Too Friendly, Too Dead

by Brett Halliday

  Shayne reached down and tried the handle of the top right-hand drawer. It opened easily and he saw it was neatly arranged with letterheads and envelopes and invoices.

  The other two drawers showed the same neatness, with sharpened pencils, stamps, a Notary Seal and other adjuncts to Mr. Fitzgilpin’s business. Nothing out of order. Nothing of a personal nature.

  The center drawer was different. It was not, Shayne was certain at first glance, one that was attended to by Mrs. Perkins.

  There were half a dozen loose cigars, an untidy miscellany of memoranda torn from small pads, a few old letters still in their envelopes, exactly the sort of things that accumulate for years in a man’s desk which he probably forgets as soon as he closes the drawer on them.

  Shayne pawed through them idly and without much real interest. They told him nothing more about the man than he already knew. He pushed the scraps of paper aside and reached farther back inside the drawer, jerked his hand back involuntarily when the sharp point of a pin pricked the ball of his thumb. He opened the drawer wider and groped in to discover a restaurant menu with a single long-stemmed yellow rosebud securely pinned inside the fold with a corsage pin. He drew it out carefully, and several of the faded, dried petals fell from the bud as he did so.

  He laid the folded menu on the desk in front of him and regarded it curiously. It was from a restaurant in Greenwich Village in New York, and the printed date on the cover was November 19, 1961. About a year and a half ago.

  Shayne carefully removed the big-headed pin so he could open the menu out flat. A small photograph was between the folds. About two by three inches. The sort of souvenir photo that is shot by girl-photographers in night clubs and restaurants, developed on the spot and sold to patrons for an exorbitant price.

  It showed a couple seated at a restaurant table facing the camera. The girl was young and radiantly beautiful, wearing a low-cut cocktail gown with a corsage of tiny rosebuds pinned on the left shoulder of the gown. The man was about thirty, dressed in a business suit and dark four-in-hand tie, and looking superlatively well pleased with himself. He had dark, lean, handsome features, with a crew cut. The single faded rosebud that had been pinned inside the menu appeared to have been taken from the corsage the girl was wearing.

  Shayne frowned and turned the photograph over. It was blank. There was no writing of any sort on the menu. He settled back in the creaking swivel chair and tugged at his earlobe while he considered the three exhibits carefully. Roses for remembrance!

  A sentimental souvenir of something. Of what? A dinner in Greenwich Village a year and a half ago.

  He sighed and explored the rest of the center drawer without finding anything further to attract his interest. He closed the drawer and squinted down at the menu, the rosebud, and the photograph again. They seemed to be trying to tell him something. Something about the nature of the murdered man. An insurance broker who had kept this carefully in the back of his desk for more than a year.

  He placed the flower inside the menu again, folded it together and got up, carrying the folded menu in one hand and the photograph in the other back to the outer office where Mrs. Perkins sat behind her typewriter again with her hands folded in her lap and a far-away expression on her nice face.

  She looked up with a start as Shayne emerged from the inner office, her gaze going instinctively to the objects in his hand. “Did you find something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Shayne laid the menu in front of her, still folded over the rose. He turned the photo around for her to look at. “Do you know this couple?”

  She frowned down at it, slowly shaking her head while her eyebrows creased in puzzlement. “I don’t… think so. Neither one of them looks familiar at all.”

  Shayne hesitated with one big hand covering the menu. “When you were telling me about Mrs. Kelly’s visit to the office, you mentioned the fact that she appeared to be interested in certain personal things about Mr. Fitzgilpin… including the frequency of his visits to New York and the last time he’d been there. Do you recall the date you told her?”

  “Oh, yes.” Mrs. Perkins’ eyes brightened. “He’s only been there once since I’ve been in the office. To attend a convention in the fall of nineteen sixty-one. In November. About the middle of the month.”

