Brett Halliday - Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve

Sullivan nodded grumpily, and dropped back in his chair. “Okay, let’s get this underway. You said you could prove Horton killed his brother.”

“He’s a liar. I didn’t kill Bob, I tell you.” Horton had started out of his seat, but he was quickly and roughly shoved back into it by the officer.

Liddell reached for the pack of cigarettes on the lieutenant’s desk, helped himself to one. “I didn’t say Horton killed his brother, Vince.” He stuck the cigarette between his lips, and touched a match to it. “I said he was responsible for his brother’s death.”

“Stop making a production out of it,” Sullivan growled. “Do you have something to tie him to it or don’t you?”

Liddell exhaled twin streams of smoke from his nostrils. “Sure. The fact that he had his brother insured for twenty-five grand double indemnity.”

“What’s new about that? That’s the motive. Right?”

“Right.”

Sullivan stared at him. “You mean you put us to all this trouble just to tell us something we knew? You said—”

“I said he was responsible for the death. But he didn’t kill him.” He turned to the blonde. “You did, baby.”

The blonde’s lower jaw sagged, and her face went deathly white. “You must be completely nuts.”

Sullivan studied Liddell’s face for signs of a rib. “That’s a pretty broad statement, mister,” he said. “I hope you have something more than snow dreams to back it up.”

“You’re not going to listen to him, are you?” Sally swung on the man behind the desk. “I was at home miles away when it happened. Ask Louis, the bartender. He’ll tell you I called Bob there just a few minutes before Bob got hit.”

“How do you know when he got hit? He could have just gotten it before he was found. He might even have been lying there ever since he walked out of the tavern.”

“Contents of the stomach and degree of digestion put the time at right about when he left Louis’s place,” Sullivan pointed out. He was eying the blonde steadily. “She couldn’t have gotten from her place down to where he was hit in that length of time.”

“She didn’t call from home,” Johnny said. “I did a little checking of the neighborhood around the bar. The only place she could have called from was a little rundown hotel just up a block or so from the bar. I had a talk with the night clerk and I don’t think we’ll have any trouble on a make. He doesn’t see many pretty blondes walk in from the street to make a phone call at that hour.”

The blonde licked at her lips. “None of this is proof. It’s all a frameup.”

“Why should Liddell try to frame you, Mrs. Horton?”

“He — he tried to make a play for me. I wouldn’t go for it.”

Liddell grunted. “That’ll be the ever lovin’ day.” He turned to Horton who was staring with disbelief at his wife. “She has been making a play for your brother, pretending that if she could get rid of you, she’d marry him. He went for it.”

“She never would have married Bob. I knew that.”

“Of course not. Sally likes pretty things too much to tie herself to another guy who couldn’t buy them for her. But the insurance money would. She planned to get her hands on that money and get rid of you at the same time by framing you for Bob’s murder.”

“You can’t prove it was murder.” Sally almost screamed the words. “All right, I was there. But it was an accident. I–I got blinded by the lights. I didn’t see him until it was too late. I got scared and—”

“I don’t know if they’ll be able to pin a first-degree one on you, baby,” Liddell said. “But even if it’s murder two, or manslaughter — just sit up there and think of George, the patsy, spending the fifty gees you were so anxious to run your fingers through. So very, very anxious.”

He walked to the door, turned with his hand on the knob. “And if you’re beginning to feel sorry for her, George, just think of the fun she’d be having spending that loot while you were waiting to get fitted for the hot seat.”

The fly-specked lettering on the window read The Bright Spot Restaurant. The sign overhead urged Eat.

He wasn’t hungry, and the place didn’t look especially attractive, but he went inside anyway.

It was a counter joint with a single row of hard-backed booths lining one wall. A half dozen customers squatted on stools at the end of the counter, near the door. He walked past them and slid onto a stool at the far end.

There he sat, staring at the three waitresses. None of them looked right to him, but he had to take a chance. He waited until one of the women approached him.

“Yours, mister?”

“Coke.”

She brought it to him and set the glass down. He pretended to be studying the menu and talked without looking up at her.

“Say, does a Mrs. Helen Krauss work here?”

“I’m Helen Krauss.”

He lifted his eyes. What kind of a switch was this, anyway? He remembered the way Mike used to talk about her, night after night. “She’s a tall blonde, but stacked. Looks a lot like that dame who plays the dumb blonde on television — what’s-her-name — you know the one I mean. But she’s no dope, not Helen. And boy, when it comes to loving…”

After that, his descriptions would become anatomically intricate, but all intricacies had been carefully filed in memory.

He examined those files now, but nothing in them corresponded to what he saw before him.

This woman was tall, but there all resemblance ended. She must have tipped the scales at one-sixty, at least, and her hair was a dull, mousy brown. She wore glasses, too. Behind the thick lenses, her faded blue eyes peered stolidly at him.

She must have realized he was staring, and he knew he had to talk fast. “I’m looking for a Helen Krauss who used to live over in Norton Center. She was married to a man named Mike.”

The stolid eyes blinked. “That’s me. So what’s this all about?”

“I got a message for you from your husband.”

“Mike? He’s dead.”

“I know. I was with him when he died. Just before, anyway. I’m Rusty Connors. We were cell-mates for two years.”

Her expression didn’t change, but her voice dropped to a whisper. “What’s the message?”

He glanced around. “I can’t talk here. What time do you get off?”

“Seven-thirty.”

“Good. Meet you outside?”

She hesitated. “Make it down at the corner, across the street. There’s a park, you know?”

He nodded, rose and left without looking back. This wasn’t what he had expected — not after the things Mike had told him about his wife. When he bought his ticket for Hainesville, he had had other ideas in mind. It would have been nice to find this hot, good-looking blond widow of Mike’s and, maybe, combine business with pleasure. He had even thought about the two of them blowing town together, if she was half as nice as Mike said. But that was out, now. He wanted no part of this big, fat, stupid-looking slob with the dull eyes.

Rusty wondered how Mike could have filled him with such a line of bull for two years straight — and then he knew. Two years straight — that was the answer — two years in a bare cell, without a woman. Maybe it had got so that, after a time, Mike believed his own story, that Helen Krauss became beautiful to him. Maybe Mike had gone a little stir-simple before he died, and made up a lot of stuff.

Rusty only hoped Mike had been telling the truth about one thing. He had better have been, because what Mike had told Connors, there in the cell, was what brought him to town. It was this that was making him cut into this rat-race, that had led him to Mike’s wife. He hoped Mike had been telling the truth about hiding away the fifty-six thousand dollars.