He turned aside, lifting ragged, red eyebrows as Tompkins came hurrying in the door.
“What’s this all about?” sputtered the junior partner. “Alice says you’ve been trying to reach me all afternoon.”
Shayne said, “Sit down, Tompkins.” He turned his head at the sound of heavy footsteps in the hall outside. “That sounds like Chief Gentry. We’ll all be cozy when he gets here, and settle the entire deal … I hope,” he added, half under his breath, as Will Gentry came in.
The chief caught Shayne’s worried look and shook his head. “Nothing yet, Mike. But I’ve been thinking it all over and I’ve reached the conclusion.…”
“I’ve reached a couple of conclusions, too,” Shayne told him. “Sit down, Will. And you sit down, too, Tompkins,” he added to the junior partner, who was pacing back and forth with his hands clasped behind his back.
Shayne stood in the middle of the floor, flat-footed and glowering, until the chief and Tompkins settled themselves in chairs.
Then Shayne addressed Tompkins, with a long forefinger pointed at him. “This is your last chance, Tompkins. What sort of alibi do you have for the period when Wallace was murdered last night?”
“Me?” Tompkins swallowed hard and endeavored to maintain his dignity. “I told you in the beginning I was prepared to give a definite alibi, if it was required.”
“So,” said Shayne, “it is now required. Let’s have it.”
Tompkins glanced appealingly at Gentry. “I don’t believe Shayne has any official standing in this inquiry. Do I have to answer him?”
Gentry said stolidly, “I’m giving Shayne official status. Answer him.”
“I … I …,” said Tompkins helplessly, “… I meant it this morning when I told you I could furnish an alibi. Unfortunately.…”
“Unfortunately for you,” said Shayne with vicious irony, “or … maybe fortunately, Tompkins, the woman whom you expected to furnish your alibi has since died. Hasn’t she, Tompkins?”
Tompkins said strongly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is a lot of hog-wash and I.…”
“No, Tompkins,” said Shayne. “It isn’t hog-wash. Did you kill Lola Berger because she refused, in the final analysis, to lie about the time you spent with her last night?”
“Lola?” sputtered Tompkins. “What do you know about Lola?”
“Practically everything,” Shayne told him gravely. “Today when I showed you that note I found in Wallace’s apartment, you realized that he had been playing around with her, too, didn’t you? Was it the first time you suspected the truth, Tompkins? Or had you known about it before?”
Tompkins sank back with a sigh. “That’s a lie,” he muttered. “Lola wouldn’t … she didn’t.…” He sat erect, his face flushed with anger. “You think there was something between her and Jim Wallace? There wasn’t! You’re a fool to think so. I’ll explain that note to you and how you came to find it in Wallace’s possession. As soon as I saw it I knew what it was. Lola and I did have a quarrel a couple of weeks ago. We made it up a few nights later, and she told me she had written a note to me and sent it here to the office. A note I never received. She didn’t tell me the exact wording, but as soon as I read that note today, I realized it must be the one. Jim Wallace was a prim, old snoop,” he went on angrily. “Just because he never had any decent sex life of his own, he hated to see anyone else have any fun. He was always after me … preaching to me … giving me fatherly advice about settling down and getting married, until he made me sick at my stomach. As soon as I saw that note today, I realized that Jim must have intercepted it, here, at the office, and kept it, for some purpose of his own.
“You’ll understand him better,” Tompkins went on, in disgust, “when I tell you that he even went so far, a couple of weeks ago, as to get in touch with Lola and have lunch with her and actually offer her money to get out of Miami and out of my life. As though it was any of his damned business,” he went on, belligerently.
“Perhaps,” said Rutherford Martin smoothly, “he realized how bad an influence a gold-digger can have upon a man in your position, Tommy. Perhaps he was thinking of the future … of some time when there might be a very large sum of cash available in the office safe … and of the terrible temptation to grab it and go away with a woman like that.”
