5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 66: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

66 full into her drunken spouse’s distorted face. “You keep still, darling! I'll see you through this. I always have, haven’t 7” Leland Cobb subsided into O’Hanna’s arms. It must have been the reaction. His take it. He crumpled in a dead-weight, flaccid torpor. Cobb’s wife turned to Fencer. She was an aroused Amazon, feverish with defensive energy. “Now!” she said determinedly. “What did you mean by that remark about a poor kid and—and an ice-pick?” “Come over here and see for your- self.” The agency dick shrugged. Charlotte Cobb stopped abruptly in front of the closet. She didn’t faint or scream or even shudder. She took it like a thoroughbred, with only the tiniest perceptible tightening in her manner. Her voice was lower, but perfectly un- der control. “You intend to charge Leland with this murder?” she asked. “Murder?” Ward Tolan echoed. ‘ He strode across the room, took a look into the closet, too. He damned near folded to the floor. His knees - sagged, and he saved himself by clutch- ing the open door for support. That Oversized jaw worked, bunching muscles the size of marbles in his cheeks. Fred Fencer pounced like a hawk. “You know her, don’t you?” “Yes,” the bond salesman admitted. He shot a quick look at Charlotte Cobb. The back of his hand came up and rubbed his chin. “She’s Kitty Beale, a schoolteacher from the Middle West. This is a hell of a shock. I was talking to her in the lobby downstairs, only a couple of hours ago.” ENCER wasn’t convinced. “A school- teacher ?” “That’s right,” Ward Tolan said. “It’s a rural school, and they close it for two weeks in the fall. Corn-picking vaca- tion, she called it. It seems the jaspers keep their kids home to help get in the crop, so school can’t keep, anyway.” “Go on,” Fencer said. “Well, she is—was—young, pretty, high-spirited. She’d got fed up with alcohol-punished heart couldn’t FIVE DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE ABC’s and Saturday night swims in a wash tub. Like a lot of those cow-pas- ture queens, she had delusions of glam- our. She wasn’t content to graduate from teaching school to being some clod- hopper’s wife, not without having her fling first. “She knew there were fast trains that made it to and from California in four days each way, and that’d leave her almost a week in San Alpa.” Tolan shrugged. “She’d been reading the travel folders. She thought her twenty bucks a day would egtitle her to have breakfast right across the table from Gary Cooper, I guess. Then she’d -go dunk herself in the same pool with ‘the Junior League, and probably wind -up the evening by dancing with Gesar Romero. She’d been sitting around ‘the lobby all day, waiting for somebody to give her a tumble.” Cynicism spread across Fencer’s face. “And you did.” Tolan was equally cynical. “What the hell? I peddle bonds for a living. Any- body who can afford the rates here is a pretty fair prospect. I thought she was a prospect, so naturally I went over and asked if we hadn’t met in Miami last winter.” O’Hanna asked, “She told you this story and so you bowed out?” “Yeah. I had a cocktail party date for four-thirty, in the Palomar Room. I’d invited about a dozen guests, the Cobbs included.” “Both of them?” “IT invited both.” Tolan nodded. “But when Charlotte came in she apologized for Leland, said he wasn’t feeling well, and had decided to stay in his room.” Fencer grinned. “Maybe it was some- thing the guy drank, huh?” “No.” The bond salesman hesitated, stroked the outline of his jaw with thoughtful fingers. He looked worried- ly at Charlotte Cobb. “I’m sorry as hell, but this is murder. I’ve got to tell them the truth.” She stared. Tolan said, “It was about four o’clock when I talked to Kitty Beale. Half an hour later, when I crossed the lobby on my way to the Palomar Room, I saw her again. Cobb was there, trying to pick her up. As I walked by, I over- | C(O) nn) 6) Oy QO) <S) @) (C(O) mM