An excerpt from
The Sketching Detective
I said, “As you probably know, Fat Joe asked me to try to help solve the murder.” Boy, what a dummy I am. These two had good reason to eliminate Sam if they knew he was the blackmailer, and yet here I was accosting the two of them in the dark. I had better be ready to do some world class sprinting myself. I told them of finding the photo — but not where — and of my learning that they were being blackmailed. With the aid of my flashlight, I showed them the picture of the two of them on the bench in fond embrace.
They rather sheepishly said they had each been contacted by mail and told to send a fairly small amount of cash each month to a box number in town or else copies of the photo would be sent to their respective spouses. They asked if I also planned to blackmail them. They said they had faithfully paid the requested amount each month but didn’t know if they could afford another set of payments.
My answer was, “Yes. I bet the two of you were out here on the evening when Sam was murdered. Your blackmail payment is that you tell me if you saw anything suspicious on that evening. If you do that, I will give you this photograph, but I must confess that I don’t know if there are other copies floating around somewhere. I think there probably are, and if I find any of them, I will pass them along to you. All this is under the condition that you will cooperate with me and tell me anything you know or learn in the future about the murder.” They readily agreed to these conditions.
