The Corpse Came Calling (17 page)

He paused, struck by a sudden thought. He turned back. “That reminds me of something, Will. I’ve got two hundred bucks that belongs to Jim Lacy or his estate. Now that I’ve managed to collect a fee from other sources, I’ll turn it over to you.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE EYES OF THE DESK CLERK lighted up when Shayne stepped into the lobby of his hotel. He leaned across the desk and called, “I’m glad your wife got back okay, Mr. Shayne. You looked worried last night.”

Shayne said, “I was worried. Did she come in by herself?”

“Well, I didn’t see her come in. But I was on the switchboard when she put in that call last night. I’ll tell you, her voice sounded good to me.”

Shayne halted on his way to the elevators. He frowned and went back to the desk. “Did you say Phyllis put in a call last night?”

“Sure. Not long after Mr. Gentry called you. I didn’t listen in more than enough to find out it was Mr. Gentry calling,” he added hastily. “But I knew something was up because you had told me to trace any calls.”

Shayne said, “That’s all right.”

“So when Mrs. Shayne made the call I knew she was home again. She must’ve gone up the service stairs.”

Shayne said, “She must have. But I appreciate your interest,” and went on to the elevator.

Phyllis met him with a rush when he opened the door. He caught her up in his arms and held her tightly for a moment. “Is everything okay, angel? Those mugs didn’t hurt you?”

“Not a bit. That headwaiter at the Danube—seemed to be the boss. Oh, Mike, did things turn out all right? I’ve been frightened. From the terrible things Tim said about you when I untied him—”

“Everything turned out swell.” Shayne interrupted her with a hearty laugh. “Is Tim’s face red! But he got his story and I got—what I wanted. But the next time I have a case you’re going to be locked in a padded cell. I’ll see to that.” He picked her up and carried her across the room and dumped her into a chair, stood over her with hands placed on his hips. “Tell me why the devil you disobeyed my orders and left the Danube. I had some bad moments on account of you last night.”

“I’m sorry, Mike. But it seemed like a good idea at the time. That girl—the one with the heliotrope perfume—kept watching me and I was sure she’d seen me with you before you left the table. Then I got the impression that she was planning to slip out while you were gone, so when that gunman came in and spoke to her and they left together I thought you’d want me to follow her.” She smiled up at her husband.

“You lie,” Shayne told her. “You know I never want you to do such a thing. Good God, angel, you’re not the type to cope with a gang of killers—guys like we were forced to entertain yesterday afternoon.”

“I found that out,” she confessed. “I’m pretty sure now that she told Leroy who I was and they acted as they did to decoy me outside where they could grab me. Because Leroy and that other man were waiting right outside the door and they threw a sack over my head as I stepped out. I didn’t see the girl again.”

Shayne stood very still. “You didn’t take any taxi ride? You’re sure Leroy helped grab you right at the door?”

“Of course I’m sure. They took me to a storeroom at the rear of the restaurant. What do you mean about a taxi ride?”

Shayne shook his head wonderingly. He said, “I’ve listened to so many lies in the past fifteen hours that I feel punch drunk, and I haven’t had a drink for hours.”

He tugged at his ear, then went into the bedroom and called the Tidewater Hotel. He asked if they had an Ann Adams registered, and was connected with room 212.

When Helen answered, he said, “Hi, toots. This is your redheaded boy friend. Remember me?”

He nodded, listening, cocked a shaggy eyebrow at Phyllis, who had followed him and stood by with a belligerent light in her dark eyes.

“That’s what I thought,” Shayne said into the transmitter. “Sit tight and I’ll be over to settle with you.”

He cradled the phone and swung around to face his wife. She sniffed the air of the bedroom with wrinkled nose. “The bed is mussed and I smell heliotrope,” she charged. “Mike Shayne, you had that female here last night.”

“Only a part of the night.” He put his hands on her shoulders and moved her out of the doorway. “I’ll tell you about it later. Right now, I’ve got a date with a blonde.”

“A date? When you’ve hardly even seen me after being locked up all night?”

“This blonde uses heliotrope perfume,” Shayne said. “You heard me promise I’d be right over. I owe her something, and you know how I am about paying my obligations, angel.”

Phyllis said, “Maybe I’d better buy a quart of heliotrope and a gallon of peroxide to blondine my hair. I could—”

Shayne was going out the door and she gave up in disgust. Sometimes Michael Shayne could be the
damnedest
man.

