Shoot the Works

by Brett Halliday

Shayne’s look of quiet amusement turned into a wide grin. “Could be, Tim. You’ve written most of the newspaper stories about me.” Then he sobered and asked, “How do you figure it?”

  “Just about the way Gentry does right now. That Mrs. Wallace came in unexpectedly and found him planning a trip, or maybe with some gal, even, and gunned him on the spot. That’s when she’d start thinking about Mike Shayne instead of the cops. Particularly knowing Lucy so well.”

  “And you think Lucy and she fixed up a story between them?”

  Timothy Rourke sighed and said equably, “Not if she told Lucy the truth. I don’t think the girl would actually connive at covering up murder, but I do think it’s quite possible that Mrs. Wallace sold her a bill of goods and Lucy has some private information she’s aching to pass on to you. You know damn well Gentry will have the phone bugged at her daughter’s house and you don’t dare call her. That’s why I thought you might be headed for the Beach.”

  Shayne hesitated a long moment before deciding not to explain to Rourke the real reason why he didn’t feel it necessary to confer with Lucy privately. They were long-time friends and the reporter had often played along with him in the past, keeping certain information confidential while Shayne was investigating a case, but the knowledge of the airline tickets in his pocket was a little too much to burden Rourke with at this point. Instead, he argued:

  “Don’t you and Will realize that the timing makes it impossible for Mrs. Wallace to be the murderer? There was no gun in the apartment. Don’t tell me you think Lucy helped her dispose of it.”

  “No. But what was there to prevent her slipping out and ditching the gun before she called Lucy?”

  Shayne frowned, thinking back to Mrs. Wallace’s statement to Gentry which Rourke knew he had overheard. At that juncture, Gentry had previously listened to her story of what happened after the plane landed, and this was information Rourke didn’t know Shayne possessed. To avoid disclosing that he had already heard the account from her own lips, he suggested, “How about you filling me in on that part of it? I assumed she phoned Lucy as soon as she walked in and found her husband dead. Let’s stop some place for a drink.”

  “Fine.” Rourke looked at his watch. “The bar at the Olinar should still be open.”

  “Why that joint?” protested Shayne. “Sammy’s is closer.”

  “The Olinar is the restaurant where she claims she stopped for a dinner she didn’t want on her way from the airport,” explained Rourke. “She claims she and her husband are known there and she signed the tab. Won’t hurt to check.”

  Shayne shrugged and checked the cross-street, drove on six blocks and turned to the right one block to pull up across the street from the Olinar, a quiet and sedate restaurant mostly patronized by native Miamians.

  They got out and crossed the street, and Shayne said, “Oh, oh,” when he recognized one of the vehicles parked in front as an unmarked police car. He grunted, “Looks as though Will had the same idea,” and they went through a side door into a well-lighted cocktail lounge, and paused to look at the half-dozen drinkers at the bar and the few tables that were occupied so late at night.

  Rourke nudged Shayne and jerked his head toward a corner table occupied by a man who sat alone with a glass and a bottle of beer in front of him. They moved toward the table together and he looked at them with pretended disinterest as they pulled out chairs.

  “If you don’t mind our joining you, Sergeant,” Shayne said with exaggerated politeness. “I’ll even buy you something better than that swill you’re drinking.”

  Sergeant Adams of Homicide looked distastefully at his glass. “Guess I’ll stick to beer. I’m waiting for the chief.”

  Shayne said, “We’ll wait with you.” He told a hovering waiter, “Cognac with water on the side, and a rye and soda.”

  “What you got, Sarge?” Rourke asked eagerly. “Mrs. Wallace’s story check out okay?”

  “I’ll save what I got for the chief.” Adams’ voice was cool but not particularly unfriendly. He knew that both Shayne and the reporter were close friends of Gentry’s and didn’t wish to antagonize them, but he was also disinclined to give out information without Chief Gentry’s okay.

  Shayne said, “We’ll wait and listen to it with him.” He stretched out his long legs and lit a cigarette, lifted the inhaler glass when it came and took a sip while his gaze roved over the room to an archway on the right leading into a now-darkened room. “Dining room in there?”

