The Cronin Matter - Ep 5

From Hollywood, it's time now for... Johnny Dollar. Dr. Bigby here. Dr. Bigby. I'm asking you for the second time now to come out to the Cronin place. I told you last night, Mr. Dollar. The circumstances are different now, a lot different.

We don't need a doctor. We need a coroner. A coroner? Phone out there without a border. It is. I'm at a forestry station a mile down the road. Jason Prell cut the wires last night before he was killed.

Jason killed? Shot to death during the storm. So that's how he ended up in Seoul. Yes, Mrs. Cronin said the same thing an hour or so before she died. No. Two. Her heart Mr. Dollar?

In a way, maybe... The dancing doll. Dr. Big B. Mrs. Cronin was murdered. Tonight and every weekday night, Bob Bailey and the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account. America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator...

Yours truly? Shani Dollar. From special investigator Johnny Dollar at the Cronin Estate Wells Falls, New York, to the home office, Shorty Mutual and Trust Company, Hartford, Connecticut. Assignment, the Cronin Matter, expense account, final page.

Item 13, $0.10. A half pack of cigarettes I left with a farmer who gave me a lift back from the forestry station. The price of my own feelings at the moment would have been lower.

About $0.08 lower, in fact. I brewed another pot of coffee and sat down to wait for Bigby. But this time I laced the coffee with Brandy. The sun was up by then, clearly the horizon, bringing a bright new morning and a brand new day.

The storm was long over, and the world sparkled and danced. But too much of the night was still with me, and the past still too much alive. And yet, maybe Dolly Cronin was better off.