Counterfeit Wife ms-14 Page 9

  “Painter places me in Palm Beach at one o’clock,” Shayne reminded him lightly.

  Gentry grunted. “I know.” He asked Rourke, “Coming along, Tim?”

  The reporter squinted at the half-full bottle on the floor and shook his head. “Not for a while, Chief. I learned a long time ago to hang around Mike when I wanted a headline. And I like his drinking liquor.”

  Gentry said, “There’s going to be an awful stink when the Deland kidnap story hits the morning papers. I’d hate to be involved in a deal like that.”

  Rourke nodded soberly. “My story has already gone in to the local paper, and out over the wires. There’ll be a lot of tears mixed up in the stink all over the country. That’s one time Petey gave me a break. I guess I ought to’ve kissed him for it.”

  Gentry gave a grunt of disgust and moved stolidly to the door, went out and closed it silently.

  Shayne and Rourke sat quietly for a time, the latter’s deep-set eyes bright with excitement as he regarded Shayne hopefully.

  When the detective said nothing, Rourke muttered, “Gentry made several queer cracks at you, Mike. I never knew him to be subtle before.”

  Shayne made a violent gesture with his right hand. “Will knows I’m on the spot half a dozen ways, but he also knows I’ve never let him down.” He settled back in one corner of the couch and closed his eyes. “Give me everything on the kidnap story, Tim.”

  “It’s nasty,” Rourke warned him. “It’s got all the elements of a cause celebre. Pathos, heartbreak, down-to-earth people. There’ll be a wave of popular indignation, sob stories, editorials, and sermons on the death of Kathleen Deland. For God’s sake, Mike,” Rourke went on shakily, “that wad of dough I saw in that Gladstone. If that’s what I think it is-”

  “Don’t bother thinking about that now,” Shayne told him sharply. “Give me the kidnap dope.”

  “I’ll give it to you straight,” Rourke growled. “After the wind-up at Leslie Hudson’s house last night I got a story off on the wires, and then beat it down to Beach headquarters to get a fill-in. I was with Painter in his office a little after twelve when he got the kidnap flash.

  “I went with him to the home of Arthur Deland on Tenth Street. It’s a nice little white stucco cottage, on a modest street of other nice little cottages. A neat lawn and flowers and a white picket fence. One glance tells you it’s the home of a hard-working man who loves his family and takes pride in his property and-”

  Shayne broke in impatiently. “Save the sob stuff for your copy. You’ve got soft since you got your guts nearly blasted out a couple of months ago.”

  “Maybe,” said Rourke quietly. “But you’re going to get the picture the way I got it. I know you’re hard-boiled and you’d sell your grandmother’s soul to the devil for a Canadian dime, but I’ve got a hunch you don’t know what you’re in the middle of this time.”

  Shayne lit a cigarette and said, “Go on.”

  Rourke poured himself a drink. “There were lights on all over the place when we got there. Painter and I went in. We were met at the door by Arthur Deland. He’s a tall, gaunt-faced man with big knuckles and calloused hands that’ve done hard work for a lot of years. His eyes were sunken and tears were running down his cheeks. There were two other people in the living-room-Mrs. Deland, and her brother from New York. Mrs. Deland’s name is Minerva; she has white hair and a sweet face. I don’t suppose she’s more than forty, but years of poverty and the struggle to maintain a decent home for their only child are stamped in her face. There’s pride, too. Pride in her home and their way of life and in the beautiful child they’ve reared.”

  Shayne groaned, reached for the bottle and tilted it, took a long drink, and said, “You’re breaking my heart.”

  “I’m trying to,” Rourke assured him. “Mrs. Deland was slumped in a rocking chair. Probably the same one she rocked Kathleen to sleep in when she was a baby. She wasn’t crying. I think she was drained of tears. There was just an empty look on her face, as though she already knew the truth-and the futility of it all. I doubt whether she felt anything more when they brought the lifeless body of her daughter to her a couple of hours later.

