I grabbed the Lake Street El and got off at Garfield Park; it was a short walk from there to the “Death Clinic” at 3406 West Monroe Street. That’s what the papers, some of them anyway, were calling the Wynekoop mansion. To me it was just another big old stone building on the West Side, one of many, though of a burnt-reddish stone rather than typical Chicago gray. And, I’ll grant you, the three-story structure was planted on a wealthier residential stretch than the one I’d grown up on, twelve blocks south.

Still, this was the West Side, and more or less my old stamping grounds, and that was no doubt part of why I’d been asked to drop by the Wynekoop place this sunny Saturday afternoon. The family had most likely asked around, heard about the ex-cop from nearby Douglas Park who now had a little private agency in the Loop.

And my reputation on the West Side—and in the Loop—was of being just honest enough, and just crooked enough, to get most jobs done.

But part of why I’d been called, I would guess, was Earle Wynekoop himself. I knew Earle a little, from a distance. We’d both worked at the World’s Fair down on the lakefront last summer and fall. I was working pickpocket duty, and Earle was in the front office, doing whatever front-office people do. We were both about the same age—I was twenty-seven—but he seemed like a kid to me.

Earle mostly chased skirts, except at the Streets of Paris exhibition, where the girls didn’t wear skirts. Tall, handsome, wavy-haired Earle, with his white teeth and pencil-line mustache, had pursued the fan dancers with the eagerness of a plucked bird trying to get its feathers back. Funny thing was, nobody—including me—knew Earle was a married man, till November, when the papers were full of his wife. His wife’s murder, that is.

Now it was a sunny, almost-warm afternoon in December, and I had been in business just under a year. And like most small businessmen, I’d had less than a prosperous 1933. A retainer from a family with the Wynekoop’s dough would be a nice way to ring out the old and ring in the new.

Right now, I was ringing the doorbell. I was up at the top of the first-floor landing; Dr. Alice Wynekoop’s office was in an English basement below. I was expecting a maid or butler to answer, considering the size of this place. But Earle is what I got.

His white smile flickered nervously. He adjusted his bowtie with one hand and offered the other for me to shake, which I did. His grip was weak and moist, like his dark eyes.

“Mr. Heller,” he said. “Thank you for stopping by.”

“My pleasure,” I said, stepping into the vestibule, hat in hand.

Earle, snappily dressed in a pinstripe worsted, took my topcoat and hung it on a hall tree.

“Perhaps you don’t remember me,” he said. “I worked in the front office at the fair this summer.”

“Sure I remember you, Mr. Wynekoop.”

“Why don’t you call me ‘Earle.’”

“Fine, Earle,” I said. “And my friends call me ‘Nate.’”

He grinned nervously and said, “Step into the library, Nate, if you would.”

“Is your mother here?”

“No. She’s in jail.”

“Why haven’t you sprung her?” Surely these folks could afford to make bail. On the phone, Earle had quickly agreed to my rate of fifteen bucks a day and one-hundred-dollar non-refundable retainer. And that was the top of my sliding scale.

An eyebrow arched in disgust on a high, unwrinkled brow. “Mother is ill, thanks to these barbarians. We’ve decided to let the state pay for her illness, considering they’ve provoked it.”

He tried to sound indignant through all that, but petulance was the result.

The interior of the house was on the gloomy side: a lot of dark, expensive, well-wrought woodwork, and heavy, plush furnishings that dated back to the turn of the century, when the house was built. There were hints that the Wynekoops might not be as well fixed as the rest of us thought: ornate antiquated light fixtures, worn Oriental carpets and a layer of dust indicated yesterday’s wealth, not today’s.

I sat on a dark horsehair couch; two of the walls were bookcases, filled with leather-bound volumes, and the others were hung with somber landscapes. The first thing Earle did was give me an envelope with one hundred dollars in tens in it. Now Earle was getting himself some sherry off a liquor cart.

“Can I get you something?” Earle asked. His hands were shaking as he poured himself the sherry.

“This will do nicely,” I said, counting the money.

“Don’t be a wet blanket, Nate.”

I put the money-clipped bills away. “Rum, then. No ice.”

He gave me a glass and sat beside me. I’d have rather he sat across from me; it was awkward, looking sideways at him. But he seemed to crave the intimacy.

“Mother’s not guilty, you know.”

“Really.”

“I confessed, but they didn’t believe me. I confessed five times.”

“Cops figured you were trying to clear your mama.”

“Yes. I’m afraid so. I rather botched it, as a liar.”

It was good rum. “Then you didn’t kill your wife?”

“Kill Rheta! Don’t be silly. I loved her, once. Just because our marriage had gone…well, anyway, I didn’t do it, and Mother didn’t do it, either.”

“Who did, then?”

He smirked humorlessly. “I think some moron did it. Some fool looking for narcotics and money. That’s why I called you, Nate. The police aren’t looking for the killer. They think they have their man in Mother.”

“What does your mother’s attorney think?”

“He thinks hiring an investigator is a splendid idea.”

“Doesn’t he have his own man?”

“Yes, but I wanted you. I remembered you from the fair…and, I asked around.”

What did I tell you? Am I detective?

“I can’t promise I can clear her,” I said. “She confessed, after all—and the cops took her one confession more seriously than your five.”

“They gave her the third-degree. A sixty-three-year-old woman! Respected in the community! Can you imagine?”

“Who was the cop in charge?”

Earle pursed his lips in disgust. “Captain Stege himself, the bastard.”

“Is this his case? Damn.”

“Yes, it’s Stege’s case. Didn’t you read about all this in the papers?”

“Sure I did. But I didn’t read it like I thought I was going to be involved. I probably did read Stege was in charge, but when you called this morning, I didn’t recall…”

“Why, Nate? Is this a problem?”

“No,” I lied.

