Black Mask Detective (Vol. 34, No. 3 — May 1950)

Homicide Honeymoon by Tedd Thomey

Rookie cop Mario Giovani thought married life was swell — until his loving dove flew the nest... and left a dead Romeo in her place.

Two of them were lying there. Two silent people with arms outflung. Two people lying in a small room where the only motion was a wilted lace curtain, breeze-blown, lazily stroking the sill of the open window.

In the alley below that window, a pair of tanned six-year-olds were lagging little steel balls at a line scratched in the blond dirt. They wore loose swim trunks and squinted against the morning California sun. One of the four unwashed hands was folded around the crushed brass tube of an orange lipstick. Both boys looked up briefly when the sound of a bell split the air above them.

Up in the bedroom, Mario Giovani reached out a firm, hair-forested hand and shut off the alarm clock’s metallic stutter.

He stretched, and muscle roamed idly along his chunky bare arms. He didn’t open his eyes, but he yawned. He combed fingers through his hair. Black hair, thick and naturally oily. He grinned suddenly, and there was a flash of straight teeth contrasting whitely against the dark olive color of his cheeks and strong jaw.

He grinned because he’d been married only four days and everything was swell. This wasn’t like it had been with his mom and dad — all that fighting and name-calling in Italian. This made you feel good in the morning, even if you had gotten home at 2 a.m., even if you had to keep on working instead of taking a honeymoon.

“Hey, Aggie!” he said. “It’s five to eight!”

No answer. That was Aggie for you. When she did a thing, she did it right. When she slept — she slept.

Mario yawned again. He wiggled his toes against the warmth of the sheets.

“Aggie, you’ll miss the bus!” Heavy-lidded eyes still comfortably closed, he sent a hand groping across to the other twin bed to tousle her yellow hair.

But instead of long, soft strands, he felt stubble and heard the wiry rasp of it as his fingers passed over a round chin.

Mario snatched away his hand as if it had been burned. He jerked to a sitting position.

He stared at his wife’s bed.

A man was lying there. Bob Hern. He was covered by a pink wool blanket, one arm hanging down limply to the faded leaves and flowers of the old rug.

Mario’s arm whipped aside his blankets and his bare heels thumped against the floor. Swiftly, he glanced around the bedroom.

“Aggie!” The word crumbled to dust in his throat.

Mario Giovani saw the large blot — so dark red it was almost black — on the blanket above Bob Hern’s chest. He tore away the blanket.

Hern was fully clothed. He wore a rumpled gray flannel suit, a white shirt and a shamrock green tie with a design of gray whorls. The chest of his coat was blood-soaked. His pinkish hair was mussed, but the familiar pink was gone from his cheeks. They were gray except for the coppery glinting of one day’s worth of whiskers.

Hern was dead. He had been dead for several hours. Mario could tell without touching him.

In his job, he’d seen death before. This kind of death, sudden and violent. But never had it been so close at hand, catapulted at him like this.

Mario stood still, his broad hands clenching his thighs through the thin cloth of his pajama pants. He stood there for a half-minute that was thirty separate, drawn-out ticks.

Turning quickly, he sped into the tiny bathroom. The cracked white tiles were sharp and cold against his feet. She wasn’t there.

“Aggie!” Panic was tugging at him, but he kicked it aside. She was safe. She had to be safe.

He ran through the tidy kitchen and out to the living room. Aggie wasn’t there either. He sprang onto the sway-backed davenport and his fingernails sank into its green cotton slip-cover as he looked behind it. She wasn’t there.

A twist of the glass knob and a yank of the redwood doors showed him that Aggie wasn’t in the small bed that folded into the living room’s east wall. Only one other place was left. Mario sprinted back to the bedroom and yanked open the closet door with the narrow, full-length mirror on it. His arms beat at the colorful dresses, the sport jackets and the extra blue serge patrolman’s uniform hanging there.

Slamming the closet door, he dropped to his knees and glanced under the twin beds, half expecting to see Aggie lying there as silently at Hern.

She wasn’t.

He got up and his eyes went automatically to the dead face on his wife’s pillow. Thoughts were tumbling and crowding into his mind. Thoughts he hated. Bob Hern and Aggie had been engaged once. Bob Hern, tall and good-looking, junior executive at Hennesey’s Department Store. He’d nearly married Aggie, until—

The thoughts went skittering crazily from Mario’s brain as his dark brown eyes fell upon the open bureau drawer. The lowest one. The gun — his extra .38 revolver — was gone. The holster was lying on the pile of balled-up socks. It gaped at him emptily.

