The Careless Corpse ms-41

by Brett Halliday

He tried the center door first and it was securely locked.

  He drew back two steps and lunged forward, lowering his left shoulder and hitting the door like a battering ram. It crashed inward and Shayne went to his hands and knees on a thickly carpeted floor, dazed by the force of the impact.

  A bright light came on over his head, and from the doorway behind him he vaguely heard a loud exclamation of astonishment from Rourke.

  Then the reporter hurried past him and Shayne slowly pushed himself up and saw the big double bed in front of the windows with Rourke leaning over the figure of Lucy Hamilton securely bound and gagged on top of the bedspread.

  Shayne swayed a little and shook his red head to clear it, and then stumbled forward to the side of the bed as Rourke released the gag.

  There were tears in Lucy’s eyes as she stared up at him imploringly, and she cried out softly, “I thought you’d never come, Michael. It seemed like years and years…”

  Shayne dropped to his knees beside the bed and put a big hand comfortingly on her face. Rourke had his pocket-knife out and was cutting through the strips of torn sheet which bound her wrists and her ankles tightly together behind her back.

  Shayne said hoarsely, “It’s all right, Lucy. Just relax. Can you tell me who did it?”

  A convulsive shudder traversed her body as her arms came free and she was able to straighten her cramped legs. In a blurred voice, she whispered, “I never saw him before, Michael. He came to the office with a gun. Thick glasses and a dark suit. He didn’t hurt me, Michael. Just brought me here and there was another man waiting inside the gate…”

  Shayne pressed his fingertips against her bruised lips. Rourke had her ankles loosened and was gently kneading the muscles in her lower legs to restore circulation.

  Shayne stood up and told Rourke, “Take care of her, Tim. As soon as she can walk, take her out the side way and put her in your car parked in front. Then come on back to the boathouse if you want to pick up the pieces.” Rourke straightened up and yelled, “Wait a minute, Mike!” but Shayne was already out of the bedroom and on his way down the stairs.

  The floodlight still bathed the side of the house and the backyard with bright light as the detective ran out the kitchen door, and brilliant lights were shining from the upper and lower windows of the two-story boathouse at the rear. But there were no more sounds indicative of a struggle. He had heard the one shot and that was all.

  He ran back along a concrete walk to a door leading into the boathouse, and jerked it open. The first person he saw was Alvarez standing in the middle of the floor with a pistol in his hand. The Cuban whirled and leveled the gun as Shayne came through the door, then lowered it and smiled pleasantly. Beyond him were twin slips opening out into the canal, and a power cruiser bobbed gently in each slip. At least one half of the interior of the boathouse was piled almost to the ceiling with stout wooden crates of various sizes and shapes, and half a dozen men were busily engaged in loading the crates into the two launches. There were two men on the other side of the boathouse against the wall, one seated on the floor and the other lying beside him.

  The seated man was Mr. Erskine. His glasses were missing and his hands were handcuffed in front of him. He sat bolt upright, facing Alvarez’s pistol, and he glared malevolently at Michael Shayne, but did not speak.

  Sprawled on his back on the floor beside him was Julio Peralta. There was an ugly wound on his forehead and blood streamed down his face, and he was breathing stertorously.

  On Shayne’s left a stairway with a wooden railing led up to the caretaker’s living quarters on the second floor. The caretaker, himself, lay crumpled at the foot of the stairs. His sawed-off shotgun was on the floor a foot beyond his body, and there was a neat round bullet-hole drilled in the center of his forehead.

  Shayne drew in a deep breath as he completed his survey of the place and lifted his gaze from Brad’s corpse to meet Alvarez’s eyes which were fixed steadily on him.

  “It was unfortunate,” said the Cuban, “that he attempted to use his weapon. I was forced to shoot quickly.”

  Shayne said, “I don’t think it’s too important. Unless I’m all wrong, he strangled a woman this evening.”

  “So?” Alvarez turned his head to glance at the men working behind him. He spoke swiftly in Spanish, and they grunted, “Si, si,” and began moving faster. He turned back to Shayne and said questioningly, “If we are given time to load these two launches? There is a larger boat anchored in the bay which can be well out to sea before daylight with most of these arms… which were destined to bring death to my countrymen, Mr. Shayne.”