In the lobby of the Tidewater Hotel on Flagler Street, Shayne went directly to an elevator and said, “Two.” When he stepped out, he looked at the room numbers and strode down a corridor to 212.

He rapped on the door, and Helen opened it immediately. Her gray silk dress was wrinkled, as though it had been slept in. She swayed as she faced him. He smelled whisky on her breath and looked past her to see an almost empty bottle on the bedside table.

She pouted her lips and said, “Well, you took your time to come see me.”

He stepped past her. “You’re drunk,” he said.

“Well, why shouldn’t I be drunk. What else was there to do? Did you expect me to sit here and go nuts? I’m afraid to go out—didn’t know what might happen.” She swayed past him and sank down on her unmade bed.

Shayne didn’t answer her. He prowled through the room, peering into the bathroom and the clothes closet.

Helen lay back on the pillow and laughed at him. “A person would think you were jealous. Want to look under the bed, too?”

Shayne said, “I always check a hotel room when I’m visiting a female like you. Never know when you’ll think up a new variation of the badger game—like last night.”

“Last night?” Helen’s eyes didn’t quite focus on his face.

“Have you forgotten last night already?” He whirled toward her. “Good God, is that all a murder means to you?”

“Murder is an ugly word.” She tried to be coquettish with her eyelashes.

Shayne pulled up a straight chair and sat down. “Let’s go back beyond last night. Let’s go back to New York.”

“Damn New York,” she broke in pettishly. “I’m dying to know what’s happened. Did you make a cleanup?”

Shayne shrugged. “I did all right. A grand from Houseman. And I guess there’ll be a hunk of reward money from the bonding company.”

“Reward money?” She shrank back. “You double-crossed him—turned him in?”

“Suppose I did? Wouldn’t you call that smart?”

“Maybe it was at that. With all the heat on Houseman.” She laughed weakly. “Christ, but you’re a card. And I thought at first you were dumb. Reward money? Well, don’t I get my split? If I hadn’t told you how things were, you’d never have figured that angle.”

Shayne said, “If you hadn’t lied every time you opened your mouth, I might not have checked too closely. But don’t worry, you’ll get everything that’s coming to you. And I guess you do deserve something. You fingered Morgan for the New York rap, didn’t you—after he had given you his piece of the claim check? The papers said the police were tipped off by an anonymous informant.”

“Sure I did.” She giggled. “I helped him plan the whole job—shipping the money here and all.”

“But Barton crossed you and Lacy up,” Shayne said sympathetically. “He had a third of the claim check and he wouldn’t play ball—simply because you’d framed Mace.”

“That’s right. Can you feature a cluck like that? Claimed it wouldn’t be honorable as long as Mace was up the river. And a hundred grand sitting here in Miami to be picked up.”

“Some people,” said Shayne, “have screwy ideas about honor. So when Harry Houseman came along from the clink and made an offer for Mace’s piece of cardboard, you figured you were playing him for a sap by selling it to him—because you didn’t think it would be any more use to him than it was to you.”

“Look. How do you figure all these angles?” she asked suspiciously.

“I’ve just been adding things up the way I know your mind works. You must have been plenty sore when you read about Houseman robbing Barton’s apartment.”

“I’ll say. What a boob I was to sell him Mace’s piece for a lousy grand. When Lacy skipped town I knew he’d thrown in with Houseman and they were cutting me out. So I grabbed a train, too. And when I got here I found them arguing over the split. Houseman held out for two thirds on account of he had two thirds of the claim check, but Lacy held out for a fifty-fifty split.”

“And you threw in with Houseman,” Shayne guessed, “because he had two of his old mob with him and Lacy was playing a lone hand.”

“Wouldn’t you have done the same?” she asked thickly.

Shayne shrugged and pressed on. “In the meantime, Mace had got word of the double cross he was getting from his wife and buddy and he crashed out and came down.”

“Yeh. Frothing at the kisser. He was gunning for Jim and me—but wanting his cut of the money. He’d given us until last night to kick through.” She shuddered. “That’s why he had to be taken care of.”

“And that’s why you planned last night’s kill.” Shayne’s lips came back from his teeth. “Using me for a decoy and putting me on the spot so I had to cover up for you.”