Mario went quickly to Hern’s side. Working nimbly, his fingers tugged at Hern’s green tie, unbuttoned the white shirt and spread it open.

A .45 slug hadn’t made that size hole. And it was too large to be the work of a .25. The best guess was that a .38 had put it there. Patrolman Mario Giovani’s .38.

Without realizing what he was doing, Mario put the chair back on its four mahogany legs and sat down. There was no expression on his face. He stared at a nail hole in the sky-blue wallpaper.

He didn’t believe it. He absolutely didn’t believe it. But the facts were there — long, finger-like facts pointing in one direction.

Aggie had hated Bob Hern. She’d killed him and then run away, taking along the murder gun. The revolver of a man she’d married only four short days ago...

For a long time, Mario Giovani stayed there on the blue-velvet seat, listening to the sounds of kids playing marbles in the alley.

Abruptly, he got up. His eyes were blazing. He swore at himself for being nothing but a rookie — a seven months’ cop who couldn’t tell a clue from a hole in the ground.

Aggie couldn’t have done it. She wasn’t the type. She was gentle and feminine. She hated guns, hated the fact that Mario had to wear his service.88 whether in uniform or not. Maybe it was just a coincidence that she wasn’t here. Maybe she’d decided to spend the night with her mom and dad in Compton.

Mario started back to the living room. In the bedroom doorway, he paused. His bare toe had touched something sticky on the rug. An orange-colored blob. Reaching down, he poked it with a forefinger. He sniffed it. It was lipstick, slightly perfumed. Aggie must have dropped it.

Returning to the living room, Mario picked up the phone. As he dialed a number, he wondered how in the hell Bob Hern’s body had gotten into the apartment.

“Hello?” said Mrs. Haagensen, Aggie’s mother.

“This is Mario.” He tried to keep the concern from his voice. “Did Aggie stay over there last night?”

“Why, no. Wasn’t she with you?”

Mario hesitated. He didn’t want to upset Mrs. Haagensen. “I thought she was, but I guess I was mistaken. I was on the beat till two this morning and when I got in I went right to bed without putting the lights on. I—”

“I don’t understand...” Mrs. Haagensen’s voice trailed off. Mario could visualize her standing in her kitchen, a small plump woman. Her brown hair — once it had been blonde like Aggie’s — was fixed In a tight shiny bun, and she almost had to stand on tip-toe to reach the wall telephone’s black mouth.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” added Mario. “She probably left me a note. That’s it — there’s probably a note around here some place.”

He knew there was no note. And he also knew that Mrs. Haagensen could tell he was lying. When he was nervous like this, he couldn’t tell even a small lie without his tongue tripping all over itself.

“I don’t like it,” said Mrs. Haagensen. “You two married only a few days and all.” She paused. “Have you phoned Vivian? She used to stay nights with Vivian sometimes.”

“No,” said Mario. “But I will right away. Thank you. Good-by.”

He put the phone down quickly, feeling sick to his stomach. With a dry tongue, he licked his lips. Everything was worse now. More and more it looked as if Aggie had run away.

Again he lifted the phone. He knew he should dial the homicide inspectors and tell them all about it. But he couldn’t. They’d start a city-wide search for Aggie. Her picture would be in all the papers, and radios would crackle with her name. Agnes Giovani, killer-bride of a cop. And when they found her and arrested her, she’d be scared. She’d say the wrong thing, get herself in deeper and deeper.

No, he couldn’t phone the inspectors — not till he’d tried to find her first himself.

His forefinger spun the dial wheel again. Six, then seven times, the receiver rang metallically in his ear before Vivian Mason answered.

“Yes?” she asked in her silken tone.

“Hello,” he said. “This is—”

“You don’t have to tell me!” cut in Vivian. “I’d know your voice anywhere, Mario. Such a nice voice...”

Mario swallowed. Vivian always made him feel uncomfortable. Like Aggie, she was blonde, but prettier — quite a bit prettier. Her eyes were nearly violet, and she wore the brightest lip rouges, the highest heels, the lowest-cut blouses. He’d liked Vivian a lot — until he met Aggie. Aggie was more fun. She got a kick out of baseball and tennis and wasn’t afraid to get her hair wet at the beach. She was more real — at least he’d thought so until this morning.

“I was wondering,” said Mario. He hesitated and at the same time heard a small thumping sound at the other end of the line.

“Sam!” shouted Vivian. “Get down from there! Excuse me a minute, Mario.”