  Shayne nodded with satisfaction. He took his hand off the menu and opened it to show her the faded and brittle rosebud inside. “Do you know why he had this carefully preserved in his desk drawer? It’s dated November nineteenth, nineteen sixty-one.”

  “Of course,” she said softly. “I remember it all very clearly now. The rosebud and the menu. And there was a picture of the bride and groom. I suppose that’s it, though I couldn’t be sure. He was the best man at a wedding at City Hall,” she explained to Shayne.

  “It was all very romantic, and it was the high point of the convention for him. It was just like Jerome to do a quixotic, sentimental thing like that. He didn’t know the bride and groom from Adam and Eve. He just met the bridegroom the night before in the bar at the hotel where he was staying in New York while he was having a beer after a convention meeting. I’ve told you before how friendly he was, and interested in strangers. He’d just start talking to anyone, any time or place, and generally they’d end up by responding and confiding in him.

  “Well, this night he got in conversation with this nice young man, who finally told him he planned to get married at City Hall the next day, but he was a stranger in New York and didn’t know a soul to stand up with him. Well, you can imagine what Jerome said to that?”

  She paused, smiling expectantly at Shayne, and he made the response she evidently wanted. He grinned encouragingly and said, “From what I’ve learned about your boss, I suspect he offered to help them get married.”

  “Not only that,” she said triumphantly, “but he went out and bought the bride a corsage of rosebuds the next day, and then ended up by blowing the four of them to an expensive dinner at this restaurant down in Greenwich Village. The bride lived in New York and had a friend, you see, to stand up with her. It was just the sort of kind, thoughtful thing Jerome would do. He was so pleased about it when he came back and told me all the details. He said they were a lovely young couple, so obviously desperately in love, and he was certain it was a real love match and that they’d live happily ever after.”

  Shayne nodded slowly, staring down at the photograph of the newly-weds. “You don’t remember their names? Nothing else about them?”

  “I’m not even sure he told me their names. He just met them that one time, you see. Why are you so interested? He never had any further contact with them that I know about.”

  Shayne said honestly, “I don’t know. Mrs. Perkins, you don’t mind if I take these along with me?”

  “Of course not. But I still don’t see…”

  “Neither do I,” he told her frankly. “Right now I’ve got a picture of the friendliest and nicest man in the world who got himself poisoned last night. It’s not a pretty picture,” he added grimly, “and it may change a great deal before we come to the end of it.”

  He carefully folded the dry rosebud and the picture back inside the menu, and thrust it into the side pocket of his jacket.

  “If you think of anything else… anything at all… don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.”

  “I will,” she breathed. “Oh, I will, Mr. Shayne. You’ve got to… you’ve just got to… get the person who did that terrible thing to Jerome.”

  7

  Linda Fitzgilpin was alone when she let Shayne into her apartment half an hour later. She still wore the simple black dress she had worn to the morgue, but now there was a look about her as though she were beginning to come apart at the seams.

  Her lip rouge was mostly gone, but there was higher color in her cheeks than previously. The red hair that had been softly waved was now slightly dishevelled and her hands trembled as she held both of them out to Shayne. Her voice was higher-pitched, with an almost st
rident note in it:

  “Mike! I’ve been wondering when you’d come. Lucy’s taken the children out… you know she promised them a picnic in the park… poor darlings, they don’t seem to quite realize what has happened to their daddy… and I’ve been sitting here all alone, thinking and wondering…”

  She drew him into the room with her hands grasping his, and she talked too fast and too nervously. Her eyes were slightly dilated and Shayne caught a strong whiff of liquor from her breath as he was drawn close to her.

  He disengaged his hands gently and told her, “I’ve been around. Gathering up bits and pieces as I went.” He moved across to a deep chair near the sofa and sank into it with a sigh. She closed the door and stood indecisively in front of it for a moment while he got out a cigarette and lit it. Then she said with forced gaiety, “I’m going to confess I’m having a wee bit of a drinkee. Would you like one? There’s bourbon and gin in the kitchen.”

