Coward's Kiss Read Online Free

they do, they trace her to the apartment. Then they trace her to you, all of which makes things difficult. Was she from New York?”
    He shook his head.
    “Know many people in town?”
    “Hardly anybody. But . . .”
    “Go on.”
    “I was just going to say that I wasn’t with her all the time. She could have had some other interests. We didn’t talk much about the time we spent apart.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “I don’t know, Ed. I think she was trying to get into the theater. She never had a part, never talked about it. But I got the idea somewhere. She might know . . . might have known some theater people.”
    I said it was possible. “Still, the police would have a tough time making a positive identification. Not if she didn’t wind up in her own apartment. Her fingerprints probably aren’t on file anywhere. If she were found, say, in Central Park, she’d go as an unidentified victim. They might never find out her name, let alone yours. At any rate it would give you time to stall. Your checks would clear the bank and the landlord would forget your name.”
    “And the real killer——”
    “Would go scot free,” I finished for him. “Not necessarily. In the first place, you’re the real killer. No, hold on—I know you didn’t do it. But the police would stop looking once they hit you. They’d have enough circumstantial evidence to get an indictment without looking any farther. Meanwhile, the killer would cover his tracks.”
    I paused for breath. “This way they won’t have you on hand as a convenient dummy. They’ll have to start from scratch and they just might come up with the real killer.”
    He brightened visibly.
    “That’s not all. I’ll know things they won’t know. I’ll be able to run my own check on Sheila Kane. Maybe somebody had a damn good reason to shoot a hole in her head. I can look around, see what I can find out.”
    “Do you think——”
    “I don’t think much of anything, to tell you the truth. I don’t want your marriage to fall in. I don’t want Kaye to get hurt and I don’t want to see you tried for murder. So it looks as though I’ll have to move a body for you.”
    He got up from the chair and started to pace the floor. I watched him ball one hand into a fist and smack it into the palm of the other hand. He was still a collection of loose nerves but they were starting to tighten up again.
    I looked at him and tried to hate him. He married my sister and cheated on her and that ought to be cause for hatred. It didn’t work out that way. You can’t coin an ersatz double standard and apply it to brothers-in-law.
    He fell on his face for a pretty blonde; hell, I’d taken a few falls for the same type of thing myself. He was married and I wasn’t, but the state of matrimony doesn’t alter body chemistry. He was a guy in a jam and I had to help him.
    “Can I do anything, Ed?”
    I shook my head. “I’ll do it alone,” I told him. “Not now. Later this evening when it’s dark and the streets are empty. It’s chancey but I’ll take the chance. I’ll need a key, if you’ve got one handy.”
    He fished in a pocket and came up with a set of keys. I took them from him and set them on the coffee table.
    “Go on home,” I said. “Try to relax.”
    He nodded but I don’t think he heard me. “The hard part comes later,” he said. “When I realize that she’s really dead. Now she’s part of a mess that I’ve gotten myself into. But in a few hours she’ll turn back into a person. A person I knew well and cared a great deal about. And then it’s going to be tough. I’ll think about you picking her body up like a sack of flour and dumping her in the park and . . . I’m sorry. I’m going on and on like a damned fool.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “This’ll sound silly as hell, Ed. But ... be gentle with her, will you? She was a very nice person. You would have liked her, I think.”
    “Jack . . .”
    He brushed my hand away. “Hell with it,”