The phone clattered as Vivian set it down. She returned after a moment.

“Sorry, Mario. That damn cat was up on the mantle again after the goldfish and knocked down a book. Now what were you wondering about?”

“Did Aggie spend the night with you by any chance?” Breath tight in his chest, he waited for her answer.

Vivian laughed. “Well, the honeymoon’s over already! What did she do, Mario, run home to mother?”

“No!” he said angrily. “I had to work last night and she probably got scared being by herself!”

“I don’t know,” laughed Vivian. “Sounds like Reno to me!” Her voice softened, becoming almost husky. “You know, Mario honey, I’m still carrying a big torch for you. I’ll be home tonight if you’d like to—”

“Thank you, but I’ll be busy.” Mario let the phone drop to its cradle.

As he replaced it, the doorbell rang with the high nervous tone of a spoon striking a glass of water.

He didn’t want to answer it. He had enough on his mind. But he knew whoever it was out on the small porch had seen him through the glass of the front door. He went over and opened the door.

Standing on the porch, revolving a faded green felt hat in his big-knuckled hands, was George Contrera. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at Mario.

Mario scowled and passed his hand impatiently across his forehead. “Sorry, George. Can’t go with you this morning. Something’s come up.”

Anger sprang into George Contrera’s eyes. They were oily brown eyes looking out of an oily brown face. Contrera was in his late thirties. He was tall and his hair was cut so short it stuck up like iron-gray pins. His thin denim shirt and pants had been washed and mended many times.

“You said you’d go!” he accused. “I need that job. And you promised!”

“I know, but we’ll have to do it tomorrow or some time.”

Contrera began to whine. “Look here, sir! If it hadn’t been for you I wouldn’t be out of a job. You arrested me, so I sat in that jail for one hundred and eighty-three days. You—”

“Shut up!” barked Mario. “It wasn’t my fault you tried to rob that gas station.” He started to shut the door. “I’ll get in touch with you later about the job.”

“Yes, sir!” There was little respect in the word and much bitterness. Narrow shoulders slumping, Contrera turned and went down the long flight of steps.

Mario closed the door.

He returned to the bedroom, the silent bedroom with the silent figure on his wife’s bed. Glancing briefly at Hern’s gray face, he picked up his tan gabardine slacks. His mind was made up. He’d have to go out and find her. Because until he could talk to her, until he could see the expression her blue eyes and hear her voice — not until then would he know for sure whether Aggie was guilty.

And all he could allow himself was an hour. He couldn’t delay phoning the homicide inspectors for more than an hour. He swore.

A short, rotten hour. One hour to find his wife in a city of three hundred thousand. One hour to find evidence to clear her if she wasn’t guilty. One hour to save her life and his.

Stepping into the slacks, he yanked up the zipper and adjusted the stiff new leather holster containing his service .38. Down in the alley, somebody screamed.

Mario sped to the open window. Two yelling boys in swim trunks were clapping their small hands across their mouths and performing an Indian war dance around a rusty trash barrel. Their faces and skinny chests were streaked with orange war paint.

Mario started to turn from the window — and then from the edge of his eye he saw her.

Aggie.

At the narrow mouth of the alley, half a block away. But she wasn’t coming home. She was walking quickly away.

There was a thick roaring in Mario’s ears as he poked his bare feet into his shiny cordovan oxfords and grabbed the blue shirt up off the rug. He ran through the kitchen, his left arm stabbing the air, trying to find the shirt sleeve flapping out behind him.

Down the front steps he went, taking them three at a time. He ran along the narrow concrete path past the purple dahlias and yellow nasturtiums and past the fat garbage can that was brown with running ants.

She’d crossed Twenty-third Street and was walking in the alley beyond. Stuffing in his shirt tail, Mario sprinted over the rutted earth.

When he was a hundred yards behind her, he shouted. “Aggie!”

She didn’t stop. She walked even faster, the paper shopping bag swinging in her hand.

His lungs were hot and heavy in his chest by the time he caught her elbow and yanked her to a stop.

He blurted: “Aggie!”

And then he felt is if he’d been slugged across the eyes with a night stick.

The girl wasn’t Aggie. This blonde had small brown eyes, a bump on her nose and a small, angry mouth.

“Say! What d’you think you’re doing!” She tore away from his grasp.

“Sorry,” said Mario. He took out his black leather wallet, fumbled it open and showed his identification. “Police Department.” he muttered. “Made a mistake...”

