It's a Sin to Kill by Day Keene

that the elderly man’s enthusiasm to prove he wasn’t a small-town sheriff was beginning to wear off. Mary Lou’s story was too pat, too providential, too theatrical. It was the sort of thing a girl vocalist at the Beach Club would think up to attempt to pry a former hot trumpet player out of a murder rap. It was cloak and dagger stuff. Such things seldom happened in real life. Now that his first flush of enthusiasm was wearing thin, White was reverting to his original opinion. He and Helene Camden had gotten drunk together. They’d moved the party to the
Sea Bird
. Sometime during the night they’d quarreled and he had killed her. So she’d been forty and fat. To a drunken man all women are attractive. Then there was the five thousand dollars. The money was still to be explained. The hell ofit was White was a small-town sheriff. Keely was a small-town prosecutor. And while Gilmore might be a capable justice of the peace, he was way over his head in his dual capacity as coroner.
    White led the way out on the pier. The battered leather suitcase was still where Mary Lou had dropped it. She opened it with trembling fingers and checked the contents. The fifteen hundred dollars was still under Charlie’s shirts. The elephant bank with almost eight hundred dollars in it hadn’t been touched. But the towel-wrapped cup was gone.
    None of the four men spoke. Still kneeling, Mary Lou said, “Whoever tried to kill me took the cup.”
    â€œWhy?” White asked.
    Mary Lou said, “Maybe he was afraid a laboratory analysis would show some trace of whatever was used to drug Charlie.”
    Sheriff White’s, “Could be,” was noncommittal.
    Ames could read the doubt in his eyes.
Here we go again
, he thought.
    Mary Lou said, “You don’t believe me. But there
was
a cup. I found it on the bottom of the basin, in about two fathoms. And I wrapped it in a towel and put it in the suitcase.”
    â€œAn’ started to town with the suitcase when some someone, you don’t really know if it was a man or a woman, hit you with a piece of pipe and rolled you into the basin.”
    Mary Lou shook her head. “No. They must have rowed me out to the middle of the pass while I was still unconscious. The tide wouldn’t have sucked me out of the basin that fast.”
    â€œAnyway, after they knocked you unconscious, they took the cup out of the suitcase.”
    â€œThey must have.”
    â€œWhy didn’t they take the money you got for the
Sally?
”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    Mary Lou’s lower lip began to quiver again. Her eyes filled with tears. Ames helped her to her feet. “Easy makes it, baby. Everything’s going to be all right. We’re just blowing a couple of blue ones.” He was sorry he’d used the simile as soon as it was out of his mouth. He didn’t like White’s reaction. It took him out of the charter boat captain class and grouped him with Camden and Ferris.
    â€œSo?” Gilmore asked.
    â€œI don’t know, John,” White said. “I’ll be damned if I do. So Camden and the French maid were playin’ house and Mrs. Camden got onto the fact that they were holdin’ hands. Camden was in Baltimore when this happened. I checked with the State’s Attorney’s office there. The maid isn’t as big as Mary Lou. She’d have a hell of a time knockin’ anyone out let alone rowin’ ‘em out into the middle of the pass with the tide at the full. Besides, gettin’ back to the dead blonde, Ames admits she boarded the
Sally
of her own free will and
asked
for a cup of coffee. Ames says he’d jist come in from gettin’ bait. He admits makin’ the coffee hisself. So how did the drug, if there was any drug, get into the coffee?”
    Mary Lou’s lower lip stopped trembling and thrust out in a pout. “You don’t believe me.”
    Sheriff White’s voice