Date with a Dead Man Read online

  She wore a plain white blouse and a gray tweed skirt, serviceweight hose on her nice legs, and serviceable oxfords tied with neat bows. All of her clothing was of good quality, neat and worn without being shabby. There was an immediate first impression of reliability and strength about her slender figure, an exudation of good breeding and dignity which was strengthened by her modulated voice. “I’m very glad to meet you, Mr. Shayne.”

  A pair of clean, white knitted gloves lay on the edge of Shayne’s desk, beside a sturdy handbag of good leather, designed to last for as many more years as it had already been in service.

  She offered him a hand with well-shaped fingers and close-trimmed nails that were innocent of polish, and the flesh was firm inside his big hand, the grip strong without being masculine.

  He said, “I’m glad to meet you, Mrs. Wallace,” and meant it. He held the chair for her to reseat herself, went around his desk to sit down while Lucy settled herself on the other side with notebook open in front of her.

  Shayne said, “Start at the beginning and tell me why you’re here.”

  “I live in Littleboro, Mr. Shayne, and I had a telephone call, long distance from Miami, yesterday afternoon. A man who said his name was Jasper Groat. It was the first time I had heard the name, although I read all about him on the bus coming in last night. He gave me his address and told me he had news about my husband, Leon. He promised to tell me everything if I would come to see him this morning, but refused to say anything else over the telephone. He wouldn’t even say whether it was good news or not. Just that he had important information about Leon that he’d tell me this morning.”

  She leaned forward slightly, her fingers twisting together in her lap and the unnatural brightness of her eyes the only clues to the inner tension which she concealed so well.

  “I came at once, of course, arranging with a neighbor to stay with the twins. And when I went to his address this morning, Mrs. Groat told me… that her husband is missing also. Since last night. She claims she doesn’t know anything about his telephone call to me and has never heard of my husband. And she suggested I talk to you about it.”

  “You say your husband is missing too?”

  “Yes. It’s been a little over a year now. I’d better start back at the beginning and tell you everything. I’ve held it in so long. I just didn’t know… I haven’t dared talk to anyone…” Her voice was still carefully modulated, but there was an undertone of rising hysteria that warned Shayne she was close to the cracking point.

  He nodded encouragingly and got out a pack of cigarettes, leaned forward to offer her one and settled back to light one for himself when she shook her head and wet her lips desperately.

  He said, “You can talk to me freely, Mrs. Wallace. Take your time and tell me everything you think may be important.”

  “Leon and I were married a little over two years ago.” She dropped her gaze to her hands and slowly twisted a plain gold ring on her left hand. “Right after we both graduated from Agricultural College. We put all our money in a small truck farm near Littleboro and were completely happy. It’s what we both wanted to do. To live close to the soil and grow things and… raise a family.” She lifted her haunted eyes to Shayne’s and added breathlessly, “You must understand that. It’s important. We were in love and we were happy. There had never been anyone else for either of us after we first met when we were freshmen at college. Even when it was hard sledding on the farm and we had bad weather and two crop failures in succession. It was hard work, but we both loved hard work. We had a good farm and complete faith in ourselves. We knew there’d be crop failures and hard times, but we were prepared for that. But we were pinched for cash and Leon hated the idea of overextending his credit… and then suddenly I was pregnant. So Leon came to Miami to look for a job for a few months to get money enough to finance a new crop. And he was lucky. He found a fine job right away. Gardener for a rich family here in the city. The Hawleys.”

  She stopped abruptly and Shayne narrowed his eyes and exhaled twin streams of smoke from his nostrils. “The Hawleys? The same family…?”

  She nodded briefly. “The same family that is written about in the paper in the story about the airplane wreck. I remember Leon mentioning a son named Albert in one of his first letters. I don’t think he liked Albert much, but it was a good job and paid well. He had been there about two months when I got a letter from him, Mr. Shayne.” She reached for her handbag and unclasped it with shaking fingers and lifted out a long envelope which she pushed toward him. “You’d better read it yourself. You’re the first one… well, you can see why I never showed it to anyone else.”