There was a long and pregnant silence after Martin ceased speaking. It was broken by a vehement explosion from Tompkins: “Good God, Martin! Are you serious?”
“It’s a possibility,” said Shayne, “that must have occurred to all of us. Let’s get back to your alibi. Isn’t it a fact that you don’t have any now that Lola is dead?”
“It is,” admitted Tompkins. “Which should be proof enough that I didn’t kill her. Don’t you see? She was my out, if anybody was fool enough to think I had anything to do with stealing the money or shooting Jim Wallace. I’d be the last man in the world to kill her.”
“If she was actually prepared to alibi you,” agreed Shayne. “And that brings us back to the note, signed with her name, that was in Wallace’s bureau. You gave no sign of recognizing the note, or her name, when I showed it to you, yet, the moment I went out of your office, you reached for the outside telephone on your desk and dialed her number. What did she tell you over the phone, Tompkins?”
The broker’s saturnine face showed helpless astonishment. “How do you know I called her number?”
“We private detectives know our business,” Shayne told him gravely, “even though we don’t employ large staffs of legmen. What did you talk about?”
“Nothing. Her telephone didn’t answer. I didn’t know it then, but I realize now she must have been dead already when I tried to call her.”
“But she answered Martin’s call about five minutes later,” Shayne pressed him. “She wasn’t dead then. So what did she tell you over the phone, Tompkins?”
“I insist that I got no answer. I let it ring ten times before hanging up.” Tompkins turned harried eyes to Martin. “You say you called her later and got an answer? I didn’t know you even knew Lola.”
“I didn’t, personally. Jim had talked to me about helping extricate you from the clutches of some designing female, but I didn’t know who she was. Shayne and I found her number written in Jim’s private address book.”
“And she answered the phone when you called her a few minutes later? Well, then,” Tompkins spoke acidly to Shayne, “if you know she was still alive at that time, you can’t suspect me of killing her. You know I was here in my office.”
“If it was Lola herself who answered Martin’s ring,” Shayne amended. “But there seems to be some question about that. Having never heard her voice before, he can’t swear the woman who answered the phone was Lola.”
“But I can swear her phone didn’t answer when I rang it.”
“You can swear to it, but you can’t prove it. Just as you can swear you spent last evening with her, but you can’t prove that either.”
“What possible motive could I have had for killing Jim Wallace?”
“Sexual jealousy is a pretty good motive. That note from Lola indicates more than a passing acquaintance between Wallace and her.”
“But I’ve explained that, too. It wasn’t written to Jim. It was written to me, after we’d quarrelled, and sent here to the office. He must have intercepted it and then kept it, for some reason of his own. To help keep us apart, I guess. I’ve told you he disapproved of our affair.”
“Sure, you’ve told us,” said Shayne wearily. “But, again, you have no proof at all. Just your unsupported word. It’s more logical to assume that she had fallen for Wallace and they were planning to go away together to South America with a million bucks of the firm’s money. And when you discovered it, you shot Jim and took the money yourself. Maybe you did think in the beginning that you could buy an alibi from her with a million dollars, but, when you found out she wouldn’t play, you had to get rid of her, too.”
“My God!” Tompkins covered his f
ace with both hands and his tone was awed. “This is one of those nightmarish things you read about. Every word I’ve told you is the absolute truth.”
“Aren’t you forgetting one thing, Mike?” asked Gentry stolidly. “The note you found in Wallace’s bedroom?”
“I’ve been waiting for you to bring that up, Will. No, I haven’t forgotten it, and it’s the one piece of solid evidence that punches a hole in the case against Tompkins. Because you and I both realize it must have been put in that drawer after last night. Isn’t that what sticks in your craw, Will?”
“Right. The moment you told me about finding it this morning I knew it had been planted after my boys went over the place. I may not have the most efficient homicide squad in the world, but, by God, they wouldn’t miss a thing like that in the apartment of a murdered man.”
