This Is It, Michael Shayne ms-19 Read online

  Shayne straightened the one finger holding the bills and they floated to the floor. “Where were you between six-thirty and seven tonight?” he asked abruptly.

  He thought Edwin Paisly was going to cry. His mouth primped up and he said, “Oh, you! What does it matter where I was?” and his tone figuratively stamped its foot.

  “It may matter a great deal,” Shayne grated.

  “You’re supposed to be a detective,” Paisly snapped. “Find out for yourself, nosey.” He reached down and snatched the two bills from the floor and hurried out of the lobby.

  Shayne debated a moment whether or not to follow him, decided against it, and took the elevator up to his apartment.

  Chapter Four

  This Is Murder

  Shayne was humming when he unlocked his apartment door and stepped inside. He heeled the door shut and stopped humming to raise bushy, questioning brows at Timothy Rourke, lolling in a big chair in the middle of the room with a highball glass in his hand.

  “What are you doing here, Tim?” Then he registered what he hoped to be both surprise and pleasure when he saw Chief Gentry’s solid figure occupying more than a third of the couch. He was chewing on the frayed butt of a black cigar and nursing a half-filled shot glass.

  “And our estimable chief of police. Glad to see you’re making yourselves at home. I know you’ll excuse me-” He started for the bedroom, stripping the polo shirt over his head. Tossing it through the open door, he turned and asked:

  “By the way, Tim, did Miss Morton turn up at the hotel?”

  “Hold on, Mike,” Gentry rumbled, forestalling Rourke’s reply. “What’s your rush?”

  Shayne grinned wryly and rubbed the red bristles on his face. “I don’t mean to be inhospitable, Will, but I’ve got to grab a fast shave and change. There’s more liquor-”

  “You’re not going anywhere, Mike. Not right now.” Gentry spoke flatly, not turning his head.

  “I thought this was a social call,” said Shayne with pretended consternation. “There’s a dame waiting for me and I promised to make it fast.”

  “Miss Morton’s secretary?”

  Shayne strode to the couch and faced Gentry, his back toward Rourke. “See here, Will-” He caught the chief’s eye and made frantic gestures to indicate he didn’t want to answer questions in the reporter’s presence.

  Gentry was not impressed. He rolled his rumpled eyelids down, studied the soggy, flattened end of the cigar butt, and asked, “Where is she, Mike? What have you and she been up to?”

  “Dropping in a few places trying to get a line on Sara Morton,” Shayne told him. He made a half-turn and snapped, “What the hell, Tim? Did you call in the cops because I stole your girl?”

  “Cut the clowning,” growled Gentry. “Where is Miss Lally?”

  “What’s it to you?” Shayne growled back. “Miss Lally is free, white, and well past the age of consent.”

  Gentry leaned forward and dropped the cigar butt in an ash tray, grunted as he leaned back, and said with deceptive mildness, “I want to question her as a murder suspect.”

  “Murder? Beatrice a suspect?” Shayne said angrily, rumpling his hair. But Gentry wasn’t looking. He was calmly lighting a cigar. Shayne turned to Rourke and demanded, “What in hell is this about, Tim?”

  Rourke’s slaty eyes were on his nearly empty glass. He said quietly, “Sara Morton is dead. She was evidently dead when you and Beatrice and I tried to rouse her around nine o’clock in her hotel room.”

  “Suicide?”

  “I said murder, Mike,” Gentry reminded him.

  “But you didn’t say Sara Morton.”

  Gentry glanced up at Shayne with eyes like streaked granite. “Suicides don’t jab a pair of long-bladed shears into the jugular and then go in the bathroom to wash the blood off the weapon, carry it back in the room, and then lie down to die. Not without dripping a little blood along the way, they don’t.”

  Shayne swore softly and went to the wall liquor cabinet, got out a bottle of cognac, and poured three ounces in a wine glass. He drank half of it and took the glass with him as he resumed his standing position between Rourke and Gentry.

  “How can you suspect Miss Lally, Will? She was in the Tidehaven bar with Tim from the time she came down after talking with Miss Morton through a locked door until I got there. Right, Tim?”

