Read Kiss and Kill for Free Online Page A

Sheriff.
    In his office adjoining the county jail, the Sheriff produced a four-by-five print of the wreck. Barney had seen many accidents, but this was a nightmare: a tangle of metal crumpled almost into a ball; two bodies mingled and minced by jagged steel and broken glass until there was no way to tell one from the other. Ed glanced at the photo and turned away, gulping, looking green.
    â€œBathroom’s down the hall,” said the Sheriff.
    Ed left fast. Barney asked: “May I have this print?”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œPeople are sometimes bashful about talking. I want to show them what kind of lice we’re after.”
    â€œOkay,” said the Sheriff. He lowered himself stiffly into a swivel chair. “Maynard called me the night he was killed, said there were some men skulking round in the woods near his house. Figured they were waiting for dark. I told him to turn out his lights and keep a loaded shotgun handy till I got there. I drove out, but he and Sue were gone, the house wide open, no car. I decided he’d made a run for it.
    â€œI started back to town, and this time I noticed the broken guardrail. I radioed the wrecker and ambulance, climbed down, and found what you saw in that picture.
    â€œAfterwards, I went back to Maynard’s house. The place had been searched while I was down in the canyon. I got a man from the lab to look it over. He couldn’t find any prints, said it was a professional job. They’d used burglar tools to break into a strongbox. But it didn’t look like they’d found what they were looking for. They hadn’t broke off the search suddenly; everything had been gone over. I thought they might be back, so I planted my beeper.
    â€œThree days later a woman phoned and asked me if I knew where the Bartons were. She’d been trying to reach them—”
    Ed Tollman spoke from the doorway; his color was a little better. “A crisp voice, kind of superior?”
    The Sheriff looked at him. “I’d’ve called it kind of stuck-up, yes.”
    â€œWhere did she call from?”
    â€œShe hung up before I could ask. I put a tracer through. It was from a pay phone in a drugstore in Kansas City.”
    Ed nodded. “The same one called me from Kingdom City. A hundred miles or so out of Kansas City.”
    The Sheriff turned to Barney. “How do you figure, Burgess?”
    â€œShe may have called to make sure the old people were dead. Or to warn them.” Barney said to Ed, “Let’s have that list of tourists.”
    The lady photographer, Claire English, was from St. Louis. That would be their next stop. “We’d better move on, Sheriff. We’re over a week behind the killers now.”
    Driving faster than the law allowed, they hit St. Louis. Claire English’s apartment was locked; so was her studio.
    â€œNow what?” Ed asked.
    â€œSomebody, somewhere, wonders where she is—friends, relatives, people who work for her. They’ll have already checked the obvious places.”
    From the building superintendent they learned that the woman photographer’s assistant had a key to her studio. He lived on the third floor of a shabby rooming house. They went there.
    Although it was nearly noon, Barney’s hammering evoked only sleepy grunts. He kept at it, and a girlish voice lisped, “Just a moment, damn it all.” They waited.
    Finally the door was opened by a svelte young man whose reddish hair was combed in waves. He wore a silk dressing gown of pale saffron and was smoking a cigarette in a long ivory holder. It looked to Barney as if his eyes were made up.
    â€œWe’re looking for Claire English.”
    The youth’s face screwed up in pettish disappointment. “Miss English is out of town. The studio’s closed.”
    â€œWhere’d she go?”
    â€œI haven’t a clue.” He was trying to close the door against Barney’s hand. “If you