The Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 15 Classic Crime & Mystery Stories

Say It with Flowers

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, July 1974.

I had just logged in at eight a.m. when a radio message came in from a squad car that there was a dead body lying on the grass at the foot of Art Hill in Forest Park. The cop who radioed in said it was a homicide. I didn’t ask what made him so sure of that, but when I got out there twenty minutes later, it was obvious.

By then three squad cars were at the scene and an area had been roped off about fifty feet in all directions from the body. Art Hill, so called because the Art Museum sits on top of it, has a lot of trees on both sides of the road at its foot, and the rope had been stretched from tree trunk to tree trunk at waist height to form a rough circle.

Six cops were spaced around the circle to prevent curiosity seekers from ducking under the rope. With nothing but the rope holding back the crowd, it was quite possible all evidence would have been trampled out of existence before I ever got there.

A lot of drivers cut through Forest Park on their way to work mornings. Consequently a lot of cars were halted on each side of the roped-off section of road. A few cars were backing and swinging around to find some other route, but most were parked and their occupants were pressed up against the rope, peering avidly toward the body.

There were no parking places on either side of the road within a half block of the roped-off area. Since they took me off a beat and assigned me to Homicide twenty years ago, I have avoided walking any farther than necessary. I honked my way through the crowd right up to the rope.

Climbing from the car, I went over and showed my badge to a tall, skinny young cop on the other side of the rope. “Sergeant Sod Harris, Homicide,” I said.

“Oh, hi, Sarge,” he said. “Patrolman Mike Hurley. I’m the one who radioed in.”

He lifted the rope so that I could duck under it. I went over to look at the body.

The dead man lay on his back beneath a tall sycamore, on the side of the tree away from the road. He was dressed in neatly-pressed, dark-green gabardine slacks, highly-polished brown shoes and a yellow sport shirt. He was about five ten, with a lean but muscular build.

It was impossible to estimate the victim’s age by his face, because there was not enough left of it. The bloody imprint of a man’s heel on the forehead indicated the massive damage had been done by kicking and stomping on his head.

That wasn’t what had killed him, though. The relatively small amount of blood spattered about from the head wounds indicated his arteries had stopped pumping blood before the kicking began. A half dozen punctures in his stomach and chest, apparently bullet holes, were what had killed him. His shirt front was soaked with blood, probably shed some hours earlier, since it had dried to a dull brown color.

A large spot of dried blood in the gutter, some twenty feet from where the body lay, indicated that the shooting had taken place there. Twin furrows in the grass that looked as though they might have been made by dragging heels, denoted that the body had been dragged behind the tree after the shooting.

The dead man’s hands, neatly folded in the center of his chest, clasped a single dandelion.

Once, the multiple gunshot wounds, the brutal head-kicking after the victim was dead, and the sardonic clasping of the dead hands about a flower, would have been prima-facie evidence of a grudge killing. However, we have developed a new breed of criminal that sometimes brutalizes victims just for kicks. The man could have been killed by an enemy, but he just as well could have been murdered by some mugger who had never seen him before.

I went within only about six feet of the corpse, and I carefully stayed clear of the drag marks in the grass. After a long look, I returned to Patrolman Mike Hurley.

“You spot him, or did somebody report it to your precinct house?” I asked.

“My partner spotted him. George Detting.” He pointed to a middle-aged cop a few yards away. “We were cruising past, me driving, when George suddenly told me to stop. That was a couple of minutes to eight.”

I glanced first one way, then the other at the cars parked on both sides of the roped-off area. “Are those all bystanders’ cars?” I asked.

The young patrolman nodded. “There were no cars parked within sight of here when we found the body.”

That meant the victim had either been walking through the park when attacked, or had been riding with his murderer. The former seemed unlikely, because no one in his right mind would walk through Forest Park at night.

Ducking back under the rope, I went over to my undercover car and radioed in for a lab man. I left instructions for him to bring along an electronic metal detector to search out empty cartridges.

It was nearing nine a.m. when Art Ward showed up with his lab kit and a camera. He had brought along a young assistant named Ken Brady, who was carrying the metal detector.

“Hi, Sod,” Art greeted me. “Pictures first?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay.” Turning to his assistant, he said, “Just stand by until I’m finished, Ken.”

Brady stayed just inside the rope while I took Art over to explain what shots I wanted. Art Ward had been taking photographs of bodies almost as long as I’ve been looking at them, but he made a face when he saw this one.