  “Every minute-except maybe two minutes when she went to the ladies’ room,” Rourke declared. “I can swear it wasn’t more than two minutes. Not time enough by any stretch of the imagination to get up to the fourteenth floor and back, much less do the job in fourteen-twenty.”

  “There you are, Will,” said Shayne. He sat down beside the red-faced, stolid chief of police. “We know she was alive at six when her secretary talked to her?”

  “How?”

  “Hell, she didn’t talk through the door with her throat cut,” Shayne flared.

  “We have only the secretary’s word that she talked. Doc Cantrell says it’s quite possible Sara Morton was killed shortly before six.”

  Shayne finished his cognac and thumped the glass down on a table. “Is that your only reason to suspect her-because Cantrell says she could have died before six?”

  “There’s lots more.” Gentry took his time blowing a puff of cigar smoke, turned his head to study Shayne suspiciously. “You seem to have fallen hard-and fast, Mike.”

  “Take off her glasses and she’s not bad,” he said tersely. “What’s the ‘lots more’?”

  “The death-room door was double locked,” Gentry rumbled placidly. “Only exit for the murderer was through the adjoining room, which Miss Lally used for an office. She has the only key.”

  “You don’t need a key to get out of a room,” Shayne protested with moody impatience.

  “According to Miss Lally’s story, Miss Morton wouldn’t unlock the door even for her at six,” Gentry pointed out. “Said she wasn’t coming out until she received a phone call. Do you think she unlocked the door to let her murderer in?”

  “Do you suppose the murderer announced his intention when he knocked on her door?” Shayne countered.

  “But it was someone she knew,” the chief stated flatly. “She wasn’t afraid of whoever killed her. Just stood there with her back turned and let her pick up the shears and plunge them in the side of her throat.”

  “Or him,” said Shayne.

  “It looks like a woman’s job to me. A sudden outburst of rage. Those shears are the sort of thing a woman would grab up to do the job.”

  “That’s damned little evidence to support suspicion of murder,” Shayne contended.

  “There’s more. And I’d rather hoped you could supply me with the clincher. Why was Miss Morton so anxious to get hold of you all day? We know she phoned your office three times.”

  “I was fishing all day. I went straight to my office from the boat and found a memo listing three calls from her. That was eight-thirty-when I called her room and had her paged. Tim must have told you about it. He was with Miss Lally when she took my call in the lobby.”

  “Will knows about that,” Rourke said. “But you didn’t tell us you hadn’t talked to her, Mike. I had the impression you had.”

  “Too bad you didn’t,” Gentry said. “I’m pretty sure she suspected Miss Lally planned to murder her. She would have told you all about it if you’d been in your office where you belonged. That’s the trouble with you damned private eyes. No system-no regular office hours.”

  “What makes you so sure Morton suspected Miss Lally?” Shayne asked. “Where’s your motive?” He sat bent forward with bare forearms on his knees, and he spoke with sharp impatience.

  “They had a fight around two o’clock this morning,” Gentry told him calmly. “Around two a.m. Did Lally tell you about that?”

  “She had no reason to. If she had known Miss Morton was dead and she was under suspicion-What did they fight about?” he broke off abruptly.

  “That’s what I want to ask Miss Lally.
It must have been a pretty hot brawl. The party in the adjoining room called down and complained about the noise. He said they were quarreling about money. When the night manager went up, Miss Lally was in the connecting room, crying and packing a bag. Miss Morton had the manager move her secretary to another room. Said she didn’t want her sleeping in fourteen twenty-two any longer.”

  Shayne scowled heavily and tugged at his left ear lobe. “I thought the adjoining room was just used as an office. Beatrice Lally is down the hall in fourteen-oh-eight.” He appealed to Rourke. “You stopped in with us when she got her wrap, Tim.”

  “She was moved into that room a little after two this morning,” Gentry said grimly. “Up to that time she slept in the connecting bedroom as well as using it to work in. That’s something else Miss Lally didn’t think to tell you,” he ended with heavy irony.

  “I didn’t have time to get her life story,” Shayne snapped, glowering at the faded dungarees. “I have a hunch she might get a little more intimate if you’d let me change and keep my date with her.”