“That,” said Shayne to the two partners, “is the big mistake one of you made this morning when you were so insistent that I get into the Wallace apartment to search for the money or some trace of it. After planting the note in the bureau drawer while you were there previously, it required a further search to turn it up. What you didn’t realize was that I have enough confidence in Gentry’s men to know it must have been planted after their search of the premises last night. Since you two were the only ones who had been inside the apartment, it had to be one of you two who did it.”
“Planted there?” burst out Tompkins. “By one of us? Why, in the name of God? I certainly didn’t do it, because it made things look as though Jim and Lola were intimate and gave me an apparent motive for killing Wallace.”
“Of course you didn’t, Tommy,” said Martin with asperity. “And neither did I. Mr. Shayne and Chief Gentry are simply overestimating the efficiency of his detectives. They obviously overlooked it in their first search.”
Shayne shook his red head decidedly. “It was planted there for me to find. By you, Martin. You’re the one who intercepted it in the mail, here at the office, not Wallace. After shooting Wallace, you suddenly realized what a nice piece of incriminating evidence it was against your remaining partner and you slipped it in the bureau drawer this morning.”
“Do I have to sit here and listen to this outrageous nonsense, Chief Gentry?” blustered Martin. “There is such a thing as slander. Good heavens, I have an absolute alibi for the time of Jim’s death. My wife and three other women will swear on a stack of Bibles that I was at home in bed from early in the evening until the time you notified me that Jim was dead.”
“Those four women,” said Shayne, “will swear that you retired early, and three of them believe you remained in your bedroom all the time. But Kitty Heffner has a different story to tell, Martin. She saw you slip out through the kitchen door about ten o’clock, and saw you return fully dressed some time later. You have no more alibi than Tompkins for the crucial period.” He spoke with such complete assurance, adding just enough to Kitty’s real story to make it sound wholly damning, that Martin’s face turned ashen and he wet his lips several times before essaying a weak smile and stammering:
“I—I believe I did slip out to the corner drugstore to get a cigar. That must have been when Kitty saw me.” He didn’t add in words, The damned tattletaleing bitch, but his tone did it for him.
Shayne shrugged and said, “Maybe. Anyhow, it shoots a nice, fat hole in your alibi for Wallace’s murder. And that brings us to this afternoon and Lola. After planting that note for me to find, it became imperative that she should die before I had a chance to question her. Otherwise, the case you were building against Tompkins would fall flat on its face. She was killed with the same gun that murdered Wallace. Your second murder, Martin.”
“But that is preposterous. Utterly impossible. Are you out of your mind, Shayne? You’re the one man in the world who knows I couldn’t have killed Lola. Good heavens, man! You were sitting right here with me in this very office when I spoke to her on the telephone. I understand that you rushed straight to her door from here, leaving me to report her number to the police. And found her dead when you got there. Do you think I’m Superman?”
“No,” said Shayne with infinite disgust. “I think you’re a murdering son-of-a-bitch who blundered all the way down the line. Where you really outsmarted yourself, Martin, was when you were so eager to throw suspicion on Tompkins that you gave me this photograph of all three of you after I asked for a picture of Wallace to show at Lola’s apartment. You felt sure that someone would have seen Tompkins there and he would be the one identified as Lola’s lover. Coupled with the note I’d found at Wallace’s place, that gave Tompkins a sexual motive for killing Wallace, and, with his alibi dead, you figured he was a cinch to take the rap for you.”
Martin tried to sputter an angry denial, but Shayne went on coldly: “What you didn’t realize, Martin, was that your picture in this group photograph would be recognized by the couple next door to Lola as the man who entered and left Lola’s apartment just about the time she was being murdered.”
“That can’t be true. There wasn’t a soul … there isn’t a soul on earth,” Martin amended tremblingly, “who can say I was ever there.”
“That’s because you don’t know the old couple’s propensity for peeking through keyholes when Lola had visitors,” Shayne told him drily, waiting with bated breath to see if Martin would challenge the untruth.
“But it’s a dreadful mistake. I don’t care what they say, you know I wasn’t there, Shayne. I was right here in this office.”