Turning, he walked slowly back down the alley, his sockless feet sliding around in the untied oxfords. He felt sick. From the back that girl had been a dead ringer for Aggie. She walked the same way, held her shoulders in the same erect manner. He should’ve known by the hair-do and the clothes that it wasn’t Aggie. But he’d wanted so desperately to believe it was her that his eyes had run away with his brain.

He went back to the bedroom and stood beside the dresser, his hands deep in his pockets. He’d been a fool. An apple-green rookie. Instead of thinking things through calmly, the way an experienced cop would’ve done, he’d bolted out of here like a scalded dog.

He glanced at the crystal face of his wrist watch. It was eight-twenty and he’d discovered the body nearly half an hour ago. By nine-fifteen at the latest he would have to phone headquarters — and they’d be sure to grill him about the delay. Hell, they might even figure he’d killed Bob Hern.

He forced himself to think slowly. There were two ways of looking at it. Either Aggie had killed Hern, or somebody else had. She didn’t like Bob Hern, there was no doubt about that. But did she hate him enough to kill?

He was one of the assistant managers at Hennesey’s where Aggie had worked in the cosmetic section. They’d been engaged, but Aggie had broken it off. She said Hern was too immature, too headstrong. He’d proved that later by having her fired for some small thing. Hern was quite a power around the store. Anybody could be a power if his father was the store’s vice president.

Thoughtfully, Mario scrubbed his fingertips through his thick dark hair. Hern’s body must have been in the bed all night. It was there when Mario came in. If he hadn’t been so careful not to wake Aggie, if he had put on the lights, he would have discovered the body then.

It had been a grim joke — hardly the sort of thing Aggie would do. Maybe it was somebody else’s idea of humor. Someone with a funny sense of proportion, funny enough to know what a shock it would be when Mario found the body beside him in the morning. It would have to be someone with a grudge against me, he thought. Someone who, at the same time, had a reason for wanting Hern dead.

What about George Contrera? He was a strange character, odd enough to pull such a trick. Contrera was the first guy Mario had ever arrested. Three days after he was sworn into the Department, Mario had caught Contrera robbing a gas station. It had been Contrera’s first offense and he’d gotten off lightly. After serving his time, he couldn’t get a job. Mario felt sorry for him and made arrangements to introduce him to the boss of a lumber yard this morning. But he hadn’t realized before what a character Contrera was. For that jail sentence Contrera blamed, not himself, but Mario.

The war-whooping was still going on down in the alley. Mario stepped over to the window and watched the small boys who were now throwing sticks that were supposed to be flaming arrows. He wondered, as he stood there, if Frank Dutton could be mixed up in Hern’s murder.

Dutton was the only other important arrest that Mario had made. It was Dutton’s fourth arrest for picking pockets and he’d drawn a stiff sentence. There’d been hatred in his eyes when he left the police station for the trip to San Quentin. Hatred for Mario Giovani. Two nights ago Dutton and some others had escaped from Quentin. Was it possible that Dutton, wanting revenge, had—

For the first time, Mario really noticed the color of the war paint the six-year-olds had daubed on their tanned bodies. Orange. He turned and went back to the bedroom doorway where he’d stepped on a blob of color right after finding Hern’s body. The two shades matched — and it was the kind of lipstick Aggie used to wear.

Returning to the window, he shouted down: “Hello, there, fellows. What’re you supposed to be — Cherokees or Navajos?”

They stopped throwing sticks. One said: “Naw, we’re Indians!”

“Oh,” said Mario. “Where’d you get the paint?”

One of them held up a crushed brass tube. “Found this in the alley.”

“I’ll give you a quarter for it.”

The boys immediately forgot they were Indians and became financiers. “Cash?” one asked.

Mario tossed down the coin. The boys tossed up the brass tube. Stepping away from the window, Mario examined it. It was orange lipstick, all right, and the tube had been smashed, probably stepped on, explaining the stain on the rug.

He felt excitement pulling at him. The tube was evidence, damned important evidence. Hurriedly, he slipped into a conservative brown sport jacket, which concealed the holster at his hip, and went out the front door. He wasn’t sure, but there was a good chance now that Mario Giovani finally knew where he was going...

Rattling from rut to rut in his 1984 coupe, Mario kept thinking about the lipstick and a dark, warm California night about a month ago. He and Aggie had stood together on the outermost rim of Rainbow Pier, a tremendous bow of soft-colored lights which pushed out into the ocean south of Long Beach.