  Adams nodded. “And the telephone booth is there behind you.” He was facing the door and he half-rose as he spoke, lifting one hand to attract Will Gentry’s attention as the chief hurried in.

  Gentry came to the table frowning heavily at the detective and reporter. “Thought you were making a deadline, Tim.” He sat down and took a long black cigar from his pocket, pursed his thick lips to hold it while the sergeant struck a match for him.

  “Thought we might pick up something here to add to my story. Do we get it from Adams or do we have to do our own sleuthing?”

  Gentry said briefly, “Let’s have it, Adams.”

  The sergeant drew a notebook from his pocket and consulted it. “The maître knows Mrs. Wallace all right and confirms she came in with a travelling bag, alone, around nine … little before, maybe. She checked her bag there,” he nodded toward a check stand beyond the archway, “and ordered a club sandwich and iced tea and came in here to make a phone call before the food came. She didn’t eat much, but sat for half an hour or so dawdling with her tea, then signed the check. He was going to have a boy take her bag out, but she said no, she had to make a phone call first, and came in here again and that’s the last he noticed her. Says it was maybe around ten o’clock.”

  Gentry nodded. “That checks,” he told Shayne absently. “Claims there was no answer and she sat in here for another half hour before trying home once more and then getting a taxi. Claims it was exactly ten-thirty-five when she finally left.” He rolled the cigar to the other side of his mouth and asked Adams, “Any confirmation of that?”

  The sergeant shook his head decisively. “Nothing either way. When she and her husband eat here they sometimes have a drink at the table but never hang out here. So they don’t know her in here. No one noticed a woman of her description waiting here, but the place was pretty crowded and they wouldn’t necessarily. Check girl was just leaving when I got here and she recalls a dame checking a bag and taking it out, but no recollection of the time.”

  “So that leaves the time element up in the air,” said Gentry stolidly. “There’s at least a half hour we’ve just got her word for. Unless we find the taxi-driver and he says otherwise, she could have got home about ten … just about the time Doc says hubby took the slug. Lucy says she called her about ten-fifty. Fifty minutes is plenty of time to stash a gun and fix things up the way she wanted it to look.”

  “You’ve got no proof at all,” said Shayne hotly. “If it was that way, why didn’t she conceal the fact that he was packing for a trip when he was shot? That’s the strongest clue to a possible motive for her.”

  Gentry shrugged and said blandly, “You never know how a dame’s mind works … particularly just after she’s gunned a two-timing husband.” He sighed and got up. “Maybe we’ll turn up the taxi-driver. Want a lift this time, Tim?”

  Rourke finished his drink, studying Shayne anxiously. “I guess so. Nothing else we can do tonight is there, Mike?”

  Shayne said, “I’m going home to sleep on it. Don’t get out on the Mrs. Wallace limb too far, Will. If Lucy says she’s okay, she is.”

  Gentry said, “I have the greatest respect for Lucy’s intuition, but I’m not running my department on that basis. You stay off a limb, too.”

  Shayne broodingly finished his cognac after they left, and paid the check, noting without surprise that Sergeant Adams’ beer was on it also.

  The situation was really messed up now. The airplane tickets in his pocket were the best proof there was that Mrs. Wallac
e had not killed her husband because certainly even an hysterical woman would have realized the two tickets were damning evidence against her and would have destroyed them at once.

  But it was too late to produce them now. He sat for a moment and silently cursed himself for having allowed Lucy to persuade him to conceal them in the first place, though, even as he did so, he knew that he would do the same thing under the same circumstances another time.

  He left the bar and got in his car, drove on to his hotel garage and parked it, then walked around to the front and entered the lobby.

  Dick was still at the desk and he looked up and made a hurried signal to the redhead as he walked in. Shayne paused and glanced around the lobby casually, saw a tall, bony woman get up quickly from a deep chair, half-concealed by a potted palm.

  A series of bracelets rattled on both wrists as she hurried toward him with mannish strides.