I let it go at that, as I needed the work, but the truth was, Stege hated my guts. I’d testified against a couple of cops, which Stege—even though he was honest and those two cops were bent even by Chicago standards—took as a betrayal of the police brotherhood.

Earle was up pouring himself another sherry. Already. “Mother is a sensitive, frail woman, with a heart condition, and she was ruthlessly, mercilessly questioned for a period of over twenty-four hours.”

“I see.”

“I’m afraid…” And Earle sipped his sherry greedily. Swallowed. Continued: “I’m afraid I may have made the situation even worse.”

“How?”

He sat again, sighed, shrugged. “As you probably know, I was out of town when Rheta was…slain.”

That was an odd choice of words; “slain” was something nobody said, a word in the newspapers, not real life.

“I went straight to the Fillmore police station, when I returned from Kansas City. I had a moment with Mother. I said…” He slumped, shook his head.

“Go on, Earle.”

“I said…God help me, I said, ‘For God’s sake mother, if you did this on account of me, go ahead and confess.’” He touched his fingertips to his eyes.

“What did she say to you?”

“She…she said, ‘Earle, I did not kill Rheta.’ But then she went in for another round with Captain Stege, and…”

“And made that cockamamie confession she later retracted.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you think your mother might have killed your wife for you, Earle?”

“Because…because Mother loves me very much.”

Dr. Alice Lindsay Wynekoop had been one of Chicago’s most esteemed female physicians for almost four decades. She had met her late husband Frank in medical college, and with him continued the Wynekoop tradition of care for the ill and disabled. Her charity work in hospitals and clinics was well-known; a prominent clubwoman, humanitarian, a leader in the woman’s suffrage movement, Dr. Wynekoop was an unlikely candidate for a murder charge.

But she had indeed been charged: with the murder of her daughter-in-law, in the basement consultation office in this very house.

Earle led me there, down a narrow stairway off the dining room. In the central basement hallway were two facing doors: Dr. Wynekoop’s office, at left; and at right, an examination room. The door was open. Earle motioned for me to go in, which I did, but he stayed in the doorway.

The room was narrow and wide and cold; the steam heat was off. The dominant fixture was an old-fashioned, brown-leather-covered examination table. A chair under a large stained-glass window, whose ledge was lined with medical books, sat next to a weigh-and-measure scale. In one corner was a medicine and instrument cabinet.

“The police wouldn’t let us clean up properly,” Earle said.

The leather exam table was blood-stained.

“They said they might take the whole damn table in,” Earle said. “And use it in court, for evidence.”

I nodded. “What about your mother’s office? She claimed burglary.”

“Well, yes…some drugs were taken from the cabinet, in here. And six dollars from a drawer…”

He led me across the hall to an orderly office area with a big rolltop desk, which he pointed to.

“And,” Earle said, pulling open a middle drawer, “there was the gun, of course. Taken from here.”

“The cops found it across the hall, though. By the body.”

“Yes,” Earle said, quietly.

“Tell me about her, Earle.”

“Mother?”

“Rheta.”

“She…she was a lovely girl. A beautiful redhead. Gifted musician…violinist. But she was…sick.”

“Sick how?”

He tapped his head. “She was a hypochondriac. Imagining she had this disease, and that one. Her mother died of tuberculosis…in an insane asylum, no less. Rheta came to imagine she had t.b., like her mother. What they did have in common, I’m afraid, was being mentally deranged.”

“You said you loved her, Earle.”

“I did. Once. The marriage was a failure. I…I had to seek affection elsewhere.” A wicked smile flickered under the pencil mustache. “I’ve never had trouble finding women, Nate. I have a little black book with fifty girl friends in it.”

It occurred to me that a real man could get by on a considerably shorter list; but I keep opinions like that to myself, when given a hundred-buck retainer.

“What did the little woman think about all these girl friends? A crowd like that is hard to hide.”

He shrugged. “We never talked about it.”

“No talk of a divorce?”

He licked his lips, avoided my eyes. “I wanted one, Nate. She wouldn’t give it to me. A good Catholic girl.” Four of the most frightening words in the English language, to any healthy male anyway.

“The two of you lived here, with your mother?”

“Yes…I can’t really afford to live elsewhere. Times are hard, you know.”

“So I hear. Who else lives here? Isn’t there a roomer?”

“Yes. Miss Shaunesey. She’s a high school teacher.”

“Is she here now?”

“Yes. I asked if she’d talk to you, and she is more than willing. Anything to help Mother.”

Back in the library, I sat and spoke with Miss Enid Shaunesey, a prim, slim woman of about fifty. Earle lurked in the background, helping himself to more sherry.

“What happened that day, Miss Shaunesey?”

November 21, 1933.

“I probably arose at about a quarter to seven,” she said, with a little shrug, adjusting her wire-frame glasses. “I had breakfast in the house with Dr. Alice. I don’t remember whether Rheta had breakfast with us or not…I don’t really remember speaking to Rheta at all that morning.”

“Then you went on to school?”

“Yes,” I said. “I teach at Marshall High. I completed my teaching duties and signed out about three fifteen. I went to the Loop and shopped until a little after five and went home.”

“What, at about six?”

“Or a little after. When I came home, Dr. Alice was in the kitchen, preparing dinner. She fried up some pork chops. Made a nice salad, cabbage, potatoes, peaches. It was just the two of us. We’re good friends.”

“Earle was out of town, of course, but what about Rheta?”

“She was supposed to dine with us, but she was late. We went ahead without her. I didn’t think much of it. The girl had a mind of her own; she frequently went here and there—music lessons, shopping.” There was a faint note of disapproval, though the conduct she was describing mirrored her own after-school activities of that same day.

“Did Dr. Wynekoop seem to get along with Rheta?”

“They had their tiffs, but Dr. Alice loved the girl. She was family. That evening, during dinner, she spoke of Rheta, in fact.”

“What did she say?”

“She was worried about the girl.”

