Ричард Деминг - Hit and Run

Hank Gent said with a smile, “Think he’d dump his money, too, Barney?”

Calhoun said weakly, “Have you talked to Mrs. Powers about it?”

“Not yet,” Sergeant Budding said in a gloomy voice. “She’s not home. But we will. We’ve got her house staked out. She’s got some interesting questions to answer. Not just about the clothing, either.”

“Oh? What else?”

“She claimed she put her husband on that plane personally. After the Hit-and-Run boys turned up the clothing, we talked to the stewardess again. When it was just a missing-person case, the boys working on it had been satisfied from her description that Powers had been on the plane. This time we showed her a picture. It wasn’t Powers who made the flight. Somebody stood in for him. What would you figure from that?”

After a long pause, Calhoun said with difficulty, “Sounds like murder, all right. But what have I got to do with all this? I don’t even know the woman. You’re not under the impression that I stood in for Powers on the plane, are you?”

Budding shook his head. “You’re too big. This guy was Powers’ size. What we want from you is what you were doing in Cleveland with Mrs. Powers, and why you rented a boat to go fishing, then didn’t fish?”

This was so unexpected that Calhoun paled. He was unable to think of any reply.

The smiling Hank Gent said, “You were unlucky, Barney. You picked a livery run by a curious guy. And one of his other customers works for the Cleveland Crime Lab. He got your fingerprints off the outboard motor and sent them to an old classmate of his who’s now a professor at U.B. He also sent along the license number of Mrs. Powers’ Buick and descriptions of you both. What were the two of you doing up there, Barney?”

Calhoun said huskily, “You can’t tie me into this. You haven’t even established that a crime’s been committed yet.”

“There’s no corpus delicti,” Sergeant Budding agreed. “We figure you dumped him in Lake Erie. Why you took him all the way to Cleveland, we don’t know. But you always were a devious guy. We think we can work up a corpus delicti , though. If you recall from your cop days, that doesn’t necessarily mean a body. It just means proof that a crime’s been committed.”

“Where’s the proof?” Calhoun challenged.

“We don’t know yet. But after your clothing boner, we figure you both probably left some other loose ends lying around. We plan to go through her house with a fine-tooth comb, and give your flat a shakedown, too.”

A film of perspiration appeared on Calhoun’s forehead. In a last desperate effort to gain time, he said, “You’re going to need a search warrant to get in my place.”

Round-faced Hank Gent smiled at him. “Oh, we’ve got one of those,” he said cheerfully, and produced it.