Brett Halliday - Shoot the Works

He lowered Lucy gently and held her out at arm’s length from him. He said, “So you and Mrs. Wallace have been playing detective, angel? Do you know you’ve had the entire Miami police department standing on their heads trying to find you?”

Lucy dimpled and confidently tucked her arm inside his. “Come in and have a drink and we’ll tell you about it.”

Shayne let her lead him into the room and seat him on the sofa beside Mrs. Wallace, with a four-ounce glass of cognac and a tall glass of ice water on the coffee table in front of him. He took a sip of cognac and said, “I’m listening, angel.”

“No matter what happens from this point on, Michael,” Lucy told him, “Mrs. Wallace now absolves you from your promise to keep quiet about the airplane tickets. As I told you on the telephone, we know her husband didn’t buy them planning a trip to South America because he hadn’t even renewed his passport and couldn’t possibly have been packing for such a trip.

“Do you understand how important that is, Michael?” Lucy went on eagerly. “It means that whoever killed him fixed things that way to look as though Jim were being unfaithful while Myra was away.”

Shayne said, “I get that part of it, angel. What I want is an explanation of the cloak-and-dagger stuff this afternoon. Why did Mrs. Wallace elude her police tail and call you mysteriously to leave the office in the middle of the day… and leave me, by God, in one hell of a tizzy because I hadn’t the slightest idea where you were or what you were doing?”

“But I left you a note, Michael,” wailed Lucy. “I told you…”

“All right,” said Shayne. “I still want to know what all the secrecy was about. Goddamn it, angel. If you had any idea how worried I was…”

“I’m sorry about that, Mr. Shayne.” Mrs. Wallace leaned forward and put one hand persuasively on his knee. “It was all my fault, and I now realize it was probably all completely unnecessary. But I had a feeling that your Chief Gentry was determined to prove that I had murdered Jim and was determined to frame me for the crime, if he could not get a conviction otherwise. I know that we were followed to my daughter’s house by a police officer last night, and that her telephone line was tapped. When I drove away from the house shortly after noon today, I knew I was being followed… and I determined to rid myself of my follower. You see, I had suddenly realized that it might be very important to prove that Jim had not planned a trip to South America without me… because I felt Chief Gentry was basing all his suspicions of me on the fact that he thought I had returned unexpectedly and caught him in the act of running away.

“When Lucy telephoned me this morning to ask about Jim’s passport, I realized this was a vital point, and if I could find his old, expired passport, it would be proof that he hadn’t planned to use those airplane tickets to South America this morning.

“But, very frankly, I suspected Chief Gentry’s attitude. It seemed to me he was convinced of my guilt and didn’t want any evidence to the contrary, and I even suspected he, or his men, might destroy any such evidence, if it appeared. Lucy has since convinced me that Mr. Gentry is a fair man and that I suspected him wrongly, but that was my feeling at the time.

“That’s why I wanted Lucy to be with me when I went to our safe deposit box at the bank to see if Jim’s passport was there. I felt I needed a witness to whatever discovery I made there. I’m convinced, now, and Lucy is, too, that those clothes of Jim’s laid out on the bed and the open suitcase and the airplane tickets were just part of a plot to make it appear that Jim planned to skip to South America, when he didn’t at all. Don’t you agree?”

Shayne grinned reassuringly at Mrs. Wallace and said, “I do, indeed. In fact…”

The shrilling of Lucy’s telephone interrupted him. He waited, sipping his drink, while Lucy hurried across the room to answer it, inevitably reminded of a similar interruption the previous evening which had pulled them into the middle of the Wallace case.

Lucy turned and held out the telephone. “It’s for you, Michael. Chief Gentry.”

Shayne sauntered forward and took the instrument.

Will Gentry’s voice was gruffly jovial. “All tied up in a neat packet, Mike. Martin has confessed everything. We’ve got the money and Tim has got his headline. What have you got?”

Shayne said, “A couple of happy females, Will. Tell me this: Did he plan the whole thing from the beginning?”

“Everything except Mrs. Wallace’s unexpected return. That was a sort of bonus that helped obscure things. Seems he was jealous of Tompkins making love to his wife… my God, have you seen the old bag, Mike?… and figured on killing two birds with one stone while ending up with a million bucks on the side. There’s only one thing, Mike, and it’s okay now that he’s confessed, but do you know that old couple across from Mrs. Berger completely repudiated their identification of him as her visitor this afternoon?”

Shayne said blandly, “You know how unpredictable witnesses are, Will. Thanks for calling.”

He hung up and turned back to the two women on the sofa. “Rutherford Martin has confessed both murders. Drink up, and then Lucy, let’s you and me take Mrs. Wallace back to her daughter on the Beach, and we’ll start out again where we left off last night.”