Blood on the Stars (10 page)

A LADY IS MISSING

MICHAEL SHAYNE FOUND CHIEF PAINTER interrogating one of the elevator operators when he reached the Dustin suite at the
Sunlux
Hotel. Painter looked worried and his black eyes flashed angrily as he disposed of the man with a scathing: “If you birds had eyes to see with or minds to remember with, a police officer’s job would be easier. Go on back to your elevator.”

Harry Jessup was seated comfortably in a deep chair across the room. He was a paunchy man with gray hair and a placid face. He rolled out his thick lips in a grimace at Shayne as Painter whirled on the Miami detective and demanded, “What’s all this about?”

Shayne said, “Suppose you bring me up-to-date. Have you found Mrs. Dustin?”

“Not a trace of her. She’s vanished completely. Flown out the window as near as I can make out from what I can learn around here.” He gestured savagely toward one of the wide-open windows. “Jessup says you sent him up here to investigate. Why? How did you know anything about it?”

“You should realize by this time that I generally know quite a lot about what’s going on.” Shayne looked over Painter’s head and asked Jessup, “Has her husband had anything to say yet?”

“The doctor’s in there trying to bring him out of it,” snapped Painter. He thrust himself forward aggressively as Shayne walked over toward Jessup.

“According to Jessup,” Painter went on, “you suspected something was wrong because Mrs. Dustin had tried to get in touch with you earlier and then didn’t answer her phone when you called back.”

“I didn’t waste time telling Jessup the whole story. Some bird entered my apartment while I was out, tried to kill my secretary, and answered the telephone, impersonating me and promising Mrs. Dustin he would see her at once.”

Shayne went on to give both men a swift résumé of Lucy Hamilton’s condition and the fragmentary story she had told. He left out all reference to his encounter with the two men in Mickey’s Garage basement, and spread out his big hands when he added, “That’s everything I’ve got. I don’t know any more than you do why Mrs. Dustin called me. I don’t know who knocked Lucy out and answered my phone.”

“Where did you go after you left here earlier?” Painter demanded, eyeing the bruise on Shayne’s face. “Who did you tangle with?”

“Too much liquor,” Shayne said ruefully. “I dropped in a couple of bars and overestimated my capacity.
Ended up ramming a culvert on Delaware Road and knocking myself out.
What have you found out about Dustin tonight?” he asked Jessup.

“Nothing that’s worth a damn.
They went to the hospital to get his hand X-rayed and bandaged. They returned a little before twelve and came right up. A few minutes later Mrs. Dustin phoned for the house physician who had temporarily bandaged her husband’s hand and asked for some sleeping-tablets. Said Dustin was suffering considerably. The doctor himself came up and gave her a vial with six tablets, prescribing one tablet immediately and another within half an hour if necessary, but she was positively instructed to call him again if two of the tablets didn’t give him relief. She and her husband were together in the bedroom when he gave the instructions, and he is sure both had understood. Yet when I entered the room with a passkey after you called, Mike, I found Dustin alone in bed in a deep sleep from which he couldn’t be roused. Half a glass of water stood on the bedside table, and four of the six tablets were gone. In the doctor’s opinion, four of the tablets were sufficient to produce Dustin’s present stupor, though the wounded man is in no danger, and in all probability will be able to tell his story soon.

“The only other telephone call from this apartment,” Jessup continued, “was about fifteen or twenty minutes after the doctor was here.
To your number, Mike.
Unfortunately, the operator didn’t listen in. That’s all. The rest is a blank. No one saw Mrs. Dustin
go out—nor
anyone visit her here. Their car is still parked where the doorman left it after the hold-up this evening.”

“Any back stairs where she could go without being noticed?”

“Sure. Right down the hall there’s an exit stairway for bathers. It leads down to the foot of the bathing-pier and anyone might go up or down it at night without being seen by any of the hotel attendants.”

“It’s quite evident that’s the way she left the hotel,” said Painter. “It’s also quite evident that she slipped her husband four of the pills, or induced him to take the overdose before she called you—or before she went out. Presumably to be sure he didn’t waken and catch her at it. Why?” He pounded a small fist in his palm for emphasis.