  “The rug on the living-room floor was faded and the furniture was worn. But it was clean and neat, and everywhere there were little touches of a woman’s loving care. Crocheted doilies, decent but cheap prints on the walls, fresh zinnias from her garden in a bowl, above the mantel a large picture of Kathleen at the age of ten. It was a tinted picture, Mike. She had laughing blue eyes and golden curls.

  “That’s Miami’s house of sorrow tonight. A dead house, silent and cold. Life has gone out of it and all the meaning that life and drudgery and privation have been to that couple. No laughing young voice echoing through it and no sunlight glinting on golden curls. I tell you it got hold of me like nothing else in the world ever did. I’ve covered lots of stories in my time and I thought I was hardened to that sort of thing, but tonight I learned I wasn’t.”

  “In the name of God, Tim, don’t switch off on your life story,” Shayne raged. “I’m still waiting to hear one single relevant fact about the kidnaping.”

  “You’ll get the facts in good time.” Rourke lit a cigarette, took a deep puff on it, and continued. “The third person in that room was Minerva’s brother, Emory Hale. He’s a big, quiet man with shaggy eyebrows. He didn’t have much to say, but you could see how it was hitting him, too. You could see that he adored his sister and that Kathleen had been the one bright spot in his life. Just from little things he said, you could tell. He’s got a poker face and from the cut of his clothes I’d say he’s a rich man, but he was wilted when we got there. I had a feeling that he knew-just as Mrs. Deland knew-that they’d never see Kathleen alive again.

  “I think I pitied the father most. He wouldn’t let himself give up hope. He was determined not to let it get him down. It was wonderful to see a man with such faith. He tried to know that no harm had come to his little girl, and in his own sorrow he tried to comfort the others. So I imagine it was hardest on him when they did bring Kathleen home.”

  “How old was the girl?” Shayne asked sourly.

  “Sixteen, Mike. Life must have looked pretty good to Kathleen Deland. She had everything before her. Honor student in the senior class at high school. Organist in the church, and a leader of a young people’s group. I swear to God, Mike, I’ll never get that girl’s picture out of my mind. I keep thinking of the thousands of sixteen-year-old floosies it might’ve been. Silly bobby-soxers and cocktail dopes strutting their adolescence-”

  Shayne groaned loudly and reached for the bottle on the floor between them. Rourke’s skinny hand went out swiftly and closed talon-like fingers about his wrist.

  “No, you don’t, Mike. I’m going to get around to asking some questions pretty soon, and I want straight answers.”

  Shayne looked quizzically into Rourke’s dark gray eyes. They glittered with a feverish intensity and the left side of the reporter’s mouth jerked as he stared back at the redheaded detective.

  Shayne relaxed and set the bottle down. He said mildly, “All right, Tim. I didn’t kill the girl, you know.”

  “I know this,” Rourke told him in a tense and shaking voice. “Kathleen Deland was murdered by every rat that had a hand in her kidnaping. It was a composite job. The law may not say so, but I contend that every bastard who so much as dirtied the tips of his fingers by contact with the kidnaping is a murderer in fact.”

  Shayne said, “I haven’t got all night.”

  “That’s the background.” Rourke laced his fingers around one knee. “Arthur Deland was too upset to tell a coherent story when we got there, but his brother-in-law supplied the facts.

  “It happened two days ago. Kathleen didn’t return from school in the afternoon. Her mother received a telephone call about four-thirty, before she’d had time to be worried about Kathleen not coming straight home from school. A man called her. He merely said that Kathleen had been kidnaped and was
being held for fifty thousand dollars ransom. He warned the mother that if a word leaked out to anyone, the girl would be killed immediately. That was all. He told her he’d call later that night, that her telephone was tapped and the house was being watched. Then he hung up.

  “Minerva Deland was frantic and called her husband immediately, afraid to tell him anything over the phone except to come home at once. He runs a small plumbing shop here in Miami. Not much business, I guess, and he and his partner have been doing most of the work themselves on account of labor shortage and lack of supplies. Just struggling along and keeping their heads above water and hoping for better days.