  “Where is she, Mike?” rumbled Gentry. “She hasn’t gone back to the hotel. The Tidehaven is covered, and my men have instructions to call me here the minute she turns up.”

  “She didn’t go back to the hotel. I dropped her off at a friend’s to have a few drinks while I came home to clean up.”

  “What friend?”

  “Now wait, Will. I’ll see that you get her for questioning just as soon as you convince me there’s any real evidence tying her in with murder. Just because they had a scrap and Morton had her moved to another room-” He shook his head and turned to Rourke.

  “How about it, Tim? You knew Sara Morton. Wouldn’t you guess she was difficult to get along with?”

  “Like a buzz saw,” said Tim emphatically. “She was hot stuff and knew she was hot stuff. The incomparable Sara-and don’t you forget it-was her theme song.”

  “There you are, Will.” Shayne spread out both hands. “It’s natural for two women like Morton and Lally to get on each other’s nerves when they’ve worked so closely together for ten years.”

  “Don’t forget their argument last night was about money, Mike,” said Gentry.

  “So what? You’ve got the word of the man in the next room. Maybe Miss Lally wanted a raise.” Shayne’s voice was harsh with anger.

  Shayne and Gentry had worked successfully together for many years, and now, seeing Shayne’s anger and impatience rising, Gentry became calm. “I don’t think it was that, Mike. The tie-up is this: The best we can figure, the murder was committed during a quarrel over money.”

  “What do you base that on?”

  “This.” Gentry took a rumpled half of a five-hundred-dollar bill from his vest pocket and handed it to Shayne. “It was in the dead woman’s hand,” he said quietly. “Looks like the murderer tried to snatch it away and tore it in two, then got panicky and killed the dame and left her lying there without taking time to pry her fingers open to get out the other half of what they were fighting over.”

  Shayne placed the half of the bill on the table and smoothed it with the tips of his fingers, turning it over and over, pretending to examine it carefully. “One thing more,” he said. “How’d you happen to find the body?”

  “I found it,” Rourke said. “I had another drink at the bar and got worried after you went off with Bea. I was sore, too, I guess.” Rourke paused for a short, mirthless laugh, then continued: “I got to brooding over being stood up by one dame and then having another one walk out on me with a lug like you, Mike. Anyhow, I was tight enough to doubt that la Morton would walk out of the hotel without even stopping by the bar to say hello and good-by. So I hunted up the house dick and made him take me up to her room. When his passkey wouldn’t unlock the door, he tried to brush me off. Said the reason she had her door bolted on the inside was because she didn’t want to be bothered. His tone of voice intimated she particularly didn’t want to be bothered with a drunken bum like me.

  “I got mad then,” the reporter went on, his slaty eyes avoiding Shayne. “I told him I knew her well, and was afraid she might have taken an overdose of sleeping-pills. I pointed out that she wouldn’t have left her room with the lights on. He could see the light through the transom, and he got scared and finally unlocked the adjoining room. We went in through the bathroom-and there she was.”

  Shayne swore softly and looked surprised. He was relieved to learn that their plan had worked and the police had no suspicion they’d both seen the body previously.

  Holding the bill out to Gentry, he asked, “What would you do to the guy you caught with the other half of this, Will?”

  “Lock him up for murder.”

  A slow grin twisted Shayne’s wide mouth. “I’ve been trying to decide whether to hold this out on you or not. I guess I’d better confess.” He reached in the pocket of his dungarees and got out the special delivery envelope from Sara Morton. He fished out his half of the bill and handed them both to Gentry. “See if they fit.”

  Timothy Rourke leaped to his feet and came over to watch Gentry fit the pieces together. “Did you get that off Beatrice, Mike?” he exclaimed incredulously. “For God’s sake-”

  “Spill it,” Will Gentry said grimly, rolling his rumpled eyelids up slowly and turning to Shayne. “And it better be good if you don’t like the inside of my jail.”

  Shayne hesitated, tapping the envelope with its enclosures against his knee, then said decisively, “Wait one minute while I check what I hope will be an alibi for Miss Lally that even you will have to accept, Will.” He looked up at Rourke, who was still standing before Gentry, puzzling over the torn bill.

