The Blonde Died Dancing Read Online Free

minutes; At last Steve dropped desperately into the love seat opposite mine. He looked at the silhouette on the coffee table. He picked it up, studied it.
    “Yes,” I said, “and what about that?”
    “The killer probably put it in her hand after he shot her.”
    “But why, Steve?”
    “I don’t know…”
    “Steve,” I said, and what I was thinking sent a chill through me. “Steve, it’s like voodoo, isn’t it? That needle through her silhouette is like a needle through a doll’s heart… a hex. Maybe the murderer handed it to her before he killed her, let her get the significance of it. Maybe he wanted her to suffer for a horrible moment before she died.”
    “You’re dramatizing.”
    “What’s your explanation of it?”
    Steve shook his head, signifying it was empty of an explanation. “The hell with the silhouette,” he said. “How was she killed? She wasn’t done in by a death ray. She wasn’t poisoned through the mail. She wasn’t bitten by a snake that crawled out of the woodwork. According to you and the newspaper, she was shot to death.”
    “At close range. Even I could see that.”
    “So she was shot by someone in the room with her.”
    “But, Steve…”
    “Yes,” he said, “I know! Nobody was in the room with her but me! Let’s stop proving I killed her!”
    “The murderer’s already done that. Steve, do you think you should go to the police? I mean, before they come to you?”
    “I don’t know. I’ve got to think about it.”
    “You have some friends on the Homicide Squad. Nobody who knows you could believe you’re a murderer.”
    “Connie, don’t be an ever-loving wife. Everybody who ever committed a murder surprised the daylights out of his friends.”
    “Yes,” I said helplessly, “but if we explained everything to the police… wouldn’t it look better?”
    “Everything? Even tell them that you stole the register? How would you explain that, Connie?”
    “Why, I…”
    “You wouldn’t have to explain it. They’d know. Baby, you stole it because you were afraid I had killed Anita.”
    “No! No, I got panicky, that’s all…”
    “If you told the cops the truth you’d prove to them I killed her. If you lied to them, they’d know it… and that would prove it to them, too.”
    “Let’s not go to the cops. Let’s forget I ever mentioned it.”
    There was a loud knock on our door.
    “The register,” Steve said.
    I scooped it up, took it into the kitchen, hid it under the bread box. When I got back into the living room, Steve was shaking hands with a man named Bolling. This Bolling was about fifty, not quite stout, but there was a lot of him. Mainly he was a genial man, but on occasions he could be rather pulverizing. We knew him pretty well. Steve had become friends with him in the line of duty. He was employed by the New York City Police. He was a lieutenant in Homicide.
    He was alone, he explained to Steve, because his partner was busy elsewhere. It seemed there had been a murder this evening at the Crescent School of Dancing and a rather curious aspect of the case made it advisable for the team of Bolling and Hankins to split up temporarily.
    Now he was speaking to me. “Mrs. Barton, I remember you being a brunette.”
    “Those were the days,” I said wistfully.
    “You make a fine blonde, Mrs. Barton. I don’t recall ever seeing a blonder blonde.”
    “This man I have does good work. He’s very sincere. Won’t you sit down, Lieutenant?”
    “In a minute.”
    He went to our phone and called his precinct station. He was anxious to have his partner, Hankins, and another colleague named Lewine know that he was at the Bartons’. When they called in at eleven to report, they were to call here. It was now a little after ten-thirty. This was going to be a long, nervous half hour for me and the Waltzer.
    The Lieutenant moved into the love seat nearest him. He said, “What’s come over the Barton family? The missus a blonde all of a sudden, the mister