  He blinked doubtfully and then recognized her. She was one of Mrs. Martin’s bridge guests. The one who had come to the door to greet him when he arrived at the Martin house.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  She moved up close to him, tilting her head coquettishly, and, when Shayne caught a whiff of her breath, he realized she’d had at least one more drink since his encounter with her at the Martins’.

  “Mr. Shayne. Or may I call you Mike?”

  “I’ll answer to either,” he told her equably. “And you’re …?”

  “Kitty Heffner. I just don’t answer to anything but Kitty.” Her voice was brassy and somewhat loud, the words slightly blurred around the edges. “I’ve been waiting and waiting. I just felt I had to see you. I’ve got some very private information for you. Things I just wouldn’t tell that old policeman.”

  Shayne said, “That’s fine,” drawing back a little from the impact of her flashing black eyes. She was a woman who must have been very beautiful fifteen or twenty years before, and a few drinks evidently made her forget those intervening years. He took her arm and started to turn her toward two chairs across the lobby. “We can sit here quietly and I’ll be glad to hear anything you can tell me.”

  “Do we have to sit down here in public, Mike? It’s really terribly confidential. I don’t know whether I ought to tell it or not, but I do think maybe another little drink would give me more nerve.”

  Shayne sighed and then indicated a waiting elevator, conscious of the amused attention of Dick at the desk and the uniformed operator. He said, “We can go up to my room if you like. Unless you’re afraid of being compromised,” he ended hopefully. “It is past midnight.”

  Her gurgling laughter was unpleasantly remindful of the neigh of a horse. “I always say it’s never too late for a little drink. And I didn’t think you’d be Victorian, Mike. Not after all the things I’ve heard.”

  He compressed his lips and got in the elevator with her. The operator stood very erect with his eyes front, avoiding Shayne’s face.

  Out of the side of his mouth, Shayne said, “Be seeing you shortly,” as he got out, and reached in his pocket for a key-ring as they went down the hall.

  He unlocked a door and reached inside to turn on the ceiling light, and then stepped back to let Kitty Heffner precede him into the square sitting room.

  She uttered a little squeal of delight as she surveyed the room. “So this is where you grill your suspects?”

  “Sometimes,” said Shayne, “I feed them enough liquor so they tell me all their secrets without being grilled. Particularly if they’re female … and pretty.” He passed her toward a wall liquor cabinet as he spoke.

  “Oh, you.” Her voice lost some of its brassy quality and became flirtatious. “I’ve always understood you liked blondes.”

  “And brunettes,” Shayne assured her. “What can I get you?”

  “Anything.” She waved a large-boned hand vaguely and the bracelets rattled on her wrist. “Whatever you’re taking will be fine. It is nice and cozy here and I just love the thought of being plied with liquor. My, but the other girls would envy me if they even guessed where I am.”

  Shayne took down a brandy bottle and two four-ounce glasses. He carried them into the kitchen and set them on a tray, ran warm water over a tray of ice cubes and put three cubes in each of two tall glasses. Filling the glasses with cold water, he carried the tray back and found Kitty ensconced on the shabby sofa, leaning back so that her matronly breasts were thrust out and her rather tight skirt was pulled up to her knees. She had nice legs and trim ankles and a neat waistline, and the redhead realized she wouldn’t be bad at all in a dim light and if she’d keep her mouth shut.

  He set the tray on a low table in front of the sofa, and provided the dim light by switching on a floorlamp across the room and turning out the overhead light.

  She patted the sofa beside her happily as he turned back. “I do feel lovely and sinful … and just a little bit terrified of you, Mike Shayne. You’re so big and masterful, I just know I shouldn’t trust myself here alone with you. I can’t help wondering what might happen if you should take it in your mind to seduce me.” A deeper note had crept into her voice and it vibrated through Shayne.

  He sat down beside her and said, “I practically never seduce a witness until I’ve grilled her thoroughly first.” He poured brandy in both wine glasses and said, “Or would you rather have yours mixed?”

  “I just love straight liquor … if it’s good. And I just know you wouldn’t have anything but the best.” She reached for her glass and contrived to have the back of her hand brush against his knuckles. He was pleased that he felt no answering tingle.