I had him photograph the body from several angles, and take pictures of the dried blood in the gutter and the twin furrows in the grass. Then I indicated the bloody heel-print on the victim’s forehead.

“Can you take a close-up of that so the print is actual size?” I asked.

“I can blow it up to actual size,” he said. “I could blow Art Hill up to actual size, if necessary.”

“The heel-print will be sufficient,” I told him.

He took a couple of close-up shots of the heel-print, then gave me an inquiring look. “Next?”

“That’s enough pictures,” I said. “You can put your assistant to work. What he’s looking for is empty shell casings. If the gun was an automatic, there might be ejected casings lying in the grass.”

Nodding, he called over Ken Brady and started him circling the body with the metal detector in ever widening circles. I knelt next to the corpse and went through the pockets.

In the single pocket of the sport shirt there was nothing. In the side pants pockets there was a key ring with a half dozen keys on it and thirty-two cents in change. In the right hip pocket was a folded white handkerchief. In the left one there was a wallet containing three hundred dollars.

That rather reduced the possibility that it had been a mugger murder. Any mugger calm enough to lay out the corpse with such funereal mockery was hardly likely to have overlooked the loot.

A Missouri driver’s license in the wallet had been issued to a Walter Schroeder of 3512 Russell Boulevard. It gave his age as forty, height as five-feet-ten and weight as 165. Eye color was listed as blue and hair as reddish-brown. Because of facial wounds and dried blood I couldn’t make out the victim’s eye color, but his hair was reddish-brown, and the rest of the description seemed to fit.

After copying down the name and address, I sealed the wallet and other items in an evidence envelope, recorded what the contents were, initialed the envelope and had Art Ward initial it too.

By then, Ken Brady had thoroughly covered the area inside the rope with his metal detector. He turned up two bottle caps, a corroded penny and a metal hairpin.

I told the two lab men they could leave, told Patrolman Mike Hurley to radio for the morgue to come after the body, and took off myself.

Number 3512 Russell Boulevard was a neat, one-story brick bungalow. An attractive brunette of about thirty-five answered the door. She wore red lounging pajamas that showed off an exceptionally shapely figure.

Taking off my hat, I said, “Mrs. Schroeder?”

“Yes,” she said.

I showed her my badge. “Sergeant Harris of the police, ma’am. Is Walter Schroeder your husband?”

“Yes,” she said, frowning. “He doesn’t live here, though.”

I raised my eyebrows. “This is the address on his driver’s license.”

“He just hasn’t gotten around to changing it. We’ve only been separated two weeks. His correct address is 4366 Maryland. That’s an apartment house.”

Taking out my notebook, I jotted down the address, then asked, “When did you last see your husband, Mrs. Schroeder?”

“Two weeks ago. Well, actually fifteen days. Since the day I had the locks changed and locked him out. I had a phone conversation with him yesterday, however. What is this all about, Sergeant?”

Long ago I learned there is no way to break the news of death gently. I said, “A man we believe to be your husband was found dead in Forest Park this morning. I’m afraid you’re going to have to come down to the morgue to identify the body.”

She paled slightly. “Walter’s dead? How?”

“He appears to have been shot. We won’t know for sure until after the postmortem. The wounds could have been made by some round-bladed instrument such as a screwdriver.”

“Wounds, you say? There were more than one?”

“Yes, ma’am. Several.”

She looked distressed. After a moment she said, “You want me to go down to the morgue with you now?”

“Yes, if you will, please.”

Stepping aside, she said, “Come in, Sergeant. You’ll have to wait while I change.”

I stepped into a tastefully-furnished living room. Mrs. Schroeder disappeared into a central hallway. I was looking around to select a seat when a man appeared from the hallway. He was a tall, powerfully-built man in his late thirties with a ruggedly handsome face but rather sullen eyes. The short-sleeved sport shirt he was wearing disclosed thick arms covered with curly black hair. Like many men with an exceptional amount of body hair, he was becoming bald on top. He was carrying a coffee mug.

“Janet says somebody killed Walter,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

He took a sip of his coffee.

“I’m Sergeant Sod Harris,” I offered.

He nodded. “How are you, Sergeant?”

“May I ask your name?”

“Sure. Sam Clayton.”

I gave him the same sort of nod he had given me. “How are you, Mr. Clayton? How well did you know Mr. Schroeder?”