“Because she hadn’t shown up for supper?”

“Yes, and after the meal she telephoned a neighbor or two, to see if they’d seen Rheta. But she also expressed a more general concern—Rheta was fretting about her health, you see. As I said, Rheta frequently stayed out. We knew she’d probably gone into the Loop to shop and, as she often did, she probably went to a motion picture. That was what we thought.”

“I see.”

Miss Shaunesey sat up, her expression suddenly thoughtful. “Of course, I’d noticed Rheta’s coat and hat on the table here in the library, but Dr. Alice said that she’d probably worn her good coat and hat to the Loop. Anyway, after dinner we talked, and then I went to the drug store for Dr. Alice, to have a prescription refilled.”

“When did you get back?”

“Well, you see, the drug store is situated at Madison and Kedzie. That store did not have as many tablets as Dr. Alice wanted, so I walked to the drug store at Homan and Madison and got a full bottle.”

“So it took a while,” I said, trying not to get irritated with her fussy old-maid-school-teacher thoroughness. It beat the hell out of an uncooperative, unobservant witness, though. I guessed.

“I was home by half past seven, I should judge. Then we sat down in the library and talked for about an hour. We discussed two books—Strange Interlude was one and the other was The Forsyte Saga.”

“Did Dr. Wynekoop seem relaxed, or was she in any way preoccupied?”

“The former,” Miss Shaunesey said with certainty. “Any concern about Rheta’s absence was strictly routine.”

“At what point did Dr. Wynekoop go downstairs to her consultation room?”

“Well, I was complaining of my hyperacidity. Dr. Alice said she had something in her office that she thought I could use for that. It was in a glass case in her consulting room. Of course, she never got that medicine for me.”

Dr. Wynekoop had been interrupted in her errand by the discovery of the body of her daughter-in-law Rheta. The corpse was face down on the examination table, head on a white pillow. Naked, the body was wrapped in a sheet and a blanket, snugged in around the feet and pulled up over the shoulders, like a child lovingly tucked into bed. Rheta had been shot, once, in the back. Her lips were scorched as if by acid. A wet towel was under her mouth, indicating perhaps that chloroform had been administered. A half-empty bottle of chloroform was found on the washstand. And a gauze-wrapped .32 Smith and Wesson rested on the pillow above the girl’s head.

“Dr. Wynekoop did not call the police?” I asked, knowing the answer. This much I remembered from the papers.

“No.”

“Or an undertaker, or the coroner’s office?”

“No. She called her daughter, Catherine.”

Earle looked up from his sherry long enough to interject: “Catherine is a doctor, too. She’s a resident at the Children’s Department at Cook County Hospital.”

And that was my logical first stop. I took the El over to the hospital, a block-square graystone at Harrison and Ogden; this job was strictly a West Side affair.

Dr. Catherine Wynekoop was a beautiful woman. Her dark hair was pulled back from her pale, pretty face; in her doctor’s whites, she sat in the hospital cafeteria stirring her coffee as we spoke.

“I was on duty here when Mother called,” she said. “She said, ‘Something terrible has happened at home…it’s Rheta…she’s dead…she has been shot.’”

“How did she sound? Hysterical? Calm?”

“Calm, but a shocked sort of calm.” She sighed. “I went home immediately. Mother seemed all right, but I noticed her gait was a little unsteady. Her hands were trembling, her face was flushed. I helped her to a chair in the dining room and rushed out in the kitchen for stimuli. I put a teaspoonful of aromatic spirits of ammonia in water and had her drink it.”

“She hadn’t called anyone but you, as yet?”

“No. She said she’d just groped her way up the stairs, that on the way everything went black, she felt dizzy, that the next thing she knew she was at the telephone calling me.”

“Did you take charge, then?”

A half-smile twitched at her cheek. “I guess I did. I called Mr. Ahearn.”

“Mr. Ahearn?”

“The undertaker. And I called Dr. Berger, our family physician.”

“You really should have called the coroner.”

“Mother later said that she’d asked me to, on the phone, but I didn’t hear that or understand her or something. We were upset. Once Dr. Berger and Mr. Ahearn arrived, the coroner’s office was called.”

She kept stirring her coffee, staring into it.

“How did you and Rheta get along?”

She lifted her eyebrows in a shrug. “We weren’t close. We had little in common. But there was no animosity.”

She seemed goddamn guarded to me; I decided to try and knock her wall down, or at least jar some stones loose.

I said: “Do you think your mother killed Rheta?”

Her dark eyes rose to mine and flashed. “Of course not. I never heard my mother speak an unkind word to or about Rheta.” She searched her mind for an example, and came up with one: “Why—whenever Mother bought me a dress, she bought one for Rheta, also.”

She returned her gaze to the coffee, which she stirred methodically.

Then she continued: “She was worried about Rheta, actually. Worried about the way Earle was treating her. Worried about all the…well, about the crowd he started to run around with down at the World’s Fair. Mother asked me to talk to him about it.”

“About what, exactly?”

“His conduct.”

“You mean, his girl friends.”

She looked at me sharply. “Mr. Heller, my understanding is that you are in our family’s employ. Some of these questions of yours seem uncalled for.”

I gave her my most charming smile. “Miss Wynekoop…doctor…I’m like you. Sometimes I have to ask unpleasant questions, if I’m going to make the proper diagnosis.”

She considered that a moment, then smiled. It was a honey of a smile, making mine look like the shabby sham it was.

“I understand, Mr. Heller.” She rose. She’d never touched the coffee once. “I’m afraid I have afternoon rounds to make.”

She extended her hand; it was delicate, but her grasp had strength, and she had dignity. Hard to believe she was Earle’s sister.

I had my own rounds to make, and at a different hospital; it took a couple of streetcars to do the job. The County Jail was a grim, low-slung graystone lurking behind the Criminal Courts Building. This complex of city buildings was just south of a West Side residential area, just eight blocks south of Douglas Park. Old home week for me.

