Kiss and Kill Read Free

her.”
    â€œPlease.”
    Didn’t the guy know? Or wouldn’t he let himself know?
    â€œThen what?” Barney asked.
    â€œI don’t understand, Mr. Burgess.”
    â€œCome home, Liz, all is forgiven?”
    The remarkable part about it, Barney mused, was that the guy seemed for real. “You sound like the police,” Ed Tollman said in an angry voice. “They told me she’d be back in the morning, like most missing wives. Well, she wasn’t—not that first morning or the other five. There can be only one reason for that, Mr. Burgess. She couldn’t come back.”
    It apparently never occurred to the schmo that she mightn’t want to come back.
    Still, that detail about the warm loaf of bread …
    The man looked exhausted. There were smudges under his eyes like fine ash. He smoked in spurts, lighting cigarettes, immediately jabbing them out in the tray, or forgetting all about them as they burned down to the filters—acting just the way a schmo acts when his wife takes a powder.
    Suddenly a thought struck Barney Burgess: Or, acting how a smart operator would act if he’d done away with the little woman.
    And just as suddenly Barney was interested. Hooked, was the way his mind put it. It was his damn curiosity, a failing he often deplored. He had found that there was no profit in curiosity, only trouble. Curiosity was unbusinesslike. He grinned to himself. Maybe I’m an artist, he thought; and he said to Tollman briskly, “Okay, you’ve had six days. What have you done?”
    â€œDone?”
    â€œYou scouted the neighborhood, phoned her friends, her office, the hospitals, the police. And then what? Sat on your ass and waited?”
    Ed Tollman’s face flushed. “The police told me to stand by.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œTo make identifications. Day before yesterday they had me look at a body they pulled out of the river.”
    Barney set out a bottle of White Horse and a glass. “And in the whole six days you never ran out of the house and through the streets looking in every woman’s face, hoping against hope?”
    â€œThat’s not logical—”
    â€œDo you live by logic? Didn’t you panic?”
    Ed twisted on the hassock.
    â€œIt happened so slowly. I mean, first she was gone for a few hours, then overnight, then another day. And all the time for no reason . You can’t panic till you know what to panic about. Sure, I’m scared now. But I’m also puzzled, Mr. Burgess. It doesn’t make sense.”
    Barney poured himself a drink, none for Tollman. This thing was too interesting to spoil by giving the guy a slug of Dutch courage. “So she goes out to buy a loaf of bread. That’s a sweet touch, Tollman. So is the little white doggie bit. Who’d figure a grieving husband would make up things like that? Huh?”
    Ed Tollman stared at him.
    Barney deliberately let his grin widen. “You’re pretty good, you know? The kind old ladies feel sorry for. The poor, poor guy. So soft-spoken. So sincere. You can hear them now: ‘I can’t believe that nice man would do an awful thing like that to his wife.’”
    â€œWhat are you talking about, Mr. Burgess?”
    â€œDon’t you know, Tollman?”
    Ed got off the hassock. His voice was dry and hard and cold. “No, I don’t. Look, Mr. Burgess, I’ve got eight thousand dollars saved up. I was going to go into business for myself—it was Liz’s idea. Whatever I am I owe to Liz. You can have the whole eight thousand if you find her. Would I make an offer like that—to impoverish myself—if I’d had anything to do with her disappearance?”
    â€œYou’re damn right you would, Tollman. If you were very smart. And had planted her where you thought she’d never be found.”
    Barney saw the man’s features flow like mud. His right hand was a white-knuckled fist.
    The