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Brett Halliday: Michael Shaynes' 50th case

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Brett Halliday Michael Shaynes' 50th case

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He gave it to him and chuckled as he said, “Sorry to cause you so much trouble, but I guess you’re going to have to stop and let me off at Sunray.”

The conductor punched the ticket with a smile and assured him they didn’t mind stopping, and that if Marvin wanted to take a little snooze to go on and do it because the conductor would promise to wake him up personally in time to get off.

Marvin thought that was nice of him, and he did doze off some more, and the next thing he knew the conductor was tapping him on the shoulder again and the train was beginning to slow down. Marvin yawned and looked out the window and saw the big neon sign of the Sunray Motel sliding past, and suddenly he was wide awake and excited to be getting home. He got his suitcase down from the overhead rack and went back and was waiting in the vestibule for the door to be opened when the train ground to a protesting stop.

He stepped down onto the cindered walk quickly, and there was bright starlight and a little sickle of moon in the sky, and he breathed the good fresh air deeply into his lungs and it smelled good after sitting in the smoker so long.

The train just barely came to a full stop, then picked up speed and glided away and he stood there and watched the lighted cars slide past until there were just the twin red lights receding and fading into the night.

Just as Marvin had anticipated, he was the only passenger to get off the train. There was a dim light inside the waiting room and he walked up there and looked in, but wasn’t surprised to find it empty. It was well past ten o’clock and that meant that all the business places were closed up tight and all the residents were asleep or at least snugly inside their own homes.

He walked around the waiting room and there wasn’t any taxi, of course, but he didn’t mind at all. The six-block walk to his home was exactly what he needed to clean the city air out of his lungs.

Pleasant Street, leading away from the depot, was tree-lined and lighted with street lamps at every second corner. Marvin walked along it briskly, glancing pleasurably at the well-kept lawns and houses as he passed them. The Burkes and the Chadwicks and the Evanses. Solid, substantial homes with neat, palm-shaded driveways and carefully-tended tropical shrubbery in the yards. All of them dark, now, except Dr. Higgens’ three-story house on the corner of Pleasant Street and Starfish Lane. There was a dim light downstairs as Marvin went by, and another in a third floor bedroom.

He wondered if someone in town were sick and hoped it wasn’t serious, and then he quickened his pace just a little as he recalled that he had been away from home four whole days without any word, and that Sissy had sniffled a little the morning he left and Ellie had said she thought she’d better keep her home from first grade for a day or so just in case it did develop into something the other children could catch.

He knew it was foolish to let a night light in the doctor’s house worry him about Sissy, but he pushed on a little faster anyway, turning into Lily Lane three blocks from the depot. It was a winding street in a newer part of town, and all the houses were modern and had larger grounds than in the older part of Sunray, each with private driveways leading up to secluded houses that were set well apart from their neighbors.

As he climbed the slope toward his own driveway, Marvin thought pleasurably how it would be when he got home. He had his latch-key, of course. Ellie and Sissy would be sleeping soundly in the adjoining bedrooms upstairs and he wouldn’t have to wake them to get in. They both slept very soundly and they weren’t expecting him.

He’d leave his suitcase downstairs in the hall, he decided, and go into the kitchen quietly and get two glasses and the bottle of imported cognac that Ellie kept pushed back on the top shelf for special occasions.

Then he’d go upstairs on tiptoe and into the big front bedroom where starlight would be shining through the two open windows and making enough light to show Ellie lying asleep in bed.

She mostly slept on her left side with her cheek pillowed on her arm, and the cover was always slipping down from her right shoulder and leaving it bare.

He’d kneel beside the bed, he thought happily, and waken her with a kiss on her bare shoulder, and she’d lift up her head sleepily, not quite knowing who it was or what was happening, and then he’d kiss her hard on the mouth and she’d come fully awake and cling to him and kiss him back.

Then he thought of a better way. He’d close the door through the bathroom into Sissy’s room and lock it first, and then he’d undress without turning on a light and go around the bed and slip under the covers on the other side of Ellie without waking her.

There was a sort of good animal smell that came from Ellie’s body when she was asleep. Different from when she was awake. Marvin always thought of it as a sensuous smell. He often waked up in the night with her lying close beside him, and he’d smell her smell and snuggle a little closer to her and bury his face under the covers against her back and breathe in deeply of the lovely fragrance that was his wife.

And almost always it had a powerful stimulating effect on him. He didn’t intend to waken her and he tried not to, but generally she’d seem to sense how he was feeling, even in her sleep, and she’d turn slowly and languidly to him, and sometimes he thought she didn’t even wake up fully even when it was all over, but he didn’t mind that because she was loving and willing whenever he wanted to, and he considered that all a man should want from his wife in the middle of the night.

He reached their driveway and it wound up between a double row of hibiscus to the front of the house which he could scarcely see from the street. He followed the drive up and around, and stopped suddenly when he saw a dim light behind drawn shades in the front bedroom window.

He saw at once that it wasn’t in Sissy’s room, and he stopped being frightened. It wasn’t actually very late and there was no reason in the world why Ellie shouldn’t still be awake and up. She might even be reading in bed, which was something she had given up after she married Marvin.

He went on up the drive to the last turn where he could see the lower front of the house clearly, and there he stopped again.

There was a car standing in the darkness under the porte cochere directly in front. For a brief moment he was irritated by the sight of it there. Ellie knew how he felt about automobiles. He always said that garages were built to protect cars from the damp night air, and he never allowed one to sit out at night.

He stepped closer and his irritation vanished and turned into something else. It was neither his sedan nor Ellie’s coupe that stood in front of his house. It was a convertible with the top down and with lots of bright chrome.

He took two more hesitant steps forward and stopped again. He recognized the convertible. It belonged to Harry. Harry Wilsson. One of their closest neighbors, and Marvin’s best friend in Sunray.

3

He stood there in the night, petrified and disbelieving, staring at the convertible parked in front of his house, knowing there must be some mistake.

Oh, it was Harry Wilsson’s car all right. There was no mistake about that. There were only two or three convertibles in Sunray, and Marvin had sold this one to Harry Wilsson himself about two months ago. They had argued together good-naturedly about the trade-in value of the Dodge sedan that Harry was turning in on it, and Marvin had ended up by giving his good friend a deal that had left him with almost no profit on the transaction.

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