Alice Wynekoop was sitting up in bed, reading a medical journal, when I was led to her by a matron. She was in the corner and had much of the ward to herself; the beds on either side were empty.

She was of average size, but frail-looking; she appeared much older than her sixty-three years, her flesh freckled with liver spots, her neck creped. The skin of her face had a wilted look, dark patches under the eyes, saggy jowls.

But her eyes were dark and sharp. And her mouth was a stern line.

“Are you a policeman?” she asked. Her tone was neutral.

I had my hat in hand. “I’m Nathan Heller,” I said. “I’m the private investigator your son hired.”

She smiled in a business-like way, extended her hand for me to shake, which I did. Surprisingly strong for such a weak-looking woman.

“Pull up a chair, Mr. Heller,” she said. Her voice was clear and crisp. Someone very different than the woman she outwardly appeared to be lived inside that worn-out body.

I sat. “I’m going to be asking around about some things…inquire about burglaries in your neighborhood and such.”

She nodded, twice, very business-like. “I’m certain the thief was after narcotics. In fact, some narcotics were taken, but I keep precious few in my surgery.”

“Yes. I see. What about the gun?”

“It was my husband’s. We’ve had it for years. I’ve never fired it in my life.”

I took out my small spiral notebook. “I know you’re weary of telling it, but I need to hear your story. Before I go poking around the edges of this case, I need to understand the center of it.”

She nodded and smiled. “What would you like to know, exactly?”

“When did you last see your daughter-in-law?”

“About three p.m. that Tuesday. She said she was going for a walk with Mrs. Donovan…”

“Who?”

“A neighbor of ours who was a good friend to the child. Verna Donovan. She’s a divorcee; they were quite close.”

I wrote the name down. “Go on.”

“Anyway, Rheta said something about going for a walk with Mrs. Donovan. She also said she might go downtown and get some sheet music. I urged her to go out in the air, as it was a fine day, and gave her money for the music. After she left, I went for a walk myself, through the neighborhood. It was an usually beautiful day for November, pleasantly warm.”

“How long were you gone?”

“I returned at about four forty-five p.m. I came in the front door. Miss Shaunesey arrived from school about six o’clock. I wasn’t worried then about Rheta’s absence, because I expected her along at any minute. I prepared dinner for the three of us—Miss Shaunesey, Rheta and myself—and set the table. Finally, Miss Shaunesey and I sat down to eat…both wondering where Rheta was, but again, not terribly worried.”

“It wasn’t unusual for her to stay out without calling to say she’d miss supper?”

“Not in the least. She was quiet, but rather…self-absorbed. If she walked by a motion-picture marquee that caught her eye, she might just wander on in, without a thought about anyone who might be waiting for her.”

“She sounds inconsiderate.”

Alice Wynekoop smiled tightly, revealing a strained patience. “She was a strange, quiet girl. Rather moody, I’m afraid. She had definite feelings of inferiority, particularly in regards to my daughter, Catherine, who is after all a physician. But I digress. At about a quarter to seven, I telephoned Mrs. Donovan and asked her if she had been with Rheta. She said she hadn’t seen her since three o’clock, but urged me not to worry.”

“Were you worried?”

“Not terribly. At any rate, at about seven o’clock I asked Miss Shaunesey to go and get a prescription filled for me. She left the house and I remained there. She returned about an hour later and was surprised that Rheta had not yet returned. At this point, I admit I was getting worried about the girl.”

“Tell me about finding the body.”

She nodded, her eyes fixed. “Miss Shaunesey and I sat and talked in the library. Then about eight thirty she asked me to get her some medicine for an upset stomach. I went downstairs to the examination room to get the medicine from the cabinet.” She placed a finger against one cheek, thoughtfully. “I recall now that I thought it odd to find the door of the examination room closed, as it was usually kept open. I turned the knob and slipped my hand inside to find the electric switch.”

“And you found her.”

She shuddered, but it seemed a gesture, not an involuntary response. “It is impossible for me to describe my feelings when I saw Rheta lying there under that flood of light! I felt as if I were somewhere else. I cannot find words to express my feelings.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, I knew something had to be done at once, and I called my daughter, Catherine, at the county hospital. I told her Rheta was dead. She was terribly shocked, of course. I…I thought I had asked Catherine to notify the coroner and to hurry right over. It seemed ages till she got there. When she did arrive, I had her call Dr. Berger and Mr. Ahearn. It wasn’t until some time after they arrived that I realized Catherine had not called the coroner as I thought I’d instructed her. Mr. Ahearn then called the authorities.”

I nodded. “All right. You’re doing fine, doctor. Now tell me about your son and his wife.”

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t a happy union, was it.”

Her smile was a sad crease in her wrinkled face. “At one time it was. Earle went with me to a medical convention in Indianapolis in…must have been ’29. Rheta played the violin as part of the entertainment, there. They began to correspond. A year later they were wed.”

“And came to live with you.”

“Earle didn’t have a job—you know, he’s taken up photography of late, and has had several assignments, I’m really very proud—and, well…anyway. The girl was barely nineteen, when they married. I redecorated and refurnished a suite of rooms on the second floor for my newlyweds. She was a lovely child, beautiful red hair, and of course, Earle…he’s as handsome a boy as ever walked this earth.”

“But Rheta was moody…?”

“Very much so. And obsessed with her health. Perhaps that’s why she married into the Wynekoop family. She was fearful of tuberculosis, but there were no indications of it at all. In the last month of her life, she was rather melancholy, of a somewhat morbid disposition. I discussed with her about going out into the open and taking exercise. We discussed that often.”

“You did not kill your daughter-in-law.”

“No! Mr. Heller, I’m a doctor. My profession, my life, is devoted to healing.”