His lips curled sardonically. “Well enough not to be grief-stricken.”

“Oh? Just what was your relationship with him, then?” I asked.

“Distant, Sergeant. As distant as I could keep it.”

“Let me put it another way. Were you business competitors? Or perhaps rivals for Mrs. Schroeder?”

He frowned at me. “That’s a pretty personal question, Buster.”

I smiled from the teeth out. “I often ask personal questions during homicide investigations, Buster. You want to get up an answer before I lose my patience and drag you downtown?”

He looked startled. After a moment he said warily, “You’re a bit touchy, aren’t you, Sergeant?”

“This business makes you that way. Particularly when some joker twenty years younger than you calls you Buster.”

He gave me a somewhat sheepish smile. “Okay, scratch the Buster. My relationship with Walt Schroeder was that he kept stealing things from me. First he stole my invention, then my job, then a year and a half of my life by having me thrown in prison. Finally, while I was safely out of the way, he stole my wife.”

“Let’s take things one at a time,” I suggested. “What invention did he steal?”

“My cutting torch. I used to work in the research department of the Schroeder-Moore Electronics Company. I’m an electrical engineer. I also had a home lab where I tinkered at night. My contract read that anything I developed on company time belonged to Schroeder-Moore. It said nothing about after-hours’ work on my own time. I invented a new type of cutting torch that could slice through steel in half the time the conventional type took. It was conceived entirely in my own lab, without so much as thirty seconds of company time being devoted to it. But Walt took me to court. I couldn’t afford the high-priced kind of legal talent he hired, so I lost. Then he added insult to injury by naming it the Clayton Cutting Torch. It’s one of Schroeder-Moore’s best sellers.”

“I can understand how that might leave you feeling a bit unkindly,” I conceded. “But I assume from the company name that Schroeder had a partner. What was Moore doing while Schroeder was suing you?”

Sam Clayton made a dismissing gesture. “Jake Moore had no say in company policy. He handled the manufacturing end, while Walt took care of all business matters. Actually, suit was brought in the name of the company, but all Jake knew about it was what Walt told him. Although he owns half interest, Jake is really just a sort of exalted plant manager.”

“I see. You mentioned Schroeder also stole your job.”

“Sure. After he won his case, he fired me.”

I frowned. “You also mentioned he had you thrown in prison.”

His face assumed a momentary expression of satisfaction. “I beat the hell out of him.” Then the satisfied expression faded. “They hooked me for assault with intent to kill. I had no intention of killing him, but it seems if you beat a man bad enough, they assume you meant to kill him. And I beat him pretty bad. I drew two years and served eighteen months. While I was away he moved in on Janet.” Janet appeared from the central hallway, now wearing a formfitting summer dress of mini-length with vertical pink-and-white stripes that reminded me of peppermint candy. She had lovely legs, I noted.

Apparently she had heard at least some of the foregoing conversation, because she said, “Walt was a very persuasive man, Sergeant. He actually convinced me that Sam had been trying to cheat him.” She gave her former husband a reproachful look. “Of course, if Sam hadn’t always been so secretive about his work, I would have known the truth. But he never let me in on what he was doing down in the basement.”

“How did you eventually learn the truth?” I asked.

“I gradually came to realize that Walt lied and cheated about everything,” she said in a rueful voice. “I didn’t learn the truth so much as I just finally realized it. Our marriage was breaking up even before Sam got out of prison, but that brought it to a head. The day Sam showed up here, I took one look at him, fell into his arms and began crying. When I had dried my tears, I phoned a locksmith to come change the locks.”

Sam Clayton grinned reminiscently. “Walt was kind of flabbergasted when he got home that evening. He didn’t put up much of an argument about moving out, though. Maybe because I was here to back up Janet’s ultimatum.”

“Mrs. Schroeder told me she changed the locks fifteen days ago. You’ve been out of prison only fifteen days?”

“Sixteen. It took me a day to get here from Jefferson City.”

“Can you account for your movements last night?”

He was in the act of raising the coffee mug to his lips, but he paused and lowered it again. “I’m a pragmatist, Sergeant. I wouldn’t risk prison again just for revenge. Anyway, I already had revenge. I took Janet back away from him. Besides that, I wouldn’t kill the goose who was about to lay a golden egg. Walt was talking about making a financial settlement for my cutting torch.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Why?”