  “Do you know what time Beatrice met you in the bar, Tim?”

  “Six o’clock,” Rourke said promptly.

  “Are you sure? Can you swear to it?”

  “I’ll be glad to. My date with Morton was for six. I got there a couple minutes early and checked my watch with the lobby clock to make sure how much too early I’d arrived. It was two minutes of six. I went straight to the bar and was just sitting down at a table when Beatrice came in.”

  “Is that good enough for you?” Shayne asked Gentry. “You’ve heard Rourke say that afterward she wasn’t out of his sight long enough to go up fourteen floors and back.”

  “I’ll take Tim’s word for it,” the chief agreed after a moment’s consideration. “But we’ve still got before six o’clock,” he added impatiently.

  “No we haven’t,” Shayne told him evenly. “We’ve just got after six-thirty.” He flipped the envelope over into Gentry’s lap and rose with a simulated yawn. “I forgot to mention that I found that waiting for me at my office when I got there at eight-thirty.” He went to the liquor cabinet, brought back a bottle of cognac, and poured a drink.

  Gentry had pulled the contents of the envelope out, and two of the pasted-word threats lay on the floor. Rourke picked them up while Gentry read the brief note from the dead woman.

  Shayne said, “Help yourselves to a drink,” and took his glass with him when he sauntered into the bathroom. He ran the hot water and began lathering his face. He looked around with pretended surprise when Gentry roared from the bathroom door.

  “What the hell do you mean by holding out on me, Mike. Get that damned lather off your face so we can talk.”

  Shayne reached for a straight razor. “But that clears Miss Lally, doesn’t it? I told you I had a date.”

  “Cut it out, Mike. This is murder.”

  Shayne sighed and wiped the lather from his face with a hot washcloth and followed Gentry into the living-room. When the chief resumed his seat, Shayne faced him with a look of injured innocence and said, “That’s a privileged communication, you know. From a client.”

  “Was your half of the bill in that envelope when you opened it?” Gentry demanded.

  “If you read what she wrote-”

  “I read it,” Gentry cut in heavily. “What did you find out from Lally about those three threa
ts?”

  “Not much. One each day in a plain post-office envelope with the address typed. The first two envelopes were destroyed, but she thinks the one that came this morning may be in Miss Morton’s room.”

  “No such luck,” said Gentry sourly. “The waste-basket was clean. Nothing at all turned up. Who does Lally think sent them?”

  “How would she know?” With both hands shoved deep in the dungaree pockets, Shayne took three slow steps up and back again, then added, “Leo Gannet offered Miss Morton twenty-five grand to get out of town a few days ago.”

  “Why?”

  “I presume,” said Shayne, walking again, “she was tying his gambling activities in too closely with police graft and political corruption. That was her assignment, wasn’t it, Tim?”

  “Something like that. A general expose of crooked operations during the winter season. Any investigation would bump into Gannet from several angles.”

  Shayne stopped opposite Gentry. “Morton’s been needling him just for the hell of it, I guess. Dropping in during the evening at his Green Barn and Red House. Worried him enough so he closed down the upstairs rooms in both places. Until tonight,” he went on grimly. “I didn’t know she was dead, you see, when Beatrice and I stopped in looking for Miss Morton; but Leo was definitely not pleased when I asked him how come he’d reopened tonight.”

  Gentry frowned distastefully at the soggy cigar butt in his hand. “When Gannet couldn’t buy her off and couldn’t frighten her off-?”

  “I don’t actually believe he’s dumb enough to send threats like that,” Shayne broke in. “But he’s got some dumb bunnies working for him. Any one of them might have thought it a smart idea.”

  “Why do you figure she didn’t call the police about the threats?” demanded Gentry.

  “You’d have to ask her that. Beatrice says the first two didn’t seem to bother her, but when the third came she asked her to look up my phone number.”

  “Sara Morton hated the police and distrusted all of them,” Timothy Rourke said. “She’s spent her life reporting criminal conditions in the big cities around the country and I guess that’d disillusion almost anyone.”