I rose. Slipped the notebook in my pocket. “Well, thank you, Dr. Wynekoop. I may have a few more questions at a later date.”

She smiled again, a warm, friendly smile, coming from so controlled a woman. “I’d be pleased to have your company. And I appreciate your help. I’m very worried about the effect this is having on Earle.”

“Dr. Wynekoop, with all due respect…my major concern is the effect this going to have on you, if I can’t find the real killer.”

Her smile disappeared and she nodded sagely. She extended her hand for a final handshake, and I left her there.

I used a pay phone in the visitor’s area to call Sergeant Lou Sapperstein at Central Headquarters in the Loop. Lou had been my boss on the pickpocket detail. I asked him to check for me to see what officer in the Fillmore district had caught the call the night of the Wynekoop homicide.

“That’s Stege’s case,” Lou said. Sapperstein was a hardnosed, fair-minded balding cop of about forty-five seasoned years. “You shouldn’t mess in Stege’s business. He doesn’t like you.”

“God you’re a great detective, picking up on a detail like that. Can you get me the name?”

“Five minutes. Stay where you are.”

I gave him the pay phone number and he called back in a little over three minutes.

“Officer Raymond March, detailed with squad fifteen,” he said.

I checked my watch; it was after four.

“He’s on duty now,” I said. “Do me another favor.”

“Why don’t you get a goddamn secretary?”

“You’re a public servant, aren’t you? So serve, already.”

“So tell me what you want, already.”

“Get somebody you trust at Fillmore to tell Officer March to meet me at the drug store on the corner of Madison and Kedzie. Between six and seven.”

“What’s in it for Officer March?”

“Supper and a fin.”

“Why not,” Lou said, a shrug in his voice.

He called me back in five or six minutes and said the message would be passed.

I hit the streetcars again and was back on Monroe Street by a quarter to five. It was getting dark already, and colder.

Mrs. Verna Donovan lived in the second-floor two-flat of a graystone three doors down from the Wynekoop mansion. The smell of corned beef and cabbage cooking seeped from under the door.

I knocked.

It took a while, but a slender, attractive woman of perhaps thirty in a floral dress and a white apron opened the door wide.

“Oh!” she said. Her face was oblong, her eyes a luminous brown, her hair another agreeable shade of brown, cut in a bob that was perhaps too young for her.

“Didn’t mean to startle you, ma’am. Are you Mrs. Donovan?”

“Yes, I am.” She smiled shyly. “Sorry for my reaction—I was expecting my son. We’ll be eating in about half an hour…”

“I know this is a bad time to come calling. Perhaps I could arrange another time…”

“What is your business here?”

I gave her one of my A-1 Detective Agency cards. “I’m working for the Wynekoops. Nathan Heller, president of the A-1 agency. I’m hoping to find Rheta’s killer.

Her eyes sparkled. “Well, come in! If you don’t mind sitting in the kitchen while I get dinner ready…”

“Not at all,” I said, following her through a nicely but not lavishly furnished living room, overseen by an elaborate print of the Virgin Mary, and back to a good-size blue and white kitchen.

She stood at the counter making cole slaw while I sat at the kitchen table nearby.

“We were very good friends, Rheta and I. She was a lovely girl, talented, very funny.”

“Funny? I get the impression she was a somber girl.”

“Around the Wynekoops she was. They’re about as much fun as falling down the stairs. Do you think the old girl killed her?”

“What do you think?”

“I could believe it of Earle. Dr. Alice herself, well…I mean, she’s a doctor. She’s aloof, and she and Rheta were anything but close, of course. But kill her?”

“I’m hearing that the doctor gave Rheta gifts, treated her like a family member.”

Verna Duncan shrugged, putting some muscle into her slaw-making efforts. “There was no love lost between them. You’re aware that Earle ran around on her?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that sort of thing is hard on a girl’s self-esteem. I helped her get over it as much as I could.”

“How?”

She smiled slyly over her shoulder. “I’m a divorcee, Mr. Heller. And divorcees know how to have a good time. Care for a taste?”

She was offering me a forkful of slaw.

“That’s nice,” I said, savoring it. “Nice bite to it. So, you and Rheta went out together? Was she seeing other men, then?”

“Of course she was. Why shouldn’t she?”

“Anyone in particular?”

“Her music teacher. Violin instructor. Older man, very charming. But he died of a heart attack four months ago. It hit her hard.”

“How did she handle it?”

“Well, she didn’t shoot herself in the back over it, if that’s what you’re thinking! She was morose for about a month…then she just started to date all of a sudden. I encouraged her, and she came back to life again.”

“Why didn’t she just divorce Earle?”

“Why, Mr. Heller…she was a good Catholic girl.”

She asked me to stay for supper, but I declined, despite the tempting aroma of her corned beef and cabbage, and the tang of her slaw. I had another engagement, at a drugstore at Madison and Kedzie.

While I waited for Officer March to show up, I questioned the pharmacist behind the back counter.

“Sure I remember Miss Shaunesey stopping by that night,” he said. “But I don’t understand why she did.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, Dr. Wynekoop herself stopped in a week before, to fill a similar prescription, and I told her our stock was low.”

“She probably figured you’d’ve got some in by then,” I said.

“The doctor knows we only get a shipment in once a month.”

I was mulling that over at the lunch counter when Officer March arrived. He was in his late twenties and blond and much too fresh-faced for a Chicago cop.

“Nate Heller,” he said, with a grin. “I’ve heard about you.”

We shook hands.

“Don’t believe everything Captain Stege tells you,” I said.

He took the stool next to me, took off his cap. “I know Stege thinks you’re poison. But that’s ‘cause he’s an old-timer. Me, I’m glad you helped expose those two crooked bastards.”

“Let’s not get carried away, Officer March. What’s the point of being a cop in this town if you can’t take home a little graft now and then?”

“Sure,” March said. “But those guys were killers. West Side bootleggers.”

