Brett Halliday - The Corpse That Never Was

“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.”

When 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.