  “No reason why you shouldn’t relax with a drink,” he told her amiably. “Sure. I’ll have a small gin… with tonic if you have it.”

  She swayed very slightly as she turned and went into the kitchen. Through the open door, Shayne saw her pick up a tall glass as she went by, and take a gulp from it before getting down a fresh glass for him.

  Her “wee bit of a drinkee” he thought wryly, was quite an understatement. He hoped she knew how to handle the stuff because there was certain information he hoped to get from her.

  She held two tall glasses in her hands when she returned. One was colorless with gin and tonic, the other a deep, brown hue that betokened lots of bourbon and not much else.

  Shayne accepted his glass gravely, took a sip and discovered she had not spared the horses in pouring his gin either. She sat on the sofa and crossed her nice legs, and he asked, “Have the police been around yet?”

  “No. Not a word from them. Not a word from anybody.” She drank from her glass and grimaced. “I’m… afraid, Mike,” she said in a small voice. “Help me. Please help me.”

  “Of course I’ll help you, Linda. Why are you afraid?”

  “Of the police. That nasty little man at the Beach. You see I… I lied to you this morning. And now I don’t know…” Her voice quavered into silence and she took another drink, her round eyes peeking at him anxiously over the rim of her glass.

  Shayne sat very still, expelling a lungful of smoke. “What did you lie about specifically?”

  “About… Jerome and last night. I was so confused and frightened when I first woke up and they told me,” she rushed on. “I thought… oh God! how can I tell you what I first thought? You see, they didn’t say it was poison at first. Just that Jerome had been found dead beside his car. I just naturally supposed that… that he’d been murdered. You can see that, can’t you? So when I called Lucy I told her… well, that I’d taken a sleeping pill before Jerome came home from the office and that’s all I knew about it.”

  “And you hadn’t?”

  “Oh, I took a sleeping pill, all right, and then a big drink of whiskey, and I woke up groggy and confused. I didn’t know he hadn’t come home until I looked over at his bed and saw it was empty. So it wasn’t really a lie… except…”

  “Except what, Linda?”

  “He did come back from the office. A little after ten o’clock. At least an hour before I expected him. It was one Friday night he didn’t stop to have a beer with the boys,” she went on with a trace of bitterness in her voice. “And he had a big drink of whiskey and… and we had a sort of argument, and then he had a phone call and went right out again. That’s when I took my pill and went to sleep.”

  “Sodium amytal?” Shayne asked sharply.

  “What?”

  “What kind of sleeping pills do you take?” he asked grimly.

  “Nembutal,” she faltered. “I have a prescription. Oh, Mike! You don’t think…?”

  “Right now I don’t know what I think. Your husband was killed last night by a lethal dose of a sleeping drug called sodium amytal probably administered in whiskey. I’ve been told he never drank whiskey in a bar. Just beer. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. It was one of his idiosyncracies. He just hated the thought of paying all that money for a little drink. Seventy-five or ninety cents for one ounce. He used to lecture me about it, pointing out that there are twenty-six ounces in a fifth that costs about five dollars.”

  “So he did his whiskey drinking at home in order to save money,” Shayne said harshly. “And he did take a drink here with you last night, and he did die of poison administered in whiskey. What do you think the police are going to make out of that, Linda?”

  “I don’t care what they think, it isn’t so.” She sat up angrily and glared at him. “He made his own drink in the kitchen. If there was any poison in it, he put it in.”

  “You said this morning it couldn’t possibly have been suicide,” he reminded her.

  “I know I did. And it couldn’t,” she cried out. “Don’t browbeat me, Mike. I thought you were on my side.”

  “I am. I was,” he amended angrily, “and I will be again if you give me reason to be. But, Goddamn it, Linda, you’ve got to tell me the truth. Look at the spot I’m in with Painter right now… assuring him that you didn’t see your husband last night and couldn’t possibly be guilty. It’s bound to come out, Linda. Every tiny detail. This is a murder investigation. Every facet of your private lives is going to be explored and put on the record. Now, don’t keep anything back from me. You mentioned a phone call that took him away… to his death. Don’t you see how important that may be? Who was it from? Where did he go?”

