The Kissed Corpse by Brett Halliday

hissed out between set teeth. “Les practically admitted he was going to meet her when he rode away from the house.”
    â€œHe did meet her,” Burke admitted affably. “Perhaps she did steal that pistol, Mrs. Young.”
    I stared at him, wondering if he meant it. His expression didn’t tell me anything.
    Dwight was helping Myra up, bending over her solicitously. “I’m sure Mr. Burke doesn’t wish to detain you longer, my dear.”
    â€œNo.” Burke didn’t get up. “But I’d like to think this thing out a little, Dwight. I may wish to question some of your servants.”
    â€œCertainly.” Dwight went out with his hand under Myra’s arm, and I had a funny all-gone feeling of not knowing what the hell it was all about.

10
    â€œAnd that,” said Jerry Burke, “is positively that.”
    I grimaced at the doors which had closed behind the couple. “Things like that keep me thinking I’ve been smart to stay a bachelor.”
    â€œI guess no man ever knows about a woman. I would have sworn she was in love with Leslie.”
    â€œShe had Dwight’s daughter fooled too,” I pointed out. “The girl thought there hadn’t been anything between them previously.”
    Burke’s fingers drummed on the arm of his chair. “The under-surface stuff dredged up in the course of a murder investigation continually amazes me.”
    â€œYou weren’t surprised by her alibi,” I charged.
    â€œN-o-o. I had a hunch she had an ace up her sleeve. She was entirely too unconcerned about being suspected. Jelcoe didn’t worry her with those .25 bullets. She almost had to have an out that we knew nothing about.”
    â€œWhere does it leave us?”
    â€œI’m afraid,” he said soberly, “we’ll have to start barking at Laura Yates’ heels.”
    I had felt that coming and was braced against it. Somehow, goddamn it, I didn’t like to think in that direction. It was something I hadn’t figured out. I hated myself for feeling physically attracted by Laura.
    Mentally, she irritated me. I felt that her outward calm was inhuman and that it had to be a pose … and I detest posing females. I couldn’t forget that she had listened to the story of Young’s death with as much emotion as she would have shown over the announcement that her car had a flat tire.
    And I couldn’t forget that she had kissed him a few minutes before he died. The memory of her kiss in the darkened upstairs room of the hacienda still plagued me, and I found myself wondering how much she would have emoted if I’d been shot five minutes later.
    â€œOn the other hand,” Burke’s speculative voice recalled me to the present, “there are other angles. I can’t rid myself of the feeling that the warning for Young to stay away from the hacienda is definitely tied up with his death.”
    â€œHere’s a hunch!” I spoke excitedly. “Myra answered the telephone while her husband was absent and replied to the anonymous telephoner without consulting Leslie. In view of what we’ve just learned … that she was tangled up in an affair with her millionaire neighbor … we know she had a good reason for wanting Leslie out of the way. How do we know the voice over the wire wasn’t more specific than she admits … we have only her unsupported word for what was said. Instead of doing the natural thing … putting the woman off, promising to urge Leslie not to go, playing for time … she admits accepting the challenge, taunting the threatener with the announcement that Leslie would go in spite of the threat.”
    Burke was nodding. “ That begins to make sense, Asa. There might even have been a definite threat which she hasn’t told us about. She might have watched Leslie ride away at two o’clock, knowing it was the last time she would see him