Shayne said, “You heard every word that passed between us tonight. I haven’t the faintest idea why she called me. As for doping her husband, that doesn’t necessarily carry all the implications you suggest. He was in bad shape and she wouldn’t want to worry him if she had discovered some lead she wanted to follow up on the robbery. It’d be just like a woman to decide to go out detecting on her own and slip her husband a Mickey so he wouldn’t worry.”

“It could also easily mean she had an inside track on the robbery which she had concealed from her husband,” Painter broke in. “He seemed a very decent sort to me. Just the sort of fool to be taken for a ride by a woman who soft-talked him into buying a bracelet worth a fortune which she then arranged to have stolen from him.”

“Why would she call me if she was in on the robbery?”

“Why
wouldn’t
she? Maybe—things were getting out of hand. Maybe her accomplices decided to keep the stuff and tell her to go fly a kite. She couldn’t turn to her husband for help. You’d be the logical one to call on.”

Shayne shrugged and said, “Maybe.”

“The whole thing seems rather clear now,” Painter insisted. “It all ties together. The careful way the robbery was planned—Dustin’s resistance, which shows he had no foreknowledge of it—the man who answered your phone and immediately pretended to be you when he recognized Mrs. Dustin’s voice.”

“Mr. X,”
mused
Shayne. “Who is he and how does he fit in the picture?”

“It’s as plain as the lump on your jaw,” scoffed Painter. “He was her accomplice.
The guy who actually snatched the bracelet.
He was coming to you to arrange a fix. Maybe she’d decided to double-cross him. As soon as he heard her voice on the telephone, he knew what was tip and arranged to meet her outside somewhere.”

Shayne said again, “Maybe.” He rubbed the uninjured side of his jaw, wandered across the living-room to look out the window at the layout two floors below. At his left
was
the white strip of beach and the lazy rolling whitecaps of the Atlantic Ocean, shimmering and phosphorescent beneath the tropical moon. Like a long finger projecting seaward lay the long wooden bathing-pier for the convenience of hotel guests. Directly beneath the window a concrete walk led along the back of the hotel from the street to the pier. All the lights, normally turned out this late at night, had been turned on again, and Shayne could see two men, presumably from the police force, strolling about aimlessly as though they were searching for clues and didn’t know where to begin looking.

The inner door of the suite opened as Shayne turned back from the window. The resident physician at the
Sunlux
announced with professional solemnity, “You may come in now. When you question the patient, try not to excite him with news of his wife’s disappearance,” after closing the door.

“How much have you told him?” Painter asked.

“Nothing except that I feared the sedative had been too strong for him and that I would cut the prescription in the future.” He opened the door and stood aside for the three men to enter the bedroom.

Mark Dustin was propped up in bed on two pillows. His normally ruddy face was sallow and had the drawn look of violent nausea. His injured hand was in a plaster cast and lay stiffly extended on the coverlet. He wet his lips nervously when he recognized Painter and Shayne, and burst out:

“What’s
all this
rumpus about? Where’s Celia? Has something happened to her?”

“What makes you think anything like that, Mr. Dustin?” Painter asked.

“You’re concealing something from me. That doctor’s been giving me a lot of double-talk. If Celia’s all right,
where is she?”

“We thought you might be able to tell us that.” Painter’s voice was silky.

“So something has happened! What, in the name of God?” Dustin panted. “What time is it? How long have I been passed out? What did that damned sawbones put in that pill he gave me?”

“It’s almost two o’clock in the morning, Mr. Dustin,” Painter told him. “What time did you take the—sleeping-tablet?”

“A little after midnight.
As soon as the doctor left.
Celia fixed it for me.”

“And you took only one tablet, Mr. Dustin?”

“Of course I took only one. He
said
to take one—and then another in half an hour if that didn’t put me to sleep. You’ve got to tell me—”

“We want you to tell us,” Painter interrupted. “How do you explain the fact that
four
tablets are missing?”

“Four? But I only took the one. Do you mean Celia took the others? She didn’t—she isn’t—?”

“So far as we know, your wife is perfectly all right. Did she say anything about going out later?”

“Of course not.
She said she’d stay right here to dissolve another tablet for me if I needed it.”

