The Corpse That Never Was ms-45

by Brett Halliday

  “Have you been to the police, Mrs. Grogan? Their Missing Persons department has better facilities than I for tracing lost people.”

  “No, I haven’t. I… I’m worried about what kind of thing Joe maybe got himself into. Like I said, I just had a feeling in my bones it was something illegal. That’s the only reason he could have for not telling me. So I didn’t want to put the police onto him. And when I got to thinking about Mr. Nathan and all, I thought you’d know best if I could just talk to you.”

  Shayne said, “I can do some quiet checking without giving his name to the police. I’d like to keep this picture, and I’ll need a description of him, and what he was wearing when he disappeared.”

  “He’s five feet ten and he weighs right in at a hundred and fifty. Thirty-four years old and all his own teeth and not a gray hair in his head.” She spoke with unconscious pride as she recited these details. “He was always a sharp dresser. Not flashy, but… he liked colored shirts and sport jackets. Last night when I left home he was wearing… let me see now…” She closed her eyes and thought for a moment. “A light-blue short-sleeved shirt and light gray slacks. When he went out at night he always wore a light-weight navy-blue sport jacket with those slacks.”

  Shayne was making notes as she spoke, and he asked her, “Is that what he would normally wear to work? He wouldn’t have changed to a matching suit?”

  “Not ever. At the Hacienda they liked their dealers and house-men to dress informal.”

  Shayne nodded and said, “I’ll start a check on the hospitals and accident cases on the strength of this description. In the meantime, please call me at once if Joe returns or you have word from him.”

  She said, “I thank you kindly.” She had her bag open in her lap and she tentatively took out her wallet. “I can pay you for your trouble.”

  Shayne shook his head and waved it away. “It’s no trouble. If it does turn out to have any connection with the Nathan case, I’m already being paid for that investigation.”

  “I can’t for the life of me see how there could be any connection… but where is Joe do you think?” Her face was suddenly drawn, and the freckles stood out across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes pleaded with him piteously for some word of comfort as she slowly got to her feet.

  “More than likely at home right now wondering where the dickens you are,” Shayne told her with a grin. “Try not to worry, and I’ll let you know if I get any line on him.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  When he returned to the table and poured himself another drink of cognac, Michael Shayne’s face wore an expression of deep concentration. Now he was confronted with one more fact which didn’t seem to fit in anywhere. He wandered out to the kitchen to refill his water glass, brought it back and sat down heavily.

  A short time ago he had been trying to pass off Max Wentworth’s death as sheer coincidence… insofar as it pertained to the Nathans. Now, he was less sure. The disappearance of Grogan under the circumstances was one too many coincidences to swallow. Yet, for the life of him he didn’t see how Grogan fitted into the picture.

  The man was a croupier at a gambling house where Nathan was apparently in the habit of dropping a hundred dollars once a week. They had become well-enough acquainted so they’d gone down to the bar to have a couple of drinks together after closing time two weeks ago. Mrs. Grogan had reason to believe they were cooking up some illegal scheme together from which her husband hoped to get quite a sum of money.

  What could that have to do with Elsa Nathan committing suicide last night?

  Shayne found himself looking down at the photograph of Joe Grogan again. He narrowed his eyes and brought back a visual memory of the man’s body in pajamas and robe with his features shattered by the blast from a shotgun in his mouth. The dead man could be Grogan, he decided, though he didn’t see how or why. It was simply that Grogan was inexplicably missing, and there was an unidentified dead man in the morgue.

  Had Paul Nathan planned this whole affair somehow, with devilish cunning? Could he have arranged for Grogan to meet his wife in the expectation that she would fall desperately in love with him and they’d end up as the principals in a suicide pact?

  It was utterly impossible. No husband could possibly plan such a thing… and foretell the consequences. Besides, there was Mrs. Grogan’s positive opinion of her husband’s character, the fact that he had been on the job at the Hacienda each one of those Friday nights when Elsa was keeping a rendezvous; there was the discarded clothing in the bedroom which didn’t fit Joe’s description as a “sharp” dresser at all. It was absurd. Shayne took a hefty drink of cognac and shoved that line of thought out of his mind. What other angles were there to follow up? There was the secretary who worked in the office with Nathan and whom he had taken to dinner at least three Fridays in a row. Suzie Conroy, her name was.

  What was the name of the other man in the office whom Nathan had mentioned twice from the preceding night? Once as having a pre-dinner drink with him, and again as the person who had told him the news about Elsa’s death at two o’clock in the morning.

  Shayne scowled as he dug back into his memory for the man’s name.

  Jim Norris! That was it. Shayne picked up the pencil and jotted the name down on a pad in front of him, and wrote “Suzie Conroy?” behind it. Norris might be able to tell him whether Nathan was having a serious affair with a secretary who worked with them.

  The only other name Shayne could add to those was Mona Bayliss, the girl whom Paul Nathan had jilted a year ago soon after he met the heiress to the Armbruster fortune.

