Free Dead Seed by William Campbell Gault

strange case, isn’t it? But challenging.”
    “We’ll solve it,” I assured him.
    Ten minutes of chitchat after that, they left. Five minutes later, I remembered that Corey wasn’t working exclusively for me as he had claimed; he had another source of income as a dishwasher. The kid should go far. He had the true hustler’s instinct.
    “I wonder what she sees in him,” Jan said. “Not that he isn’t nice enough, in his way. But she is lovely!”
    “We made it. Why shouldn’t they?”
    “I’m not following you again.”
    “They are our junior clones,” I explained, “a lovely girl with taste and a vulgar private eye.”
    She shook her head. “You’re not at all like Corey, Brock.”
    “You didn’t know me when I was his age,” I told her.

NINE
    C HIEF HARRIS HAD PROMISED BERNIE that we could take all the time we wanted on this case. It was possible that Bernie and I were not on the same case. I was out to nail the killer of Sydney Morgenstern. Bernie hoped to nail Kelly. As for the third fearless bloodhound on this hunt, crafty Corey Raleigh, his primary goal was to build up his bank account.
    Over our waffles in the morning, Jan told me she was going to play golf today.
    “A sound idea,” I told her. “All work and no play could make Jan a dull girl.”
    “It’s work, in a way. I’m playing with my new client.”
    “Ms. Impeccable?”
    Jan nodded. “She’s a twelve-handicapper.”
    Jan was a fifteen. “Be sure,” I advised her, “that you don’t play her like you play me. Don’t ask for strokes, and don’t putt well.”
    “That would be dishonest, Brock. That would be customer golf.”
    “Pardon me! I forgot—she’s not a customer, is she? She’s a client.”
    “She is. And I hope you recognize the distinction.”
    I did; about eighty percent in markup. I tactfully kept my big mouth shut.
    When she left, I phoned Bernie and asked if I should come down this morning. We had no place to go, he told me. Why didn’t I keep an eye on the Medford house? He would phone me around noon.
    And then a thought hit me. In our talk with Kelly, Bernie had not asked him for a Saturday-night alibi. “Why not?” I asked.
    “Because Captain Dahl thought it might be smarter to find out where he was before we asked him. We can catch him in a lie easier that way.”
    I didn’t try to follow the police logic of that. I told him about Corey being fired by Mrs. Lacrosse.
    “Naturally. She doesn’t need him any more. She got her blackmail money. What we’re going to try to find out this morning is how much.”
    “We—?”
    “Captain Dahl and I.”
    They had never been soul mates, those two. They had found a bond of common interest; they both hated Kelly.
    “Remember now,” he warned me, “if you get a chance to talk with Grange or Miss Medford, don’t get too pushy. We don’t want to scare them off.”
    “I will be my usual suave self,” I informed him coolly.
    I poured myself another cup of coffee and took that and the Times with me to the backyard. The people next door had paid off. But Mrs. Lacrosse was not leaving town. She still had to recover her son. She didn’t need Kelly for that, she now figured, not even low-pay Corey.
    He was, she thought, too bright to buy the Sarkissian pitch and would soon leave the place. That might be true. But if he hated his mother, where else could he go to escape her, where else could he find free board and a guarded sanctuary?
    He must have assumed she wouldn’t stay in town forever. She probably had other relatives back in Skeleton Gulch. San Valdesto could be an uncomfortably alien environment for Mrs. Carl Tryden Lacrosse.
    Tryden. For the second time that word rang a muted bell in my unconscious. Tryden and Tyrone? Tyrone Power? No, that wasn’t it.
    I was deep in the trenchant prose of Ellen Goodman when, from the other side of the hedge, Fortney Grange called, “Good morning, Brock.”
    “Good morning,” I said, and stood up. “Come on over.