“I’m a West Side boy myself,” I said.

“So I understand. So what’s your interest in the Wynekoop case?”

“The family hired me to help clear the old gal. Do you think she did it?”

He made a clicking sound in his cheek. “Hard one to call. She seemed pretty shook up, at the scene.”

“Shook up like a grieved family member, or a murderer?”

“I couldn’t read it.”

“Order yourself a sandwich and then tell me about it.”

He did. The call had come in at nine-fifty-nine over the police radio, about five blocks away from where he and his partner were patrolling.

“The girl’s body was lying on that table,” March said. “She was resting on her left front side with her left arm under her, with the right forearm extending upward so that her hand was about on a level with her chin, with her head on a white pillow. Her face was almost out of sight, but I could see that her mouth and nose were resting on a wet, crumpled towel. She’d been bleeding from the mouth.”

“She was covered up, I understand,” I said.

“Yes. I drew the covers down carefully, and saw that she’d been shot through the left side of the back. Body was cold. Dead about six hours, I’d guess.”

“But that’s just a guess.”

“Yeah. The coroner can’t nail it all that exact. It can be a few hours either direction, you know.”

“No signs of a struggle.”

“None. That girl laid down on that table herself—maybe at gun point, but whatever the case, she did it herself. Her clothes were lying about the floor at the foot of the examination table, dropped, not thrown, just as though she’d undressed in a leisurely fashion.”

“What about the acid burns on the girl’s face?”

“She was apparently chloroformed before she was shot. You know, that confession Stege got out of Dr. Wynekoop, that’s how she said she did it.”

The counterman brought us coffee.

“I’ll be frank, officer,” I said, sipping the steaming java. “I just came on this job. I haven’t had a chance to go down to a newspaper morgue and read the text of that confession.”

He shrugged. “Well, it’s easily enough summed up. She said her daughter-in-law was always wanting physical examinations. That afternoon, she went downstairs with the doctor for an exam, and first off, stripped, to weigh herself. She had a sudden pain in her side and Dr. Wynekoop suggested a whiff of chloroform as an anesthetic. The doc said she massaged the girl’s side for about fifteen minutes, and…”

“I’m remembering this from the papers,” I said, nodding. “She claimed the girl ‘passed away’ on the examining table, and she panicked. Figured her career would be ruined, if it came out she’d accidentally killed her own daughter-in-law with an overdose of chloroform.”

“Right. And then she remembered the old revolver in the desk, and fired a shot into the girl and tried to make it look like a robbery.”

The counterman came and refilled our coffee cups.

“So,” I said, “what do you make of the confession?”

“I think it’s bullshit any way you look at it. Hell, she was grilled for almost three days, Heller—you know how valid that kind of confession is.”

I sipped my coffee. “She may have thought her son was guilty, and was covering up for him.”

“Well, her confession was certainly a self-serving one. After all, if she was telling the truth—or even if her confession was made up outa whole cloth, but got taken at face value—it’d make her guilty of nothing more than involuntary manslaughter.”

I nodded. “Shooting a corpse isn’t a felony.”

“But she had to know her son didn’t do it.”

“Why?”

March smirked. “He sent her a telegram; he was in Peoria, a hundred and ninety miles away.”

“Telegram? When did she receive this telegram?”

“Late afternoon. Funny thing, though.”

“Oh?”

“Initially, Dr. Wynekoop said she’d seen Earle last on November twelfth, when he left on a trip to the Grand Canyon, to take some photographs. But Earle came back to Chicago on the nineteenth, two days before the murder.”

I damn near spilled my coffee. “What?”

March nodded emphatically. “He and his mother met at a restaurant, miles from home. They were seen sitting in a back booth, having an intense, animated, but hushed, conversation.”

“But you said Earle was in Peoria when his wife was killed…”

“He was. He left Chicago, quietly, the next day—drove to Peoria. And from Peoria he went to Kansas City.”

“Do his alibis hold up? Peoria isn’t Mars; he could’ve established an alibi and made a round trip…”

“I thought you were working for the family?”

“I am. But if I proved Earle did it, they’d spring his mother.”

March laughed hollowly. “She’d be pissed off at you, partner.”

“I know. But I already got their retainer. So. Tell me. What did you hold back from the papers?”

It was standard practice to keep back a few details in a murder case; that helped clear up confessions from crazy people.

“I shouldn’t,” he said.

I handed him a folded fin.

He slipped it in the breast pocket of his uniform blouse.

“Hope for you yet,” I said.

“Two items of interest,” March said softly. “There were three bullets fired from that gun.”

“Three? But Rheta was shot only once…”

“Right.”

“Were the other bullets found?”

“No. We took that examining room apart. Then we took the house apart. Nothing.”

“What do you make of that?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Stege…if you got nerve enough.”

“You said two things.”

March swallowed slowly. “This may not even come out at the trial. It’s not necessarily good for the prosecution.”

“Spill.”

“The coroner’s physician picked up on something of interest, even before the autopsy.”

“What?”

“Rheta had syphilis.”

“Jesus. You’re kidding!”

“A very bad dose.”

I sat and pondered that.

“We asked Earle to submit to a physical,” March said, “and he consented.”

“And?”

“And he’s in perfect health.”

I took the El back to the Loop and got off at Van Buren and Plymouth, where I had an office on the second floor of the corner building. I lived there, since I kept an eye on the building in lieu of paying rent. Before I went up, I drank in the bar downstairs for half an hour so, chatting with bartender Buddy Gold, who was a friend. I asked him if he was following the Wynekoop case in the papers.

“That old broad is innocent,” the lumpy-faced ex-boxer said. “It’s a crime what they’re doin’ to her.”

“What are they doing to her?”

“I saw her picture in the paper, in that jailhouse hospital bed. Damn shame, nice woman like that, with her charities and all.”

“What about the dead girl? Maybe she was ‘nice.’”

