Con Demerest - Her anal perversion

"Were there any witnesses?" Stanley asked hopefully.

"None," Alice answered, shaking her head slowly. "What are you thinking, Mister Stanley? Surely you don't intend to take this to court and try to avoid paying Mister Denton. I ran the poor man down! I broke his back! He may be paralyzed! I insist that he be taken care of! What do you think I have insurance for? I've kept up the full amount. I used to think my husband carried too much insurance on everything, but when he died, I learned different. Tell me you're not going to try to cheat Mister Denton, please, because I won't let you get away with it."

The investigator smiled for the first time since he'd entered the house, and his voice took on a more friendly tone. "Your attitude is admirable, Missus Darling. But you needn't worry about my company's ethics. I can assure you that if Mister Denton's case warrants it, we'll pay to the full extent of your policy's personal liability coverage, one hundred thousand dollars. But we don't pay out that kind of money without a thorough investigation. Now, suppose you tell me exactly how the accident occurred." He took a cassette recorder from his attache case and turned it on, then leaned across and extended the microphone toward Alice. "Speak into the mike, and tell it just as it happened, please. Try not to leave out anything, no matter how unimportant it may seem to you."

Having her words recorded made Alice nervous, but she spoke clearly into the microphone and recounted the accident in all its gory detail. When she finished, her hands were trembling. Stanley instructed her to start at the first and tell it again. This irritated Alice, but when he told her that because of her initial nervousness she might possibly have left out something of importance to him in his investigation, she agreed to his request and began plodding through the gruesome details of it once more.

Then Stanley started asking her questions about Denton, and they were personal questions totally unrelated to the accident as such. He wanted to know where Denton worked, where he'd come from, how long he'd lived at the boarding house, what he did for entertainment, how much did he drink, whom did he associate with.

Alice answered as best she could, but she knew very little about Denton. All she could tell him was that Denton had boarded with her for exactly one month, that he apparently had no friends or job, and that he stayed in his room a lot and drank to excess.

"Do you carry an insurance card in your purse, Missus Darling? The one with your policy's limits of coverage listed on it."

"Why, yes I do. Why do you ask?"

"Because I see a purse on the piano. Is it yours?"

"Yes, it's mine."

"Is that where you usually leave it?"

"No, that's not where I usually leave it, but I don't see where that's any concern of yours, Mister Stanley."

He grinned. "Missus Darling, did anyone ever tell you you're downright cute when you get angry?"

Alice blushed and lowered her softening gaze. "No," she laughed, "not for years and years."

"Well, you are, and I hope you'll forgive my impudence in saying so. But the purse, it could be important. I try not to overlook anything. Do you often leave it on the piano?"

"No, not often," she replied, returning her gaze to his face and liking what she saw.

"Sometimes you do though, right?"

"I suppose I must. It's there now, isn't it?"

"And your boarders have access to the parlor?"

"Yes, of course. The TV is here, and we all have to pass through the parlor when we enter or leave the house by the front door. But there are no thieves living here. Nothing has been stolen."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "That isn't what I was thinking. Will you grant me this, Missus Darling? That Denton had the opportunity to examine the contents of your purse?"

"Why, I guess so. But why would he want to do that? As I said, nothing has been stolen from me."

Stanley changed the subject, asked for the cup of coffee she'd previously offered, and remained to chat with her for a moment on what seemed to be a purely personal level. She learned his first name was John, and that he was recently divorced. He left shortly, saying he would be in touch with her again.

The temperature had risen to the high eighties. It felt good, lazy, pleasant. John Stanley was enjoying it while it lasted. In shirt sleeves and tie – his suit coat was in his ear – John paused on the porch of Mrs. Darling's boarding house to suck his lungs full of the good clean air. A smile crept over his freckled boyish face as he stretched luxuriously. That Alice Darling was some kind of woman, small but stacked, and pretty as all get out. His dong gave an involuntary throb as he imagined what it might be like to bed her. He chuckled, deciding she would be well worth the trouble it would take to lay her. But it would take time, because she was clearly a lady, and business came first. John reminded himself he was on a case. He put the sweet face and desirable curvaceous body of Alice Darling out of his mind and walked out to have another look at her car.

He was glad he did, because he hadn't noticed it the first time, and he doubted the police had either, since they'd made their investigation in darkness. It was almost unnoticeable, the light film of fine dust on Mrs. Darling's Ford. No one would have noticed the faint handprint on the right front fender unless they'd been looking for it. But it was there, between the wheel well and the front end of the car, as if someone had slapped the fender.

John's suspicious mind conjured the mental image of Denton slapping the fender and then hurling himself up into the air with a backward somersault. Perhaps he was wrong, but such things had happened, and he was taking no chances. He snapped a picture of the handprint with his miniature camera. Then he opened his attache case and began trying to lift at least one clear fingerprint.

There were too many things in this case which didn't add up right, and he couldn't shake the feeling that there'd been no accident. He hadn't told Mrs. Darling, because she had enough on her mind and would find out soon enough anyway, but Denton's lawyer was threatening to sue her for a million dollars. It was a ridiculous sum, of course. Alice Darling couldn't possibly pay it. But if Denton got a court judgment for even a fourth of that amount against the comely widow, he would collect the entire hundred thousand dollars insurance money. He would also get her boarding house, and her car, and any savings she might have.

If Denton's back was really broken, why wasn't he in a hospital instead of Gordan's office? He didn't buy the doctor's statement that Denton couldn't be moved. This whole thing looked like a put-up job to the sharp investigator, a dastardly scheme to defraud his insurance company and fleece a defenseless widow of everything she owned. It smelled rotten to John, and if there was fraud, as he suspected, he intended to prove it, for both the sake of his company and the lovely Mrs. Darling. Thinking of the latter, he strode off toward his car whistling the tune of a song containing the words "How she makes me quiver, how she ma-akes me-ee sighh".

The temperature rose into the low nineties around one that afternoon, and there was virtually no breeze at all to stir the still air. It became stuffy inside the two-story boarding house, but the weather outside was beautiful. Alice's work was done until four, when she would have to start preparing supper for her children and her remaining six boarders, all of whom were very understanding and sympathetic about the accident. She was alone in the house. Her kids were at school, and all her boarders worked during the day – with the exception of poor Mr. Denton, who was at Gordan's as a result of her careless driving.