for her.
A Touch of Death — 9
The hell with her.
She shrugged and reached for the lighter on the
coffee table.
“What is it?” I asked.
She stared thoughtfully at me. “I’ve been trying to
size you up.”
“Why?”
“I’m coming to that. I think I can see you now. A
little tough—and, what’s more to the point, a little
cynical, as anybody would be who was a hero at
eighteen and a has-been at twenty-five. You sold
things for a while, but you sold less and less as time
went by and the customers had a little trouble
remembering who Lee Scarborough was. You can
stop me any time you don’t agree with this.”
“Go on,” I said.
“There was another thing I kept trying to
remember. I’ve got it now. You got in trouble your
last year in college and were almost kicked out and
nearly went to jail.”
“So I smashed up a car,” I said.
“It was somebody else’s car. And the woman who
was smashed up along with it was somebody else’s
wife. She was in the hospital a long time.”
“She got over it,” I said. “Without any scars.”
“Yes. I guess you would know that.”
“All right. Look. There’s a type of babe who chases
football players. What’re we supposed to do? Scream
for help? Or wear chastity girdles?”
She smiled. “You don’t have to defend yourself.
I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to
see how you fit in the picture. And I think you’ll do,
on all counts. I want to make you a proposition.”
“I hope you have better luck than I did.”
“You take women pretty casually, don’t you?” she
said.
“There’s another way?”
A Touch of Death — 10
“Never mind. But do you want to hear what I
asked you up here for?”
“Shoot.”
“Remember, I asked you how you’d like to make a
lot of money? Well, I think I know where there is a
lot of it, for anybody with nerve enough to pick it
up.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “How do you mean, pick it
up? Steal it?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s already been stolen.
Maybe twice.”
I put down my cigarette. She was watching me
closely.
“Just how much money?” I asked.
“A hundred and twenty thousand dollars,” she
said.
A Touch of Death — 11
Two
It was very quiet in the room. I whistled softly.
She was still watching me. “How does it sound?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t heard anything
about it yet.”
“All right,” she said. “I have to take a chance on
somebody if I’m ever going to do anything about it,
because I can’t do it alone—and I think you’re the
one. It’ll take nerve and intelligence, and it has to be
somebody without a criminal record, so the police
won’t have their eyes on him afterward.”
“O.K., O.K.,” I said. I knew what she meant.
Somebody who wasn’t a criminal but who might let a
little rub off on him if the price was right. It was a
lot of money, but I wanted to hear about it first.
She studied me with speculation in her eyes.
“There’s a reward for the return of it.”
She was sharp. I could see the beauty of that. She
was showing me how to do it. You thought about the
reward, first; when you got used to that you could
let your ideas grow a little. You didn’t have to jump
in cold. You waded in.
“Whose money is it?” I asked. “And where is it?”
A Touch of Death — 12
“It’s just a long guess,” she said. “I didn’t say I
knew where it was. I said I think I know. You add up
a lot of things to get to it.”
“Such as?”
She took a sip of the drink and looked at me across
the top of the glass. “Did you ever hear of a man
named J. N. Butler?”
“I don’t think so. Who is he?”
“Just a minute.”
She got up and went into the bedroom. When she
came back she handed me two newspaper clippings.
I looked at the first one. It was datelined here in
Sanport, June eighth. That was two months ago.
SEARCH WIDENS FOR MISSING BANK
OFFICIAL
J. N. Butler, vice-president of the First
National Bank of Mount Temple, was the
object of a rapidly expanding manhunt
today as announcement was made of
discovery of a shortage in the bank’s
funds estimated at $120,000.
I looked up at her. She smiled. I read on.
Butler, prominent in social and civic
activities of the town for over twenty
years, has been missing since Saturday, at
which time, according to Mrs. Butler, he
announced his intention of going to
Louisiana for a weekend fishing trip. He
did not return Sunday night, as
scheduled, but it was not until the bank
opened for business this morning that the
shortage was discovered.
I read the second one. It was dated three days
later, and was a rehash of the previous story, except
that the lead paragraph said Butler’s car had been
found abandoned in Sanport and that police were
now looking for him all over the nation.
A Touch of Death — 13
I handed them back. “That was two months ago,” I
said. “What’s the pitch? Have they found him?”
“No,” she said. “And I don’t think they will.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think he ever left his house in Mount
Temple. Not alive, anyway.”
I put the drink down very slowly and watched her
face. You didn’t have to be a genius to see she knew
something about it the police didn’t.
“Why?” I asked.
“Interested?”
“I might be. Enough to listen, anyway.”
“All right,” she said. “It’s like this: I’m a nurse.
And for about eight months I was on a job in Mount
Temple, taking care of a woman who’d suffered a
stroke and was partially paralyzed. Her house was
out in the edge of town, across the street from a big
place, an enormous old house taking up a whole city
block. J. N. Butler’s place.” She stopped.
“All right,” I said. “Keep going.”
“Well, his car, the one they found abandoned here
—I saw it leave there that Saturday. Only it wasn’t
Saturday afternoon, the way she said; it was
Saturday night. And he wasn’t driving it. She was.”