“Yeah, but some dope fiend did it. Why don’t they find him and put him in jail?”

I said that was a good idea and had another beer. Then I went up to my office and pulled down the Murphy bed and flopped. It had been a long, weird day. I’d earned my fifteen bucks.

The phone woke me. When I opened my eyes, it was morning but the light filtering in around the drawn shades was gray. It would be a cold one. I picked up the receiver on the fifth ring.

“A-1 Detective Agency,” I said.

“Nathan Heller?” a gravelly male voice demanded.

I sat on the edge of the desk, rubbing my eyes. “Speaking.”

“This is Captain John Stege.”

I slid off the desk. “What can I do for you?”

“Steer clear of my case, you son of a bitch.”

“What case is that, Captain?”

Stege was a white-haired fireplug with dark-rimmed glasses, a meek-looking individual who could scare the hell out of you when he felt like it. He felt like it.

“You stay out of the goddamn Wynekoop case. I won’t have you mucking it up.”

How did he even know I was on the case? Had Officer March told him?

“I was hired by the family to try to help clear Dr. Wynekoop. It’s hardly uncommon for a defendant in a murder case to hire an investigator.”

“Dr. Alice Lindsay Wynekoop murdered her daughter-in-law! It couldn’t be any other way.”

“Captain, it could be a lot of other ways. It could be one of her boy friends; it could be one of her husband’s girl friends. It could be a break-in artist looking for drugs. It could be…”

“Are you telling me how to do my job?”

“Well, you’re telling me how not to do mine.”

There was a long pause.

Then Stege said: “I don’t like you, Heller. You stay out of my way. You go manufacturing evidence, and I’ll introduce you to every rubber hose in this town…and I know plenty of ’em.”

“You have the wrong idea about me, Captain,” I said. “And you may have the wrong idea about Alice Wynekoop.”

“Bull! She insured young Rheta for five grand, fewer than thirty days before the girl’s death. With double indemnity, the policy pays ten thousand smackers.”

I hadn’t heard about this.

“The Wynekoops have money,” I said. “A murder-for-insurance-money scheme makes no sense for a well-to-do family like that…”

“Dr. Wynekoop owes almost five thousand dollars back taxes and has over twenty thousand dollars in overdue bank notes. She’s prominent, but she’s not wealthy. She got hit in the crash.”

“Well…”

“She killed her daughter-in-law to make her son happy, and to collect the insurance money. If you were worth two cents as a detective, you’d know that.”

“Speaking of detective work, Captain, how did you know I was on this case?”

“Don’t you read the papers?”

The papers had me in them, all right. A small story, but well placed, on several front pages in fact; under a picture of Earle seated at his mother’s side in the jail hospital, the News told how the Wynekoops had hired a local private investigator, one Nathan Heller, to help prove Dr. Alice’s innocence.

I called Earle Wynekoop and asked him to meet me at the County Jail hospital wing. I wanted to talk to both of my clients.

On the El, I thought about how I had intended to pursue this case. Having done the basic groundwork with the family and witnesses, I would begin searching for the faceless break-in artist whose burglary had got out of hand, leading to the death of Rheta Wynekoop. Never mind that it made no sense for a thief to take a gun from a rolltop desk, make his victim un-dress, shoot her in the back, tuck her in like a child at bedtime, and leave the gun behind. Criminals did crazy things, after all. I would spend three or four days sniffing around the West Side pawn shops and re-sale shops, and the Maxwell Street market, looking for a lead on any petty crook whose drug addiction might lead to violence. I would comb the flophouses and bars hopheads were known to frequent, and….

But I had changed my mind, at least for the moment.

Earle was at his mother’s bedside when the matron left me there. Dr. Alice smiled in her tight, business-like manner and offered me a hand to shake; I took it. Earle stood and nodded and smiled nervously at me. I nodded to him, and he sat again.

But I stayed on my feet.

“I’m off this case,” I said.

“What?” Earle said, eyes wide.

Dr. Alice remained calm. Her appraising eyes were as cold as the weather.

“Captain Stege suggested it,” I said.

“That isn’t legal!” Earle said.

“Quiet, Earle,” his mother said, sternly but with gentleness.

“That’s not why I’m quitting,” I said. “And I’m keeping the retainer, too, by the way.”

“Now that isn’t legal!” Earle said, standing.

“Shut-up,” I said to him. To her, I said: “You two used me. I’m strictly a publicity gimmick. To help you make you look sincere, to help you keep up a good front…just like staying in the jail’s hospital ward, so you can pose for pitiful newspaper pics.”

Dr. Alice blinked and smiled thinly. “You’re revealing an obnoxious side, Mr. Heller, that is unbecoming.”

“You killed your daughter-in-law, Dr. Wynekoop. For Sonny Boy, here.”

Earle’s face clenched like a fist, and he clenched his fists, too, while he was at it. “I ought to…”

I looked at him hard. “I wish to hell you would.”

His eyes flickered at me, then he glanced at his mother. She nodded and motioned for him to sit again, and he did.

“Mr. Heller,” she said, “I assure you, I am innocent. I don’t know what you’ve been told that gave you this very false impression, but…”

“Save it. I know what happened, and why. You discovered, in one of your frequent on-the-house examinations of your hypochondriac daughter-in-law, that she really was ill. Specifically, she had a social disease.”

Anger flared in the doctor’s eyes.

“You could forgive Earle all his philandering…even though you didn’t approve. You did ask your daughter to talk to him about his excesses of drink and dames. But those were just misdemeanors. For your husband’s wife to run around, to get a nasty disease that she might just pass along to your beloved boy, should their marriage ever heat up again, well, that was a crime. And it deserved punishment.”

“Mr. Heller, why don’t you go. You may keep your retainer, if you keep your silence.”

