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

She shook her head, gave the cup a final caress, and closed the cabinet. “I’m afraid I’ve had my last experience with guns, Mr. Selby,” she said. “I’ll never be able to win any more prizes, will I? Or wear dresses like this again.”

Neither Stan nor I said anything.

“What I hate most about this is that it means leaving so much behind,” she said. “I had everything I ever wanted. And now... now I’ve got to leave it. It just doesn’t seem possible this is happening to me.”

“We have all the answers we need except one,” I said.

She smiled a quick, wan smile that was gone so abruptly that I wondered whether it had ever really been there.

“You mean, why did I kill him?”

I nodded.

“He was extorting money from me,” she said. “He’d been doing it for years.”

“In what way, Mrs. Daniels?”

“By threatening to tell that we’d never been divorced,” she said. “Larry and I were married just before the Korean War broke out. About a year after he was recalled to service, I received a telegram from the Secretary of War, saying that he was missing in action. That was the last I ever heard from or about him until long after the war was over. In the meantime I had met Arnold Daniels.”

“You tell Daniels about Larry?” Stan asked.

“No. Arnold Daniels was nothing but a drunken hulk, and I loathed him. But he was also the wealthiest man I’d ever met.”

“And so you married him without bothering to divorce Larry Yeager?” Stan asked.

“Yes. I was sure Larry was dead. And I knew that a chance to marry so much money might never come my way again.”

“And then?” Stan said.

“Then, after I’d been married to Arnold for a suitable time, I went to Florida and got a divorce.”

“And considerable alimony?” Stan said.

“It was two thousand dollars a month,” she said. “And then, about four years ago, Larry suddenly appeared at my apartment. He said he’d been in a prison camp until the war was over, and that while he was there he’d realized our marriage was a mistake. When he got back to the States, he stayed on the West Coast.”

“And he’d done nothing about a divorce, either?” I asked.

“No. And then one day a mutual friend happened to run into Larry out there and told him about my having married Arnold Daniels. Larry took the next plane to New York.”

“And that’s when the black-mail began?”

She nodded. “That very day. Larry had found out exactly how much alimony I was getting. He said that if I didn’t start giving him five hundred dollars a month, he’d expose me. Going to prison as a bigamist and losing two thousand a month from Arnold was more than I could face, and so I began to pay him what he asked.”

“And this went on for four years?”

“Yes. Once I talked to a lawyer about that telegram from the Secretary of War saying that Larry was missing in action. I thought it might be possible to make my second marriage legal. But the lawyer said no. It seems that a telegram saying Larry had been killed would have been the equivalent of a death certificate. But one that merely said missing in action’ didn’t mean a thing.”

“I see,” I said. “But why should you continue to pay him for four years, and then suddenly decide to kill him?”

“He wanted a bigger share of my alimony. He said I would have to start giving him half of it every month. And then one night Earl Lambert showed me that gun, and I knew just what I was going to do. When I left Earl’s place the next morning, I had the gun in my bag.”

“Still,” I said, “you took that gun several weeks ago. Why so long a wait?”

“I just couldn’t summon up the courage,” she said. “But about three weeks ago Larry told me he had to have a thousand dollars in cash, and had to have it at once. I asked him why, but he just laughed and made some inane remark about wanting to buy a dirty movie. I gave him the money — but when I did, I promised myself it would be the last penny he ever got.”

“And was it?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yesterday I was supposed to take him a thousand dollars — half of my alimony. Instead, I took that gun and killed him.”

There was a long silence. Then Stan and I glanced at each other, got to our feet, and walked to the door.

“Ready, Mrs. Daniels?” I asked.

She rose, picked up her handbag, and walked toward us very slowly.

“It’s happening, isn’t it?” she said in a hushed, awed voice. “It’s really happening.”

But her eyes weren’t on either Stan or me; they were on the closed door. And the look was there — the look you see only on the face of someone who stares into the kind of future that was waiting for Reba. Daniels.

“Yes, Mrs. Daniels,” I said. “It’s really happening.”

Nice and Dead

by Lawrence Treat

There was no noise... no blood. All had gone off exactly as planned. There was nothing between him and safety — nothing but a dead girl’s shadow.

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