Kiss and Kill

Kiss and Kill Read Free Page B

Book: Kiss and Kill Read Free
Author: Ellery Queen
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was an expense-paid Christmas trip to Mexico.”
    â€œYou both went?”
    â€œWe were saving money. She couldn’t cash in her prize, so she went without me.”
    Barney frowned. But at that point his caller came back on the line. “One mugging in that neighborhood, that’s all. Two kids lifted a drunk’s wallet for twenty-two bucks. We got the kids.”
    â€œWhat time was it?”
    â€œTen-thirty.”
    â€œThanks, Clyde.” He hung up the phone. “So she couldn’t have witnessed a crime and been kidnaped to keep her quiet. That leaves us with the opposite—that she was kidnaped in order to make her talk. What could your wife know? The ad business? Your firm’s trade secrets? Neither of you had access to that kind of information, I take it. Which brings us back to the beginning: that Liz took off on her own.”
    â€œI can’t accept that,” said Ed Tollman.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œAre you married?”
    â€œNo.”
    Ed shrugged. “I know Liz wouldn’t leave me. She wanted nothing I couldn’t give her.”
    Barney did not smile. He had known couples like that—a self-enclosed, self-sufficient unit, like a double-yolked egg. (He had often wondered how it must feel to have that sort of rapport with a woman.) When someone threw a rock at the egg, it must be hell, he thought. Ed was Humpty-Dumpty, waiting to be put back together.
    â€œJust the same,” Barney said, “we’ll cover that loophole. People who disappear seldom break it off completely. Sometimes they’ll get in touch because of habit. Who were Liz’s closest friends?”
    â€œA girl who worked in the agency, Connie Greenberg. Another old schoolmate who lived in Charlevoix, Michigan. Liz grew up there.” Ed Tollman added, “So did I.”
    â€œOkay. I’ll take on a couple of helpers, one to watch the agency, the other to keep his eyes open in the home town. They’re just kids learning the game, but they can do the job. Twenty-five a day for them and expenses.”
    Ed nodded. “Something else,” he said. “I don’t know where it fits in, but two nights ago a woman called from long distance and asked for Liz. I tried to find out who she was, but she hung up. The operator traced the call to a pay phone in a bus stop in Kingdom City, Missouri.”
    Barney said thoughtfully, “Somebody who was traveling.”
    â€œBut who? I’ve been in touch with all her friends.”
    â€œNot all of them, buster, if she didn’t leave you voluntarily. Let’s go to your place. I want to check through her stuff.”
    Ed was apologetic about the basement apartment. “We were saving money. That’s why we don’t even have a car.”
    Barney examined a gadget fastened to the top of the door.
    â€œAn automatic door opener of my own design,” Ed explained. “I hooked it up while Liz was in Mexico. If the dog wanted to go out—he was housebroken—he stepped on this grid.” He laid his palm on a metal plate in the floor to one side of the door; an electric motor whirred and the door opened. “When I’m busy I don’t like to be disturbed.”
    Barney strolled into the living room. Waist-high bookshelves, mere planks laid on bricks, held statuettes, bric-a-brac, doodads, souvenirs, and stacks of new books in slick dust-jackets.
    â€œDid your wife read a lot?”
    â€œNot much, but she had the idea she should. Besides, Liz couldn’t resist those cheap book-club offers.”
    Barney glanced at Ed’s drawing board, bare except for a pile of sketches. Beside the table were ranked the tools of his trade—ruler, compass, speed-ball pens, eraser. Nearby, another table was a mare’s nest of newspaper fragments, crossword puzzles, notes, and papers filled with spiraling doodles.
    Barney went through the litter, on the hunt for anything. All he found was

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