  “That’s what I gathered, anyhow, because he said it was utterly impossible for him to raise as much as five grand, much less fifty. He got home as fast as he could and was just as paralyzed by fear for his daughter’s safety as his wife was. They knew they should call the police or the F.B.I., but they didn’t. They huddled together with their fear and waited for the telephone to ring.

  “The second call was at ten-thirty. Mrs. Deland answered, and she thinks it was the same voice. Nothing particularly noticeable about it, just a voice over the telephone. He asked for her husband and repeated his threat of the afternoon, and told Deland to appoint a third party to act as intermediary in the negotiations. Someone whom Deland could trust and who could be trusted to keep his mouth shut. Deland immediately thought of Jim Dawson, his partner in the plumbing shop. He gave Dawson’s name and address, but protested that it would be utterly impossible to raise the ransom.

  “The voice then told him that he had a rich brother-in-law in New York. ‘Midnight tomorrow is the limit if you ever want to see your girl alive again.’ The man hung up.

  “Well, of course Deland and his wife had already thought of appealing to her brother, Emory Hale. Seems he’d helped them financially before, and is fixed so he might have that kind of money on tap.

  “About midnight they phoned Hale in New York and laid their need before him. He argued at first that they should call in the F.B.I., but they were too frightened and made him promise not to. At least that’s what Hale said. He knew it was the right thing to do, but he loved Kathleen so much he was afraid to upset the negotiations. He promised to raise the money the next day and fly down with it at once.

  “Neither of the Delands slept that night. They called Dawson and told him what was up, begged him to keep his mouth shut and follow instructions. Dawson agreed.

  “They had a wire from Emory Hale the next day saying he would arrive with the cash at eight o’clock. They phoned Dawson so he could pass the word along.

  “Dawson called by phone at five o’clock. He had received his instructions from the kidnaper. The money was to be wrapped in a paper package and be waiting at the Deland house at eight o’clock, while he waited at his house. They had previously specified that the money should be in old hundred-dollar bills, and that’s the way Emory Hale brought it from New York by plane. He came straight to the house and they wrapped it in a paper package, five bundles of bills, each bundle containing a hundred hundred-dollar bills.” Rourke paused, looking at Shayne gravely.

  Shayne laughed shortly and lit a cigarette. “Finish talking before you start asking questions.”

  “There isn’t much more to tell. About ten-thirty the phone rang. Deland answered it. He was told to leave the house alone and drive in his car by a certain route to the County Causeway and meet Dawson there. Dawson was to take the money, drive to Miami, turn north on Biscayne Boulevard, and keep driving north on the highway at about thirty miles an hour until he was accosted. He was warned that they’d all be watched every second after he left the house and if anything went wrong, the girl would be killed.

  “Deland left the house in his car with the ransom money as directed and turned it over to Dawson, then came back home. The three of them waited until midnight for the girl to be returned to them. At midnight, Emory Hale blew up and demanded that they call the police. You can’t blame him. It was his money.”

  “No word from Dawson?” Shayne asked softly.

  “He had vanished into thin air. As soon as he got the gist of the story, Painter alerted every cop on both sides of the bay and up the coast! He called the local office of the F.B.I., and they’re sending experts down. I was still at the house with Painter at about two o’clock when we got the flash that the girl’s body had been found-asphyxiated-inside the locked luggage trunk of a gray sedan that had overturned just off Thirty-sixth Street an hour previously.”

  Shayne expelled a long breath and relaxed. “Now we come to the part that’s supposed to tie me into it.”

  Rourke nodded. “The best we could piece out the story, it happened this way. The sedan was traveling east on Thirty-sixth like a bat out of hell and tried to make a turn on Fourteenth Avenue. It struck a concrete bridge abutment and turned over, landing on its side. There’s some reason for believing the sedan was trying to escape from a pursuing car, but that isn’t positive. A crowd gathered at once and pulled out the driver-a big blonde. A man was riding with her and he climbed out unaided. Several people saw him in the light of headlights, and said he had blood streaming down his face. We got several conflicting descriptions, the way you always do, from excited witnesses. They all thought he was tall, and two or three said he had red hair.

