Too Friendly, Too Dead ms-44

by Brett Halliday

He got out and went around to open her door and helped her out, and held onto her arm tightly as he led her through a side door and down a short corridor to an unmarked closed door which he opened without knocking. There was a small anteroom with a desk and a shirt-sleeved police officer sitting behind it. He grinned recognition at the redhead and greeted him heartily, “Hi there, Shamus. What brings you…?” and stopped abruptly when he saw the pale-faced woman beside the detective.

  Shayne said, “I’ve brought Mrs. Fitzgilpin, Dexter. Shall we… go in?”

  “Yeh… good… sure.” The patrolman arose hastily, grabbed his uniform coat from a hook and shrugged into it. He pressed an intercom button on his desk, explaining over his shoulder to Shayne, “Chief wanted to know when she got here.” He leaned down and spoke into the intercom, “Mrs. Fitzgilpin is here to make that identification, Chief.”

  “Hold it till I get there,” Chief Peter Painter’s voice rasped over the wire, and Patrolman Dexter straightened up and began fastening the buttons of his coat and said officiously, as though they hadn’t heard Painter’s order, “Just a minute, folks. Chief Painter will be right in.”

  Linda was standing very close to Shayne, and he felt her body begin to shake as though gripped by a chill. She whispered faintly, “Couldn’t we… couldn’t I see Jerome?”

  “Just a second.” He held her arm tightly against his, knowing that Painter was right in wanting to be present to observe her reaction when she viewed the body, but mentally damning him for prolonging her agony just the same.

  It was only a couple of minutes before the door opened behind them and the Miami Beach Chief of Detectives strutted in. He was a short, very slender man, and his natural gait was a strut. He was thin-faced and immaculately dressed, and wore a pencil-line black mustache. His expression of grave sympathy changed to one of irritated surprise when he saw Shayne standing close beside the widow. He stiffened and drew himself up and demanded, “How does this concern you, Shayne?”

  “I’m a personal friend of Mrs. Fitzgilpin’s,” Shayne told him coldly. “Save any other questions for later. Let’s get this job done.”

  Painter hesitated, his black eyes sparkling with hostility. He would have enjoyed ordering the detective to stay outside while they viewed the body, but nothing in the circumstances warranted that, so he nodded shortly and said, “Very well. Dexter,” he snapped at the waiting patrolman.

  Dexter saluted briskly and stepped forward to open a door beyond his desk. He held it open and Shayne waited for Painter to enter the small, drab room before following with Linda, slipping his arm about her slim waist as he did so.

  The body lay on a wheeled stretcher in the middle of the floor, just as it had been brought in from the ambulance, though it had been stripped of clothing and was now covered by a white sheet.

  Painter went forward and circled to the other side of the stretcher and waited with his hand on a corner of the sheet until Shayne and Linda stood opposite him. Then he drew the sheet back to disclose the face of the dead man, who lay on his back with sightless eyes staring upward.

  Linda’s body became absolutely rigid inside Shayne’s encircling arm as she looked down at the plump features of her husband, now flaccid and undistinguished in death. She said, “Yes,” sibilantly, and then moaned an anguished, “Oh… Jerome,” and she leaned over him and her tears fell on the waxen flesh and she reached forward a trembling hand to put her fingertips gently on the cold forehead.

  Shayne tightened his arm about her waist and drew her back, swallowing down an angry lump in his throat. That little inoffensive man on the stretcher, two fatherless children at home, and a young and vital widow who now faced the future alone! Despite the years he’d been close to violent death, a scene like this still affected Shayne as strongly as though he were just starting out in his profession. He turned Linda away, saying gruffly to Painter, “You’ve got your identification. Now tell us what happened.”

  Painter followed them out to the anteroom officiously. “I’ll have to have a statement from you, Mrs. Fitzgilpin. Where you were last night. When you saw your husband last. The state of his personal and business affairs. Anyone who had a motive for doing him harm.”

  “Wait a minute, Petey,” Shayne interrupted him angrily. “I gathered this was a straight mugging job. What have all those questions got to do with that? Are you trying to cover up your inefficiency here on the Beach by trying to make it into something else?”

