Murder in the Air Read Online Free PDF Page A

waiting for the booze to take effect. He shouldn't let silly comments like that get to him. Christmas was something to survive. Surely he wasn't the only human being on earth who felt that way.
    He gave himself another minute and then grabbed the envelope Loretta had given him. Opening the top flap, he withdrew a single sheet of paper. It was a typed note, signed in an unreadable scrawl by someone named Wish Greveen. He wouldn't have been able to read the signature except that the sender's name was typed at the top as part of the transmission record. Bud had an Uncle Wish, so the name wasn'tforeign to him, not that he knew how Uncle Wish came by it. His given name was Darby.
    The note was simple and to the point.
    Dear Mr. Manderbach:
    I'm writing to call your attention to a new program airing on WTWN radio next Sunday night. It's an updated version of the old
Dallas Lane, Private Eye
mystery series, the same one that ran on another local radio station from 1954 to 1959. I have reason to believe that this program will be of great personal interest to you, and I strongly encourage you to tune in. As I have been commissioned to write the script for the show, any comments you have would be welcomed. I will be checking into the Maxfield Plaza sometime later in the week.
    Sincerely,
Wish Greveen
    Bud read it through one more time and then tossed it aside. There were a lot of crackpots in this world. He had the distinct feeling he'd just heard from one of them. Pouring himself another inch of Scotch, he sat back and sipped it slowly.
    The fax was obviously a joke. Commercially backed radio drama died years ago. Nobody in their right mind would fool around with it today—not with movies, video games, and the Internet to entertain the masses. Nah, someone was pulling his leg.
    Still, maybe he'd ask Loretta to call WTWN next week and see if the information was accurate. Manderbach's regularly advertised on WTWN. Maybe the fax was some kind of veiled pitch to get him to sponsor the show. If it was, he might have to listen—or have Loretta listen—just to see what it was all about. Not that he was interested. On the other hand, if some poor son-of-a-bitch really wanted a piece of helpful criticism from a man who prided himself on his business acumen, who was Bud Manderbach to deny this guy a bit of hard-won wisdom?
    January 13, 1959
    Dear Mother:
    1959 arrived without so much as a handful of confetti or a glass of champagne. I spent New Year's Eve alone in a crummy hotel room in Eindhoven. I felt more cut off from the world in those few hours than Eve ever felt before in my entire life. If Ed picked up a gun and blown my brains out, no one would've cared or, for that matter, even noticed. The streets were full of revelers, but I was afraid to go out.
    That was almost two weeks ago. East weekend I found another hotel, in a safer part of town. I still don't go out much. It's just better that way. I had such hopes for the new year, Mom, and for what it would bring. I never dreamed Ed be in Europe, away from home. Depressed. Alone. I know you're not much for reading the Bible. Em not either, though I did pick up a used King James version in London before I left and read it on the boat coming over.
    Do you remember this? “And the Lord said unto Cain
…
now art thou cursed … a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.”
    I can't help but wonder if that's my fate. Eve done more thinking about my life in the past three weeks than at any other time in my life. It's funny, but before I left Minnesota, Ed convinced myself that all my actions were noble. I see now that I was kidding myself I thought I could control events, protect the innocent, punish theguilty. I was on a mission, Mom, and in the bargain, my career would zoom into the stratosphere.
    In the end, all I accomplished was saving my own hide while the woman I love is dead. I have no one to blame but myself I'm almost afraid to give you an address for fear of what you