  “Nobody paid much attention to him in the excitement. Mostly, they were crowding around the unconscious woman, and the passenger slipped away. Chick Farrel happened to be one of those attracted to the wreck, and he told some of the cops he thought he recognized you, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “They didn’t think much about it at the time. The woman was named Gerta Ross. She came to after a little and asked them to take her home. A cop wanted to take her to a hospital, but she refused. Said she was a nurse and knew how to take care of herself. So the cop drove her home-to a big place out on West Fifty-fourth. He let her out in front and she went up the walk to the front door by herself.

  “In the meantime,” Rourke continued slowly, “the police wrecker came out to pick up the sedan. While they were getting ready to tow it in, one of the cops noticed a golden curl sticking out from under the lid of the luggage compartment. He lifted the lid and found Kathleen Deland’s body crammed inside. The girl was gagged and tightly bound, and she’d been doped to keep her quiet. The locking mechanism showed she’d been locked in, but the wrench the car received in turning over caused the catch to slip and the lid to open. Otherwise, they might not have found the body for days.” He ended angrily.

  Shayne looked at him for a long moment. Then he asked quietly, “Can you tell me how long Kathleen had been dead?”

  “Not more than an hour, Mike. About midnight. They had provided her with plenty of air,” he went on bitterly, “by boring three half-inch holes in the bottom of the luggage compartment. But the kid didn’t have a chance. The holes were right over the exhaust pipe-by accident or design-and the exhaust pipe had a big hole in it just beneath the air holes. She had been breathing carbon monoxide as she lay there bound and gagged. At least,” he ended sorrowfully, “she couldn’t have suffered too much.”

  “What happened to the woman who was driving?”

  Rourke looked longingly at the bottle of cognac, now no more than a quarter full, then propped his bony elbows on his knees and said, “She was gone by the time the cops went looking for her. It seems she ran a sort of private nursing home, an ideal place to keep a kidnaped child. As nearly as has been learned, she hasn’t had any patients for the past few days. No one knows enough about former patients to get a line on her.”

  Shayne said absently, “Fifty grand in C-notes.”

  “That’s right. Done up in five bundles of ten grand each. Mind if I take a look in that suitcase, Mike?”

  “It’s in the bathroom,” said Shayne indifferently.

  Rourke went into the bathroom and brought out the suitcase. He set it on the floor and opened it, lifted the top half and looked inside, then turned it
over to dump the contents on the floor.

  The five bundles of bills, held together by wide rubber bands, tumbled out. Rourke picked one of them up and moved back to sit on the couch. Shayne smoked a cigarette and watched him while he carefully counted the bills.

  “I make it a hundred,” he said, looking at Shayne.

  “Uh-huh?”

  Rourke tossed the bundle back with the others. “Five times a hundred makes five hundred. Fifty thousand bucks in all.”

  “I think you’ll find a few missing,” Shayne offered casually, “if you want to bother to count all the bundles.”

  “Do you mind telling me where you got them?”

  “I wish you’d tell me one thing before we get started on that angle. Was the ransom money marked?”

  “No. Emory Hale swears it wasn’t. And Deland says he looked it over, too, before giving it to Dawson to make sure it wasn’t marked in any way to make the kidnapers suspicious and queer the pay-off.”

  Shayne was sitting erect now, listening intently.

  “Painter gave Hale hell about that,” Rourke went on. “He told him it was completely dumb not to have at least taken the serial numbers of the money to be used in a kidnap pay-off, and, under pressure, Hale admitted he did have the numbers. He gave Painter a typed list he said the bank had given him.”

  “Were the bills in sequence?” Shayne asked sharply.

  “No. They were all mixed up. I looked over the list with Painter. Hale explained that he had demanded bills that had been in circulation for some time.”

  “What time was it when Painter got this list?”

  “About twelve-thirty.”

  Shayne shook his head and muttered, “I don’t see how in hell Bates could have had a list of the numbers not more than fifteen minutes later. Bates and Irvin. Or how they could have picked any one bill out of a jumbled list except by accident.”

  “What are you mumbling about?”

  “We’ll come to that later. Describe Deland’s partner to me. The pay-off guy.”