THE WAX MANNEQUIN:
Sydney’s cigarette glowed like a dying star in the dim interrogation room. That knowing smile—smile-the one that made guilty men sweat—played across her lips.
“You’re not going to like this,” she warned.
Mahoney leaned forward. “Try me.”
A slow drag. Smoke curled from her nostrils. Then the bombshell:
“Stanwood’s body was never in that car.”
Sylvester barked a laugh. “So Bowich’s a liar now? That’s your play?”
“Bowich saw what he was meant to see,” Sydney corrected, tapping ash. “A wax dummy. Our killer’s macabre puppet show.”
Mahoney’s cigar froze midway to his lips. “A what?”
“Think about it.” Sydney’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “The perfect frame job. Knock Stanwood out with ether—just a shoulder graze from Catherine’s gun for authenticity. Plant evidence in her room. Then stage the grand finale: a wax corpse with a dagger in its chest, positioned where Bowich would ‘recognize’ his old friend.”
She leaned back, watching the pieces click together in their minds.
“The tear on the coat’s right side? That’s how you know it was a mannequin. Real killers don’t stab wax figures from awkward angles unless they want the blade visible through a car window.”
Mahoney’s face darkened. “You’re saying this bastard kept Stanwood drugged somewhere as insurance? If the frame failed, he’d ‘rescue’ him and play hero?”
Sydney nodded. “And if it worked…” She mimed a dagger plunge.
Three Days Later – Stanwood Mansion
The house of shadows welcomed its new occupant.
Sydney moved through the halls like a specter—measuring blood spatter with tape, scrutinizing dust motes under a microscope, occasionally murmuring to the brown candle flickering in her room. The staff eyed her with suspicion.
Especially Philip Buntler.
“Scientific detective?” He’d sneered that first night. “More like carnival fortune-teller.”
Sydney merely smiled and adjusted her microscope.
Now, as midnight crept toward dawn, she examined a peculiar wax residue scraped from Stanwood’s study floor. The candlelight caught something metallic embedded in the sample—
A tiny fleck of gold.
The exact shade used in high-end wax figures.
Somewhere in the house, a floorboard creaked.
Sydney’s hand drifted toward her revolver.
Right on schedule.
TO BE CONTINUED…
(Adapted from Earl Stanley Gardner’s “The Mystery of the Missing Body”)