The Paperback Show Murders by Robert Reginald Page A

motives are, but something here just doesn’t add up. I’m going to find out what it is, and when I do, we’ll know the real truth, won’t we?”
    She didn’t flinch, didn’t move an inch. “Even you lie, you and that old lesbian bitch of yours. You don’t scare me. Brody’s done nothing wrong. I’ll give you a truth straight up, if you want one: you hurt him, and I’ll hurt you. Got it? Let this go. Just walk away.”
    â€œI can’t do that,” I said. “Margie’s a friend. She doesn’t deserve to be unjustly accused by the cops of something she didn’t do. I’ll keep on digging until I find the real dirt. And I don’t care whether you or Brody or anyone else gets nicked in the process.”
    â€œThen to hell with you! To hell with you all!” she said.
    â€œWhat’s, uh, the matter, Gully?” Brody asked.
    â€œNothing, my dear boy, nothing you need to worry yourself over. Your, uh, friend was just leaving.”
    â€œGoodbye,” he said, “good luck!” He raised a bottle of beer in my direction.
    That was the last time I ever saw him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    â€œ TEUFELSHAUS ”
    Saturday, March 26
    â€œâ€˜Take that!’ Sabatini said, lunging at his opponent, the nefarious Count Alger de Mandeville.
    â€œMandeville parried with the rare neuvième , and then lunged with the equally unusual seizième thrust, aimed at his enemy’s privateers.
    â€œIl Signore del Castello Raffaele countered with the terrible Teufelshaus maneuver, which not only blocked Le Comte’s odd attack, but skewered him like a Viennese sausage on the end of his hard steel blade.
    â€œâ€˜I’ve always wanted to try that!’ Sabatini said to his quivering Quixote, now coughing out his life on the black-and-white marble tiles of Castle Dreadlock.
    â€œâ€˜I’ve…never…heard…of...such...a…thing,’ the dying count gasped.
    â€œâ€˜I read it in a book somewhere,’ Il Signore said, ‘ Scélérate-Mouche !’
    â€œâ€˜ The…Villainous…Fly ?’ Mandeville died with a frown of perpetual puzzlement framing his florid face.
    â€œâ€˜Well, perhaps the accent…?’ The swordsman laughed out loud with a ‘ha, ha, ha’ of triumph—and then again—and again! For alas, it was very true that Sabatini was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad.”
    â€”The Lord of the Castle ,
    by Don Pedro Pistón (1960)
    It’s amazing how you can see things one way, and think you understand everything about a situation; and because you’ve misinterpreted or misread one small event, you get things completely wrong from the start. And then you continue down the wrong road until some strong shock jolts you wide awake again.
    I thought myself another Sam Spade or Ellery Queen or even, mon ami , that bon homme detective, Hercule Poirot. I should have realized I was just another bookseller who’d read too many ’50s paperbacks down the years.
    I wanted to talk to Freddie the Cur, but when I pounded on his door, also located on the dark side of the motel, there was no answer.
    Kitty Gaylord and Cole Spayze popped out of their room, two doors down from Freddie’s, and ambled toward me. “You looking for Freddie?” Cole said.
    â€œYou know where he is?” I asked.
    â€œHe usually hangs out this time of night in the Drinkery” (the Royal Crest’s bar, next door to the Eatery).
    Sure enough, I found him there plopped in the back of an oversized booth, slouched over a bloody Mary, like he was protecting it from being stolen.
    â€œWhadya want?” he growled up at me.
    â€œI saw your little run-in with Brody earlier this evening,” I said.
    â€œSo?”
    â€œYou seemed awfully, uh, anxious about something.”
    â€œThat drunken idiot,” Freddie said. “First he tells