  Shayne said, “I think you’ll have time. If the neighbors took that pistol shot for a back-fire…” He shrugged. “What about Peralta?”

  “He will live,” said Alvarez grimly, “to be given a fair trial by his own people.”

  “And Erskine?”

  “Who, Mr. Shayne?”

  The detective nodded toward the handcuffed man.

  “You mean Mr. Albert Tatum. Him we will have to leave to the good graces of your own government, Mr. Shayne. He is an American citizen with a price on his head if he ever returns to Cuba voluntarily, but I will not be a party to his illegal seizure.”

  Shayne studied the seated man with interest. “A price on his head? For what?”

  “For crimes against my country extending back over a period of twenty years. He and Peralta have been business partners that long, and they plundered and pillaged under the Batista regime. Since the revolution, they have been plotting to overthrow it.”

  “Have you any proof he isn’t a Communist?”

  “That one?” Alvarez snorted his contempt.

  Shayne said, “All right,” mildly. “At the very least, I think I can promise you he’ll get a long jail term for kidnaping.”

  He turned aside and looked down speculatively at Brad. “Do you mind if I check something on this guy?”

  Alvarez said, “I have no interest in carrion.”

  Shayne squatted down beside the dead caretaker and found a wallet in his right-hand hip pocket. There were bills in the money compartment which he didn’t count and left undisturbed, but he emptied the card compartment in the center and sorted through old business cards, scrawled notations and telephone numbers, and receipted bills with interest.

  He found two items that repaid his search. One was the torn half of a yellow claim check which he recognized instantly. He knew it matched the other half in his pocket without putting the two halves together.

  The second was a receipted bill from a Miami jewelry shop in the sum of $630.42, which was marked “Paid” three days previously. The charge was for, “Reproduction bracelet.”

  Shayne carefully placed both items in his own wallet, returned the rest of the stuff to Brad’s and replaced it in the dead man’s pocket.

  As he completed doing so, he heard footsteps outside the door, and got to his feet to see Timothy Rourke and Lucy Hamilton appear in the doorway.

  He expostulated to Rourke, “I told you to take Lucy out to your car…”

  “Michael!” Lucy stood inside the door staring at the handcuffed man seated on the floor. “That’s the man. He brought me here in his car…”

  “Erskine?” Standing beside her, Timothy Rourke said wonderingly, “He’s from Washington, Lucy. The State Department.”

  “He’s as much from the State Department as you are,” Shayne said angrily. “My God, Tim, don’t tell me you’re as naive as Peter Painter. He and Peralta were in cahoots all the way along.”

  Rourke shook his head from side to side. “I don’t get it. Why would he tell that long, involved story about Communism and all that? Mike, I’m afraid you’re making a hell of a mistake.”

  Shayne grinned at him sardonically. “You heard Lucy, didn’t you? Alvarez can fill you in on the rest of it. Don’t you see how it was, Tim? He and Peralta had this operation going, and they needed a little more time without police interference. The theft of the bracelet w
as a monkey-wrench, and when Painter insisted officiously on pushing the investigation despite Peralta’s protests, Albert Tatum went to Painter with his State Department-Communist story which Petey swallowed hook-line-and-sinker. After all, the one thing no red-blooded, patriotic American can do today is to question the State Department. Oh, hell,” Shayne ended in disgust. “Of course Painter didn’t question the man’s credentials. Will Gentry might have been a little harder to convince, if he’d been approached directly, but you know yourself that Tatum came to Will with Painter’s seal of approval. So Will accepted him at face value.

  “They had everything all set until yesterday when Peralta upset the apple-cart by calling me in,” Shayne went on swiftly. “It was a personal thing with him, reflecting on his wife, which he didn’t want to divulge even to Tatum.

  “As I say,” Shayne ended up with an angry wave of his hand. “Ask Alvarez who ‘Erskine’ actually is. While he fills you in, I’m going to take a quick look-see upstairs where the caretaker lived.”