“Not out of generosity,” Clayton assured me. “He wanted Janet back. She told him she wouldn’t even discuss it until he made a fair settlement with me, but then she would give it serious consideration.”

I looked at Janet. “Would you have considered going back to him?”

“No. But he was crazy enough about me so that I think he would have settled with Sam if he thought that gave him a chance to get me back.”

“I thought he was such a sharp businessman.”

“Oh, he was,” she agreed. “But he tended to lose his perspective when I was involved. He would assume that because I was always completely honest with him, I wouldn’t cheat him this time.”

“But you would have?”

“Of course. It would have been only cheating him back, for what had rightfully been Sam’s and mine all along.”

I grunted. Looking back at Clayton, I said, “You didn’t answer my question about where you were last night.”

Janet said a trifle quickly, “He was here, Sergeant. He is living here.”

I returned my attention to her. “He didn’t leave the house all night? Perhaps after you were asleep?”

“I slept in his arms,” she said firmly. “He hasn’t been out of my sight for more than a few minutes at a time since yesterday morning.”

I looked back at Clayton. Raising his coffee mug again, he smiled at me over the rim as he sipped at it. When he lowered it, he said, “You heard the lady.”

From years of listening to untruths I had developed a sort of built-in lie detector that tipped me off when witnesses or suspects were deliberately lying. I felt its silent blips now. There was nothing I could do about it at the moment, though.

A trifle sourly I said to the woman, “If you’re all ready, let’s go.”

En route downtown I remembered Janet Schroeder had mentioned having a phone conversation with her husband the previous day. I asked her what it had been about.

“He still had some of his things at the house. I let him pack his clothing and take it along the evening I had the locks changed, but he left behind some other personal things. He wanted permission to come by for them. I told him he could come by today.”

“When was this conversation?” I asked.

“He phoned from his office about noon.”

“He mention anything that might be a clue to his murder?”

She shook her head. “Aside from what I told you, all that transpired was his usual pitch for a reconciliation, and my recapitulation of the terms necessary before I would even discuss it.”

We drove in silence for a few moments. Eventually I said, “Now that your second husband is dead, do you think his partner will make a settlement with your first one?”

“Jake Moore? Of course not. So you see, Sam will get nothing now. Doesn’t that prove Sam had absolutely no motive to kill Walt, even if he didn’t have an alibi?”

I could think of one. If the dead man hadn’t changed his will, which he probably hadn’t, since he was attempting to arrange a reconciliation, probably his widow would inherit half interest in the company. No doubt this would amount to a lot more than any settlement Sam could have gotten for his invention.

The city morgue was on the first floor of the Coroner’s Court Building. We first stopped in the office of the coroner’s physician to find out if the body had been washed and tagged. When we learned it had been, I led Janet to the door of the morgue.

Pausing before I opened it, I said, “I guess I better prepare you for a shock. Whoever killed him took a few kicks at his head after he was dead. His face is kind of a mess.”

She turned a trifle pale, but her voice was steady when she said, “I have a strong stomach, Sergeant. I can face it.”

I opened the door and led her inside. Apparently old Jimmie Creighton, the morgue attendant, had just finished washing and preparing the body for autopsy, because it was lying naked on a wheeled cart in the center of the room. The face was no longer bloody, but it was still battered beyond recognition. There were five purple-ringed holes in the chest and stomach. Next to one of the holes was a butterfly-shaped red birthmark.

Janet’s already pale face drained of all color, but apparently her stomach was as strong as she claimed, because her voice remained steady. Gazing at the birthmark, she said, “It’s Walter.”

I led her from the room and back to the office of the coroner’s physician. Police headquarters is only a half block from the Coroner’s Court Building. I phoned the garage and ordered a car and a driver to take Janet home. I told the dispatcher to have the driver report to the waiting room of the coroner’s physician’s office.

While we were waiting, the door to the private office of the coroner’s physician opened and two reporters I knew stepped out. Plump, white-haired Dr. Lyman Fish paused in the doorway behind them.

Mel Powers of the Post said, “Hi, Sod. Doc Fish says you’re working the one found in Forest Park this morning.”

Harry Fenner of the Globe said, “Kind of weird sense of humor on the killer’s part, laying him out with that flower in his hands.”

I looked at Dr. Fish, who said, “That was all right to tell, wasn’t it, Sod?”

Before I could answer, Mel Powers, noting Janet’s paleness, said, “Are you here to identify the body, ma’am?”

