The Corpse That Never Was (12 page)

Shayne said, “Please sit down, Mrs. Grogan,” and moved to his own chair and poured more cognac into his glass. “Before I answer your question, tell me about your husband. Why are you worried about him?”

“Because he didn’t come home last night. And never a word from him all day. And I called the Hacienda at noon and they said Joe never turned up for work last night and he hadn’t told them beforehand and they hadn’t heard from him either.”

Shayne said, “A lot of things might have happened.”

“Joe’s steady. He’s never done anything like that before. He liked his job the best of any job he ever had. It gave him, oh… a feeling of being important. Seeing people lose more money in one night than he ever earned in a year… and not turning a hair either. But it’s more than that. He’s been funny… this last month he has. Like he had a secret he wouldn’t tell me. But he had some extra money and he kept hinting about I wasn’t to worry because there was going to be a lot more where that came from. And last night I could see he was keyed-up. Before I went off to work, I could tell. I’m a cocktail waitress in the Griffin Hotel lounge from six to twelve, and have to leave for work at five-thirty. He kept saying I wasn’t to worry and maybe he’d tell me all about it today. And then… he wasn’t home when I woke up this morning.”

“What makes you think it has anything to do with the suicides last night?”

“It’s not much, I know. It’s just… well, when I read about that Mrs. Paul Nathan in the paper this morning, it came to me suddenly. That’s the name of the man he mentioned a month ago when this all started, like I said. It was another Saturday morning I remember because we always go to the beach on Saturdays, and Joe began talking about the rich people that gambled at the Hacienda, and how lots of them got real friendly with him at the roulette table while they were playing, and not uppity at all.

“And he mentioned this Paul Nathan as an example, and he hinted that they were cooking up something together that was going to make him a lot of money. But he clammed right up and said I was to forget all about it when I begged him not to do anything foolish because he was sure to get caught. Like fixing the table, you know, or some trick to make this Mr. Nathan win at roulette instead of lose. And he said it wasn’t like that at all, and I wasn’t to say another word about it, but maybe things were going to be so I could quit working as a waitress. So when I read about Mr. Nathan’s wife last night… and Joe not home and no word from him at all, I got to thinking back and I got worried.
Do
you know anything about Joe, Mr. Shayne?”

Shayne said, “No. I’m sorry, Mrs. Grogan. All I know is that Paul Nathan played roulette at your husband’s table the last two Friday nights; and the first night they went down to the bar together and had a couple of drinks and a talk at the bar after the gambling room closed at four. And last Friday Nathan was playing alone at your husband’s table just before closing and they were observed talking together. That’s nothing in itself, but with what you’ve told me it may add up to something.”

“Like what, Mr. Shayne?” She twisted her hands together in her lap and caught her lower lip tightly between her teeth.

Shayne said honestly, “At this point, I don’t know. I can’t even make an intelligent guess. You said you thought they might have some scheme for Nathan to win money at roulette. Do you mean the table is crooked and the croupier can fix it so a certain person will win if he wants him to?”

“Oh, no. It wasn’t that. I’m sure it wasn’t. The games are all straight at the Hacienda. Joe always said that. It’s one reason why he liked to work there. But… well, it’s something that Joe
might
do. I don’t want you to get me wrong, Mr. Shayne. He’s a good man. Never been arrested in his life.” She said this proudly. “He isn’t what you’d call a gambler. Not like a lot of the others that hang around those joints. It was a job to Joe. Pure and simple, a steady job. He wouldn’t do anything he thought was wrong or really crooked. Not for all the money in the world. But you know how it is working in a place like that every night. Money gets so it doesn’t
mean
very much. In the first place, they’re all breaking the law. The ones that run the games and the ones that come to play. So you get a sort of different slant on things, I guess. It wouldn’t really seem like
stealing
money… to maybe fix it to get a little of it for yourself. I know Joe felt that way. Him getting just a regular salary while the house was raking in thousands of dollars every night. So when he kind of hinted that he and Mr. Nathan were into something that would make him rich, I just thought it might have to do with gambling.”