  “I do see… now,” she faltered. “I didn’t at first. It was about ten-thirty, Mike. He was just finishing his drink. I was going into the bedroom when he answered the phone, and I just paused in the doorway long enough to know it wasn’t for me. I heard him say, ‘Kelly? Yes, this is Fitzgilpin,’ and that is all I heard. I went in and closed the door. When I came out he had hung up the phone and was putting on his jacket. All he said to me was, ‘I’ve got to go out. Be back in an hour or so.’ Then he slammed out. As I said, we’d been quarrelling,” she ended miserably, “and I didn’t even ask him where he was going.”

  Shayne said, “Kelly? Man or woman, Linda?”

  “How do I know? He answered the phone.”

  “You’re sure he didn’t say Mrs. Kelly?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “He wouldn’t necessarily,” he ruminated, “even if it had been a Mrs. Do you know any Kellys? Did the name mean anything to you?”

  “Nothing. I just supposed it was one of his clients. In some sort of jam probably. He was always ready to dash out in the middle of the night to help anybody who called on him.” Again, there was a trace of bitterness in her voice which Shayne had detected once before.

  “And you have no idea where he was going?”

  “None at all.”

  “All right. Let’s go back to this morning when the police woke you with a telephone call. You were confused and groggy, and surprised to discover that your husband hadn’t come home. What was your process of reasoning that caused you to deny to Lucy that he had been home last evening and had gone out again?”

  “I… don’t know exactly. I was frightened and… and I guess I felt guilty because we’d quarreled and he’d slammed out that way. I didn’t see how it would help,” she went on piteously. “I didn’t know who the call was from or where he went.”

  Shayne said slowly, “You know what the police are going to think, don’t you?”

  “Do they have to know, Mike? Do you have to tell them?”

  “Of course they have to know. My God, Linda! I could lose my license for withholding vital information like that. This is murder. Get that fact firmly implanted in your pretty red head.”

  “All right.” She tilted her chin defiantly. “What will the police think?”

  “That you knew all the time he’d been poisoned,” he told her inexorably. “That you we
re afraid to admit he’d been home and had a big drink of whiskey with you because you had dosed it for him. All we need now is to find some sodium amytal around the place,” he added disgustedly.

  “But I didn’t know,” she cried out helplessly. “That’s why it was such a shock to me in the morgue when they said he’d been poisoned. You know I fainted practically in your arms.”

  He said drily, “I know. And I also know that Peter Painter suspected you were faking it at the time.”

  “But I wasn’t faking, Mike. You know I wasn’t.”

  “Right now,” he growled, “I’m not positive I know anything about you for sure. And no matter what I think… what Painter thinks is more important at this time. You say you quarreled with your husband last night,” he went on abruptly. “What about?”

  “He… oh, it was stupid, but… Jerome was very jealous, Mike. Any little thing sent him off into a tirade.” She took a long drink from her glass, fluttering her eyelids down to conceal her gaze from his.

  “What sort of little thing?”

  “Oh, you never could tell. Last evening, for instance. When he came home there was the butt of a cigar in an ashtray still smouldering. He accused me of having entertained a man in his absence. I told him it was Emily and Ernie Cahill from down the street who’d just dropped in for a few minutes. He knows Ernie smokes cigars, but would he believe me? Oh, no. Not Jerome. It’s a sort of neurosis with him. It was, I mean,” she amended hastily. “Because he had a sort of inferiority complex about women. You know. You saw him. He wasn’t particularly dashing or masculine. And he was eleven years older than I. It’s plagued our marriage from the beginning. If I so much as looked at another man at a party…” She shuddered delicately. “He was… well, I used to tell him he was masochistic about it.”