“Oh, hitting a little close to home, am I? Well, let me finish. You paid for this. I don’t think it was your idea to kill Rheta, despite the dose of syph she was carrying. I think it was Earle’s idea. She wouldn’t give him a divorce, good Catholic girl that she was, and Earle’s a good Catholic, too, after all. It’d be hell to get excommunicated, right, Earle? Right, Mom?”

Earle was shaking; his hands clasped, prayerfully. Dr. Wynekoop’s wrinkled face was a stern mask.

“Here’s what happened,” I said, cheerfully. “Earle came to you and asked you to put the little woman to sleep…she was a tortured girl, after all, if it were done painlessly, why, it would be a merciful act. But you refused—you’re a doctor, a healer. It wouldn’t be right.”

Earle’s eyes were shifting from side to side in confirmation of my theory.

I forged ahead: “But Earle came to you again, and said, Mother dear, if you don’t do it, I will. I’ve found father’s old .32, and I’ve tried it…fired two test rounds. It works, and I know how to work it. I’m going to kill Rheta myself.”

Earle’s eyes were wide as was his mouth. I must have come very, very close, even perhaps to his very language. Dr. Alice continued to maintain a poker face.

“So, Mom, you decided to take matters in hand. When Earle came back early from his Grand Canyon photo trip, the two of you rendezvoused away from home—though you were seen, unfortunately—and came up with a plan. Earle would resume his trip, only go no farther than Peoria, where he would establish an alibi.”

Earle’s face was contorted as he took in every damning word.

“On the day of the murder,” I told her, “you had a final private consultation with your daughter-in-law…you overdosed her with chloroform, or smothered her.”

“Mr. Heller,” Dr. Alice said icily, looking away from me, “this fantasy of yours holds no interest whatsoever for me.”

“Well, maybe so—but Earle’s all perked up. Anyway, you left the body downstairs, closing the examining room door, locking it probably, and went on about the business of business as usual…cooking supper for your roomer, spending a quiet evening with her…knowing that Earle would be back after dark, to quietly slip in and, what? Dispose of the body somehow. That was the plan, wasn’t it? The unhappy bride would just disappear. Or perhaps turn up dead in ditch, or…whatever. Only it didn’t happen that way. Because Sonny Boy chickened out.”

And now Dr. Alice broke form, momentarily, her eyes turning on Earle for just a moment, giving him one nasty glance, the only time I ever saw her look at the louse with anything but devotion.

“He sent you a telegram in the afternoon, letting you know that he was still in Peoria. And that he was going to stay in Peoria. And you, with a corpse in the basement. Imagine.”

“You have a strange sense of humor, Mr. Heller.”

“You have a strange way of practicing medicine, Dr. Wynekoop. You sent your roomer, Miss Shaunesey, on a fool’s errand—sending her to a drug store where you knew the prescription couldn’t be filled. And you knew conscientious Miss Shaunesey would try another drug store, buying you time.”

“Really,” Dr. Alice said, dryly.

“Really. That’s when you concocted the burglary story. You’re too frail, physically, to go hauling a corpse anywhere. But you remembered that gun, across the hall. So you shot your dead daughter-in-law, adding insult to injury, and faked the robbery—badly, but it was impromptu, after all.”

“I don’t have to listen to this!” Earle said.

“Then don’t,” I said. “What you didn’t remember, Dr. Wynekoop, is that two bullets had already been fired from that weapon, when Earle tested it. And that little anomaly bothered me.”

“Did it,” she said, flatly.

“It did. Your daughter-in-law’s syphilis; the two missing bullets; and the hour you spent alone in the house, while the roomer was away and Rheta was dead in your examining room. Those three factors added up to one thing: your guilt, and your son’s complicity.”

“Are you going to tell your story to anyone?” she asked, blandly.

“No,” I said. “You’re my client.”

“How much?” Earle said, with a nasty, nervous little sneer.

I held my hands up, palms out. “No more. I’m keeping my retainer. I earned it.”

I turned my back on them and began to walk away.

From behind me, I heard her say, with no irony whatsoever, “Thank you, Mr. Heller.”

I turned and looked at her and laughed. “Hey, you’re going to jail, lady. The cops and the D.A. won’t need me to get it done, and all the good publicity you cook up won’t change a thing. I have only one regret.”

I made them ask.

Earle took the honors.

“What’s that?” Earle asked, as he stood there trembling; his mother reached her hand out and patted his nearest hand, soothing him.

I smiled at him—the nastiest smile I could muster. “That you won’t be going to jail with her, you son of a bitch.”

And go to jail she did.

But it took a while. A most frail-looking Dr. Alice was carried into the courtroom on the opening day of the trial; still playing for sympathy in the press, I figured.

Then, after eight days of evidence, Dr. Alice had an apparent heart seizure, when the prosecution hauled the blood-stained examination table into court. A mistrial was declared. When she recovered, though, she got a brand-new one. The press milked the case for all its worth; public opinion polls in the papers indicated half of Chicago considered Dr. Alice guilty, and the other half thought her innocent. The jury, however, was unanimous—it took them only fifteen minutes to find her guilty and two hours to set the sentence at twenty-five years.

Earle didn’t attend the trial. They say that just as Dr. Alice was being ushered in the front gate at the Woman’s Reformatory at Dwight, Illinois, an unshaven, disheveled figure darted from the nearby bushes. Earle kissed his mother goodbye and she brushed away his tears. As usual.

She served thirteen years, denying her guilt all the way; she was released with time off for good behavior. She died on July 4, 1955, in a nursing home, under an assumed name.

Earle changed his name, too. What became of him, I can’t say. There were rumors, of course. One was that he had found work as a garage mechanic.

Another was that he had finally re-married—a beautiful redhead.

Dr. Catherine Wynekoop did not change her name, and went on to a distinguished medical career.

And the house at 3406 West Monroe, the Death Clinic, was torn down in 1947. The year Dr. Alice was released.