  Shayne didn’t know why he wrote her name down underneath Jim Norris. Force of habit. In a case like this you checked everything out. True, Wentworth’s report to Elsa stated that he had been unable to discover any link between Mona and Nathan after their engagement had been broken.

  But why had Elsa suspected such a link? What had caused her to give Mona’s name to Wentworth when she retained the man to tail her husband every Friday night? Under normal circumstances, she would have been scarcely aware of Mona Bayliss a year ago when she and Paul were married. It was improbable that they had even met at that time. Yet, a year later the woman had been enough in her thoughts that she had ordered a detective to check up on her.

  A tiny thrill of excitement coursed through Shayne’s veins. Maybe this was an angle. Something, certainly, had occurred recently to make her suspicious of Mona.

  He settled back in his chair, tugging at his earlobe and reflectively draining his glass of cognac.

  His telephone rang as he set the empty glass down. He picked it up and spoke into it and recognized the forceful voice of Eli Armbruster at once:

  “Mr. Shayne. I called to ask what progress you’ve made.”

  Shayne said, “Very little.”

  “I see.” Armbruster’s voice remained suave but there was a hint of iron in it. “May I inquire how you have employed your time during this entire day since I retained you to investigate my daughter’s death?”

  Shayne hesitated before he replied, repressing his natural reaction to the question. He made his tone as suave as Eli’s when he said, “I’ve mostly been engaged in gathering evidence which corroborates the fact that your daughter died by her own hand as the result of a suicide pact with her lover whom we know only as Robert Lambert.”

  “Nonsense, Shayne. I explained to you this morning the utter inconsistency of this with Elsa’s character. She would never have entered into such a liaison.”

  Shayne said grimly, “I’m looking at facts, Armbruster. Lambert telephoned your daughter where she was at home, alone, each Friday evening since he rented that apartment. She was observed arriving to keep a tryst with him within half an hour of each phone call. She remained in the apartment with him until after midnight each of those nights. She brought her own nightgown and bedroom slippers with her and left them in the apartment. There is no evidence that any other person has been in the apartment since Lambert rented it. These are
facts. Did you know, too, that she had asked her husband for a divorce a couple of months ago?”

  “Elsa? Had asked him for a divorce? Nonsense. I told you how she felt about that. Refused him absolutely even though I urged her to go ahead and pay the man off.”

  “And offered to pay half the sum yourself?” Shayne asked pleasantly.

  “Where did you get that information?”

  “From Paul Nathan. He admits asking for two hundred fifty thousand as a cash settlement, but insists it was Elsa’s idea.”

  Eli Armbruster barked, “The man is an unmitigated liar. I warned you not to believe a word he said.”

  “He warned me the same thing about you.” Shayne kept his voice completely neutral.

  “Surely you don’t take him seriously.”

  “I’m trying to sift out the facts. If Elsa did not want the divorce, Mr. Armbruster, why did she hire a private detective to report on her husband’s movements?”

  There was a slight pause before Armbruster said thoughtfully, “So she did, eh?”

  “You suggested it, didn’t you?” Shayne pressed him. “Recommended Max Wentworth to her?”

  “I told her I had found Wentworth an efficient person for that sort of job in the past, and that if Paul Nathan continued to pester her about a divorce she might do well to see if Wentworth could gather evidence to take into court against him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that this morning?”

  “Why should I?” countered Eli sharply. “What bearing has it on the case?”

  “Max Wentworth might be alive at this moment if you had told me.”

  “Wentworth… alive? What on earth do you mean?”

  “He was found murdered in his office a short time ago. That makes three people dead in less than twenty-four hours, Armbruster. Are you keeping anything else back from me?”

  “I don’t care for your attitude or your tone of voice, Shayne. I fail to see how Wentworth’s death has any possible bearing on what happened last night.”

  “Goddamnit!” said Shayne angrily. “If you knew this morning that Elsa was having Paul tailed on Friday nights you must have realized that his testimony concerning last night would be very important. Maybe it was important enough for someone to murder him before he had a chance to make out his final report.”

  “I see. Yes, of course.” Armbruster seized the idea happily. “If Paul knew he was being followed last night, he would most certainly feel he had to silence the man. Because I’m convinced he engineered those two deaths.”

  “I wish you’d tell me how he managed it.”

  “I’m paying you to work out the details,” Eli reminded him acidly.

  Shayne said, “I don’t think he knew he was being followed. It’s not the sort of thing a wife would be likely to tell her husband.”

  “Perhaps Wentworth approached him… with an offer to keep his silence for a price.”

  “Perhaps. Did you get the impression Wentworth was that sort of double-dealer from your previous contacts with him?”

  “I got the impression that he had few moral scruples… that he would have little hesitancy about selling out to the highest bidder.”

  “Yet you recommended that sort of a man to your daughter?” Shayne couldn’t prevent a caustic note from creeping into his voice.

  “What sort of blasted nonsense are you talking, Shayne? One uses the tools at hand for the sort of job one wants done. I felt that Wentworth was the man for the job.”

  “What you mean is, don’t you, that you felt Max might be persuaded to manufacture some evidence against Nathan if he couldn’t turn up anything?”

