Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for September 02, 2023

a collectible like an old baseball card like that and laying around like it is?… even a battered one like that?…

Someone spit terbaccy on the card!

One boring week done, one to go.

Sounds like a Firestrike date,

Good morning™, canny card catchers !

Finally !  Sam gets a bit part of some significance. Tracy is actually examing evidence and has already taken note of important features. :-)

Good morning™, all!

Keep in mind that this strip is drawn to be printed in black and white. I highly suspect that the speckles on the top left corner of the card are actually splatters of blood. It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t translate all that well by colouring inside the lines.

The baseball card is the item I identified as “dangling precariously on the edge of the bench” a few days ago…wonder if they’ll get around to the envelope under the bench and the puddle of water…maybe remain TRIED to swing at him with the bat but the victim slipped on the puddle, banged his skull on the bench, the slammed face first onto the floor…the prints on the barrel of the bat may prove to be the victim’s, showing he yanked the bat out of demain’s hand then possibly turned…slipping on the puddle

Tracy has great eyesight to be able to see latent prints on the barrel of the bat.

I’m still confident that if the story line makes sense (recognizing they often don’t) that Phil is being framed. No collector would risk part of his memorabilia collection by using it as a murder weapon.

The Nuremoh card is just behind Honus Wagner as a collectible!

Or maybe he got the Nuremoh card from Art Dekko. And it’s a fake?

I think the butler – er, I mean, the manager – did it!

I guess the Knights’ ownership is willing to let the manager handle this for the front office. How…unlikely.

Mr. Moustache is looking scared in P-1. He’s guilty. GUILTY I TELL YOU!!

1-DT: This end of the bat has poo on it. I wonder how? MANAGER: Errr…doh dee doh

2-SAM: SO DOES THIS CARD THAT’S BEEN SITTING HERE UNNOTICED!

3-MANAGER: Oh – those Ted Turner cards are everywhere. As owner of this farm club, he makes everyone carry one at all times. We use ‘em for T.P. sometimes. DT: Ted played pro ball? MANAGER: No. He likes to think he did.

DT: Like Sam likes to think he’s a Detective! HAR HAR! SAM: HA HA! Wait…

Keep that piece of evidence at a safe distance, Tracy, or your chin will slice through the plastic if not the bat.

Hard to believe a killer, even one who committed the crime in a burst of anger, would leave the murder weapon just laying around. Of course, this could be an attempt to frame Demain for the crime.

Hans Wagner,Mickey Mantle rookie and now Nuremoh. What a motive for murder.

Tracy can eyeball fingerprints on the barrel of a wood bat?

Whether the agent is blood, tobacco spittle, or anything else, the Nuremoh collector card has been defaced, and that might have enraged a “worshipper” (as we’ve been told Phil Demain was) into irrational acts of violence, even to the point of using the collectible bat as a weapon. He is still, at the end of Week One of Two, looking like the prime suspect. But his offense might be knocked down to Homicide 2 (unpremeditated) or even Manslaughter….