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if it had time to clear through his bank?”
    “What?”
    “The check,” he said impatiently. “If he was killed before it went through, they won’t honor it.”
    She looked into his eyes, horrified. “Michael Shayne! You sit here worrying about a check when your client has been murdered!”
    “Somebody has to pay for this trip,” he told her harshly. “A man’s bank account is immediately frozen on his death, and you have to monkey around with court orders to get a clearance.”
    “It seems to me,” said Lucy icily, “that you wouldn’t have any right to keep it, since you got here too late to do him any good.”
    “But I’ve already cashed it,” he remonstrated in her ear.
    She drew away from him, her brown eyes misty. “I want to read about it,” she told him.
    Shayne put his arm around her. Her body stiffened.
    “Don’t be like that, Angel. Let’s read it together.”
    Lucy slowly relaxed, and they bent over the front page spread out on the table. Her left cheek rested lightly against the short sleeve of his polo shirt, and they continued the story:
     
    “Charles Roche’s body was discovered at 6:00 A.M. near the intersection of Twelfth Street and Magnolia Avenue by Raoul J. King, a truck farmer from Lynn Acres, who was driving into Centerville with a load of produce. The body was lying in a clump of weeds on the right-hand side of Magnolia Avenue, about a hundred feet from Twelfth Street where Mr. Roche’s car was parked.
    “‘I just happened to notice something lying there as I drove past,’ Mr. King told a Gazette reporter. ‘It was good sunup and I thinks to myself, by golly, if that don’t look like a man lying there. I stopped my truck and got out and looked, and sure enough it was. Whole back of his head was blown off and I sure knew he was dead, without touching him. I left him right like that and ran back to my truck and told the first policeman I came to. I didn’t know it was Mr. Roche till later.’
    “Officer Harold Dixon turned in the alarm and hurried to investigate. He was soon joined by Police Chief Henry Elwood and other members of Centerville’s efficient force. Chief Elwood assumed personal charge of the investigation into the murder of one of our city’s most respected citizens, and issued the following statement to the press at 10:00 o’clock this morning:
    “‘Charles Roche was shot once behind the right ear with a .44 caliber Colt’s revolver. A similar weapon was found on the ground near his body, and we are satisfied it is the death weapon. From the position of the body and evidence found on the scene of the crime, we believe Mr. Roche was walking back toward his parked car along the edge of the pavement when someone came up from behind and fired the fatal shot.
    “‘Death was practically instantaneous, states Coroner M. Peter Tombs, and probably occurred between three and five o’clock this morning. His wallet was intact with a fairly large sum of money in it, which would make it appear that robbery was not the motive. We believe we know the identity of the perpetrator of this foul deed, and expect an arrest to follow shortly.’
    “The above statement was all Chief Elwood was prepared to give out at the time, and he refused to say more when pressed by representatives of the Gazette to name his suspect.
    “From sources close to Mr. Roche, we learn that he has received several threatening letters during the past weeks, and that at least one of these communications has been turned over to the authorities by his grief-stricken wife.
    “We have also learned that the last person to have seen Mr. Roche alive was his wife. This was a little before 2:00 A.M. when Mr. Roche left his home on Mountaincrest Drive after telling Mrs. Roche he had an appointment to meet the labor agitator, George Brand, at his home at 610 Magnolia Avenue, not more than a hundred feet from the point where Roche’s body was found.
    “‘I begged him not to go see that man,’ Mrs.