  He swung on his heel and climbed the stairs to the small, compact, bedroom-sitting-room apartment above the boat-house. It took him less than five minutes to find the emerald bracelet. Brad had been so sure that Tatum and Peralta would forestall any search by the police that Shayne found it thrust carelessly underneath some clean shirts in a top right-hand drawer in a chest in the bedroom.

  He held it up for a moment and admired the light reflected by the emerald-green facets, and then dropped it into his pocket and hurried back downstairs.

  Timothy Rourke was deep in conversation with Alvarez, and the loading of the crates of munitions into the two power cruisers was continuing methodically. Lucy Hamilton, looking wilted and forlorn, stood drooping by the doorway.

  Shayne went to her and put his arm about her waist tightly, and announced in a loud voice, “Lucy and I are getting out of here, Tim. The headlines are all yours.”

  “Wait a minute, Mike.” Rourke turned on him with a worried scowl. “What about the emerald bracelet that started the whole thing to cooking?”

  With a look at the still-unconscious Julio Peralta, Shayne said blandly, “I never did take a retainer on that case, Tim. I think I’ll just drop the whole thing and forget about it. Let’s go, Lucy. My God, I just remembered I haven’t had any dinner.”

  “Neither have I, Michael.” She pressed her head against his shoulder and allowed him to half-carry her out the door. “Do we have to go any place? I’ve got some hamburger at home.”

  “And some cognac?” he demanded teasingly.

  “You know there’s always cognac, Michael.”

  “Come on then.” He led her out the side gate with his arm tightly around her, and toward the street. “We’ll take my car,” he decided. “I don’t believe Mr. Geely or Mr. Harris will get in our way tonight.”

  “Who are they?”

  “A couple of drunks,” he told her cheerfully.

  SIXTEEN

  It was comfortably and cozily homelike in Lucy Hamilton’s apartment. Sprawled on the sofa in a completely relaxed posture with his jacket off and sport shirt open at the throat, Michael Shayne allowed himself to think (as he had often done on other evenings like this) what a thoroughly comfortable person Lucy was to be with.

  Close at hand on the low coffee table in front of him was a four-ounce stemmed wine-glass half full of cognac, with a tall glass of ice-water beside it, and within easy reach was an uncorked bottle of Monnet. A rich, garlicky odor drifted tantalizingly from the kitchen into his nostrils, and there were the small domestic sounds of Lucy preparing her special “poor-girl steaks” to which she had first introduced him in New Orleans many years ago.

  “Like an old shoe,” he told himself complacently. That’s the way Lucy was comfortable. Then she came out of the kitchen wearing her absurd, frilly, little apron and with her face rosily flushed from the heat of the stove.

  She carried a highball glass in her hand and said, “I’ll let the sauce simmer another five minutes while I finish this drink.”

  He studied her appreciatively and said, “You don’t look old-shoeish.”

  “What?” She sat down hard at the other end of the sofa and stared at him with narrowed eyes.

  “Well, you don’t.” He grinned sheepishly and lifted his own drink in a salute. “In fact, you’re pretty damned beautiful.” He spoke angrily, as though defending her.

  “What are you talking about, Michael Shayne?”

  “You,” He sipped his drink and dropped his gaze from her challenging eyes. “And you can cook, too,” he added lamely.

  “Michael.” She deliberately made three syllables out of his name. “Tell me what you’ve been sitting there thinking while my back was turned.”

  “You know what?” He sat up enthusiastically and put his glass down. “I know just what you need to make you into a real glamour-puss.”

  “I don’t know that I care to be a glamour-puss.” She lifted her firm chin and glared at him. “On the other hand, I don’t particularly appreciate…”

  “I know, I know,” he interrupted placatingly. “It just slipped out while I was sitting here feeling so comfortable.” He got to his feet and crossed the room to his jacket neatly hung over the back of a chair, and fumbled in a side pocket. “Close your eyes,” he directed her, and turned about slowly with the emerald bracelet concealed in the palm of his hand.

  Lucy hesitated a moment, trying to remain angry, and then obediently closed her eyes like a little girl. Shayne crossed to the sofa and knelt beside her, took her wrist and laid it flat on the arm of the sofa, and carefully draped the bracelet across it. Then he said softly, “Open your eyes, Angel.”