“His wife?”
“His wife.”
“Hold it,” I said. “You say it was night. How do you
know who was driving?”
“I was out on the front lawn, smoking a cigarette
before going to bed. Just as the Butler car came out
of their drive onto the street, another car went by
and caught it in the headlights. It was Mrs. Butler,
all right. Alone.”
“But,” I said, “maybe she was just going to town or
something. That doesn’t prove he didn’t leave in the
car later.”
She shook her head. “Mrs. Butler never drove his
car. She had her own. He didn’t abandon that car in
Sanport. She did. I’d swear it.”
A Touch of Death — 14
“But why?”
“Don’t you see the possibilities?” she said
impatiently. “He almost has to be dead. There’s no
other answer. They’d have found him long ago if he
were alive. He was a big, good-looking man, the
black-Irish type, easy to see and hard to hide. He
was six-three and weighed around two-thirty. You
think they couldn’t find him? And another thing.
When they run like that, ninety-nine times out of a
hundred there’s another woman in it. Suppose Mrs.
Butler found out about it, before he got away? He
was going to have the money and the other woman,
while she held still for the disgrace. What would she
do? Help him pack his bag, to be sure he had plenty
of handkerchiefs?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “What about her?”
She shrugged and gestured with the cigarette.
“Who knows who’s capable of murder? Maybe
anybody is, under the right pressure. But I can tell
you a little about her. This is probably an odd thing
to say, but she’s one of the most beautiful women
I’ve ever seen. Brunette, with a magnolia complexion
and big, smoky-looking eyes. And a bitch right out of
the book. Old-family sort of thing; the house is really
hers. She also drinks like a fish.”
“You didn’t miss much while you were up there.”
“You mean the drinking? It was one of those
hushed-up secrets everybody knows.”
“Then,” I said, “your idea is she killed Butler? And
that the money’s still there in the house?”
“Right.”
“Didn’t the police shake it down?”
“After a fashion. But why would they make much
of a search, when he’d obviously got away to
Sanport and then disappeared?”
“I see what you mean,” I said. “But there’s another
angle. You say he was a big guy. If she killed him,
how did she dispose of his body? She couldn’t very
well call the piano movers.”
A Touch of Death — 15
She shook her head. “That I don’t know. I haven’t
been able to figure it. But maybe she had a
boyfriend. She still had to get back from Sanport,
too, after she ditched the car. And, naturally, she
couldn’t come on the bus. Somebody’d remember it.
A boyfriend fits.”
“I can see Mrs. Butler rates, in your book,” I said.
“So far, she’s only a lush, a murderer, and a tramp.
What’d she do? Dig up your flower beds?”
“Opinions are beside the point. This is for money.
What we’re trying to get at is facts!”
“And all we’ve got is a string of guesses. Anyway,
what’s your idea?”
“That we search the house. Tear it apart, if
necessary, until we find the money, or some
evidence as to what became of Butler, or
something.”
“With her in it? Think again.”
“No,” she said. “That’s why it takes two of us.
She’s here in town now, attending a meeting of some
historical society. I’ll hunt her up, get her plastered,
and keep her that way. For days, if necessary. You’ll
have time to dismantle the house and put it back
together before she sobers up enough to go home.”
“What you’re really looking for,” I said, “is a patsy.
If something goes wrong, you’re all right, but I’m a
dead duck.”
“Don’t be silly. The house is in the middle of an
estate that’d cover a city block, with big hedges and
trees around it. There’s one servant, who goes home
as soon as she’s out of sight. You could take an
orchestra with you, and nobody’d ever know you
were in there. The police may check the place once a
night when nobody’s home, but you don’t have to
tear off a door and leave it lying on the lawn for
them, just to get in. The drapes and curtains will all
be drawn. There’ll be food in the kitchen. You could
set up housekeeping. How about it?”
“It sounds safe enough, for the price,” I said. I got
up and walked across the room. “But I still don’t see
A Touch of Death — 16
it. All that stuff about her leaving there in the car
doesn’t prove anything. Hell, maybe she was in it
with him, and was just covering for him by ditching
the car while he got out of town some other way.”
She shook her head. “No. I tell you he’s dead. And
she killed him. That money’s still there.”
“I can’t see why you’re so sure,” I said.
“Then you don’t believe I’m right?” she said. “You
don’t want to tackle it?”
I thought about the money. A hundred and twenty
thousand. You couldn’t get hold of it all at once. It
was too big. It had to grow on you.
I let it grow.
But, hell. She was crazy. In that whole story of
hers there wasn’t one shred of evidence that Butler
hadn’t got away with it. A lot of good guesses,
maybe, but no concrete evidence. And if you were
going to take a chance and start breaking laws like
that, you had to have something more definite than a
guess to lead you on. I couldn’t see it.
“Well?” she asked. “How about it?”
“The whole thing’s a pipe dream,” I said.
“You’re passing up a fortune.”
I shrugged. “I doubt it.”