  “I resent that imputation. I suggest this discussion be closed.”

  Shayne said, “There’s one more point that may be very important. How well do you know Mona Bayliss?”

  There was quite a long pause while he waited for an answer to this question. Then the old buccaneer repeated hesitantly, “Bayliss? Mona Bayliss? Is that the name of the young woman whom Paul jilted in order to marry my daughter?”

  “I’m sure you know that’s who she is,” Shayne told him. “Max Wentworth made a full report on her when he checked into Nathan’s background for you. And you met her at that time, didn’t you? And offered her a large sum of money to sue Nathan for breach of promise in the hope of preventing your daughter’s marriage to him?”

  Shayne held his breath as he waited for a reply to this completely unwarranted accusation. It was just the sort of thing he guessed the old man might have done under the circumstances. In this case the gamble paid off.

  Eli said heavily, “I did talk to her, yes. And sounded her out somewhat along those lines. She was completely intransigent. She was apparently madly infatuated with the fellow and terribly hurt by his cavalier treatment of her, but blamed only herself for losing him and was childishly determined not to interfere with his marriage. It was impossible to reason with her.”

  “Have you had any indication that she and Paul have been seeing each other recently?”

  “N-no.”

  “But when you and Elsa discussed her hiring a private detective, you did suggest to her that it might be worthwhile to check up on Mona Bayliss on the chance that they were seeing each other again?”

  “Certainly not. I would have had no reason for doing that.”

  “And you’re sure that you didn’t?”

  “Of course, I’m sure. As a matter of fact, I’m positive that Elsa and I never discussed the woman at any time. So far as I know, my daughter was not aware of her existence. And now, if you’re quite through cross-examining me, Shayne…”

  “There’s one other thing,” the detective said hastily. “A man named Norris who works in your organization. Do you know how I can get in touch with him?”

  “Jimmy Norris? Certainly. I’m sure he’s in the Miami telephone book. James R. Norris. The R stands for Roosevelt, but it isn’t the lad’s fault that he was born in the nineteen thirties to Democratic parents. He’s one of our bright young men.”

  Shayne thanked him and hung up. He sat back and lit a cigarette, frowning thoughtfully at the bits of information he had got from the old man. Something had caused Elsa to be suspicious of Mona Bayliss and to direct Max Wentworth to investigate her current relationship with her husband. With both Elsa and Max now dead, there was no one to ask what that something was.

  Shayne hesitated, glancing down at the pad in front of him on which he had written down the three names a short time before.

  He opened the telephone book and looked for Norris, found a number of listings, but only one James R. He lived at a good address in the Northeastern section, and Shayne wrote the number down behind the man’s name on the pad in front of him.

  Then he turned the pages to see if he would find Mona Bayliss listed also. He did find her, at the address on Hibiscus Road which Wentworth had given for her. Shayne wrote her telephone number down slowly, staring at each digit as he set it down behind her name.

  Somehow, that number was vaguely familiar to him. He knew by God, he had heard it very recently. Where?

  He narrowed his eyes at it, letting the digits run together in his mind, then closed his eyes completely and concentrated. It did no good. There was that haunting sense of familiarity… nothing more. He made his mind go back to the typewritten report Wentworth had prepared for Elsa Nathan. No. Her address had been there. 729 Hibiscus Road, but no telephone number. There was no reason why Wentworth should have given it, of course.

  But somewhere… somehow… in some connection with the case at hand…

  He shook his red head angrily and dribbled more cognac into his glass. In a case like this you never got anywhere by trying to force the memory to come to you. You pushed it completely out of your mind and pretended absolute disinterest in the subject. Eventually it would come to you… when least expected.

  He sipped cognac and reached for the telephone, intent on calling Norris’s number and arranging to meet him.

  His
hand stopped in midair before it touched the instrument.

  He reached in his pocket and got out the slip of paper on which he had jotted down the telephone numbers Robert Lambert had called from the apartment, although he did not really need to do so.

  He already knew positively that Mona Bayliss was the other person whom Lambert had telephoned that first evening after renting the apartment in which he had died last night.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When he had looked up Mona’s number in the book it had been with the idea of calling to see if she was home and arranging to have a talk with her if possible.

  This knowledge changed all that. He didn’t want to see Mona Bayliss quite yet. Not until he knew more about her relationship with Robert Lambert. Not until, goddamnit, he knew more about Robert Lambert himself.

  He caught himself looking down at the photograph of Joe Grogan again, and was reminded of the promise he’d made Mrs. Grogan.

  He called police headquarters and was connected with the Missing Persons Bureau, and was lucky enough to find a man he knew in charge.

  “This is off the record for the moment,” he said after identifying himself. “I’ve got a missing guy named Joe Grogan. Since last evening.” He described Joe from the photo and from what Mrs. Grogan had told him, including the way he had been dressed when she last saw him.

  “We’ve got nothing that fits that, Mr. Shayne. Unless,” he added hopefully, “you’re thinking about the stiff who blew his head off with a shotgun last night. Superficially…”