  Lucy opened her eyes wide, and a rapturous, “Oh!” came from her lips as she looked at the flexible golden bracelet with six large, square-cut, green stones brilliantly reflecting light from the table lamp beside her.

  “Michael.” She touched it gently with her fingertips, lifting her arm so that it hung about her wrist. “You lied to Tim out there. You did find it. It’s… heavenly.”

  “Let’s see if it fits.” He bent over her arm to fasten the catch.

  “You shouldn’t, Michael. It frightens me. A hundred and ten thousand dollars,” she said in an awed voice.

  “Just what you need to set off that apron. It’s a trifle loose on you, but that can be fixed, I guess.” He stood back, smiling down at her admiringly.

  “Michael! I shouldn’t even try it on. It frightens me just to think…”

  “Keep it,” he said casually. “The thief is dead, and, if Peralta goes off on that boat to Cuba tonight, I don’t think he’ll be in a position to do any complaining.”

  “That’s terrible, Michael,” she said severely. “You’ve got to return it to Mrs. Peralta. You can’t even think…” Her door buzzer rang three times loudly from downstairs. Shayne said, “That’ll be Tim hoping to soak up a nightcap. Keep it on your wrist, Angel,” he urged her as he crossed to press the release button. “Let’s see anybody compare you to an old shoe with that on.”

  “But you’re the only one,” she began, and then subsided, holding her arm up and turning it slowly, admiring the green fire lurking in the depths of the stones.

  Shayne opened her door and stood aside to let Timothy Rourke in. The reporter shambled past him, saying, “Couple of questions I want to ask, Mike. Hi, Lucy. If you’ve got a drink…”

  He stopped in mid-stride with his mouth open. “Mother of God! Where’d you get that?”

  “Just a paltry little old emerald bracelet I picked up for her,” Shayne said casually. “Sets off the apron rather nicely, don’t you think?”

  “Where’d you get it, Mike?”

  “Upstairs over the boathouse in the caretaker’s bedroom.”

  “So he was the one who stole it! Wait a minute, Mike. That torn half of a claim check you found on Felice’s body. I figured she had been in on the theft and they had stashed the bracelet away in some checkroom and each of them kept half
the check. So, why did Brad kill her and tear up her room looking for her half of the check, if he had the bracelet all the time?”

  “Did Brad kill her, Tim?”

  The reporter shook his head slowly, getting his thoughts back into focus. “Whose fingerprints were on the barrel of my gun?” he demanded.

  “Brad’s.”

  “I thought so,” exploded Rourke. “In fact, before I came up here, I phoned Will Gentry and told him to check the dead caretaker’s prints with those on my gun and the ones they found all over Felice’s apartment.”

  “You hadn’t told me that before,” Shayne reminded him.

  “I know. Things have been happening too damned fast.” Rourke looked imploringly at Lucy who was still admiring the bracelet on her wrist. “For the love of God, Lucy, darling, are you going to get me that drink?”

  She said, “Sorry, Tim. I was practicing being a glamour-puss.” She stood up regally, holding her braceleted arm stiffly in front of her. “Bourbon and branch water, Mr. Rourke?”

  Rourke stared after her as she swept out into the kitchen. “What makes with the bracelet, Mike?”

  Shayne shook his head sadly. “I just gave it to her.”

  “A hundred grand worth of emeralds?” gasped Rourke.

  Lucy came back carrying Rourke’s drink. Shayne went to her as she handed it to the reporter, and put his arm tightly about her slim waist. He asked, “Do you really like it, Angel?”

  She looked down at the glittering bracelet on her wrist. In a curiously small and forlorn voice, she told him, “I’d like it a lot better, if you’d buy me a kind of imitation that we could afford instead of stealing one for me.”

  Shayne asked quietly, “How’d something be at about six or seven hundred dollars?”

  “It would be wonderful, but…”

  Shayne carefully placed the first two fingers of his left hand underneath her chin and turned her mouth up to his. He kissed her on the lips and then told her cheerfully, “We can easily afford that bauble on your wrist, Angel. Don’t you think that garlic sauce is about ready to serve?”