Chapter 15
EVEN as Cellini Smith and Ira Haenigson rounded the side alley that gave into the stage door of the Paree Burlesque, they could hear those too-familiar sounds and knew they were late. Cries of horror and dismay, babbling voices protesting their innocence or another's guilt, questions of curiosity or morbidity, impotent, futile oaths, promises of revenge.
Chloe lay dead— beyond doubt this time— not ten feet from the stage door. From the radio cops, who had just arrived, and the burlesque performers, Cellini dully gathered what information there was.
The candy butcher had gone into the alley for a breath of air a little while before and had found the body. It could have been lying there for at least forty minutes, for nobody had entered or left the theatre by the backstage duri
