Free The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed by Charles Runyon

him back the note and started the car. I was biting my lip. “Six months. He didn’t give you long.”
    “No.”
    “So … that’s why you’ve got Gaby pumping Sandy.”
    He nodded.
    “Well, I don’t know about Anne’s other man, but I can tell you this. She was found with only seven dollars in her purse.”
    “It doesn’t mean anything. The killer would have taken it, assuming be was the one who’d given it to her.”
    I turned the car around and drove back toward Curt’s place. He didn’t have to say he wanted my help. He’d been saying it all morning, in a dozen ways. The next move was mine.
    “Let’s say Frankie didn’t do it. Why do you think the killers still around’?”
    “Several reasons. Bernice is one. Her situation was a lot like Anne’s.”
    “Oh? In what way?”
    “She had a roving eye, Gil says. A truckdriver friend of his was making it with her for a year. After he left town, Gil went out to see if she wanted a replacement.”
    “Gil Sisk?” I felt a hot flush of jealousy. “Gil wouldn’t want Bernice.”
    “A feminine viewpoint. Gil said she had a number of interesting … features. No brains, but Gil wasn’t wanting conversation. Anyway, she gave him the cold eye, so he decided somebody had beat him there. Could’ve been Anne’s old boyfriend.”
    “Curt, that’s too farfetched.”
    “Not if you add up the other similarities. Forget Anne was your sister, look at her objectively. She was roughly the age of Bernice. Had the same kind of passive, unexciting husband. She was known to advertise what she had—like Bernice. And at the end she and Bernice both had a secret lover—”
    “Oh Lord!” I gasped. “I just remembered, Bernice was in the store a couple of days before she was.. before she died. She’d been saving trading stamps, but this time she waved them away. She said there were better ways of getting gifts, and besides she’d be leaving town soon. That’s like Anne telling Frankie she could get a big wad of money. What do you think?”
    “It fits,” said Curt. We were approaching his place; Gil had gone, probably to lunch. Neither Gaby nor Lou had come back.
    “Park behind the house,” said Curt. “I want you to talk to Heine a minute.”
    Heine had shut down his drilling rig and was getting ready to leave for lunch. Heine was a living insult to Hitler’s Aryan ideal; short and stooped, with large hairy arms hanging to his knees. He had a dark, wizened face and wiry, tight-curled hair. He also had a local monopoly on well digging, sewer cleaning and plumbing.
    “Heine, tell her what you found when you went out to the Strubles’ place the day after she drowned.”
    “What I don’t find, you mean?” Heine gave me a black-toothed grin. “My big pipe wrench. Gone. I think somebody steal it. Maybe the sheriff.” He winked at me.
    “Did you look in the well?” asked Curt.
    Heine’s eyes widened. “Ah, that well, we fill her up.”
    “Why?” asked Curt.
    “Mister Struble, he said fill up quick, to the top. This is custom, to fill up the wells when people inside fall. Always. Water is no good to drink.”
    As he drove away, I said to Curt: “You’re taking a lot for granted, even if the pipe wrench was in the well. Okay, it could have been a weapon. But you don’t know she was murdered, you don’t even know she had a lover—”
    “No.” He sat down on the steps of the wooden porch. “Her husband took a room in town and left her stuff in the house. I’d like to go through it, see if there are any notes, flowers, souvenirs from her lover.” He looked up at me. “Struble listed his place with your husband. That means Lou has a key, right?”
    I felt my back stiffen. I knew what was coming. “Yes.”
    “Can you get it for me?”
    “Why not ask Lou?”
    “A month from now I could. Right now I don’t know him well enough.”
    I looked out, trying to frame my answer. I saw a car approaching, kicking up a long serpent of dust. Gradually I made