Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 34, No. 5, April 1974

“Marian Coe and Genita Garren. Miss Coe’s the one who used to work for the telephone company. She’s been in the violent ward at Bellevue for the last two years.”

“And Genita Garren?”

“Poor girl — she married a cop.”

“And that’s supposed to eliminate her?”

“It was a French cop. She’s living in Bordeaux.”

“That leaves Eddie Willard, Bill Marcy, and Leda Ellis.”

“And Honey.”

“Yes, and Honey. Let’s take them down the line. What’s Eddie Willard doing these days?”

“Loansharking.”

“Fine way for a Columbia student to end up.”

“It just shows you the value of a college education. If he hadn’t gone to Columbia, he’d probably be borrowing money instead of lending it.”

“What about Bill Marcy?”

“Like they say in the papers — a millionaire sportsman. His father left him a mint.”

“And Leda Ellis?”

“According to the Information Unit, she’s still as lively as she was when she used to go to Fred Beaumont’s parties.” He put his notes away. “And that’s it, Pete.” He paused. “Listen, Pete — you’ve got a lot of paperwork to catch up on, right?”

“Too much of it. Why?”

“Well, while you’re doing it, why don’t I start checking out Willard and Marcy and Leda Ellis?”

“All three of them?”

“Why not?”

“You afraid I’ll snag you into helping with the paperwork, or what?”

“Well, there’s that, too. But mainly I’m just tired of homesteading this damn squad room.”

“I know the feeling,” I said. “Good-by and good luck.”

Stan had been right about my having a lot of paperwork; and since it had to be done, now was the time to do it. I lit a cigar, took the cover off my Number five Underwood, and dug in.

I worked steadily for the better part of two hours; then I went down to the corner diner, had a quick breakfast, and came back to the squad room to pick up where I had left off.

Ten minutes later, the phone rang. It was Ted. Holly, over at Communications.

“Pete, I’ve got some good news for you,” he said. “That rider on the circular about the sunglasses paid off. The Emmert Optical Company says they ground a pair to that identical prescription, and with that same kind and shade of glass. Of course, we can’t assume that this is the only prescription of its kind. But it sure ought to do for starters.”

“It’ll do fine,” I said. “You know the owner’s name yet?”

“It was on the doctor’s prescription. The glasses were made for a Miss Helen Ramey, 212 Central Park West.”

“Thanks, Ted.”

“She a newcomer to the case?”

“I’m not so sure,” I said. “She just might have been the biggest part of it, right from the beginning.”

“You mean, without her, there might not have been any case to begin with?”

“Yes,” I said, “that’s exactly what I mean.”

I’d done enough paper work.

Helen Ramey turned out to be a small, neat girl with worried brown eyes, short brown hair, a blunt nose, and a head almost as perfectly round as a bowling ball. She had, she told me, lost her sunglasses at Atlantic City on a recent weekend there with two other girls from her office. She had come back from the water to find that someone had kicked her towel, and that her glasses had been lost in the sand or stolen. She had been very much distressed by the loss, since the glasses had cost her nearly forty dollars.

I was able to verify Miss Ramey’s story with both of the other girls, both of whom also verified the fact that, at the time of the murder, Miss Ramey had been having lunch at her desk in the office where she worked.

All of which meant that our only real lead in the homicide had evaporated, and that the glasses could have been dropped at Larry Yeager’s apartment by almost anyone at all.

After I’d driven back to the station house, I bought a quart container of black coffee and took it up to the squad room with me.

None of the messages oh my call spike had anything to do with the investigation, and the single report in my In basket, signed by the Assistant Medical Examiner who had autopsied Yeager’s body at Bellevue, boiled down to the fact that Yeager had died as a result of having been shot four times with a gun.

I’d just finished filing the report in Yeager’s folder when Stan Rayder walked in. While he got his big white mug from his desk and helped himself to some of my coffee, I told him the sad outcome of my check on Helen Ramey.

“She has an oddly shaped head,” I said. “It’s a little large, for a woman, and absolutely round. With a head like that, the frames of her sunglasses would have to be wider than most women’s frames would be.”

“I get it,” he said. “In other words, they’d be wide enough to be worn by either a woman or a man.” He shook his head. “A bum break. It means we’re right back where we started. Our hottest suspect just went right out the window.”

“That’s just about the sorry size of it,” I said. “And as long as we’re losing leads and suspects the way we are, we might as well let go of one more.”

“Who?”

“Yeager’s girl friend. Doris Hagen. I just don’t see her as a material witness, Stan. Not with the way things’ve worked out since we jugged her.”