They’d held hands and watched the white manes of the waves breaking against the rocks below. He didn’t remember exactly what started it, but they began criticizing one another in fun. Blue eyes impish, Aggie said she absolutely couldn’t stand the green necktie he was wearing. She said it looked like a piece of anemic celery.

Mario laughed and said he didn’t like her orange lipstick because it was the same kind Vivian wore — and he didn’t think she should go around reminding him of former girl friends. So they had a little ceremony. Mario took off the tie and dropped it into the black waves. Aggie took the brass tube from her purse and tossed it in. And he’d spent the next ten minutes kissing off the rest of the orange lipstick.

He was sure Aggie hadn’t bought another one. So how had the orange lipstick got on the rug? Maybe Vivian would know. Maybe Vivian put it there.

Vivian lived in a small yellow-shuttered white cottage on East Tenth Street. A long ambulance and a black and white police car were parked in front. Mario slammed his old coupe against the curb and was stepping out before the wheels stopped rolling.

As he strode up the flagstone path, a man in a white jacket came out the front door — an ambulance attendant.

“Somebody sick in there?” asked Mario.

“Yeah,” said the attendant. “A crazy dame practically committed suicide.”

“Blonde?”

The attendant nodded and Mario hurried onto the porch. That crazy Vivian, he thought. Why in the hell would she want to kill herself?

He went through the open front door and into the living room. Standing in one corner, talking in low tones, were two patrolmen in blue serge and—

Vivian Mason.

Mario heard himself yell. “Vivian! But you — I thought it was you!”

She ran toward him. She was wearing a long, tomato-red negligee with lace froth at the wrists and throat. Her straight yellow hair was pinned back with gold buckles. Tears glistened wetly in her violet eyes as she tumbled against him, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“It’s Aggie!” she cried. “It was awful. There was a bottle of sleeping tablets in the medicine cabinet—”

Mario unstrapped Vivian’s hand from his neck and twisted around. As he bolted through the bedroom door, his blood seemed cold thin water in his veins.

His wife of four days was lying on the rumpled, unmade bed in the nightgown he’d given her for her birthday. Mario shouldered the attendant aside and bent over her.

“Aggie!” he whispered hoarsely. “Aggie!”

Her eyes were closed and droplets of perspiration clung to her dark eyelids. Her face was an oval as pale as paper. There was no color to her lips, but her long hair, unbrushed, was a tangle of brilliant gold fanning across the crumpled hump of the pillow.

She lay there as motionless as the blankets.

“Good lord!” Mario yelled at the attendant. “Is she all right?”

“I don’t know,” said the attendant, placing shiny instruments in a brown leather bag. “We pumped out her stomach...” He took Mario’s arm. “You keep out of here for a while. I’ll let you know when you can come back.”

Mario walked stiffly out to the living room. He dropped into the first chair that brushed his leg. The .38’s holster caught in the upholstery and pressed awkwardly against his hip but he hardly noticed it. Hands jammed across his face, he sat slumped forward.

After a while, he heard Vivian talking to the two patrolmen. Her voice was calm, but had a taut undertone.

“I’ve known Aggie for years,” Vivian said. “And her husband.”

She paused. “That’s him over there. He’s a policeman, too.”

“You say she phoned you last night?” asked one of the patrolmen.

“Yes. Around midnight. Mario had to work last night and she was afraid to stay by herself. So she asked if she could spend the night here with me and, of course, I said fine. When she came over she was terribly nervous, but I thought that was natural because she always was afraid when she was alone.”

“What about this business with the gun and the man she says she shot?”

Mario looked up sharply.

“I’m getting to that,” said Vivian. “She couldn’t sleep, so I fixed her a sleeping tablet. Then this morning she suddenly woke me up yelling about Bob Hern and how she’d shot him last night. She opened her purse and there was a gun in it and everything — and I, well, I just didn’t know what to do.”

The patrolman pointed to a gun lying on an end-table. “That gun?”

Vivian nodded her yellow head. Mario didn’t have to look twice to know it was the extra .38 he’d kept in the lower bureau drawer.

“She was hysterical,” added Vivian. “She kept crying that she’d killed Bob Hern because he was going to tell Mario that she and Bob were still — were still in love.”

Vivian was marching nervously up and down, the red hem of her negligee sweeping the rug. “I calmed her down,” she explained. “At least I thought I did. I went out to fix breakfast. When I went back to the bedroom, there was the empty bottle of tablets and I couldn’t wake her up. I even slapped her. And then I got scared and phoned the—”

The bedroom door was pulled back and the white-jacketed attendant crooked a forefinger at Mario. “You can come in.”

