Read Copp In The Dark, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) for Free Online Page B

didn't fully commit herself to it until I'd seated her in my car. I went around and slid in beside her, kicked the engine, and asked, "Okay, where to?"
           She bit her lip and said, "I guess we should try my place first."
           "Your place?"
           She nodded her head in confirmation. "Craig is my husband."
           I gave her a hard look and replied, "The resume for both of you says single."
           "I know. We were secretly married a month ago."
           "Why secretly?"
           She turned fidgety eyes to me and said, "That's none of your business. But I expect you to respect it and not go blabbing it around, none of this."
           Hell, I wouldn't blab it, none of it.
           Didn't even believe it, not any of it.
           But it was damned good theater, and I was hooked. Yeah, I was really hooked.
     

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    It was a small but nice garden apartment less than ten minutes from the theater, all units at ground level with parking just outside the door.
           Enroute , Elaine seemed to warm up a bit and began telling me about a series of "incidents" involving Craig Maan which just seemed too "queer" to be accidents. The trouble had begun two weeks earlier and just a few days after the investor group had come forward with their offer to produce the show for a national road company.
           As she told me about it, a new scenario began forming in my mind—not the one she was painting for me but an alternate explanation of the events. In fact, if I had not already known about Dobbs and Harney and their interest in Craig Maan , I could have easily believed that the guy was a total phoney and spinning fanciful and self- aggrandizing stories to his friends for his own amusement. I have known people to do that, for no other reason than that it made them feel more important and interesting, if only to themselves.
           "He was involved in two hit-run car accidents," she explained, "and he was shot at on the freeway. The police
    called it a random shooting. Can you believe that? Then his apartment caught fire while he was asleep in it and—"
           "His apartment?" I interrupted. "Don't you two live together?"
           "I told you our marriage is secret. Of course we don't live together. We talked about him moving in with me while his apartment is being reconditioned but then we decided it would be best if he just bunked around with the guys."
           I said, "Did he bunk around with the guys for your honeymoon too, or is that also none of my business?"
           "It's also none of your business."
           "When was the fire?"
           "Last weekend. Then on Tuesday, the day we all decided something had better be done to put a stop to all this, he was shot at again."
           "Where?"
           "In the parking lot outside the theater."
           "So there would be witnesses to that."
           "No. Craig had stayed behind to have a talk with the backers. He met them in the lounge after the show. Everybody had left the theater area by the time that was finished. I guess his car was the only one left over there at the time. So there were no witnesses. But the hotel security men heard the shot."
           "Have you seen his apartment since the fire?"
           "I have never seen his apartment."
           I said, "Come on now, Elaine. You've been working opposite the guy for months, you say you married him, yet you've never seen his apartment?"
           "I don't even know where he lives," she confided. "The address on his employment file is a fake."
           "You checked that out?"
           "Yes, I checked it out. I know what you're thinking, Joe, because I've thought it all myself. Craig has always been very mysterious about his personal life. I used to think he was just being theatrical or whatever, until today when he broke down and told us all about