  He lifted his own glass and said, “You’ve got some information about the murder?”

  She took a dainty sip of the brandy, savored it, and then avidly drank half the glass. She set it down without a sputter and without reaching for the ice water.

  “I think so. I think it’s important.” She was frowning a little and a tremor of self-doubt crept into her voice. “I don’t think I’m just being catty, and I don’t think I just decided it might be important, just because it gave me an excuse for coming up here and being with you. But I don’t know for sure. I do feel dreadfully disloyal and all. But it is a murder case, isn’t it? And, in a murder case, isn’t it against the law to withhold evidence?”

  Shayne took a drink from his own glass and chased it with ice water. “It’s practically a felony,” he told her. “You can tell me in confidence.”

  “I knew I could, Mike. That’s why I didn’t volunteer any information to that policeman. I told myself, Kitty Heffner, you just keep it for Mike Shayne. But now I don’t know whether it was just because in the back of my mind I thought it might turn out this way or not. You do know you’re dreadfully attractive, don’t you?”

  Shayne said gruffly, “I’m supposed to be grilling you. Remember?”

  “Of course I do. And you practically never seduce a witness until you’ve grilled her thoroughly first, do you?”

  “That’s right. So the sooner we get on with it.…” Shayne’s voice trailed off into suggestive silence.

  “It’s about Mr. Martin’s partner that you said was murdered, mostly. And something about Mr. Martin, too. As soon as I heard you say he was dead I couldn’t help thinking to myself, ‘So, he finally got what was coming to him.’ And I wasn’t surprised, not a bit. The way he was always pawing everybody at parties and making remarks with double meanings. Not me, you can bet. I wouldn’t have it. The mere thought of his kissing me in the kitchen makes my flesh crawl. But there were others that liked it, all right. I know I shouldn’t tell you this, but, I made up my mind, I was going to tell you the truth because it might be important.”

  Shayne asked, “Who were some of the others?”

  “Ella for one.”

  “Mrs. Martin?”

  “That surprises you, doesn’t it? With her fat and her gray hair and all. Men are so dumb. Just because Ella is fifty-two and has had the change of life and lets herself look run-down and dowdy, most men never thi
nk she might still like to have some fun on the side. Mr. Martin is like that. I always thought he never even suspected. Until tonight. And then I began to wonder.”

  Kitty paused and emptied her glass. She held it out to Shayne. “Could I have another tiny sip?”

  Shayne let her hold it while he tilted the bottle and poured a large number of tiny sips into her glass.

  “You thought Martin never suspected what?”

  “The way they used to smooch together. At parties, you know. When they thought no one was looking.” A sly smile curved her lips. “Sometimes I think Ella just lets her hair stay gray and dresses the way she does to fool her husband. So he’d never even suspect she was carrying on with his partner on the side.” She paused for another hefty drink and Shayne got out a pack of cigarettes and shook two out. She took one and put it in her mouth and Shayne lit a match. She set her glass down and put her fingertips to his hand to guide the flame to the end of the white cylinder. Her fingertips were cold and they trembled violently. Her black eyes were wide and they held his, challengingly, as she pulled smoke into her lungs. She said in a small voice, “Should I be frightened, Mike? I feel … funny inside, when I touch you. Do you feel funny, too?”

  Shayne pulled his gaze away from hers and lit his cigarette, saying carefully, “I feel wonderful, Kitty. Maybe you’d better not drink any more.”

  “But I want to. It makes me feel loose inside and … and wanton. Do you mind if I feel wanton, Mike? That’s a lovely word. Like wanting. And that’s what you do to me and you know it. And I’m glad of it. I’m glad I’m old enough to know a man likes that. To be wanted. You do like it, don’t you, Mike? Every man does. That’s something I’ve learned, and if I’d only known it when I was younger everything would have been so much easier. But I thought it was terrible to let a man know the way you felt. I thought he’d despise you if he ever guessed. But men don’t, do they? You don’t, do you?”

  She moved closer to him on the sofa, as she spoke. Her mouth was slightly open and her breath came in little panting gasps.