“Yes,” she said. “He was my husband.”

“Mrs. Janet Schroeder, gentlemen,” I said. “She has just officially identified the victim as her husband, Walter Schroeder.”

Both reporters momentarily lost interest in me in order to question her about what her reaction had been to the news and if she had any theories about who had killed her husband. I took advantage of the diversion to ask Dr. Fish if he had looked at the body yet.

“Only briefly,” he said. “I would guess he died sometime during the night. Say between nine p.m. and three a.m. I’ll probably be able to refine that for you after the autopsy. I’ll get a preliminary postmortem report to you tomorrow, and the full report in a couple of days.”

He went back into his office and closed the door. A uniformed policeman came in from the hall and asked generally, “Sergeant Harris?”

“That’s me,” I said. “You from the garage?”

“That’s right.”

“I want you to run Mrs. Schroeder here home. She lives down on Russell Boulevard.”

“Okay,” he said.

I broke in on the reporters’ questioning of the widow to tell her the chauffeur had arrived and to thank her for making the identification. Apparently they had gotten everything they wanted from her, because they made no attempt to hold her up with more questions. After she and the driver had left, they turned back to me.

“I don’t know any more than Doc Fish told you,” I said. “We have no suspects and we don’t know what the motive was — except it wasn’t robbery. He had three hundred dollars in his wallet.”

They hadn’t known that, because Dr. Fish hadn’t. The wallet had gone to the lab, not to the morgue. The two reporters tried to push me into speculating on why the money had not been taken, but I was too old a hand for that game. Usually when some idiot statement is attributed by the press to the cop working on a murder case, you can bet that he was badgered into it by reporters in order to spice up the story.

I broke away from Powers and Fenner after a time and, because by now it was after twelve, drove to a restaurant for lunch. After lunch I checked the restaurant’s phone book for the address of the Schroeder-Moore Electronics Company. It was on Spring, north of Chouteau.

The place turned out to be a one-story brick building a half block long. A girl at an information desk just inside the main door directed me along a hall to the Schroeder-Moore executive offices.

The office I was looking for had lettered on its door in gold leaf: Walter Schroeder, Jacob Moore. Inside, I found a large reception room where a striking redhead of about thirty sat behind a desk on which there was a phone with a number of push buttons. On either side of the room were closed doors. The one to the left was lettered: Walter Schroeder. The one to the right read: Jacob Moore. Apparently the redhead was the joint secretary of both partners. “Hi,” I said. “Mr. Moore in?”

She gave me a polite smile. “Do you have an appointment, sir?”

Taking out my wallet, I showed her my badge. “Sergeant Sod Harris, Homicide.”

“Oh,” she said. “You must be here about Mr. Schroeder. We heard it on the air just before noon. It’s simply terrible.”

“It is that,” I agreed.

“Have you arrested him yet?”

“Who?”

“Mr. Clayton.”

I regarded her curiously. “You think Sam Clayton killed him?”

“Well, it was the same way Mr. Schroeder was left before. With a flower clasped in his hands, I mean. And he had an appointment with Mr. Schroeder last night.”

“Clayton had an appointment?”

She nodded. “Mr. Schroeder had me phone the message to Mr. Clayton. He said to tell him to stop by his apartment at nine p.m. and they would work out the details of the settlement.”

“The settlement for the Clayton Cutting Torch?”

She nodded again. “I assume so, although Mr. Schroeder didn’t say. He simply gave me the message and I phoned Mr. Clayton to pass it on.”

“When was this?”

“Just as he was leaving the office at four-thirty yesterday.”

I raised my brows. “He didn’t wait to find out whether or not Clayton could make it?”

“Oh, he knew he would be available, because he had talked to his wife earlier in the day — about noon. Mr. Schroeder had moved out and Mr. Clayton was staying with her, you know.”

I grunted acknowledgment.

“Mrs. Schroeder was insisting that Mr. Schroeder had to make a financial settlement with Mr. Clayton over his invention before she would consider reconciliation. Mr. Schroeder said he would think it over, and asked when Mr. Clayton would be available to discuss it. She said any time at all, including that evening.”

“You listened in on the conversation they had, huh?” I asked.

“It was an accident,” she said defensively. “Mr. Schroeder had me get his wife on the phone, and I just forgot to hang up.”

I grunted again. At that moment the door to the right opened and a tall, well-built blond man of about forty looked out.

