Make Out with Murder Read Online Free PDF

a pipe in, and sooner or later find a mild enough tobacco, but in the meantime he was doing his best. He thought pipe-smoking might be good for the image. He took the pipe apart and cleaned it while I settled myself. He never did get around to smoking it that night.
    I said, “Another thing. Melanie was extremely careful about that air mattress. You had to take your shoes off before you sat on it, and she would make me check to see if I had anything sharp in my pockets. She was very nervous, about puncturing the thing.”
    Haig nodded. “The syringe.”
    “Right. Even assuming she decides to take heroin, and even assuming she’s going to shoot it, the last place in that apartment she’d pick to use a hypodermic needle is the air mattress.”
    “You didn’t point this out to the police.”
    “No. I didn’t point out anything to them, like telling them how she was afraid she was going to die.”
    “Perfectly within your rights.” He touched his beard, stroked it with love and affection. “A citizen is under no compulsion to volunteer unrequested information to the police. He is merely obliged to answer their questions honestly and completely, and make no false statements.”
    “Well, I fell down there.”
    “The lock.”
    “Right. They asked how I got in and I told them the lock was wrecked a couple of weeks ago in a burglary and she hadn’t got around to replacing it yet.”
    “And of course you didn’t tell them you had been there once before.”
    “No. I, uh, more or less gave them the impression I spent the past four hours with you.”
    “I think that was wise,” he said. “They should have noticed the syringe and the air mattress. That should have been as obvious as a third nostril.” He closed his eyes for a moment and his hand worked on his beard. “You should have told me of Miss Trelawney’s fear of death.”
    “What could you have done?”
    “Probably nothing. Hmmm. There were five girls altogether, I understand. Five Misses Trelawney.”
    “That’s right. And now three of them are dead.”
    “And two alive. Are the survivors living here in New York?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t really know anything about them.”
    “Hmmmm. Perhaps you know more than you think. Melanie must have talked about them.”
    “Actually, she didn’t talk too much about anything. She wasn’t very verbal.”
    He nodded approvingly. “I’ve never felt loquacity is a mark of excellence in a woman. Nevertheless, she no doubt mentioned something about the girls who died. Their names, if nothing else.”
    “Robin and Jessica.”
    “One died in an auto wreck and the other fell from a window?”
    “Yes. Let me think. Jessica went out the window and Robin died in the car accident.”
    He pursed his lips. At least he did something weird with his lips, and I have never quite known what it is that you do when you purse your lips, but this was probably it. “Let’s not call it an accident, Chip,” he said. “Let’s merely call it a wreck, just as we’ll say that Jessica fell from a window, not that she threw herself out.”
    “You think they were both murdered?”
    “I think we ought to take it as a postulate for the time being. And we have to assume that whoever had a motive for murdering three of five sisters is not going to discontinue his activities before he has done for the remaining two into the bargain. Which of the sisters was the first to die?”
    I had to think. “Robin first, then Jessica. I don’t know about the timing, though. All of this happened before I met Melanie. I have the impression that Jessica died two or three months ago, but I really don’t know how long before then Robin died.”
    He closed his eyes. “That’s very interesting,” he said.
    “What is?”
    “First an auto wreck,” he said. “Then a fall, then an overdose of heroin. Assuming that an autopsy reveals that was indeed the cause of death. Which would seem a logical assumption at this stage of things. There were