  Painter drew himself up angrily. “This isn’t your affair, Shayne. I am conducting this investigation. I must insist that Mrs. Fitzgilpin make a statement.”

  “All she knows is that he worked late at his insurance office here on the Beach last night, and was presumably carrying several hundred dollars in his wallet. Was he rolled, or wasn’t he?”

  “He was rolled, all right. That is, his wallet is missing and there are indications that a ring was pulled from his finger. Did he wear a valuable ring, Ma’m?”

  Linda nodded woodenly. “Not particularly valuable, but he prized it highly. An amethyst. Worth, perhaps, a hundred dollars.”

  “There you are,” Shayne said hotly. “Round up some of the petty crooks whom you allow to run free on the Beach, and you’ll have your killer. Mrs. Fitzgilpin’s statement stands. She went to sleep last night expecting her husband to return about midnight as he generally did on Fridays. She was wakened by your phone call this morning and discovered his bed unslept in. I think that’s all you need to know right now.”

  “I’m not so sure about that, Shayne.” Peter Painter spoke with smirking satisfaction and caressed his thin mustache with a beautifully manicured thumbnail. “You’ve stupidly neglected a very important point. You haven’t asked the cause of death.”

  “All right. What caused his death?”

  “We haven’t had time for a P. M. yet, of course. Just a preliminary examination of stomach contents while we were awaiting identification,” Painter purred happily. “But he was poisoned, Shayne. There isn’t the faintest shadow of doubt that death was due to poison… probably administered in alcohol from half an hour to an hour before he died. Do you consider that reason enough for requiring a full statement from the widow without interference from you?”

  Linda said falteringly, “Poisoned? Oh no!” She put her hands to her face and swayed against him in a faint and would have slumped to the floor if his arm hadn’t supported her.

  3

  “Goddamn it,” said Shayne angrily. “That’s one way of breaking the news to a newly-made widow.” He slid his left arm gently beneath Linda’s knees and lifted her limp body. “Where can I take her? Got some smelling salts?”

  “There’s a sofa in my office. I’ll get a doctor if necessary… if she isn’t faking it.” He opened the door and strutted out, and Shayne followed him down the hall to the chief’s private office.

  Looking down into Linda’s white face as he carried her, Shayne saw her closed eyelids begin to flutter and knew she was coming out of it.

  He laid her carefully on a sofa in the office, sat beside her and took both her hands in his, rubbing them gently between his palms. “She doesn’t need a doctor,” he said shortly. “She just needs a moment to recuperate from one shock before she receives another. You could have taken me aside and told me privately…”

  “When I need lessons from you in how to interrogate a suspect, I’ll ask for them, Shayne.”

  “A suspect?” Watching her face, Shayne saw the color slowly coming back; her eyelids opened briefly to allow her to see his concerned face looking down into hers, and closed again as she breathed a faint sigh.

  “What else?” said Painter sharply. “The man was poisoned, Shayne. It’s not a simple mugging. Closer to home than that.”

  “How do you know it isn’t a new M. O. for your Beach muggers?” demanded the redhead angrily. He released her hands as Linda opened her eyes wide and struggled to sit up, slid his hand beneath her back to help her and said soothingly, “Take it easy, Linda.
Your husband is dead. That’s a fact you have to live with. How he died isn’t really important.”

  “I say it’s extremely important,” Chief Painter cut in incisively. “I need every tiny detail I can get about the man in order to proceed intelligently. I’ll call in a stenographer and take down a complete statement… if you don’t mind, Mr. Shayne,” he added sarcastically, moving behind his desk and reaching for the intercom button with pointed forefinger.

  Shayne said bluntly, “I do mind, Painter. She’s my client and she’s in no condition to make a statement at this point. Goddamn it, man! There are two small fatherless children at home waiting for her to come back and tell them what happened to daddy. You can get a statement from her later, but right now I’m taking her home.”

  “Your clients aren’t immune to interrogation, Shayne. If you continue to interfere with the due process of law, I’ll have you locked up here and now.”