  It was a pre-stamped envelope with an extra stamp pasted beside the printed one. It was addressed to Mrs. Leon Wallace, Littleboro, Florida in firmly inked letters, and there was a return address in the upper left corner: Leon Wallace, c/o Hawley, 316 Bayside Drive, Miami, Florida. The envelope was worn and somewhat gray with much handling. It was postmarked in Miami slightly less than a year previously.

  As Shayne opened the flap and took out a single sheet of plain, white bond paper, folded three times, Mrs. Wallace said, “There were ten one-thousand-dollar bills folded inside his letter, Mr. Shayne.”

  He paused to study her face. “Ten one-thousand-dollar bills?”

  She nodded. “Read it and see what you think.”

  He finished opening it and glanced at the salutation. “I’ll read it aloud, if I may, so Miss Hamilton can take it down.”

  She nodded again. “Of course.” She leaned back stiffly and closed her eyes, compressing her lips as Shayne read aloud the words which he knew must be indelibly engraved in her memory:

  “Darling:

  “Don’t be frightened by all this money. I haven’t robbed a bank or done anything really wrong. And it isn’t ‘hot.’ Better go to Ft. Pierce and deposit it in the bank there where they won’t ask embarrassing questions, and draw it out as you need it.

  “I have to go away, Myra, and I can’t tell you where. This will take care of you and pay for a new crop and the hospital bills for the baby. I can’t write you any more, and you’ll have to trust me.

  “Try not to worry, and don’t go to the police or anyone. Don’t ask any questions or try to find out anything. If you do exactly as I say, I will send you another thousand dollars every three months, but I will be in bad trouble and there will be no more money if you upset the apple-cart.

  “Believe me, darling, I have thought it all out and this is best for you and me, and for the baby. This is more money than I could earn in a year.

  “You can tell people I’ve re-enlisted in the army or something. Or that I’ve gone out West to another job.

  “Just don’t worry! And don’t try to find out any more than I’ve told you. I love you and I always will. You will understand when it is all over.

  “Kiss the baby for me when he comes… and please try to trust me to know what’s best. Your loving husband.

  LEON”

  There was silence in the office when Shayne finished reading the letter. It was broken by the crackle of brittle paper as he carefully refolded the sheet into its original creases. Mrs. Wallace opened her eyes wide and swallowed. “Well? What should I have done, Mr. Shayne?” She turned to look at Lucy intensely. “You’re a woman, Miss Hamilton. What would you have done under those circumstances?”

  Lucy shook her head slowly, her brown eyes warm with understanding. “If I loved my husband… and trusted him… I guess I would have done the same as you. But what does it mean, Michael?” she went on swiftly. “Ten thousand dollars! And another thousand every three months.”

  He shook his red head at Lucy, asked Myra Wallace, “Did you hear anything further?”

  “Only an envelope every three months, mailed from Miami and with another thousand-dollar bill inside.” Her voice trembled slightly. “It was addressed in his handwriting and had the same return address, but there wasn’t a scrap of writing inside. Just one bill. I’ve had thr
ee of them now. The last one about a month ago.”

  Shayne replaced the letter in its envelope. “And last night Jasper Groat telephoned to say he had information about your husband… just before he disappeared?”

  “That’s right. But he didn’t tell me what sort of information. Whether Leon was alive or dead.”

  Shayne said, “I think it’s time you did some checking with the Hawleys.”

  “I did! I telephoned out there this morning from Mrs. Groat’s apartment and asked for their gardener, Mr. Leon Wallace. Some servant answered. A Negro, I’m sure. And he said they hadn’t had any gardener for at least a year… and he didn’t know anything about my husband. That’s when I decided… I should come to you, Mr. Shayne. I’ve heard about you, of course,” she went on breathlessly. “Everybody in Florida has, I guess. I can pay you. I’ve saved most of the money Leon sent me. Just find him for me. I don’t care what he’s done. The farm’s doing fine now. We can pay all the money back.”