“You were here in this office, all right. After hurrying back from shooting Lola. And trying to use me to establish an alibi.”
“But you heard me speak to her on the phone.”
“I heard nothing of the sort. You were very careful that I shouldn’t hear anything. I heard you speak into a dead phone … pretending to speak to a dead woman.
“You can have him, Will,” Shayne ended with a grimace. “We’ll find the million dollars wherever he stashed it last night and you’ll have the case tied up in a knot.”
He stood up just as the telephone rang.
It was Tompkins who answered his partner’s telephone. Martin seemed not to hear it. He was hunched forward in his chair, staring unseeingly at the floor while his lips worked in and out and perspiration streamed down his fat jowls.
Tompkins said respectfully, “It’s for you Mr. Shayne,” and handed the instrument to him.
Shayne said, “Hello,” and Lucy Hamilton’s voice lilted over the wire to him:
“Michael? I called Chief Gentry’s office and they gave me this number. I’ve got the most wonderful news. We’ve solved the case … at least … that is, partly anyhow. The important part. You can go ahead and tell about those airplane tickets, Michael. They were just a fake and Jim Wallace couldn’t have been planning a trip abroad because we found his expired passport and it hasn’t even been renewed. Don’t you see what that means, Michael? It means.…”
He interrupted her excited voice fondly, “I see exactly what it means, angel, and you’ve been a great help. Where are you?”
“At my place. Mrs. Wallace is with me, and.…”
“Stay right there,” Shayne ordered, “and break out the cognac. I’ll be right along.”
He replaced the telephone and told Gentry with a grin. “You take over, Will. I’ve got a date with my secretary and a bottle.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lucy Hamilton met him in the doorway of her apartment with outstretched arms and glistening eyes. He grabbed hold of her in a bear hug and lifted her feet from the floor while he looked over the top of her head at Myra Wallace sitting sedately on the long sofa in the sitting room with a glass of sherry in her hand.
Last night, in the presence of her dead husband, Mrs. Wallace had been a shattered woman. Today, the shadow of bereavement showed on her face, but her eyes were clear and shining, and while there was still evidence of grief for the loss of her beloved husband, there was no longer perplexity and fright engendered by the circumstances under which
she had found his body.
Michael Shayne was glad for that as he looked at her while holding Lucy in a tight embrace. Mrs. Wallace had lost her husband, but she had not lost her faith in Jim Wallace. That was good. At the moment, Shayne realized it was damned important. It was something he hadn’t known before, but after this revelation he knew he would never forget it in the future.
He lowered Lucy gently and held her out at arm’s length from him. He said, “So you and Mrs. Wallace have been playing detective, angel? Do you know you’ve had the entire Miami police department standing on their heads trying to find you?”
Lucy dimpled and confidently tucked her arm inside his. “Come in and have a drink and we’ll tell you about it.”
Shayne let her lead him into the room and seat him on the sofa beside Mrs. Wallace, with a four-ounce glass of cognac and a tall glass of ice water on the coffee table in front of him. He took a sip of cognac and said, “I’m listening, angel.”
“No matter what happens from this point on, Michael,” Lucy told him, “Mrs. Wallace now absolves you from your promise to keep quiet about the airplane tickets. As I told you on the telephone, we know her husband didn’t buy them planning a trip to South America because he hadn’t even renewed his passport and couldn’t possibly have been packing for such a trip.
“Do you understand how important that is, Michael?” Lucy went on eagerly. “It means that whoever killed him fixed things that way to look as though Jim were being unfaithful while Myra was away.”
Shayne said, “I get that part of it, angel. What I want is an explanation of the cloak-and-dagger stuff this afternoon. Why did Mrs. Wallace elude her police tail and call you mysteriously to leave the office in the middle of the day … and leave me, by God, in one hell of a tizzy because I hadn’t the slightest idea where you were or what you were doing?”
“But I left you a note, Michael,” wailed Lucy. “I told you.…”
Shoot the Works Page 15