Brett Halliday - Shoot the Works

“Me?” Tompkins swallowed hard and endeavored to maintain his dignity. “I told you in the beginning I was prepared to give a definite alibi, if it was required.”

“So,” said Shayne, “it is now required. Let’s have it.”

Tompkins glanced appealingly at Gentry. “I don’t believe Shayne has any official standing in this inquiry. Do I have to answer him?”

Gentry said stolidly, “I’m giving Shayne official status. Answer him.”

“I… I…” said Tompkins helplessly, “… I meant it this morning when I told you I could furnish an alibi. Unfortunately…”

“Unfortunately for you,” said Shayne with vicious irony, “or… maybe fortunately, Tompkins, the woman whom you expected to furnish your alibi has since died. Hasn’t she, Tompkins?”

Tompkins said strongly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is a lot of hog-wash and I…”

“No, Tompkins,” said Shayne. “It isn’t hog-wash. Did you kill Lola Berger because she refused, in the final analysis, to lie about the time you spent with her last night?”

“Lola?” sputtered Tompkins. “What do you know about Lola?”

“Practically everything,” Shayne told him gravely. “Today when I showed you that note I found in Wallace’s apartment, you realized that he had been playing around with her, too, didn’t you? Was it the first time you suspected the truth, Tompkins? Or had you known about it before?”

Tompkins sank back with a sigh. “That’s a lie,” he muttered. “Lola wouldn’t… she didn’t…” He sat erect, his face flushed with anger. “You think there was something between her and Jim Wallace? There wasn’t! You’re a fool to think so. I’ll explain that note to you and how you came to find it in Wallace’s possession. As soon as I saw it I knew what it was. Lola and I did have a quarrel a couple of weeks ago. We made it up a few nights later, and she told me she had written a note to me and sent it here to the office. A note I never received. She didn’t tell me the exact wording, but as soon as I read that note today, I realized it must be the one. Jim Wallace was a prim, old snoop,” he went on angrily. “Just because he never had any decent sex life of his own, he hated to see anyone else have any fun. He was always after me… preaching to me… giving me fatherly advice about settling down and getting married, until he made me sick at my stomach. As soon as I saw that note today, I realized that Jim must have intercepted it, here, at the office, and kept it, for some purpose of his own.

“You’ll understand him better,” Tompkins went on, in disgust, “when I tell you that he even went so far, a couple of weeks ago, as to get in touch with Lola and have lunch with her and actually offer her money to get out of Miami and out of my life. As though it was any of his damned business,” he went on, belligerently.

“Perhaps,” said Rutherford Martin smoothly, “he realized how bad an influence a gold-digger can have upon a man in your position, Tommy. Perhaps he was thinking of the future… of some time when there might be a very large sum of cash available in the office safe… and of the terrible temptation to grab it and go away with a woman like that.”

There was a long and pregnant silence after Martin ceased speaking. It was broken by a vehement explosion from Tompkins: “Good God, Martin! Are you serious?”

“It’s a possibility,” said Shayne, “that must have occurred to all of us. Let’s get back to your alibi. Isn’t it a fact that you don’t have any now that Lola is dead?”

“It is,” admitted Tompkins. “Which should be proof enough that I didn’t kill her. Don’t you see? She was my out, if anybody was fool enough to think I had anything to do with stealing the money or shooting Jim Wallace. I’d be the last man in the world to kill her.”

“If she was actually prepared to alibi you,” agreed Shayne. “And that brings us back to the note, signed with her name, that was in Wallace’s bureau. You gave no sign of recognizing the note, or her name, when I showed it to you, yet, the moment I went out of your office, you reached for the outside telephone on your desk and dialed her number. What did she tell you over the phone, Tompkins?”

The broker’s saturnine face showed helpless astonishment. “How do you know I called her number?”

“We private detectives know our business,” Shayne told him gravely, “even though we don’t employ large staffs of legmen. What did you talk about?”

“Nothing. Her telephone didn’t answer. I didn’t know it then, but I realize now she must have been dead already when I tried to call her.”

“But she answered Martin’s call about five minutes later,” Shayne pressed him. “She wasn’t dead then. So what did she tell you over the phone, Tompkins?”

“I insist that I got no answer. I let it ring ten times before hanging up.” Tompkins turned harried eyes to Martin. “You say you called her later and got an answer? I didn’t know you even knew Lola.”

“I didn’t, personally. Jim had talked to me about helping extricate you from the clutches of some designing female, but I didn’t know who she was. Shayne and I found her number written in Jim’s private address book.”

“And she answered the phone when you called her a few minutes later? Well, then,” Tompkins spoke acidly to Shayne, “if you know she was still alive at that time, you can’t suspect me of killing her. You know I was here in my office.”

“If it was Lola herself who answered Martin’s ring,” Shayne amended. “But there seems to be some question about that. Having never heard her voice before, he can’t swear the woman who answered the phone was Lola.”

“But I can swear her phone didn’t answer when I rang it.”

“You can swear to it, but you can’t prove it. Just as you can swear you spent last evening with her, but you can’t prove that either.”

“What possible motive could I have had for killing Jim Wallace?”

“Sexual jealousy is a pretty good motive. That note from Lola indicates more than a passing acquaintance between Wallace and her.”

“But I’ve explained that, too. It wasn’t written to Jim. It was written to me, after we’d quarrelled, and sent here to the office. He must have intercepted it and then kept it, for some reason of his own. To help keep us apart, I guess. I’ve told you he disapproved of our affair.”

“Sure, you’ve told us,” said Shayne wearily. “But, again, you have no proof at all. Just your unsupported word. It’s more logical to assume that she had fallen for Wallace and they were planning to go away together to South America with a million bucks of the firm’s money. And when you discovered it, you shot Jim and took the money yourself. Maybe you did think in the beginning that you could buy an alibi from her with a million dollars, but, when you found out she wouldn’t play, you had to get rid of her, too.”

“My God!” Tompkins covered his face with both hands and his tone was awed. “This is one of those nightmarish things you read about. Every word I’ve told you is the absolute truth.”

“Aren’t you forgetting one thing, Mike?” asked Gentry stolidly. “The note you found in Wallace’s bedroom?”

“I’ve been waiting for you to bring that up, Will. No, I haven’t forgotten it, and it’s the one piece of solid evidence that punches a hole in the case against Tompkins. Because you and I both realize it must have been put in that drawer after last night. Isn’t that what sticks in your craw, Will?”

“Right. The moment you told me about finding it this morning I knew it had been planted after my boys went over the place. I may not have the most efficient homicide squad in the world, but, by God, they wouldn’t miss a thing like that in the apartment of a murdered man.”