  Shayne said, “I already have one client in this case, Mrs. Wallace. It seems to me that the disappearance of your husband and Jasper Groat are tied together somehow.” He hesitated, tugging at his left ear lobe and furrowing his forehead. “Have you kept those other envelopes the quarterly payments arrived in?”

  “Yes. I have them at home. But they’re just like this one, Mr. Shayne. Addressed in ink in Leon’s handwriting. So I know he was alive and here in Miami just a month ago.”

  Shayne said, “I’d like to have the envelopes, Mrs. Wallace. And a picture of your husband.”

  “I have one at home I can send you.”

  “Do that as soon as you get back. In the meantime, describe him to me.”

  “He’s twenty-four. Just my age. He was a little late graduating because he elected to do his selective service between high school and college. He’s about five-ten, and slender and dark-haired. He…”

  She broke down suddenly, bowed her face into her hands and her sobbing was loud in the silent office.

  Shayne got up. He lifted one shoulder expressively at Lucy, jerking his head toward Myra Wallace, and, as she closed her notebook and hurried around to the young wife, he said, “Get her address and phone number, Lucy. And be sure she understands she’s to send us those other envelopes and a picture of her husband as soon as she gets home. You see she gets off all right. I think she said something about leaving a pair of twins at home in the care of a neighbor.”

  “Of course, Michael. Where will you be?”

  “Right now,” said Shayne grimly, “I have several questions to put to the Hawley family.” He walked out of the office angrily, wondering again, as he had so often wondered in the past, how any man could be so utterly obtuse as to suppose that a woman like Myra Wallace would prefer for one moment all the money in Fort Knox to her own husband and the father of her child.

  Her children, damn it! Twins. And for a few thousand lousy bucks some goddam fool male human being calmly advised his wife to stop worrying about him and enjoy spending the money.

  4

  Shayne’s first stop was police headquarters and the Missing Persons Bureau presided over by Sergeant Piper who had been in charge for twenty years and carried more information in his head than was contained in the filing cases behind him.

  Piper was bald-headed and red-faced, and he shook his head when Shayne stopped in front of his chest-high desk. “Nothing on that Jasper Groat you called in about last night, Mike. You ready for us to go to work on it?”

  “Not until I do a little more checking and talk to his wife again. But I do want to know if you ever had a Leon Wallace in your files.”

  “Leon Wallace?” The sergeant wrinkled his high-domed forehead and shook his head. “Nope. Want I should check?”

  Shayne said, “I know you don’t need to check, Piper. It wouldn’t have been more than a year ago.”

  “Then it’s positively no,” said Piper.

  Shayne hesitated. “The name of Hawley strike any chord?”

  Again Piper shook his head positively.

  Shayne said, “I’ll let you know the moment we decide Groat goes on your official list.”

  He went out and drove to the Daily News Building on Biscayne Boulevard and went up in an elevator to the City Room. With the early edition already coming off the presses, there wasn’t much activity in the room, and Shayne found Timothy Rourke relaxed at his desk in a corner. The reporter leaned back with a wide yawn on his cadaverous face and dropped his feet off another chair so the redhead could sit down. “Got something, Mike?”

  “I don’t know. Is Joel Cross around?”

  “Not likely.” Rourke glanced across the room at a vacant desk and shook his head. “Since he got a by-line, Joel can’t do much work here in the hurly-burly of working reporters.” Rourke’s tone was distasteful. “He creates better at home is the way I hear it.”

  “Has he been in this morning?”

  “I think so. Turned in a follow-up on the plane rescue he did yesterday.”

  “Heard anything about a diary kept by one of the rescued men that the News may be printing?”

  “Plenty,” said Rourke. “Read Cross’s story this morning. Deathless literature, no less. We got us a scoop, my boy.” He yawned again.

  Shayne said, “I understand the Hawley family refused to be interviewed about the death of their son on the life raft.”

  “Stuck-up society bastards,” said Rourke feelingly. “Don’t want any reporters intruding on their grief.”

