Free The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs: A Masao Masuto Mystery by Howard Fast

is that they live in Beverly Hills?”
    â€œHe’s killed three people already.”
    â€œI got to call my wife,” Wainwright said.
    Masuto went downstairs. He came out of the building and paused for a moment under the light at the entrance. He never heard the shot, only felt a hot pain at the side of his chin, as if a bee had stung him. As he put his hand up to his face, he heard the roar of a motor, and across the street a dark car shot away.
    There was blood on his hand.
    A prowl car had just parked, and the officer leaped out and ran over to him. “What happened, Sarge?”
    â€œA bullet nicked me,” Masuto said.
    â€œI didn’t hear a shot.”
    â€œHe uses a silencer. Look around a bit, Cowley. See if you can find the bullet. A little slug, a twenty-two. It might be embedded in the door.”
    â€œI ought to get after him.”
    â€œWe don’t know who he is or where he went,” Masuto said gently. “Look for the bullet.” Then he went back into the building.
    Wainwright was just putting down the phone. “What in hell happened to you?” he demanded.
    â€œI have been shot.”
    â€œLet me look at it. Yeah, it just nicked your cheek. Where do they keep the peroxide?”
    â€œIn the john.”
    Wainwright swabbed out the cut and put a Band-Aid across it. “You say he was in his car across the street. That has got to be sixty feet, and with a twenty-two pistol, he is cne hell of a shot, maybe an impossible shot.”
    â€œHe could have had a shoulder brace or it could have been a target gun this time, maybe a rifle. Or maybe just laying the pistol on the door of his car to steady it. Or he might have been aiming for my chest.”
    â€œWhich would still be pretty damn good shooting.”
    â€œIt would.”
    â€œWhy you?” Wainwright asked. “If it’s the same guy?”
    â€œIt is.”
    â€œHow can you be sure?”
    â€œBecause he called and spoke to Polly, and she told him I was handling the case.”
    â€œThat’s stupid!”
    â€œNo—he might have had information. How was she to know? I’m the one who’s stupid. He knows a lot about us. Well, now I know something about him.”
    â€œWhat, if I may ask?”
    â€œHe—it—the killer is a man. He’s an expert pistol shot. He drives a Mercedes.”
    â€œSo do half the people in Beverly Hills. But why a Mercedes? You said you couldn’t see the car, just that it was dark.”
    â€œI know that sound. There’s a particular sound when you gun a Mercedes. Also, he’s rich.”
    â€œNot uncommon in this town.”
    â€œAnd he has an enormous ego and a complicated but childish mind. The botulism, for example. Not brilliant, not even clever, but complicated. Also—and this I think is where I’ll get him—he has killed before.”
    â€œYou mean the chemist and the Chicano kid?”
    â€œNo—no. There’s killing somewhere in his past that we don’t know about.”
    As Masuto was leaving, Wainwright called after him, “Masao, be careful.”
    â€œI am always careful,” Masuto said.

Alice Greene
    A curved drive in a half-moon shape swept in from the sidewalk, past the front door of Laura Crombie’s house, and then back to the sidewalk. A low hedge of variegated plantings stretched parallel to the sidewalk, from one end of the driveway to the other. The house was well lit inside, but the driveway was in darkness.
    Masuto parked his car in the street, behind Beckman’s car, and then walked slowly up the driveway where three other cars were parked. At one side, the driveway was intersected by a connection with the garage. The garage doors were closed. Masuto looked closely at the three parked cars. The first in line was a Mercedes two-seater 450 SL. “Twenty-seven thousand dollars,” Masuto said to himself. Beverly Hills was not a place where people