Obit Delayed by Helen Nielsen Read Free Book Online

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Exhibit A
, and strange thoughts began to intrude on Mitch’s effort to follow the testimony. Pinky was telling his story now, painfully stubborn under questioning, but Mitch had heard it all before.
    Strange thoughts. Virginia, at thirty-odd, had come a long way from the nursery. Frank Wales’s alleged paternal instinct might not make much sense when considered in that light; but making sense wasn’t too common among mortals, and Wales was as mortal as the next man.
Or was he?
    A new thought hit Mitch like an ice-cold shower. For the next few minutes he wouldn’t hear anything said in that chamber, because he’d just realized an alternative to guilt in Frank Wales’s absence.
    It was roughly twenty-four hours since the alarm went out for a man and a station wagon. Twenty-four hours of radiocasts, telecast descriptions, and a police dragnet reaching far beyond the state borders. To drive his car Wales would need gas, and no station reported servicing his car since that Sunday night stop at Indio. To walk he would need food and water, and nobody had sold food or drink to this man with the well-advertised face. There was no doubt that Wales could have completed that drive in from Indio in time to kill his ex-wife, but suppose, and this was the idea that made the inquest swim out of focus and the testimony seem empty and foolish—suppose he’d completed the trip in time to witness her murder? Suppose Frank Wales had walked in on that bloody scene? An accident like that would never be covered by any insurance company.
    So Pinky could go on answering questions about Virginia’s state of mind that last day of her life. He could go on denying that she seemed nervous or strange; he could repeat that he didn’t know anything about her plans for the evening and that he only paid her wages, he didn’t hear her confession. He seemed to like that phrase. He used it again twice. He could even recite his business troubles, but not for Mitch Gorman’s ears. The inquest was all Peter’s now. This was no place to find a murderer.
    Once upon a time there had been a housing shortage in Valley City, and then the war was over and some public-spirited citizens built a lot of elegant apartments that no workingman could afford unless his job ran forty hours a day. But Dave Singer seemed to have no trouble paying his rent, because there was his name spelled out on the little card over the doorbell. About the time Mitch’s finger was growing to the button, the door opened a few inches and a slice of face peered at him through the aperture. It wasn’t Dave. Even a partial view was enough to reveal that this boy could make two of Dave standing abreast.
    “I didn’t know Dave had a butler,” Mitch said.
    From the doorway came nothing; just that one cold, staring eye.
    “I’d like to talk to him if he’s around.”
    “What about?”
    “That’s what I’ll tell Dave.”
    The door opened a bit wider, and Mitch recognized an old fraternity brother of Dave’s, San Quentin, class of ‘49. Herbie Boyle didn’t have Dave’s looks or style, but the width of his shoulders didn’t come from a tailor.
    “Dave ain’t here,” he growled.
    “You’re sure of that?”
    “That’s what I said.”
    “And you don’t know where he went, do you, Herbie?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Sure,” Mitch nodded, “that’s exactly right. That’s just what I had in mind. And you don’t know anything about Virginia Wales, either.”
    Conversation with Herbie wouldn’t be sparkling under the best of circumstances, but now it came to a full halt. He just stared at Mitch a few seconds longer and then slammed the door in his face.
    There was always the possibility that Herbie had been telling the truth. Dave didn’t have to be at home. Minus neons the Club Serape was just a lot of faded-green stucco without windows, but only if you didn’t know about Vince Costro and his enterprises. Costro was a very enterprising fellow, sort of a Horatio