Read Online The Judge Is Reversed by Frances Lockridge - Free Book Online Page A

loot-I-mean-captain. But there’s another thing, Nate. See if Blanchard had any tennis rackets lying around, huh? In—” He turned and looked toward the others for enlightenment. “Presses,” Jerry said.
    â€œPresses,” Sergeant Mullins said, to Detective Nathan Shapiro, supervising further investigations in the outsize apartment on Riverside Drive. “Wood gadgets that clamp—oh.” He listened. He said, “Yeah, Nate. That was the idea. Be seeing.” He hung up.
    â€œTwo rackets,” he said. “Both in presses.” Weigand raised eyebrows. “Yeah,” Mullins said. “Nate’s sent them along to the lab. Also, the girl’s on her way down.”
    They sipped, seated again, the racket on the floor by Sergeant Mullins’s chair.
    â€œOnly,” Pam North said, after some minutes, “it’s a little hard to picture. Somebody walks in and says, ‘By the way, Mr. Blanchard, have you got a tennis racket handy? Like to brain you with it if you have.’ And Blanchard says—”
    She did not finish her sentence. She finished her drink, instead.
    â€œIt seems stronger than usual,” she said. “Did you put in extra vermouth, Jerry?”

6
    Hilda Latham was slender, even in a green woolen suit. Her eyes were greenish-blue, and she was very pretty. And she had dark red hair. When the precinct man who had come down with her said, at the doorway, “This is Miss Latham, captain,” and, without being told, went out again and closed the door behind him, Bill Weigand looked quickly at Pam North. Quickly, just perceptibly, Pam nodded.
    â€œNice of you to come down, Miss Latham,” Bill said, and Pam said, for herself and Jerry, that they were the Norths and could they get Miss Latham something to drink? The girl shook her head. There was a tightness about her curving lips; there was, Pam thought, a wariness in her greenish eyes. But it’s quite likely, Pam told herself, that I’m seeing what I look for.
    â€œI want to do anything,” Hilda Latham said. Her voice was soft, yet very clear. “Anything I can. Only I don’t—” She did sit down, then. “It’s so hard to believe,” she said, and this time the soft clear voice trembled a little. “When the men told me—” She did not continue. She looked from one to the other.
    They appreciated her coming down, Bill told her again. He didn’t know, either, what she could tell them. Except that it might help them to talk to anyone who had known John Blanchard well, as he assumed—
    â€œAll my life, nearly,” Hilda Latham said, and her soft voice was steady again. “Since I was a little girl, anyway. He and father had been friends for years. And for a couple of years—no, three years—he and Aunt Susan—” She paused. She smiled faintly. The smile was without meaning. “I’m not keeping things very straight, am I?” she said. “Aunt Susan was Mrs. Blanchard. She died years ago. Not my aunt, really. Just—just a word a child uses. You know?”
    â€œOf course he does,” Pam said. “Won’t you change your mind about a drink, Miss Latham? Probably you could do with one.”
    â€œWell—” the red-haired girl said, and again arranged a smile on curved lips—a smile for convention’s sake. “Anything.”
    A martini would be all right; a martini would be fine.
    There was nothing, there had been nothing, to indicate that Hilda Latham remembered the Norths as among those who had watched the short, bitter scene in the garden bar at Forest Hills. There was no reason she should remember. She, not they, had been at the center, been the watched.
    â€œThank you,” she said, to Jerry, for the drink. “You’ll wonder how I happened to have a key to John’s apartment.”
    â€œAunt” Susan, but not “Uncle” John. But those