This time Aggie was awake.

Taking her moist hand in his, Mario said softly, “Thank God!”

“Hello...” whispered Aggie. “Gee, do I feel — funny.”

With a corner of the sheet, Mario blotted the perspiration from her forehead. He didn’t want to question her; he didn’t want to cause her any more pain — but he had to know.

“Aggie,” he said gently. “Did you take the sleeping tablets?”

The blue eyes blinked. “Tablets?”

He nodded. “Did you take some?”

“No. Just the milk Vivian fixed for me this morning. It — tasted funny.”

“Milk!” Mario gripped Aggie’s hand. “Can you tell me the rest — everything that happened last night?”

She nodded. The words came slowly, half-whispered. “Vivian phoned me last night. She asked would I like to spend the night with her. She knew I didn’t like to be alone. I told her about the gun in the bureau, but I was still a little afraid so I said yes. I wrote you a note and took a cab—”

Mario interrupted. “I knew it! I knew you must have left a note!”

“Yes,” said Aggie weakly. “Well, when I got here Vivian and Bob Hern were drinking. Bob was as stiff as the bottle. I excused myself and went right to bed. This morning when we got up, Vivian fixed me the milk. I drank it and then the phone rang and — and it was you, Mario, but—”

Aggie shook her head drowsily. “I got so sleepy I dropped the glass. And that’s all — that’s all I remember...”

Mario straightened up. “It’s enough, honey.”

He returned to the living room and introduced himself to the two patrolmen. Then he turned to Vivian and his voice was steady.

“Vivian, were you over at my apartment last night?”

“No. Why?”

“You’re sure, absolutely sure?”

“Of course. You think I’d lie to you?”

In reply, Mario drew the crushed brass lipstick from his pocket.

Instantly, Vivian’s hand snatched at it. “Where’d you get that! I threw it out the win—” She snapped off the sentence, realizing she’d said too much.

Mario kept his voice low, but there was a cutting edge to it. “You killed Bob Hern, Vivian. And you fed Aggie the sleeping tablets, trying to make it look like she tried suicide after shooting Hern. You got Hern drunk and took the keys from Aggie’s purse after she was asleep. You took Hern to our place and shot him with the gun Aggie mentioned was in the drawer!”

“No!” Vivian’s slim fingers seized Mario’s arm. “Don’t say such things!”

Mario yanked his arm away. “You dropped the lipstick in our bedroom and it got stepped on, putting a smear on the rug. So you tossed the broken tube out of the window.”

He strode back into the bedroom and yanked open the closet door. A dozen pairs of feminine shoes were in colorful rows on the floor.

On the sole of a green alligator pump he found a smear of orange.

“That proves it, Vivian,” he said.

She glanced at the shoe — and her lower lip trembled. “I know, Mario. I... I was such a fool. That Bob Hern — I hated him! He thought I was swell to have fun with, but when it came down to marrying me—” Her voice broke.

As Mario stood watching, she clamped her arms around his neck. “Anyway, Mario, I never loved him. I’ve always loved you! I couldn’t stand it when Aggie got you — and I thought if I killed Bob Hern then I could marry you!”

“A hell of a lot of sense that makes!”

“It’s true!” she cried. “I loved you so much I didn’t want to kill Aggie because I was afraid they might accuse you! That’s why I called the ambulance right after she took the milk. I was sure they would arrest her. And Mario—”

Mario spoke through tightly closed teeth. “You didn’t want to save Aggie. You waited as long as you could before calling the ambulance. You knew when I phoned you that I was trying to find her before I reported the murder. And you wanted to be sure I wouldn’t have a chance to prove Aggie was innocent!”

“Yes, Mario.” Vivian’s warm, perfumed lips brushed his cheek. “Mario,” she whispered anxiously. “You’re a policeman. You can think of some way of getting me off, can’t you, honey?”

He broke away and shoved her against the door. “No!” he exploded.

Vivian’s mouth became warped. She was suddenly a snarling, scratching she-cat. She threw herself at him.

He caught her wrist and held the shuddering, shrieking weight of her off at arms’ length until the two patrolmen got handcuffs in place.

They led Vivian to the door. She brushed a strand of yellow hair from her forehead. She slipped a hand inside the arm of the younger patrolman, the handsome one with the neat mustache.

“I like policemen,” she said. Her violet eyes looked up at him softly. “I’m going to especially enjoy riding to the station with you...”

But Mario didn’t hear her. He was sitting on the edge of Aggie’s bed, holding her hand and smiling down at her.