Blood on the Stars (11 page)
Read Blood on the Stars Online
Authors: Brett Halliday
Tags: #detective, #mystery, #murder, #private eye, #crime, #suspense, #hardboiled
“Every bit of it is a pack of nonsense,” said Mark Dustin wearily. “I would trust Ceil with every dime I’ve got—any time and anywhere.”
“We’ve had plenty of cases where wealthy men trusted their wives and—”
Dustin let out a snarl of rage and painfully lifted himself to a sitting position, turned about, and slowly swung his legs from the bed. “I won’t lie here and listen to such insults. None of this is helping find Celia. She may be in danger. We’re wasting time here when we should be out searching for her.”
“Take it easy.” Shayne moved over, caught up his legs and put them back on the bed, then went to the door and called the doctor. He said, “Painter has done his worst, and your patient still survives.” He brushed past the doctor and went across the room to the telephone, looked up a number, called it, and stood with the receiver to his ear while Painter and Jessup filed out of the sick room.
Painter came over and stood behind him and asked fretfully, “Who are you calling now?”
“Walter
Voorland
. But he doesn’t answer.” He cradled the receiver and looked up another number, called it, and waited until the phone rang three times before there was a click and Randolph’s voice said, “Yes?”
Shayne hung up without answering. He said grimly, “If I were chief of detectives on Miami Beach I’d get every man on my force out to search for Mrs. Dustin.”
“Whom did you call that last time?” Painter demanded.
“Randolph, the insurance agent.”
“
Voorland
and Randolph,” Painter muttered. “What can they possibly know about this?”
“That’s what I’d like to find out.” Shayne picked up his hat and started toward the door.
“Where are you going?” snapped Painter.
Shayne said, “Out,” and kept on going.
A HOT ANGLE
EARL RANDOLPH lived in a modern, four-story apartment building in Miami’s northeast section. There was a small foyer with brass mailboxes indicating the names and apartment numbers of the occupants. Randolph’s name was over 3-D. Shayne pushed the 4-A button and waited. When the electric latch on the inside door clicked, he entered, went down a narrow hallway to the self-service elevator, and went up to the third floor.
He found apartment 3-D and pressed the button. Randolph opened the door. He wore a white shirt open at the neck, the sleeves rolled up above his elbows. He blinked at Shayne, and an expression of complete surprise came over his round face.
“Mike—I didn’t expect you.”
“I’ve been visiting a couple here in the building,” he lied.
“Thought I’d drop in to talk over the Dustin case.
Mind if I come in?”
“Of course not.”
Randolph quickly regained his poise and stepped back. The detective removed his hat and hung it on a
hatrack
beside Randolph’s wide-brimmed Panama.
The living-room was filled with smoke, and a card table drawn up in front of the day-bed was littered with papers and newspaper clippings from two cardboard files. The ash tray was piled high with cigarette butts, and an almost empty tall glass stood beside it.
Randolph said apologetically, “I’m afraid it’s rather close in here. Got to working and forgot to open a window.” He went across to open one,
then
asked, “Have a drink?”
“Not now. I had too much earlier this evening.” He ruefully indicated the bruise on his jaw. “Cracked up my car and got this clip on the jaw.” He moved to a deep chair and sank into it. “What have you been doing all evening?”
“Working.”
Randolph sat down behind the littered table. “I came straight home from the
Sunlux
and began going through my old files. I—” He paused, rubbing a blunt forefinger thoughtfully across his mustache. “I think I may have turned up something interesting, Mike.”
Shayne said carelessly, “Tim
Rourke
said he’d been trying to get you all evening, but you didn’t answer the phone.”
“My phone has been acting up. Just a little while ago it rang and no one answered when I took up the receiver.”
Shayne nodded and said, “Maybe that’s the reason Tim couldn’t get you. Do you mean you’ve turned up something on the ruby bracelet?”
“I don’t know. There could be some connection. At least, there are some interesting angles.” The insurance agent leaned back and carefully placed the tips of thick fingers together. “About star rubies in general—and Walter
Voorland’s
connection with them in particular,” he ended quietly.