“But you said,” Shayne reminded her patiently, “that the croupier had no control over who won or lost on the wheel.”

“That’s right, too. Well, it came to me what Joe had mentioned once before… oh, it was months ago, when he was saying how careful the house had to be about the men they hired. It would be easy enough, he said, for a crooked dealer to
pretend
a man had won when he hadn’t. You know how fast at roulette those balls go around and drop into the slots… with piles of money spread out on the table on numbers and combinations. They have spotters around, of course, to see it doesn’t happen, but it would be easy enough, Joe said, to get away with it a few times before they noticed and started watching. And just a few times, with the odds they pay on a single number, would mount up mighty fast to a big killing.”

Shayne nodded slowly. “I can see that possibility. But we happen to know, Mrs. Grogan, that Nathan didn’t win at your husband’s table. In fact, he was a consistent loser.”

“Well, it was just the only thing I could think of. Like I say, it couldn’t have been anything really bad or Joe wouldn’t have touched it with a ten-foot pole.”

“Do you have a picture of him?” Shayne asked.

“I brought one along… just in case.” She lifted a large handbag from the floor beside her and withdrew an enlargement of a snapshot taken on the beach.

It showed a smiling, clean-faced young man of about her age, squinting into the sun and wearing a tight pair of bathing trunks. He was of medium height and build, and had a likable, open countenance.

Shayne studied the picture carefully, wishing to God that the shotgun had left more of the dead man’s face for identification last night.

Because, although it couldn’t be, of course. All logic told him it couldn’t possibly be so, but as he looked at the photo he had an uneasy realization that with the addition of a mustache and a pair of blue-tinted glasses, Joe Grogan would fit Robert Lambert’s description quite well.

He put the picture down and asked her casually, “Do you know if Joe had his fingerprints on file anywhere? Chauffeur’s license? Or was he in the army?”

“I’m sure he never was fingerprinted. He missed the draft, you see, on account of a heart murmur. It made him mad because he said he was as good as the next man, but they turned him down.”

“How did you and your husband get along, Mrs. Grogan?”

She looked at him uncomprehendingly for a moment before answering. “You mean… at home and all? We got along real well. Joe was a steady worker and we were saving up to buy a house of our own. We wanted to have kids, but… we’ve been waiting until I could afford to quit work.”

“Your husband is quite an attractive young man,” Shayne told her, looking down at the picture. “Did he ever… get mixed up with other women?”

“We’ve been married five years,” she told him placidly. “During that time I’ll swear my Joe never looked at another woman.” Her steady gaze met his candidly and unflinchingly. “A wife knows about a thing like that, I guess. And then besides,” she added with a quiet smile, “there he was, working steady every night in the week. And us doing things together in the daytime. That’s why I worked night shift. So I could be more with him.”

Shayne didn’t press the point. He asked instead, “Did he have any scars on his body? Any distinguishing marks that would identify him?”

“No. He didn’t. And if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, you can stop it right now. It wasn’t my Joe that called himself Robert Lambert and was meeting that married woman on Friday nights. In the first place, he wouldn’t. In the second place, he hasn’t missed a night at work for the past two months. In the third place, I heard over the radio that he said in his suicide note that he was married to a Catholic who wouldn’t give him a divorce. I’m no Catholic, and Joe and I have agreed lots of times that if it ever was to happen one of us fell in love with someone else that he could
have
a divorce just for the asking.”

“Have you been to the police, Mrs. Grogan? Their Missing Persons department has better facilities than I for tracing lost people.”

“No, I haven’t. I… I’m worried about what kind of thing Joe maybe got himself into. Like I said, I just had a feeling in my bones it was something illegal. That’s the only reason he could have for not telling me. So I didn’t want to put the police onto him. And when I got to thinking about Mr. Nathan and all, I thought you’d know best if I could just talk to you.”

Shayne said, “I can do some quiet checking without giving his name to the police. I’d like to keep this picture, and I’ll need a description of him, and what he was wearing when he disappeared.”