“Marybell, will you get me that audit report?” he asked. Then he looked at me.

“This is Sergeant Harris of the police, Jake,” she said. “He’s here about Mr. Schroeder.”

“Oh. Come on in, Sergeant.”

He stepped aside to let me enter his private office. Closing the door behind me, he offered me a chair before his desk and went around to seat himself behind it.

“It was quite a shock to hear of Walt’s murder on the radio,” he said. “I had been phoning his apartment all morning to find out why he hadn’t showed for work, but there was no answer, of course. Have you made an arrest yet, Sergeant?”

“Not yet. When did you last see your partner, Mr. Moore?”

“When we both left work at four-thirty yesterday afternoon. We walked out to the parking lot together.”

“Then you overheard him tell your secretary to phone Sam Clayton?”

He nodded. “I guess Walt was offering him some kind of settlement for an invention of Clayton’s on which we hold the patent. I don’t know what kind of settlement he planned, because Walt always handled business details and I run the plant.”

“You weren’t interested enough to inquire?” I asked quizzically.

“Of course I was interested,” he said, flushing slightly. “But Sam Clayton was an embarrassing subject I preferred to avoid. He was the first husband of Walt’s wife, you know, and Janet recently kicked Walt out and took Clayton back. When Walt asked Marybell to phone Clayton, he told her to call him at his own home. Wouldn’t that have left you too embarrassed to ask questions?”

Not if my business partner was going to make a financial commitment that was going to cost both of us, I mused; but I merely emitted a noncommittal grunt.

The door opened and the redheaded secretary came in. She laid a bound document about a quarter-inch thick on Jacob Moore’s desk. Reading upside down, I saw that the cover page bore the letterhead: Austin-Hubbard, Inc., Certified Public Accountants, and an address on Lindell Boulevard. Centered in the page was typed: Annual Audit of the Financial Records of the Schroeder-Moore Electronics Company, a Partnership.

“Thank you, Marybell,” Moore said.

“Okay, honey.”

I cocked a quizzical eyebrow at her back as she went out the door. When I turned back to Moore, I saw he had turned somewhat red.

“We’re engaged,” he explained. “She’s really not supposed to do that around the office, though.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “She’s a very attractive girl.”

“Thank you.”

“Your fiancée mentioned something about the flower clasped in Schroeder’s hands being the same way he was left before. You interrupted us by coming from your office just then, so I didn’t have a chance to ask what she meant. Do you know?”

“Oh, sure. I assume you know Sam Clayton spent time in the State Penitentiary at Jefferson City for beating Walt up.”

“Uh-huh. He’s been out only a couple of weeks.”

“Well, what Clayton did was catch Walt alone on the sixth tee of the Forest Park Golf Course while Walt was playing a solo round. He beat poor Walt unmercifully. Broke his nose, both cheekbones and several ribs. Then he stretched him out on his back, unconscious, folded his hands in the center of his chest and clasped a flower in them. Only that time it was a daisy instead of a dandelion. Walt might have died if a foursome playing through hadn’t spotted him lying there and called an ambulance.”

“That puts a different complexion on things,” I said. “I think I’ll go back to headquarters and pull the case file on that assault.”

The case was in the Homicide files, because assaults are investigated by Homicide. Cliff Marks, who was no longer with us, had made the investigation. The circumstances had been essentially its Jacob Moore had described them, and Clayton had been convicted of assault with intent to kill in the Circuit Court for Criminal Causes.

I phoned Communications and had the nearest squad car to the house on Russell Boulevard sent to pick up Sam Clayton. When he was brought in a half hour later, I told him he was under arrest for investigation, suspicion of homicide. Then I started to read him his constitutional rights.

“I know all that,” he interrupted impatiently. “This is my second time here, remember. I want to make a statement. I know nothing at all about Walt’s murder.”

“He was laid out in a manner remarkably similar to the way you left him after beating him up,” I said. “How do you explain that?”

“I don’t have to. Ask his killer when you catch him. Sergeant, I was listening to a radio news report of the murder when the cops arrived to arrest me. It said Walt had three hundred dollars on him. I sure as hell wouldn’t have left that if I’d killed him. I’m practically broke.”

“You have pretty good prospects if you beat this bust,” I said. “I imagine your ex-wife, whom I assume you also plan to make your future wife, will inherit half interest in Schroeder-Moore.”