“I’d like to hear the angles.”
“Are you working on it, Mike?”
“Not officially. But Painter accused me of planning the snatch. You heard what Dustin said in the hotel. I’ve a hunch I may be called in by him. I had another talk with him about half an hour ago.”
Sweat glistened on Randolph’s round face. He separated his finger tips and took out a handkerchief to wipe it away. “How is he feeling?
Any serious complications?”
“They fixed him up at the hospital.” Shayne lit a cigarette and broke the matchstick between his fingers and frowned at it. “Mrs. Dustin is a mighty pretty woman. Do you think either of them has a tie-in with the heist?”
“What makes you say that?” Randolph sounded surprised, almost startled.
Shayne dropped the broken matchstick into the ash tray and spread out his hands. “Painter and you agreed that the job must have been carefully planned. Someone must have tipped off the gang.”
“I don’t think I said that—” Randolph protested. “I said it had all the earmarks of a professional job. But it could easily have been as you suggested. If they had a lookout in the
Sunlux
lobby and he spotted Mrs. Dustin going out wearing the bracelet—” Again he let his words trail off speculatively.
“What angles have you dug up?”
Earl Randolph seemed eager to drop the other subject. He leaned forward and rustled the papers on the table. “A couple of other cases involving expensive star rubies, Mike. Both of them sold by
Voorland
and insured for large sums. Both stolen in hold-ups somewhat similar to the one tonight, and never recovered. The policies were paid in full in both cases.”
“I thought you and
Voorland
both stated tonight that the star ruby cannot be cut up and resold—and because of that fact we would almost surely have an offer from the gang.”
“Theoretically that’s true, Mike. That’s why I began to check my old records as soon as I came back from the hotel. I discovered a couple of damned queer coincidences. Listen to this:
“October twelfth, nineteen forty-three,”
he continued, reading from a typewritten sheet.
“Policy issued to James T. King at the Tropical Towers Apartment, Miami, Florida, for eighty thousand dollars on a perfect eight-and-one-half carat star ruby ring.
Purchased from
Voorland
for one hundred grand.
It was stolen less than a week after the policy was issued.
Never recovered.
We paid the policy in full in December.”
“Wasn’t that a lot of money for one ruby that size?”
“Not in nineteen forty-three. I appraised the stone myself and recommended the policy.”
“Anything fishy about the loss?”
Randolph frowned and picked up another typed sheet.
“No—and yes.
It happened right inside the apartment building. King was in the habit of leaving the ring in the hotel safe at night. He called down at eight o’clock this particular evening and asked to have it sent to his room. He and his wife were going out unexpectedly to a swanky party. The fact that the party was gotten up on the spur of the moment was later established.
“The clerk got the box out and gave it to a bellboy to take up. He got out of the elevator and started down the corridor to the King suite. As he passed an alcove he was sapped on the back of the head and knocked out cold. When they found him ten minutes later the ring had vanished. It hasn’t turned up since.”
Shayne was tugging at his earlobe and listening intently. “King?” he suggested.
Randolph shrugged. “Naturally, we made a very thorough investigation before allowing the claim. There wasn’t a particle of evidence. He lost twenty thousand on the deal.”
“If the ruby could be fenced for fifty percent he’d have made thirty grand,” Shayne pointed out.
“If,”
Randolph agreed. “But that’s the big if, Mike. Look—you might cut it down to say six carats. A six-carat ruby might bring fifty thousand in the open market. But those things are distinctive. There aren’t many six-carat stones like that around. We have records of every unique stone like that. If it had turned up later, we’d know it. It hasn’t.”
Shayne crushed out his cigarette and nodded thoughtfully. “But you have to admit it looks like an inside job. Who else but King could have known the bellboy was going to bring the ring up just then?”
“Only the clerk, but he actually had no time to notify a confederate to get up there in time to waylay the boy. If we’d had anything else to hang suspicion on, we might have tried to make a case out of it. But we went through King’s background with a fine-tooth comb. He was absolutely legitimate.
