The Baxter Trust

who would have reason to want to frame her. I can’t think of anyone with a better reason than the present Mrs. John Dutton.”
    Taylor shook his head. “I really think you’re grasping at straws.”
    “I gotta grasp at something. What’s his wife’s name?”
    Taylor consulted the pad. “Inez Dutton.”
    “Fine. Check her out. Who’s next?”
    “Carla Finley.”
    “Ah, yes. Let’s not forget Carla Finley. What about her.”
    Taylor grinned. “Carla Finley happens to have the best alibi of all. At the time of the murder, she was seen by at least fifty people. Naturally, none of them would be very eager to testify, even if they could be found.”
    Steve grinned. “I’ll bet. Next.”
    “Zambelli, as he said, was involved in a poker game at the time. There again, no one is particularly anxious to testify.”
    “Which proves nothing. If he hit him, he’d have hired it out. Who’s next?”
    Taylor wheeled around and put his feet up on his desk. “Now we come to the have-nots. Mrs. Rosenthal, the next-door neighbor, claims she was at the supermarket at the time.”
    “For the whole hour?”
    “So she says. She points to an eighty-nine-dollar, forty-seven-cent cash-register receipt and a stocked refrigerator and pantry as confirmation.”
    “Wait a minute. How could she carry that much stuff?”
    “She didn’t. She had it delivered. The delivery boy brought it around two-thirty that afternoon.”
    “That sounds about right. But wait a minute. Wouldn’t he have run into the cops, then?”
    “He did. Mrs. Rosenthal was out in the hallway giving the cops an earful when he arrived. At first the cops weren’t going to let him through, but then Mrs. Rosenthal raised merry hell about her frozen foods melting, and billing the cops for it, and suing the city, and finally they gave in just to shut her up.”
    “So ... her alibi is purely circumstantial.”
    Taylor sighed. “Yes it is. Now, I know you asked me to do this, so I did it, and I have to tell you, if there’s any connection between Mrs. Rosenthal and Robert Greely, I can’t find it. And just between you and me, alibi or no alibi, I’d be willing to bet you my agency she didn’t do it. Mrs. Rosenthal isn’t the type of woman who would have known Robert Greely. Mrs. Rosenthal is the type of woman who accounts for the large number of bachelors in this country. In short, Mrs. Rosenthal is an obnoxious, gossipy, interfering, nosy pain in the ass.”
    “All right,” Steve said, relenting. “Next.”
    Taylor glanced at the sheet. “Teddy Baxter says he was at home. Whether he was is anybody’s guess. As a widower living alone, he has no corroborating witness.”
    “Too bad.”
    “Uncle Max has the same problem. The elevator man doesn’t remember seeing him go out, but of course there’s a back entrance, and a man on his way to a murder might be inclined to use it.”
    “He certainly might. I’d give anything to be able to prove that he did.”
    “You’d really like to pin it on him, wouldn’t you?”
    “I certainly would.”
    “I don’t blame you. With him convicted of murder, you could knock out the trust, get Sheila a few cool million, and cut yourself a nice slice of the pie.”
    “Yeah. But that’s not why I want to do it.”
    Taylor looked at him. “Oh? Well then, why?”
    Steve shrugged. “I don’t know. He just really pisses me off.”

34.
    F OR ONCE , S HEILA B ENTON WAS subdued. She was doing her best to keep up a good front, but her perky facade was so transparent Steve Winslow could see right through it. She was really scared.
    “Well,” she said, “how bad is it?”
    “You want information or reassurance?”
    “Information.”
    “Well, the way it looks right now, the only way I could make any money on this case would be to bet on the prosecution.”
    “That’s not funny.”
    “No, it isn’t.”
    “The trial really starts tomorrow?”
    “Well, not the trial itself. Jury selection will probably take a couple of days. But we have to be in court, if that’s what you mean.”
    “Couldn’t you have gotten a continuance?”
    “Why would you want one? The longer we stall, the longer you have to stay in jail.”
    “I don’t see why you couldn’t have pushed for bail.”
    “Well, it probably wouldn’t have done any good. And the thing is, I have a big problem there. See, one of the main points in our defense is that you have no money, and therefore no one could have been blackmailing you. If I