“But I never left the house last night, Sergeant. Janet verified that.”

“You both lied,” I said flatly. “Let’s not beat about the bush, Clayton. I know you had a nine o’clock appointment with Schroeder last night.”

He blinked. After a moment he said in a depressed voice, “You talked to Walt’s secretary, huh?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Her call surprised the devil out of me. As Jan told you, Walt had phoned her at noon about picking up some stuff he still had at the house, and as usual she bugged him about settling with me. But he hadn’t committed himself to anything, and she said he didn’t sound too encouraging. Then I get a call from his secretary that he wants me to drop by his place to work out the details of the settlement. But he wasn’t home when I got there.”

“No?” I said unbelievingly.

“Honest. I waited around until past ten, ringing the bell periodically, but he never answered.”

“Anybody see you waiting around?”

“A couple of tenants once. But that’s no help to me, because it only proves I was there. I had Jan’s car, and most of the time I waited in it. About every ten minutes I went in to ring the bell, and once a couple got off the elevator and went into an apartment down the hall while I was ringing. That was about quarter to ten.” The admission that he was at the murdered man’s door only a short time before Schroeder probably died cinched it for me. I suspected he had mentioned it only because he had been seen and wanted to get in an advance explanation before I talked to the witnesses.

I took him down to the booking desk, had him booked and put into a holding cell at Central District.

That night when my wife Maggie and I settled in the front room after dinner, we as usual split the evening paper. She always started with Section A, while I got first crack at the sports pages.

We had been silently reading for only a few minutes when she said, “You didn’t tell me you had that awful Forest Park case.”

“I try to forget my work when I get home,” I said.

“The killer certainly had a macabre sense of humor, leaving a flower clasped in the poor man’s hands.”

“Yeah, he sure did.”

“What kind of flower was it?”

“A dandelion.”

“That doesn’t seem very appropriate,” Maggie said.

I lowered my paper to look at her. “Appropriate?”

“In the language of flowers a dandelion stands for coquetry. Whoever heard of a man being guilty of that?”

“I don’t think the killer was using the flower as code,” I said. “I think he picked a dandelion because it was the only kind of flower growing in the immediate area.”

“Oh,” Maggie said. “Perhaps you’re right.”

The next morning I found a preliminary postmortem report on my desk. Five.38 caliber lead slugs had been dug from the corpse of Walter Schroeder, two of them good enough for comparison purposes if we ever turned up the murder weapon. The others had been smashed out of shape by hitting bones. Estimated time of death had been reduced from the original span of six hours to between ten p.m. and midnight.

There was also an envelope on my desk containing the photographs Art Ward had taken. Among them were the two close-ups of the heel-print on the victim’s forehead, blown up to actual size.

I had logged in a few minutes before eight. It was just eight when I finished looking at the photographs. I switched on the transistor radio on my desk for the eight o’clock news.

Murder is too common in any big city to create much stir ordinarily, but the bizarre circumstances of this one had caught the public’s imagination, so that it was the top local news story of the moment. The first item of the newscast concerned the Schroeder case.

The newscaster said: A new development in the grotesque murder of Walter Schroeder was the arrest late yesterday afternoon of Samuel Clayton, thirty-seven, the first husband of the victim’s widow. Police have released no information as to what evidence led to the arrest, but circumstances of the murder were remarkably similar to those of an assault on the murdered man by the suspect two years ago. In that instance Clayton served eighteen months in prison for beating Schroeder unconscious. While in prison, his wife divorced him and married Schroeder. Clayton was released on parole only seventeen days ago, and this station has learned the Schroeders were separated at the time of the murder and Samuel Clayton and his former wife had reconciled. Schroeders dead body was found in Forest Park yesterday morning, both shot and beaten, and with a flower clasped in his hands. Coincidentally, when Clayton left him beaten unconscious two years ago, Schroeder was also found with a flower clasped in his hands.

My conversation with Maggie the previous night popped into my mind. Switching off the radio, I started making phone calls. When I finished, I knew the wrong man was in jail for the murder.

I was driving along Chouteau toward Spring when another brainstorm hit me. It wasn’t exactly a hunch, but merely a passing thought that the motive for the murder might have something to do with company business. Then it occurred to me that the quickest way to find out if there were anything wrong with the business would be from its auditors.

I cut north to Lindell Boulevard, and fifteen minutes later I was talking to Thomas Austin, C.P.A., who had done the audit of Schroeder-Moore’s books.