I tried another pass but she wasn’t having any, so I
said, “See you around,” and shoved off. I punched
Winlock’s buzzer on the way downstairs, but he still
wasn’t home.
I got in the car and looked at my watch. It was
after five. The whole afternoon was shot. I went
home, picking up my mail on the way in through the
lobby, and wondering how much longer I’d be able
to pay the rent. It was more apartment than I
needed, or could afford, in a new building with a lot
of glass brick and thick carpets, over on Davy
Avenue. I’d moved into it when I first went with
Wagner Realty and was going to make a thousand a
month selling houses in a subdivision. That was in
May, and when they dusted off the old wheeze about
a reduction in force three days ago, on the first of
A Touch of Death — 17
August, I was still working on the first month’s
thousand. Maybe the demand for ten-thousanddollar
apple crates was falling off, or I was no
salesman.
I sat down in the living room and looked at the
mail. It was all bills except one letter on orchid
stationery. I tried to recall who the girl was, but
finally gave up and looked at the bills. The tailor
called my attention very tactfully to $225 that I had
apparently overlooked last month and the month
before. There was another note due on the car. I
shuffled through the others: two department stores,
the utilities, and the kennel that boarded Moxie, the
English setter. I checked my bank balance. I had
$170.
I went out in the kitchen and tried to convince
myself I ought to have a drink. After looking at the
bottle, I shoved it back on the shelf, losing interest
in it. I never drank much, and I still had the sour
taste of those others in my mouth. I thought of her. I
thought of her on that towel. The hell with all dizzy
women, anyway. The whole afternoon shot, I hadn’t
sold the car, and I didn’t even get the consolation
prize. No sale, no loving, I thought disgustedly,
saying it so it rhymed. The whole afternoon shot to
hell. It would probably have been pretty good stuff,
too.
That bank balance couldn’t have been right. A
hundred and seventy— I checked it again.
It was right.
I thought of Saudi Arabia, of 120-degree heat and
sand and the wind blowing for two years, and
wondered if I could take it. But before long it wasn’t
going to be a question of whether I could stand it or
not. I had to do something. I made less money every
year.
You got your brains beat out for four years for
seventy dollars a month plus your tuition and having
some old grad pounding you on the back to get into
the pictures after you’d scored from eight yards out
in the last three seconds of play in the Homecoming
A Touch of Death — 18
game, and five years later the son-of-a-bitch couldn’t
remember your name when you tried to send it in
past the arctic blonde in the outer office.
I put a cigarette in my mouth, reaching for the
lighter, and then let it hang there, forgotten. Half of
$120,000. . .
I shrugged irritably. Was I going to start that
again? Maybe I was going back to believing in Santa
Claus. Diana James was just a victim of wishful
thinking, trying to build something out of a halfbaked
theory. But still, she didn’t quite strike me as
that kind of featherhead.
Why was she so sure? That was the thing I
couldn’t see. It didn’t match up with the flimsy
evidence of her story. And why hadn’t the police
found him? Something rang there, too. They should
have picked him up long ago, a big, good-looking
guy like that with no place to hide. I didn’t know
much about police work, but it seemed to me
embezzlers should be the easiest of all lamsters to
collar; the people who were looking for them knew
too much about them. They’d have pictures of him, a
complete knowledge of all his habits, everything. His
car had been abandoned here in a city of four
hundred thousand, and then he had vanished like a
wisp of smoke. It could happen. But the odds were
very long against it.
The whole thing was just crazy enough to make
you wonder.
And the amount was too big to get out of your
mind.
I cursed, and went back down to the car. I drove
over to the library and asked for the back files of the
Sanport Citizen. Beginning with the first of August, I
worked back toward June. In the fourth paper I
found another story on it. It was datelined Sanport,
July 27.
NO SOLUTION IN BUTLER
DISAPPEARANCE
A Touch of Death — 19
After nearly two months of a nationwide
manhunt, police announced today there
has been no new light whatever thrown
on the possible whereabouts of the Mount
Temple bank official who allegedly
absconded with $120,000 of the bank’s
funds. Since the discovery on June 11 of
Butler’s car, abandoned on a local street
near the beach. . .
Well, there wasn’t anything new in that, except the
fact that they definitely hadn’t found him.
I sat suddenly upright in the chair. The thing that
had been bothering me all the time was just beyond
my reach. I looked back at the story: “. . .Butler’s
car, abandoned on a local street near the beach. . .”
That was it.
That second clipping she had shown me, the one
carrying the story about the car, had given the name
of the street. It hadn’t sunk in at the time, but it had
been bothering my subconscious ever since. I
grabbed another bundle of the papers and began
flipping hurriedly through them. June 14, June 13,
June 11—it should be in this one. I shot my glance up
column and down, across the front page. Here it
was.
“The late-model automobile of the missing man
was discovered early today abandoned near the
beach in the 200 block of Duval Boulevard.”
I wondered why I had let it slide off the first time
I’d read it. It was given right in Winlock’s ad, the
thing that had taken me out there in the first place.
The address of that apartment house was 220 Duval
Boulevard.
I was beginning to have an idea why she was so
sure Butler was dead.
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