  Shayne didn’t bother to reply to that. He told Linda, “Listen to me carefully. When you do make a statement, I want you to be out of shock and in full possession of your reasoning faculties. If this idiot is stupid enough to hold you here against your will, refuse to answer any questions. Do you understand, Linda? Call a lawyer. That’s your legal right, and I want you to promise me you’ll do it.”

  She nodded, her face grave, her eyes intent on his. “I promise.”

  “Okay, Petey.” Shayne stood up and grinned at the infuriated detective chief. “Am I under arrest?”

  “By God, Shayne, I ought to throw you under the jail. Get out of here. And stay out of this case, do you hear?”

  Shayne said, “I’ll get out gladly… for now. But I told you Mrs. Fitzgilpin is my client, and my license entitles me to practice my profession in Miami Beach as well as any other municipality in this state. Come on, Linda. The little man wants us to go now.”

  He arose, holding out his hand to her, and she took it and he pulled her to her feet. He said, “She’ll be at home and available to you at any time, Painter. But you keep it clear in your mind that you have no jurisdiction across Biscayne Bay. When you question her it will have to be in cooperation with the Miami police.”

  He stalked to the door, holding Linda’s arm tightly and leaving Peter Painter standing behind his desk transfixed with frustration and rage.

  When they reached Shayne’s car and Linda subsided weakly in the seat beside him, she asked in a low, frightened voice, “He did say Jerome was poisoned, didn’t he, Mike? I’m not dreaming that.”

  Shayne nodded, backing out carefully. “That’s what he said. Just a preliminary medical report, of course, but we can take it pretty well for granted there’s no mistake.”

  “It’s so horrible. So utterly vicious and unthinkable. Poison! That means premeditation. Someone who wanted and planned Jerome’s death. Who could? Everyone he knew loved him. He was gentle and generous and kind. It’s appalling and impossible to try and realize that there’s such a monster alive who would do that to Jerome.”

  Shayne drove toward the Causeway very carefully several minutes before answering her. “These are questions you’re going to have to face, Linda. Not only will they be asked by the police, but you must ask them of yourself and try to know the answers. We don’t know what sort of poison it was yet… how it was taken. There’s always the possibility of suicide in a poisoning. Can you positively rule that out?”

  “Oh, yes.” Linda sounded honestly and completely shocked. “Not Jerome. He loved living. He really did… as much as any person I’ve ever known. Though we weren’t wealthy, we lived comfortably and his business was increasing all the time. He never wanted to make a lot of money, and was determined to keep his business small, to have personal contacts with his clients. That was one of the things he liked most… his feeling that he really was of help and service to the people who came to him. He was such a friendly man. I can’t conceive him having an enemy.”

  “There wasn’t any difficulty recently? Nothing to upset him?” probed Shayne.

  “Nothing at all. Well, there was a funny thing happened about a week ago at the office, and we laughed about it. Some woman wanted to insure her husband’s life for a quarter of a million dollars without him knowing about it… the husband, I mean. That’s absolutely against the rules, you know, and Jerome told her so point-blank. He didn’t know her from Eve, and didn’t know why she came to him with such a proposition, but he suspected it was because he has such a small business and she hoped he’d be tempted by the fee. Because it would be huge, you know, on such a yearly premium. And that made him angry. Because she had the effrontery to think he’d do something like that just for the money involved. He told her off flatly, I guess. It was funny,” she added wistfully. “For one whole evening, we both felt rich. You see, she called one day to make an appointment to see him the next day and discuss the policy and he told me about it that night. Naturally, she didn’t tell him she wanted to take out the policy without her husband’s knowledge, so it was a shock the next day when he came home and told me it was all off.”

  Shayne was driving westward quite slowly over the Causeway, staying in the right-hand lane and letting other cars scoot past on the left, letting the widow talk herself out because he realized that was the best possible therapy under the circumstances and also because these were exactly the sort of things he needed to know about Jerome Fitzgilpin if he was going to investigate his death.

  “This woman,” he asked, “didn’t come back?”

  “No. I’m sure she didn’t or Jerome would have mentioned it. I’m sure he made her understand emphatically that he would have no part of such a scheme.”

