Mason deciphered, “Sincerely yours. Winnie Joyce.”
“Perhaps the photograph had been substituted before you packed,” Mason suggested.
“No. I noticed particularly. You see, my daughter’s happiness has been on my mind ever since I heard this about the Products Refining Company. I looked at her picture when I packed it and hoped that she’d always be happy and smiling as she was in that picture.”
“Well,” Mason said, “there’s no use beating around the bush. Go to your husband. Call for a showdown. After all, Mrs. Newberry, you may be alarming yourself needlessly. He may have won the money in a lottery.”
“But I have talked with him. It doesn’t get me anywhere. He simply says he won some money in a lottery. That’s all I can get out of him.”
“Did you ever accuse him of embezzling money from the Products Refining Company?” Mason asked.
“Not in so many words, but I intimated that I thought he might have.”
“And what did he say?”
“Told me I was crazy, that he’d won a lottery.”
“You don’t know what lottery?”