Counterfeit Wife (9 page)

“What kidnaping?” Shayne asked with innocent interest. “That’s the second time I’ve heard it mentioned. What wrecked car?”

“Painter has been sucking wind ever since an eyewitness testified he saw you crawl out of a wrecked car on Thirty-sixth Street and slip away at one o’clock,” Rourke broke in.

“Who was the witness?”

“A character named Chick Farrel,” Painter informed him.

“Oh, Chick?” Shayne lit a cigarette and looked at the reporter over the match flame. “I get it now. That’s why you asked a while ago if Chick had it in for me. Anyone can see he was lying. I was in Palm Beach at one o’clock; and thank you for establishing my alibi,” he ended mockingly to Painter.

“Farrel may have been mistaken,” Painter admitted unhappily. “But what about this job? Shayne certainly had time to pull it off just the way I described.”

Will Gentry turned to the Medical Examiner as he came from the death room carrying his satchel. “How about it, Doc? Give us the T.O.D.”

The M.E. was bald-headed and brisk. He said, “Not less than forty-five minutes nor more than an hour and a half.” He looked at his wrist watch. “Two o’clock is the best I can do.”

“Wait a minute, Doc,” Shayne said. “Will you testify that the man must have been dead by two-thirty?”

“Absolutely.”

Shayne said, “Thanks,” and turned to Painter. “What time does Henry say I came into the lobby?”

“He claims it was two-forty-five,” Painter admitted, “but if I were running this investigation I certainly wouldn’t accept that as gospel.”

“Since you’re not running the investigation,” Will Gentry rumbled, “hadn’t you better run along and look for some kidnapers?”

Rourke snickered. Peter Painter’s face flared red. A manicured forefinger shook with impotent rage when he pointed it at Gentry and said, “I acknowledged in the beginning that Farrel might be mistaken as to Shayne’s identity, but I’m convinced his reason for making such a mistake was that he confidently expected the man with Gerta Ross to be Shayne. I’m also convinced that Shayne’s shenanigans tie in with the Deland kidnap pay-off and I shan’t sleep until I prove it.” He went stiffly from the room and slammed the door behind him.

“Does he think Chick Farrel is mixed up in a kidnaping?” Shayne asked incredulously.

Rourke shook his head. “Chick happened to know the dame in the wreck. Painter knows it couldn’t have been you with her, but he’s grilling Farrel trying to establish some connection between you and the blonde kidnap-murderess.”

Shayne sighed and said, “I wish someone would bring me up to date.”

Will Gentry pursed his lips around the cigar and looked balefully at Shayne. He gave a grunt of disgust and disbelief, got up and started toward the death room with a firm stride. He stopped, turned, and said casually, “There was a big fire out on West Thirty-eighth Street a little after two o’clock. Two-story frame house burned down.”

“Anybody hurt?” asked Shayne with interest.

“Not by the fire. But there was a funny thing. A Negro’s body was found in the basement garage by firemen. Face was all torn up—like he’d tangled with a meat chopper.” Gentry hesitated, moving his cigar across his mouth to the other side, then added, “They found part of a whisky bottle with bloody, jagged edges lying close by.” He turned and went on to the bedroom.

“Whisky bottle?” Shayne called out. “It’s a good thing I’m a cognac drinker or they’d be hanging that on me, too.”

“Now why the hell,” asked Rourke when Gentry’s bulky body disappeared into the room, “did he take time out to tell us about that?”

Shayne said, “You never know about Will,” and reached for the bottle.

FATAL KIDNAPING

AFTER GENTRY’S MEN had taken pictures and measurements in the bedroom, fingerprinted the entire apartment, and carefully documented the possessions of the dead man, they departed, taking Slocum’s body with them.

Shayne and Timothy Rourke remained on the couch. When Gentry followed his men out of the bedroom he looked tired and harried. Shayne got up, went into the kitchen and put ice cubes and a small quantity of water in a tall glass. He returned and poured cognac in with the water and ice, sloshed it around to mix it, and handed it to Gentry.

He said, “Drink that down, Will, and tell us what you found out in there.”

“Not much of anything, Mike,” he said quietly, belching out a cloud of smoke from a freshly lit cigar. “The dead man appears to be Leonard Slocum, minor executive of an oil firm, recently transferred here from Mobile, Alabama. Contents of his wallet and suitcase are about what you’d expect from a man in his position. No fingerprints in the apartment except yours, his, and another set, probably the maid’s. The vase could be the death weapon. It’s heavy enough, and a man could get a pretty good grip on the neck of it, but the Doc doubts it. More likely the barrel of a heavy gun. Slocum’s prints are on the vase, but they could have been pressed there by the killer as a silly kind of blind after he’d wiped his own prints off. Doc is testing the blood on the vase to see if it’s Slocum’s—or yours, Mike,” he ended solemnly.

Shayne nodded. “What else?”

“Not much,” Gentry sighed. “A few drops of blood on the carpet in here leading to the front door. Didn’t that vase use to stand on the shelf by the door?”

“For years,” Shayne told him. “If someone knocked and Slocum answered the door and was attacked, he could’ve grabbed it to defend himself.”

“Or the killer could have grabbed it to use on him,” Gentry countered. “He may have been attacked right there in the bedroom, by someone who entered with a key and surprised him in bed.”

“What about the blood drops leading to the door?”

“If the killer got slugged he could have dropped those as he went out. Slocum’s about your size, Mike. How many people in Miami knew he’d be sleeping in that bed tonight and that you wouldn’t?”

“Not many.”

“Slocum isn’t the type of man to have many enemies here. Besides, he’s a stranger. On the other hand, Miami is lousy with mugs who’d like nothing better than to knock
you
off. By the time the killer swung a couple of times and bashed in Slocum’s face, he might not have known the difference.”

Shayne didn’t argue with him or point out several inconsistencies in this theory. At the moment he was quite happy to have the police go on thinking Slocum had been killed as a result of mistaken identity. He wished he could think so, but too many things pointed to Perry and Senator Irvin, with himself as the innocent instigator.

“Why did you come back to Miami so fast?” asked Gentry casually.

Shayne grinned and it hurt his swollen lip. “Didn’t you like the story I told Painter?”

Gentry set his glass down and got up to go over to the coveralls and socks which Shayne had discarded. He bent over them and studied them for a moment, then went back to his chair. “Some garage mechanic has been wearing those coveralls, and there’s old grease on the bottom of your socks.”

Shayne didn’t say anything. Rourke tried to help by remarking, “Some garage mechanics have good-looking wives and are jealous of them.”

Gentry paid no attention to the remark. He frowned and said, “I keep thinking about that dead Negro in the basement garage of the house that burned tonight. The boys found an open razor gripped in his right hand. He was about the size to have worn those coveralls.”

“How did the fire start?” Shayne asked blandly.

Rourke sat quietly, looking suspiciously from one to the other, trying to fathom the meaning of the seemingly irrelevant remarks.

“Short circuit in the electric wiring, apparently,” Gentry rumbled. “Fuses kept blowing out and when they had no more, some damn fool tried to make a connection by putting a penny in the fuse box socket. If it wasn’t for a telephone call I received I wouldn’t think so much about it,” he ended gently.

Shayne nodded. “I know what you mean. Have you picked up Irvin?”

“Not yet.” Gentry took a couple of swallows of his drink, then added, “I’ve got men asking questions.”

Shayne tugged absently at his ear lobe as the police chief got to his feet. He said, “Let me know as soon as you get any answers.”

Gentry stared for a moment at Shayne’s bland face and said, “It might help a lot if you’d tell me where you were between midnight and two-thirty.”

“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 célèbre.
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.