“He’s five feet ten and he weighs right in at a hundred and fifty. Thirty-four years old and all his own teeth and not a gray hair in his head.” She spoke with unconscious pride as she recited these details. “He was always a sharp dresser. Not flashy, but… he liked colored shirts and sport jackets. Last night when I left home he was wearing… let me see now…” She closed her eyes and thought for a moment. “A light-blue short-sleeved shirt and light gray slacks. When he went out at night he always wore a light-weight navy-blue sport jacket with those slacks.”

Shayne was making notes as she spoke, and he asked her, “Is that what he would normally wear to work? He wouldn’t have changed to a matching suit?”

“Not ever. At the Hacienda they liked their dealers and house-men to dress informal.”

Shayne nodded and said, “I’ll start a check on the hospitals and accident cases on the strength of this description. In the meantime, please call me at once if Joe returns or you have word from him.”

She said, “I thank you kindly.” She had her bag open in her lap and she tentatively took out her wallet. “I can pay you for your trouble.”

Shayne shook his head and waved it away. “It’s no trouble. If it does turn out to have any connection with the Nathan case, I’m already being paid for that investigation.”

“I can’t for the life of me see how there could be any connection… but where
is
Joe do you think?” Her face was suddenly drawn, and the freckles stood out across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes pleaded with him piteously for some word of comfort as she slowly got to her feet.

“More than likely at home right now wondering where the dickens you are,” Shayne told her with a grin. “Try not to worry, and I’ll let you know if I get any line on him.”

W
hen he returned to the table and poured himself another drink of cognac, Michael Shayne’s face wore an expression of deep concentration. Now he was confronted with one more fact which didn’t seem to fit in anywhere. He wandered out to the kitchen to refill his water glass, brought it back and sat down heavily.

A short time ago he had been trying to pass off Max Wentworth’s death as sheer coincidence… insofar as it pertained to the Nathans. Now, he was less sure. The disappearance of Grogan under the circumstances was one too many coincidences to swallow. Yet, for the life of him he didn’t see how Grogan fitted into the picture.

The man was a croupier at a gambling house where Nathan was apparently in the habit of dropping a hundred dollars once a week. They had become well-enough acquainted so they’d gone down to the bar to have a couple of drinks together after closing time two weeks ago. Mrs. Grogan had reason to believe they were cooking up some illegal scheme together from which her husband hoped to get quite a sum of money.

What could that have to do with Elsa Nathan committing suicide last night?

Shayne found himself looking down at the photograph of Joe Grogan again. He narrowed his eyes and brought back a visual memory of the man’s body in pajamas and robe with his features shattered by the blast from a shotgun in his mouth. The dead man
could
be Grogan, he decided, though he didn’t see how or why. It was simply that Grogan was inexplicably missing, and there was an unidentified dead man in the morgue.

Had Paul Nathan planned this whole affair somehow, with devilish cunning? Could he have arranged for Grogan to meet his wife in the expectation that she would fall desperately in love with him and they’d end up as the principals in a suicide pact?

It was utterly impossible. No husband could possibly
plan
such a thing… and foretell the consequences. Besides, there was Mrs. Grogan’s positive opinion of her husband’s character, the fact that he had been on the job at the Hacienda each one of those Friday nights when Elsa was keeping a rendezvous; there was the discarded clothing in the bedroom which didn’t fit Joe’s description as a “sharp” dresser at all. It was absurd. Shayne took a hefty drink of cognac and shoved that line of thought out of his mind. What other angles were there to follow up? There was the secretary who worked in the office with Nathan and whom he had taken to dinner at least three Fridays in a row. Suzie Conroy, her name was.

What was the name of the other man in the office whom Nathan had mentioned twice from the preceding night? Once as having a pre-dinner drink with him, and again as the person who had told him the news about Elsa’s death at two o’clock in the morning.

Shayne scowled as he dug back into his memory for the man’s name.

Jim Norris! That was it. Shayne picked up the pencil and jotted the name down on a pad in front of him, and wrote “Suzie Conroy?” behind it. Norris might be able to tell him whether Nathan was having a serious affair with a secretary who worked with them.