“Ah. Dissolve it, eh?” Painter pounced on the word happily. “Did she dissolve the first tablet for you?”

“Of course.
I can’t take the stuff in tablet form. Look here,” the westerner went on, turning a strained face to Shayne, “won’t
you
tell me what this is all about? Where is Celia?”

“We don’t know, frankly. It appears that she may have dissolved four tablets for you instead of one—to make sure you didn’t wake up while she was gone.”

“Gone?
Where?”
Dustin appeared weary and dazed.

“We had hoped you could tell us,” Painter cut in. “Did she say anything to give you an inkling of such a plan? Did you hear her telephone anyone?”

“You’re crazy. She wouldn’t dope me like that and then slip out to meet someone secretly. We—we’re in love, damn it.” His strong features were now twisted in anger.

“None of us are intimating that your wife is keeping an assignation,” said Shayne quietly. “We believe she did give you an overdose of sleeping-tablets and then went out to meet a man, but we think she had some plan or idea of tracing the bracelet. Did she say anything about that? Any hint that she was holding any information back from you?”

“No,” Dustin said slowly. “Not a thing. I don’t—it isn’t like Ceil to keep anything from me.”

“Not even under these conditions?” Shayne asked swiftly, gesturing toward Dustin’s bandaged hand and head. “She knew you were in no shape to take any action, and she wouldn’t want to worry you. Don’t you suppose she thought it best to leave you here safely asleep while she went out on her own?”

“I see. I—don’t know. She might do that. She was always trying to mother me—keep me out of trouble. But what clue did
she
have? There couldn’t have been anything—” He paused and made a helpless gesture with his left hand.

“Shayne has advanced one possible theory, but I have another,” said Painter pompously. “One which I believe fits the known facts better. Was your wife a wealthy woman, Mr. Dustin?”

“No. She was teaching school when I met her. We were married a few days after we met. But I had plenty. She always had everything she wanted.”

“Are you sure of that, Dustin?” Painter thrust his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels, assuming the indulgent air and tone of a professor about to explain the facts of life to a group of adolescents:

“There are many women married to wealthy husbands who yearn for money of their own. Don’t misunderstand me. You may have been very lenient with her, even extravagant. I have no doubt that Mrs. Dustin lived in luxury. But did she have her own bank account? Did she have economic freedom?”

“I never refused her money,” Dustin said angrily. “She had only to ask me when she wanted anything.”

“That’s just the point. She had to
ask
you, and believe me, Mr. Dustin, we run into situations identical with this quite often. Wives who have to ask for every dollar they ever have. Wives who—”

“Goddamn it,” Dustin broke in angrily, “what are you trying to say?”

“Just this.
You bought your wife a ruby bracelet for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. She knew it was insured,” Painter continued profoundly, “for the full amount. Do you realize how a woman might feel—wearing a fortune in jewelry and yet without a dollar she can call her own?”

“I think,”
said
Dustin thickly, “I begin to see what you’re driving at. If it’s what I think, I don’t like it. If I were able to get off this bed, I’d—” His left hand doubled into a white-knuckled fist.

“Don’t get upset, Mr. Dustin.” Painter took a backward step. “I’m forced to speak plainly. Remember, the bracelet was stolen the very first time it was worn. The job had every appearance of being carefully planned. Yet you and your wife were the only ones who knew its value and that she planned to wear it tonight.”

“The jeweler knew it—
Voorland
. And Shayne knew it,” Dustin said, turning his head on the pillow to look at Shayne. “Your pipsqueak of a Dick Tracy here pointed that out earlier this evening. He was accusing you of the job, by God. Now he’s got around to accusing Ceil.
Why not me?”
He turned back to Painter.

“Because the theft wouldn’t benefit you,” Painter said indignantly. “Have you forgotten that your wife deliberately drugged you and slipped out to keep an appointment with a man whom she thought was Mike Shayne—after telephoning him she wanted to see him about the bracelet?”

“Wait a minute,” Shayne cautioned. “We don’t
know
what Mrs. Dustin said over the phone to Mr. X. We don’t know but what she wanted to see me about something else entirely.”