Free The Luck Runs Out by Charlotte MacLeod Page A

nothing yet….Nothing on the van either, eh?…We’ve got a nephew of the deceased here. Mr. Flackley has no access to a phone and is anxious to be kept informed.”
    He broke off the connection. “Okay, Flackley, you’re in business. Soon as anything turns up, we’ll send the news along by radio. In the meantime, you’ll have Officer Madigan for company.”
    “Say, that’s real nice of you,” said Flackley, “but wouldn’t it be just as well if I rode back with you and went out with the search parties? Don’t seem right, everybody else out doin’ all the work and me sitting here twiddling my thumbs.”
    “Try not to think of it that way, Mr. Flackley. Somebody’s got to keep the home fires burning you know. How are you fixed for food, by the way? Want Officer Madigan to pick anything up along the road?”
    “No, I’m fine for now, thanks. Aunt Martha stocked up as soon as she found out I was coming.”
    She’d done that, Shandy thought, and then some. The old-fashioned pantry shelves revealed a strange hodgepodge: cans of chili and frijoles next to Boston baked beans, bags of potato chips and pretzels rubbing labels with Quaker Oats and homemade preserves. The refrigerator—Lieutenant Gorbin wasn’t bashful about making a thorough search, warrant or no warrant—held the usual things like eggs and milk and cheese along with plastic-wrapped spareribs, barbecued chickens, and four six-packs of beer, one of them half empty. Miss Flackley had evidently made a touching effort to lay in the sorts of foods she thought her nephew might prefer.
    This visit of his must have been a real milestone in her isolated life. Why in Sam Hill hadn’t she mentioned that she was going to have the fellow staying with her? Helen would have told her to bring him along, then she’d have had a bodyguard and this tragedy might never have occurred. Shandy voiced the thought.
    “Aunt Martha would never do a thing like that,” Flackley replied. “She wouldn’t have wanted a roughneck like me trailing along when she went out in society.”
    “We’re not society.”
    “You would be to her, college professors and all. Being an educated woman herself, she could hold up her end okay, but shucks, I wouldn’t even know which fork to use.”
    The word “fork” gave Shandy a small jolt. Just about this same time yesterday, he’d been sweating it out at the Carlovingian Crafters. Those identical forks with which Miss Flackley ate her last meal on this earth had been locked in the trunk of his car.
    “Speaking of forks,” he said to Corbin, “I hope to God you’ve caught those two rats who held up the Carlovingian Crafters yesterday.”
    The police officer looked at him curiously. “You own stock in the company or something?”
    “No, but I helped carry out the loot. It was my wife they took hostage.”
    “For Pete’s sake! Sure, Professor Shandy from Balaclava College. Funny I didn’t make the connection. This other business put the robbery clean out of my mind. You folks have been having quite a time of it, haven’t you?”
    “You might say that,” Shandy replied grimly. “The most bizarre part of the whole story is that we were buying the silver partly because Miss Flackley was coming to dinner. My wife”—he chose his words carefully, in order not to offend the nephew—“wanted to set an attractive table.”
    “Any special reason?”
    “Because it was the first time we’d invited her, I suppose. Frankly, I sometimes find my wife’s motives a trifle obscure.”
    Corbin grinned. “I know the feeling. Well, Professor, I wish I could tell you we’ve got those crooks safe in the slammer, but I can’t. We were sure we’d be able to scoop them right in with the good descriptions we had and the weight of the stuff they were trying to get away with, but they seem to have dropped clean out of sight.”
    “Say,” Flackley broke in, “I saw that story about the robbery on the news last night. You don’t suppose by