Brett Halliday - Never Kill a Client

He grinned sourly and tossed the rest of the liquor down. In spite of himself, he had to admit she was quite a gal. Nothing seemed to faze her, by God. Under other circumstances, Elsa Cornell was decidedly the sort of female who appealed to Michael Shayne.

She was waiting composedly for him at the door with her handbag tucked under her arm when he came out of the bedroom with her bags. She opened the door and held it for him while he paused and awkwardly picked up his briefcase also, and she followed him out and walked down the corridor to the elevator beside him with all the aplomb of a married woman checking out of a hotel room with her husband to whom she has been married for twenty years.

Nor did her aplomb desert her in the lobby. She went directly to the cashier’s desk with her room key in her hand, said icily, “I have to leave town unexpectedly. May I have my bill? There was a room-service charge about half an hour ago,” she added.

Shayne handed the three bags over to a bellboy who hurried up to him, and said, “We need a cab to catch a plane.”

The boy told him, “I’ll have one waiting,” and took the bags out the front door. Shayne stood behind Elsa and sardonically watched her pay her bill with cash. He didn’t know what the exact amount was, but observed that she received a few ones and some silver back from a fifty and twenty which she pushed under the grille. Her suite at a hotel like the Perriepont would run between twenty-five and thirty dollars a day, Shayne guessed, which meant that she was paying for two days’ occupancy and must have checked in on her arrival from Miami the day before yesterday.

Just one more lie to chalk up against her, he thought with grim amusement, remembering the unpacked bags standing so revealingly inside the bedroom when they entered the suite earlier. She must have packed them and set them there that day when she started out to find Joe Pelter’s cab and write the note that was to be delivered to him at the Plaza Terrace and start him out following a will-of-the-wisp.

The whole caper had been planned thoroughly and carefully. There was no question about that. But why? And by whom?

Who was the dead man in his office?

And where was Lucy Hamilton?

Elsa rejoined him and they went out together and found the bellboy had a taxi waiting. He gave the boy a dollar and got in beside Elsa, and told the driver, “The airport. We’re catching a nine-forty plane.”

The driver said cheerfully, “Plenty of time… just about,” and Shayne sat back in his corner of the seat and lighted a cigarette.

Elsa sat stiffly, well-removed from him, without speaking for several blocks. Then she sighed audibly and opened her bag, took a cigarette from her case and put it between her lips. “Will you light it for me, please?”

Shayne said, “Sure,” and struck a match and held it for her and asked banteringly, “Don’t I get a tip this time… something like the torn half of a thousand-buck bill?” She leaned her head back against the seat, inhaled deeply and expelled smoke. “Tell me about the dead man in your office, Mike. Was he murdered?”

“Aside from the fact that I have a hunch you know a hell of a lot more about it than I do, I don’t mind telling you the damn little I know about it. Yeh. I told you back in the hotel that the police think my secretary did it.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re a bunch of incompetent damned fools,” he growled. “They can’t find Lucy and their first assumption is that she must have murdered the guy and taken it on the lam. He was stabbed in the heart with a filing spindle off her desk,” he added gruffly.

“Who is the man?”

“They haven’t identified him yet. Why don’t you tell me? You know the truth is bound to come out.”

“But I don’t know what the truth is,” she told him evenly. “I’m as anxious to know as you are, Mike. I had no thought of getting mixed up in… murder.” She brought the word out shudderingly.

“Then why don’t you tell me the whole story?”

“No. You wouldn’t believe me. I have already told you how I was hired…”

“I know. By a guy named Joe Morrison. But we’ve already kicked that story full of half a dozen holes. I’ve got an airplane ticket in my pocket that proves you flew in from Miami two days ago… just in time to mail that phony letter to me. You paid a hotel bill tonight for two days at the Perriepont. Good God, woman, how long do you think you can keep this up?”

“You have a ticket in your pocket,” she told him evenly, “that proves some woman named Elsa Cornell flew to Los Angeles from Miami two days ago. Can you prove my name is Elsa Cornell?”

“At this point, no. What the hell is your name?” he demanded suddenly.

“Perhaps you will find out in Miami… where you are the great detective.” She drew back into her own corner of the seat and told him with finality, “I will not talk about it any more. I am not ashamed of anything I have done except that you made me feel like a cheap whore when you refused me in my hotel room tonight. I know nothing about any murdered men in your office, and less about your secretary.”

And that was that, Shayne realized, for the time being at least. She didn’t seem to mind returning to Miami with him. Maybe there was some innocent explanation for her part in the affair, but he was certain he hadn’t got it from her yet.

At the United Terminal he checked their three bags together and exchanged the two return tickets for gate passes while Elsa stood calmly beside him without speaking. They still had a few minutes before departure, and Shayne utilized those to dispatch a telegram to Will Gentry, chief of the Miami police force.

He said: “Arriving Miami United Flight Seventeen six tomorrow morning with possible homicide witness.” Then they went out through the departure gate together to board their plane.

The sun was a red ball of fire over the Atlantic ocean when the huge jet-liner settled down smoothly on the runway at Miami and taxied in to the terminal. Elsa had slept in the window seat beside Shayne most of the trip, or had pretended to sleep, turned partially on her side away from him with two pillows underneath her blonde head, and she had not spoken a single word during the entire trip.

Now she stirred and sat up, peering out the window at the airport, glistening and clean in the early morning sunlight, and she opened her bag and got out her comb and the compact with a small mirror.

She peered into the mirror with a slight frown, shook her honey-colored hair and ran the comb through it with a few practiced strokes, and without looking at Shayne, said, “So we’re here. What now?”

Shayne said, “I suspect we’ll be met by an official delegation.”

“I mean… what about me after we get off? Do I have to… do you expect me just to trail along with you while you solve a murder case and go hunting for your precious secretary?”

“That will depend a whole lot on what’s happened here since I talked to Tim Rourke. If we’re lucky, the case will already be solved and Lucy will be waiting to greet me at the gate. If not…?” He shrugged. “It will be up to Will Gentry to decide about you after I tell him how you got me out of town yesterday. Consider yourself under arrest at this point,” he added casually as the plane came to a stop and the unloading platform came out to meet it.

“Under arrest?” Now she did look at him, long and searchingly. “Are you kidding?”

“Not at all. Come on.” He moved out into the aisle and waited politely for her to precede him off the plane.

“But what for?” She seemed utterly perplexed. “What right have you got to arrest me?”