The Blue Movie Murders by Ellery Queen Read Free Book Online Page B

catch on to the blue-movie angle you could have them in your hair, too.”
    â€œAll this on an empty stomach!”
    Governor Holland chuckled. “Sorry I got you up, Mike, but I thought you’d want to know.”
    â€œI did. Thanks for calling, Governor.”
    He hung up and sat for a time simply staring out of the window. He had to admit there was beautiful country around Rockview, with the distant pine-covered mountains still showing final traces of the winter’s snows.
    He went downstairs to breakfast and then decided to drive down to Police Headquarters. It might be wise to see Powell again before the lieutenant got wind of the story in the newspapers.
    Crossing the parking lot to his car he remembered that it was just twenty-four hours since Ben Sloane had been murdered at this motel. He paused and glanced back at the low two-storey building, letting his eyes pass over the windows curtained against the morning sun. The motel seemed blank, impassive, already scrubbed clean of its involvement in crime.
    As he watched, a car with New York plates drew up across the road and a bearded man in a turtleneck sweater climbed out. He had a camera and he took a few quick shots of the building’s exterior. Ben Sloane had been an important man—important enough to bring the New York press onto the scene.
    McCall didn’t feel like conversing with reporters just then, so he ducked behind his car, waiting for the man to drive away or go inside. That was when he noticed something glistening in the mud, just beyond the asphalt portion of the parking lot. He glanced up to see the bearded cameraman had entered the Rockview Motel, and then went over to look more closely.
    It was a large metal button with a scratched red background and white lettering, and he had a mate to it in his own pocket. It read Cynthia’s Raiders , and he wondered what it was doing there.
    Lieutenant Powell was not at headquarters, but Suzanne Walsh was. He found her pacing the hallway, grim and impatient. “I didn’t realize you were still in town,” he said.
    â€œMr. Sloane had no relatives. I’m waiting to claim the body and make arrangements for it to be flown back to California. But they insisted on doing an autopsy, and there’s so much red tape.”
    â€œMurder is very inconvenient,” McCall sympathized.
    â€œThen there was that girl with all her questions.”
    â€œWhich girl? A reporter?”
    â€œI don’t know. She wouldn’t say. She just wanted to know what we were doing here, and about the murder. She came to my room last evening.”
    â€œWhat did you tell her?”
    â€œNothing. I sent her away. I didn’t like her at all.”
    McCall remembered the muddy button. “Was her name Cynthia Rhodes?”
    â€œNo, nothing like that. It was a month. April, I think. April something.”
    McCall shrugged—he knew no April. She might be one of Cynthia’s Raiders . “Are you waiting for Lieutenant Powell?”
    She nodded. “He has to release the body.”
    In a city like Rockview, far removed from the spiralling crime rates of more densely populated areas, the police department was a relatively quiet place at nine o’clock on a Thursday morning. While they waited, only one prisoner was brought in—a long-haired youth who’d been found with marijuana in his possession.
    â€œEven here,” Suzanne Walsh commented with a brief clucking sound. “What’s the country coming to?”
    â€œMaturity, I hope. But sometimes it’s a long and tortuous process. For all of us.”
    Powell came in then, looking tired and angry. He saw Miss Walsh first, and started to speak, but then his eyes lit on McCall and he barked, “What in hell are you doing back here? Taking over the investigation like it says in the papers?”
    â€œYou’ve been in this business long enough not to believe everything you read in the