Warning Sign: A Dirk Malone Story

Written for Sunday Whirl Wordle . Our host is
Brenda Warren; her prompt words for this week are
shown below. Here’s where the prompts took me.

ravenous, lurked, shame, space, found, glass,
hollow, flicker, rattled, slip, red, and crash

The dame walked in like trouble always does …. uninvited and irresistible. Her lipstick was like a red warning sign that should have been heeded but never was.

“Mr. Malone, I’m Beverly Bennett” she said, as if that was supposed to mean something to me. Her voice had that practiced hollow quality, the kind that leaves space between words for lies to breed and grow. She slid into the chair across from my desk, black gloves peeling a cigarette from her case with elegant precision.

I found my glass of bourbon before I found my manners.

“It’s my husband,” she began, smoke curling from her lips like a confession. “Edward had a very lucrative business. Now he’s been missing for three days. His partner, Victor Lansing, was the last person to see him alive.” Something flickered behind her eyes …. not worry exactly, not fear …. something colder. “Victor must have killed him for the money.”

“What makes you so sure your husband’s dead, Mrs. Bennett?”

“Call it female intuition.”

Nothing rattled this one. That should’ve told me something. No, scratch that. That should’ve told me everything.

She reached into her purse, slid an enveloped across my desk, and walked out of my office with the cool slink of a cougar. I should have felt shame taking her envelope but business is business …. no matter how bad it stinks.

I tracked Victor Lansing to a warehouse on Hudson Street where he lurked among the shipping containers. From where I sat, he looked nervous, behaving like a guilty man …. or a frightened one.

I let that distinction slip by me. Stupid mistake.

A loud crash came from inside the warehouse. I kicked in the door and found Lansing slumped over a barrel, a bullet in his back and a crumpled piece of paper in his hand. It was a note.

She killed Edward and now she’s after me.

I drove to the address on the envelope Mrs. Bennett had given me; the place was cleaned out and she was gone.

The most dangerous cases always start the same …. a beautiful woman, a missing husband, and a private investigator too ravenous for his next paycheck to notice he was never the detective in this story.

He was just the alibi.

NAR©2026
#MLMM
#Wordle

This is “Hungry Like The Wolf” by Duran Duran

Wordle 751

^{Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.}