Brett Halliday - Never Kill a Client

Shayne said, “The police will be here in a few minutes asking you more questions. Keep that cabin locked until they get here. Did you check Jenkins in?”

“I reckon. I been trying to recollect.” The bald man frowned and then looked up at Shayne with renewed interest and said, “It’s comin’ back to me now. Say! He was a big redhead a lot like you. Yeh. That’s right. Younger though, an’ better lookin’. No offense meant,” he added hastily.

“What did his wife look like?”

“She wasn’t with him when he checked in. I remember it real good now. Lots of ’em don’t, you know? Not when they check in. Not if… well, you know how it is,” he continued hastily. “Nothing wrong about that. I recollect he said his wife was downtown shopping an’ she’d be along later.”

“Then you didn’t actually see her?”

“No. I reckon not. After they’ve registered, they drive in and out without stoppin’. Say! Number Nineteen? Ain’t that the one the other fellow was askin’ about yesterday evening? Kinda thick-set an’ mean-lookin’? He come in first and used the telephone, then went out without saying thank you or go-to-hell, and about five minutes later he was back askin’ who was registered in Nineteen. I didn’t tell him, by golly. Figgered it wasn’t none of his damn business.”

That would have been Brenner, Shayne thought. He tapped the registration card with his fingertip and asked, “Did you check this man’s car and license number when he registered?”

“Well, you know how it is, Mister. Mostly they stop out there about where your car is.” He gestured out the door. “You see the car standin’ there, and if it’s what he says it is you don’t go out to look at the license number. Nothing in the law says I gotta do that, I reckon.”

A whining note crept into his voice, and Shayne agreed, “I guess not.” He turned away, saying over his shoulder, “The police will be here in a few minutes. Don’t let any cleaning woman in that cabin until they get through.” He got in his car and headed back to downtown Miami.

Fully clothed and freshly shaven, with his sparse hair combed smoothly and his glasses firmly settled on the bridge of his nose, the man looked as though he might actually be named Reginald Dawes Rexforth Third when Shayne walked into Gentry’s office twenty minutes later and found him seated there in earnest conference with Miami’s chief of police.

Will Gentry still hadn’t been to bed, and he looked it. His heavy body sagged behind the big desk and his florid face was grayer than usual. He looked up at Shayne disapprovingly and said, “From what Rexforth here has been telling me, Mike, I think you’ve got yourself into a hell of a tight spot this time.”

“Forget that for a moment, Will.” Shayne’s gray eyes were very bright although he hadn’t been to bed for more than twenty-four hours either. He disregarded Rexforth entirely, and told Gentry, “I think I can clean this whole thing up fast. Just get that woman in here. Elsa Cornell. I think I know the right sort of questions to ask her now.”

Gentry rolled his rumpled eyelids down like tiny Venetian blinds to shut out Shayne’s piercing glance. “I’d be glad to,” he muttered, “if we had her. All right, goddamn it,” he added angrily, rolling his eyelids back up again to meet Shayne’s gaze squarely. “I don’t need any remarks about the efficiency of my police department. She got away from Ed Corby and Jim Greene while they were bringing her in from the morgue. She was sitting in front with Greene and he stopped for a stop sign. When he pulled into the intersection with traffic coming from both ways, she calmly opened the front door and stepped out. He couldn’t stop, damn it, without causing a couple of wrecks. And by the time they got clear and went back for her, she’d vanished.”

Shayne simply said, “My God, Will,” and sank into a chair on the other side of the chief’s desk from Rexforth. “She was the only link we had. Driving back from that motel…” He stretched his big hands out in front of him and closed the fingers slowly into fists. “… I decided I was going to get the truth out of her if I had to choke it out of her lovely throat.” He paused. “All right, Will. So we haven’t got her. What have we got?”

“In the first place, Mike, I’ve got two witnesses who place you square in Miami yesterday noon and at five o’clock,” Gentry told him heavily. “Want to comment on that?”

Shayne looked across at Rexforth and said, “The five o’clock thing is his, of course. Why doesn’t he produce his man named Brenner who’s supposed to have tailed me out to the Orange Palms Motel?”

“I will, Mr. Shayne,” said Rexforth happily. “He should be on his way here now.”

Shayne said, “Fine. I’d like to hear him tell his own story. What’s this noon deal, Will?”

“It’s a lad who works for the lunchroom down the street on Flagler where Lucy often orders lunch delivered up to the office. He knows her well, Mike, and says he knows you by sight. He’s prepared to swear that you met him down in the lobby of the building about twelve-thirty yesterday when he was taking a tray up to Lucy, and you gave him a dollar tip and told him you were going tip and you’d take it to her.”

“So that’s how they pulled it?” muttered Shayne. “That adds up. Anyone who bothered to check carefully would know that Lucy always orders lunch sent up from that lunchroom, if I’m not in the office.”

“He says he can identify you, Mike,” Gentry pressed him. “That he’s seen you in the office with Lucy several times.”

Shayne nodded disinterestedly. “I’ve probably seen him a couple of times when he delivered lunches. If we’re tied up, Lucy orders something for both of us. Is that all you’ve got?”

“Isn’t it enough?”

“No, by God, it isn’t!” Shayne exploded, leaping up from his chair angrily. “Where are these witnesses who are supposed to identify me? Jesus Christ, Will! You’ve listened to Rexforth’s story. Don’t you get the implications?”

“The implications I get,” Gentry told him coldly, “is that there was a hundred thousand dollars floating around loose in Miami and you figured to grab it. I’m not saying what happened in your office yesterday afternoon, Mike. I’m not saying either you or Lucy killed the guy. But I think both of you know a hell of a lot more about it than I do… and I’m waiting for you to let me in on it.”

Shayne let out a long breath and said, “I’ll agree there probably was a hundred grand floating around Miami yesterday waiting for somebody to grab it. And someone did… or made a hell of a good try. But it wasn’t I, Will. And it sure as hell wasn’t Lucy. Did you send a man out to the Orange Palms Motel?”

Gentry nodded, reaching in his pocket for a thick black cigar which he rolled between his fingers and sniffed gravely. “That’s where Rexforth says you took Lucy yesterday afternoon from the office. And that part doesn’t make sense, I’ll grant you. If you and Lucy suddenly decided to bed down together, I can’t see you shacking up in a motel to do it.”

“I’ve told you a dozen times,” said Shayne tensely, “that I was in California at five o’clock yesterday afternoon. It was some other man, Will, pretending to be me to try and get his hands on that dough.”

“And Lucy went out to a motel with him?” Gentry looked properly incredulous.

“I didn’t say that. I said…”

“When you telephoned in,” Gentry reminded him, “you said you wanted Cabin Nineteen checked because Lucy had been there. Now you say she wasn’t there. You can’t have it both ways, Mike. But you’re never going to make me believe Lucy went out to a motel with another man. Maybe with you, damn it, though I should think you could plan it better than that, but not with some other lug.”