The Case of the Kidnapped Angel: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Six) by Howard Fast Page A

a shoe rack, holding at least a hundred pairs of shoes and, at the bottom, four pairs of riding boots. He then went through the racks and finally found, not on the racks, but carefully folded on a shelf behind the dresses, six pairs of whipcord breeches. What this added up to, Masuto could not for the life of him imagine. Possibly nothing. Possibly she liked to ride. In the detective stories he read occasionally, everything pointed in a specific direction. But here were things most curious that pointed nowhere.

The Departed Angel
    â€œYou don’t need me,” Dr. Baxter said sourly. “I don’t have to dance attendance on every corpse you clowns turn up. I was in the middle of my dinner—”
    â€œIt’s ten o’clock,” Wainwright said apologetically.
    â€œCivilized people eat late, and if you think I’m going to spend all night doing an autopsy, you’re crazy. I’ll get at it in the morning.”
    â€œAll we want to know,” Wainwright begged him, “is why she died.”
    â€œBecause her heart stopped. It causes death.”
    â€œCome on, Doc, be reasonable.”
    â€œAre you reasonable? What do you think they pay me to be medical examiner for this silly town of demented millionaires. All right, you want to know what she died of? I’ll tell you what she didn’t die of. She didn’t die of an over-dose of heroin, if that’s what you’re thinking. She’s not a user.”
    â€œWas she murdered?”
    â€œHow the hell do I know whether she was murdered? I’m not a cop, and I can’t read the minds of the dead. When I cut her up, I’ll tell you what I find.”
    â€œYou can take her away,” Wainwright told the stretcher bearers. They left the bedroom with the body, Baxter stalking after them.
    â€œHe’s a doll,” Beckman observed. “He’s just a sweet, good-natured doll.”
    Sweeney, glancing up from his search for fingerprints, blamed it on Baxter’s profession. “You do that kind of work, it’s got to show.”
    The photographer was still working his flashbulbs. “The body’s gone,” Wainwright said tiredly. “That’s enough. Take what you got back to the station and develop it.”
    â€œI don’t know how the word gets around. Maybe it’s ESP,” Beckman said. “But there’s two TV crews outside and four or five reporters. Someone’s got to talk to them.”
    â€œI’ll talk to them. Just tell them to wait and be patient.” Beckman left the bedroom. Wainwright slumped down on the chaise and said to Masuto, “What makes you so damn sure she was murdered?”
    â€œIt had to be. Only I didn’t have enough sense to realize it.”
    â€œI don’t know what in hell you’re talking about, Masao, but I know one thing. This afternoon you told me you knew who killed Mike Barton. No more games. I want the name.”
    â€œAll right. But it doesn’t finish anything. Angel Barton killed her husband—but only in a legal sense. She was with a man, and the man pulled the trigger. Of course, she was part of it. They planned the thing together. And the stakes were high—one million dollars in cold cash, and if it worked, anything she was entitled to in his will.” Masuto reached into his pocket and took out the gun he had wrapped in his handkerchief. “Here’s the gun that killed Mike Barton.”
    Wainwright stared at it speechless. Sweeney came over, lifted the little pistol carefully by its trigger guard, and examined it in the light of a lamp.
    â€œAs lovely a set of prints as I’ve ever seen.”
    â€œWhere did you get it?” Wainwright demanded.
    â€œOver there—in her dressing table. Where the killer had placed it after he finished with Angel. The prints are excellent. He put them on the gun after Angel was dead, pressing her fingers to it.”
    â€œAnd how did he