It was pushing nine-thirty when I finally got to the Schroeder-Moore Electronics Company. The redheaded Marybell greeted me cordially.

“Your boss in?” I asked.

“Yes. You can go right in, Sergeant.”

“I would like you to come along,” I said. “This concerns both of you.”

Her eyebrows went up, but she obediently rose and preceded me to the door of Jacob Moore’s private office. Opening it, she said. “Sergeant Harris is here, honey. He wants to talk to both of us.”

Moore, behind his desk, gave me a welcoming smile. “Come in, Sergeant.”

I went in and closed the door behind me. Marybell took a chair and looked at me expectantly. I remained standing, but moved over nearer the desk.

I said, “Mr. Moore, I’m curious to hear how you knew the flower clasped in the hands of your dead partner was a dandelion.”

His smile became a frown. “I heard it on the air.”

I gave my head a slow shake. “It was reported simply as a flower in both newspapers and by every local radio and TV station, because that was the only information the coroner’s office released. I not only checked with the coroner’s office, but with both newspapers and every local radio and TV station. The latter even checked their tapes of all newscasts since the murder. No one could possibly have known the flower was a dandelion except the person who put it there.”

He paled. “That’s ridiculous, Sergeant. Why would I kill my own partner?”

“Because you had partnership insurance of a hundred thousand dollars on each other, and you figured that was just about enough to save this company from bankruptcy.”

He licked his lips. “What makes you think the company is in financial difficulties?”

“I just came from Austin-Hubbard. Your partner had milked Schroeder-Moore of most of its assets. He just couldn’t resist cheating everybody, could he?”

He said nothing, merely waiting with a sick expression on his face.

I said, “You should have tried to find out what he did with the money before you panicked and killed him for the insurance. Tom Austin made some discreet off-the-record inquiries and found out Schroeder was buying controlling interest in a rival electronics company somewhat smaller than this one. Austin figures his plan was to let this company go bankrupt, then have the other company buy it up for a song, and end up controlling both companies without the bother of sharing things with a partner. In Austin’s opinion, you could have recovered the assets he drained off if you had taken him to court, and even could’ve had him jailed for embezzlement if you had wanted to. It would have been simpler than killing him.”

“I didn’t kill him,” he insisted with more desperation than hope of belief. “Your case is based on nothing but conjecture.”

“Sure,” I admitted. “It’s also only conjecture that Marybell repeated to you the phone conversation between Schroeder and his wife that she listened in on, and that’s what gave you the idea. Your partner never told Marybell to phone Clayton. You told her to phone him and say the message was from Schroeder. That was to make sure that at the very least he would have no alibi for the time of the murder; at best, he would be seen prowling around Schroeder’s apartment house by witnesses. I’ll make a further conjecture. My guess is that all the time sucker Sam Clayton was ringing the doorbell, you had Walt Schroeder under your gun inside the apartment. When Clayton finally gave up and went away, you forced Schroeder to drive you to Forest Park where you did the job. Have I got it about right?”

“You haven’t got any thing right,” he croaked. “I never killed him.”

Looking at the redhead, I said, “If your only part in this was phoning that message to Sam Clayton, you probably could get off the hook as an accessory by telling the truth about who told you to make the call.”

She had become quite pale also. She looked at Moore.

“He’s cooked anyway,” I said. “As soon as I book him, I plan to get a search warrant for his home. This was such a good frame that I imagine he felt secure enough not to bother disposing of possible evidence. We’ll probably find the shoe bearing the heel-print that matches the bloody one on Schroeder’s forehead. And the murder gun.”

Jacob Moore’s gaze inadvertently flicked sidewise at his top right-hand desk drawer. I was around the desk and had jerked the drawer open before he could shift his eyes forward again.

As I lifted out the.38 revolver, he squeaked, “You can’t take that without a search warrant!”

“Check with your lawyer,” I advised. “I had probable cause to believe you were getting ready to reach for a weapon.”

I looked back at the redhead.

“I don’t want to get into any trouble,” she said huskily. “If Jake did it, I had no knowledge of it.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Who told you to make that phone call to Sam Clayton?”

Her gaze flicked to Jake Moore, then away again. Almost inaudibly she said, “It was Jake.”

I took out the little card I carry outlining arrested persons’ constitutional rights and began reading them to Jacob Moore.