“No. I swear I didn’t plan it. It was an accident—Mace coming there—”

“You got my wife out of the way to set the scene and hurried over with a long lie about not knowing what had happened to her. And I halfway believed you, God help me.”

“Well, I did want a chance to talk to you alone,” she admitted sullenly.

“You got a better chance than you expected. You crawled into bed and telephoned Mace to come to my apartment—not telling him you were there, but that I had Lacy’s piece of the claim check.”

“I did not,” she cried wildly. “I didn’t know he was coming. I was so scared when he caught me there. When I heard him talking—”

“With the bedroom door closed tightly,” Shayne cut in.

“Sure.” She widened her blue eyes. “I recognized his voice right away.”

“You’re still lying like hell. When you were in the closet later with the door cracked open you couldn’t hear anything that was said by Pearson and Gentry and Rourke.”

“All right, you—you devil. What of it? You fell for it, all right. You were stuck with a dead man and well knew it. You couldn’t afford to have that silly wife of yours find out you had another woman in her bed and got caught by the woman’s husband. You think you’re so damned smart. Think your way out of that one.”

Shayne lit a cigarette. He admitted, “Sure I was stuck. You outsmarted me. Just as you’ve outsmarted and double-crossed every man you’ve ever had any dealings with.”

She stretched her legs out on the bed and nodded, apparently greatly gratified. “But you were tough,” she returned. “You wouldn’t fall for my sob stories—and you wouldn’t scare when Leroy and Joe came after the piece of the check you had got from Lacy.”

“Houseman must have been plenty sore,” Shayne chuckled, “when they came back from stopping Lacy on the causeway with only a portion of Lacy’s piece—and the wrong piece at that.”

“He was fit to be tied,” she acknowledged.

“He probably blamed you—partly—because you hadn’t taken it from Lacy before he started for my office.”

Helen started to nod, but she stopped with a jerk of her blond and tousled head. “What do you know about that?”

“Everything. I know you two quarreled in Lacy’s room. When he telephoned me, you tried to stop him, and when he went out anyhow you put in a frantic call to Houseman to have Leroy and Joe intercept him before he reached me. Though I don’t imagine,” Shayne went on deliberately, “that you had any idea Lacy would get very far with three bullet holes in his chest.”

Helen stopped breathing for an instant. Her eyes blinked open and shut. She raised her head from the pillow on the bed and asked, “What—are you—talking about?”

“I’m referring to the three slugs you poured into Lacy after he telephoned that he was coming to my office.”

“You’re crazy,” she panted. “I didn’t do any such thing. Leroy and Joe—”

“Both carry heavy guns—heavier than the one you killed Lacy with,” Shayne supplied. “Nope. He was already a dead man when they stopped him on the causeway. That’s one reason they snatched the piece of claim check and beat it without seeing that they didn’t have all of it. They expected him to die any minute and didn’t want to be around.”

Helen laughed shrilly. She was apparently greatly amused. “You
are
a card. Where do you get such goofy ideas?”

Shayne hunched forward in his chair. His gray eyes bored into the girl lying on the bed. “Lacy’s coat and vest were buttoned over his wounds,” he said harshly. “He had been shot while his vest and coat were open. A man doesn’t drive around in a car with his coat and vest unbuttoned.”

“That’s—no proof,” she said angrily.

“It was enough for me to figure that he was shot in his hotel room. And I was certain your little peashooter had done the job when I heard it click on an empty the third time you pulled the trigger on Mace last night. It only holds five shots. You had used three of them on Lacy.”

“That’s still no proof. You’re crazy to think I shot him in his hotel room. Someone would have heard the shots.”

“A .22 doesn’t make much noise. Nobody heard the shots in my apartment last night. And Gentry was on his way up while you were murdering your husband.”

A spasm of fear contorted her face. She shrank away from Shayne’s gaunt, grim face. Then she began laughing as if to reassure herself. “You’re doing a lot of guessing. Even if it was that way you’d never make anyone believe it in a million years.”

Shayne said, “Maybe you never heard of ballistics. You’d better not make book on that.” He hunched around and lifted the telephone. He said, “Get me the detective bureau at police headquarters.”

Helen Morgan stiffened. Then, suddenly, she threw herself forward and was clawing at Shayne’s face. He fended her off with one hand until she sank back sobbing.