  “What do you know about them?”

  “The Hawley clan? Nothing personally. Rich and exclusive as all get-out because the two brothers, Ezra and Abel, landed here from the Mayflower forty years , ago and established a trading post where they gypped the Indians out of a fortune.”

  Shayne said, “Ezra is the one who died a week or so ago?”

  “That’s right. Abel kicked off six years ago.” Timothy Rourke gathered his feet under him and sat erect, his sunken eyes studying Shayne’s face keenly. “Why this sudden interest in the Hawleys?”

  “Couple of things. There should be a good file on them in the morgue.” Shayne kept his voice carefully casual, but as he stood up, Rourke lounged to his feet with him.

  “That’s right. And I’ll go along and help you find whatever the hell you’re looking for.”

  Shayne didn’t argue as they went out a side door and down steep stairs to the file room. They were old friends and had worked together on many cases in the past, and Shayne explained.

  “I don’t know what I’m looking for, Tim. Two little things. One that sticks in my craw is that the Hawleys made no effort at all to contact either of the two survivors of the airplane who nursed their son on the life raft for several days. The other is a gardener named Leon Wallace who was working for them about a year ago. That name ring a bell?”

  Rourke shook his head as they entered a long, quiet room with rows of filing cabinets stretching away into the dimness from a desk where they were greeted by a gray-haired woman smoking a cigarette in a long holder.

  Rourke lifted a thin hand and said, “Don’t disturb your butt, Emmy. We’ll get what we want.” He led the way down an aisle and stopped in front of a file to draw out the second drawer. He lifted out a bulky cardboard folder loaded with an accumulation of press-clippings on the activities of the Hawley family for many years, and pulled the cord of a bright overhead light as he opened it for Shayne. “Where do we start?”

  Shayne said, “About a year back. A little more, I guess. Let’s jump off with Albert’s marriage which occurred shortly before he was inducted into the army.”

  “Thereby breaking the old lady’s heart and practically bringing on a state of armed insurrection in Florida,” said Rourke cheerfully. “It won’t be recorded in the news columns, but I remember the hell the old lady raised when Uncle Sam crooked his finger at her darling Albert. There were plenty other ordinary citizens who could serve in the army just as well.” He was flipping over the clipp
ings with a practiced hand. “It was common gossip around town that the old dame practically performed a shotgun wedding to get her son married off, hoping he’d beat the draft that way. But the draft board took a dim view of it and yanked him in anyhow. Here’s the bride.”

  Shayne leaned forward to look at a wedding picture taken on the steps of a local church. He said, “It wouldn’t take a shotgun to urge me into her bed.”

  Rourke said indifferently, “I never did hear which one the old lady used the shotgun on. Here’s a family group if you’re interested.”

  It was a picture taken at an outdoor wedding reception at the groom’s home and showed a thin, aquiline-faced matriarch on the lawn under a palm tree, surrounded by the bride and groom, another couple identified as her daughter Beatrice and husband, Gerald Meany, and a tall, hawk-faced old gentleman whom Rourke said was Uncle Ezra.

  “The blood was thinned out by the time it reached the younger generation,” Rourke said dryly. “That Beatrice, now. There’s quite a dossier on her if you want to go back further. Quite a nympho before she snagged husband Gerald. Afterward too, maybe. I’ve heard stories…”

  Shayne shrugged, turning the clippings. “The hell of it is, I don’t know what I’m looking for. Would a nympho tie in with a disappearing gardener?”

  “Why not? If the old lady decided he was what her daughter needed.”

  Shayne stopped at another picture of Albert Hawley, evidently snapped at the same time but not quite the same pose as the one he’d seen in the Herald last night. He glanced at the story beneath the picture and found it had been taken just prior to Albert’s departure for induction into the army. There was a statement, attributed to Albert Hawley, to the effect that he expected no special consideration whatsoever while undergoing boot training, and that he felt it would be a privilege to accept the anonymity of army life and share the hardships of his fellow draftees as a part of Democracy’s challenge to the evil forces of Communism.