  “Was he attractive to women?” Shayne asked abruptly. “Did he ever give you reason for jealousy?”

  “Jerome?” She laughed with the happy indulgence of a woman who knew herself well-loved. “They liked him, of course. Everybody did. A lot of his clients were widows or spinsters who had to earn their own livings, and they trusted him and asked for business advice. But we’ve been married fifteen years and I don’t believe he ever as much as looked at another woman.”

  “I can believe that,” Shayne told her sincerely with a sidelong glance. “You’re a very beautiful woman. And a lot younger than Jerome, I’d guess. How much? Fifteen years?”

  “Eleven,” she replied promptly. “I was only nineteen when I married him and I’ve never regretted it.” She sighed deeply and relapsed into silence, and despite his procrastination they were approaching the mainland.

  Then she laid her hand on his forearm and asked timidly, “Will you work on the case, Mike? I can afford to pay you. Jerome left quite a lot of insurance, and I’d feel so much better if I knew you were working on it. That little man at the Beach! Ugh.” She shuddered. “He gave me the creeps somehow. Lucy Hamilton talks about you and your cases a lot and I know how successful you are. I suppose you know Lucy is hopelessly in love with you,” she confided.

  Shayne laughed. “Not hopelessly. Sometimes she hates me. Right now, for instance, I’m sure she’d hate me if I didn’t take your case… or if I accepted a fee for solving it.” He had turned north a few blocks off the Causeway, and now drew up in front of Linda’s apartment house.

  “I’ll go up with you,” he suggested, “and see if I can induce Lucy to invite me down to her place for a cup of coffee and a slug of cognac.”

  “I can make coffee,” she offered. “And there’s whiskey, but I’m afraid no cognac.”

  “Lucy always keeps a bottle on hand,” he assured her, “and I think you’ll want a few minutes alone with the children.”

  He took her arm as they climbed the stairs together, and released it when Lucy opened the door of the Fitzgilpin apartment and he saw a boy of nine and a little girl of six clinging to his secretary’s two hands.

  They both started talking at once when they saw their mother in the doorway, “Mommy… Mom… Lucy’s gonna make a picnic… take us to the park… to have a picnic lunch,” little Sara explained soberl
y, and then Ralph pulled away from Lucy and straightened his shoulders manfully and asked, “Where’s daddy, Mom? Lucy said there’d been an accident…?”

  “… cident,” echoed Sara, and Linda dropped to her knees on the floor and held out both her arms, and the two children crowded into them.

  Looking over their heads into Lucy’s mutely questioning eyes, Shayne shook his head and said, “Have you got a drink downstairs, Angel? I need one.” She understood at once, and circled the little family trio to go out the door with him. Shayne pulled it shut firmly, and told her, “Linda will be okay. She’s got what it takes. Right now she doesn’t need us.”

  “It was Jerome?” she breathed as she went down the stairs with him to her apartment

  He nodded absently. “Not only that, Angel, but it’s not as cut and dried as we thought. He was rolled, all right. Even a fairly inexpensive ring taken off his finger, but it wasn’t just a conventional mugging. He died of poison.”

  Lucy had unlocked her door and pushed it open. She turned to him with exactly the same exclamatory words with which Linda had greeted the same announcement. “Poisoned? Oh no!”

  Shayne nodded, walking past her into the familiar, pleasantly cool living room. “It’s just a preliminary report, but the M. E. on the Beach doesn’t make mistakes. Painter tried to take Linda over the hurdles, of course, on account of that, but I put my oar in and shut him up for the time being.”

  Having worked with Shayne for a lot of years on a lot of cases, Lucy Hamilton knew exactly what he meant without any further explanation. A poisoning almost positively indicated premeditation. Very few poisoners act on the spur of the moment. It also, in a large majority of cases, meant a woman murderer… particularly if the victim were a male. More than that, it was (too often) the preferred method for wives to get rid of unwanted husbands.

  Lucy came to him in the middle of the room and clutched his arm fiercely. “Not Linda, Michael. I know her. I’ve seen them together a lot. She’s a lovely mother… crazy about those two kids. And they were nuts about their daddy. She’d never in the world…”