RANSVESTIA

Kim spoke suddenly, harshly. "Didn't you hear it all on the P.A.?"

Calesi shook his head. "It's not on," he said. "We disconnected it earlier, like you said, sergeant."

"You did right," Bud said, with a thin smile, feeling Kim and Jill staring at him. "I doubt Sheriff Gantsby intended to kill anyone else."

"He was a fine cop to the end," said Bud. "He couldn't see an inno- cent person arrested for a crime he'd committed himself."

Hamilton's battered, old desk had several thick folders stacked beside the typewriter. He sighed, and hung his coat over the back of the chair.

"Hey, Bud," Monroe, newly promoted to Detective, trying to be affable with everyone, swivelled away from the report he was typing, and asked, "Did you have a good holiday?"

"Kind of," said Bud cautiously, thinking of the one day he'd spent in repeated conversations with district attorneys, judges and police officials before he'd caught the midnight plane home.

"An open-and-shut case, I heard," Monroe was smiling, showing strong, white teeth in a well-tanned face.

"It's closed now," said Hamilton, picking up the first folder. Just then, Lieutenant Frank Matek came into the office, a surly expression on his face. Monroe eased back to his typing and his machine began to clack furiously.

"Got word from Tremayne," said Matek sourly. "Thanks for our assistance and there won't be any need for you to return for the inquest. Seems like they hardly needed you at all.”

Hamilton was reading rather than listening. But as Matek spoke, he thought of Kim, in a printed summer dress, quite low cut, a trim femi- nine figure with soft brunette hair blowing about his powdered cheeks waving to Hamilton as the line moved out to the plane, the only one to think that he would need a ride to the airport, not a bit out of place among the wives and sweethearts waving goodbye to other travel- lers. "No," he said, "they didn't need me at all."

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