Murder Takes a Break by Bill Crider Read Free Book Online Page A

  But they were better than going to see Barnes.
    "Why should I talk to him?" I asked.   "I'm not working on that case.   I'm looking for a kid named Randall Kirbo."
    "You don't find it intriguing that he disappeared at about the same time a young woman's body was found?"
    "We don't know exactly when he disappeared.   And we certainly don't know that he had any connection with Kelly Davis."
    She looked disappointed in me.   "And we don't know that no one has talked to the police about her death, do we?   But it seems very likely that no one has.   Two strange events during the same week, and no one will talk about either one of them.   I find that peculiar."
    So did I, but I was still hoping there was no connection.
    "Don't you?" Sally asked.
    I knew very well what she meant, but I said, "Don't I what?"
    "Don't you find it peculiar?"
    "Yes," I said.   I sighed.   "Yes, I guess I do."
    Somewhere inside my head I heard Dino's voice: "It'll be different this time."
    Sure it would.   I'd hardly gotten started, and already it seemed pretty likely that there was a dead body involved.
    Goddamn that Dino, anyway.

9
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    "T here's absolutely no connection between the disappearance of Randall Kirbo and the death of Kelly Davis," Gerald Barnes told me, so unconvincingly that I was immediately certain he thought there was.
    We were sitting at his desk in the police station.   I'd taken the same parking spot I'd used earlier, knowing that I was pressing my luck but hoping that everyone was too busy watching over the money changing hands at the turkey-leg booths down on The Strand to give me a ticket.   I was at least lucky enough to have caught Barnes in the building.   He had too much seniority to pull guard duty.
    "How do you know there's no connection?" I asked.
    Barnes had thinning brown hair and wore glasses with heavy plastic frames, the kind you don't see very often these days.   Buddy Holly would have been proud.   He pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked at me.   He didn't answer my question.  
    "Bob Lattner asked me about you earlier," he said.   "You know what I told him?"
    "That I was a expert detective who'd solved a couple of really tough cases for you?"
    "That's part of your trouble, Smith.   You think too much of yourself.   You didn't solve those case.   I solved them.   You just hung around and got in the way."
    If that was the way he wanted to look at it, I wasn't going to argue with him.   It wouldn't do any good, and I think we both knew better, anyway.    Even if he didn't, I certainly did.
    "What's the other part of my trouble?" I asked.
    "You're a smart-ass."
    I was beginning to think that was a unanimous opinion among all my acquaintances.   That didn't mean they were right, of course.
    "Thanks for sharing that with me," I said.   "Now, let's get back to what we were talking about, the non-existent connection between the disappearance of Randall Kirbo and the death of Kelly Davis."
    "Someone might have hired you to look into the disappearance, Smith," Barnes told me, "but that doesn't give you the right to poke around in any other on-going investigations."
    His glasses had slipped again.   I started to suggest that he go in and have them adjusted, but I decided he wouldn't appreciate the advice.   So I kept it to myself.
    Instead, I said, "Let's just pretend for a second that while I'm trying to find out what happened to Kirbo, I happen to discover that he knew Kelly Davis.   What then?"
    "Then you inform me.   I'll take it from there."
    "You haven't taken it any great distance so far."
    Barnes took off his glasses and set them on the desk.   His eyes suddenly looked smaller.   He pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned back in his chair.
    "You're right about that," he said.
    I knew then that he was weakening.   Or maybe he'd just been setting me up.   Maybe he'd been planning to tell me all