From a small town in Ohio where he and his wife had lived all their lives.
He was an engineer, graduate of Purdue, who’d worked on a small salary all his life until he fell into a fortune a couple of months previously.
“He inherited the estate of a wealthy uncle in California, estimated at between two and three hundred thousand. He and his wife sold their home and went west to collect the money, then started out to have some fun for the first time in their lives. They hit Miami the first of October, spent money lavishly, and ended up by splurging on the ring. I remember King and his wife,” Randolph went on reflectively, leaning back and closing his eyes.
“They were nice people, a little bewildered by sudden wealth. He was about forty. Thin and stooped, as though he’d worked too hard all his life without quite enough to eat. His wife always managed to look dowdy, even when she was wearing a Paris original. There wasn’t one single thing to hang anything on, Mike. We sent a man to Ohio to check their background, and they were exactly what they claimed to be.”
Shayne said, “That doesn’t sound like very much,” his eyes bleak and staring into space.
“By itself, it isn’t,” said Randolph. He shuffled the papers until he found the one he wanted. “The next case is another star ruby sold by Walter
Voorland
. I was in New York at the time and the policy on this one was issued by Provident Casualty.
To Roland Kendrick of Westchester County, New York, a wealthy sportsman and playboy.
That was in October of forty-five. He bought an eleven-carat star ruby pendant for his wife. Stanley Ellsworth made the appraisal at one hundred and ten thousand. Purchase price was one twenty-five. It lasted longer than the first one.
Almost a month.
The
Kendricks
went from here to New Orleans and were held up by two armed men late at night when they were returning home from a night club. Kendrick was knocked cold as he stepped out of his car to open his garage door, and when he came to, his wife was dead. Shot through the head. The ruby pendant was gone. It has never turned up, either. That claim was paid promptly, after the New Orleans police reported it absolutely straight.”
“I was in New Orleans at the time,” Shayne broke in. He lit another cigarette and continued: “I wasn’t in on that one, but I don’t recall a whisper of suspicion attaching to the widowed husband. The
couple were
apparently happy together, and she had been flashing the pendant around at night clubs. I don’t see much in any of this,” he ended soberly.
“Except that
both
were star rubies—
both
were sold by
Voorland
—and
both
have disappeared as completely as though they had disintegrated. Now it happens again. There’s a pattern, Mike.
A definite pattern, but a completely illogical one.
Who could profit if the stolen stones aren’t resold?”
“I suppose you didn’t meet this second victim, Kendrick.”
“No. As I said, my company didn’t handle that one. But Kendrick’s background was just as thoroughly checked as King’s had been. He was rather a well-known sportsman around New York, and a heavy gambler. Had a piece of two or three fighters and was reputedly very wealthy.”
Shayne said slowly, “The one thing that sticks in my craw about all these cases is the way
Voorland
always has these big star rubies for sale. You and he both say the value of them lies in the scarcity of such stones. Yet one dealer seems to have got hold of a lot of them in the last few years.”
“I know.” Randolph’s round and slightly distended eyes looked troubled. “It is a remarkable coincidence, but I can’t believe it’s more than that.
Voorland
has an unimpeachable reputation throughout the world. And it isn’t quite so remarkable when you realize that star rubies are his personal passion. They have been for the last forty years. He is known throughout the gem markets to pay well for every good one that turns up.
That Dustin bracelet, for instance.
I’ve known for years that he has been searching for the perfect stones to match up in it.”
Shayne asked moodily, “Couldn’t those two stones—the eight-and-a-half—and eleven-carat stones—have been cut down to make two of the rubies in the Dustin bracelet?”
Randolph pursed his lips and looked doubtful. “It’s possible, but certainly not probable. Remember,
Voorland
sold the stones originally. It would be mighty hard to cut them so he wouldn’t still recognize them in reduced size.”
“Is there any way to check the sources from which he acquired the stones in the bracelet?”
“I’m afraid not. That sort of information is regarded as a trade secret. In some cases a particular stone can be traced to its original source, but most dealers don’t keep a record of such transactions.”
“Why not?”