Brett Halliday - Framed in Blood

“His home number?” Shayne asked, surprised.

“Yes. He left right after that. You see-”

“Hold it,” Shayne interrupted with a scowl, jerking his rangy body erect and trying to fit this information into the facts he already knew. “Are you sure he was headed for home when he left here at ten o’clock?” Marie had her glass to her lips and was swallowing rapidly.

“That’s what he said. How else could he get the call if he wasn’t home in half an hour?” She spoke irritably, set her empty glass on the table, relaxed, and closed her eyes once more.

Shayne settled back and did some fast thinking. How else, indeed, he wondered. Yet, Rourke had said that he went to the Jackson house at midnight, and Betty denied that Bert had returned all evening. Of course, Bert might have changed his mind on the way home. He could have stopped at a bar for a quick one and decided to make another phone call from there instead of going home and waiting. That would explain what Betty had told Rourke at midnight.

Setting his angular jaw, Shayne swore silently. If it were not for Tim he could go ahead with the extortion thing. But Marie Leonard was hinting at “another man” and that man was bound to be Tim, in spite of his hopes that there wasn’t another man when he lied to Gentry.

He came to his feet suddenly and walked slowly around the room, absently studying the two prints hanging on the wall, fingering the artistic statuettes on the lacquered table. Returning to his chair he poured another small drink, downed it, and demanded of Marie, “Why didn’t Bert stay right here to get the call? Didn’t he usually stay later than ten o’clock?”

“Sometimes.” She opened her eyes, drew one leg up on the chair, turned her body, and rested her cheek on the chair back to look directly at Shayne. “We’d had a big fight about this trouble he insisted on getting himself into. I told him it was all over between us unless he gave it up. I’ll-never forgive myself for doing that to him.” Her red mouth primped, and tears rolled down her cheeks. She dabbed at them with a handkerchief and continued.

“I sent him away angry. He slammed out without even saying good-by, but I didn’t know then-that I’d never see him again. Oh-I should have made him stay here with me, Mr. Shayne. If only I’d been-kinder to him.”

“Bert Jackson was a grown man,” he reminded her.

“But he wasn’t. He was just a boy in so many ways. Did that man kill him, Mr. Shayne? You haven’t even told me how Bert died.”

“What man?”

“That other man. You know-the one Betty-”

“Bert Jackson was shot,” Shayne told her harshly. “His body was found about three o’clock this morning out in the Northwest section.”

She shuddered and covered her face with both hands, weeping again. Shayne got up and stepped around the table, caught her wrists gently and pulled her hands away from her eyes. She gripped his fingers and cried desperately, “You must know who did it! With the information Bert gave you. He must have told you who the man was. You’ll see that he’s arrested and pays-even if Bert’s story about his political graft isn’t ever printed.”

“I don’t know who the man is,” Shayne told her.

“But Bert said that you-that he-”

“Your account of his telephone call clears up certain aspects of it,” he said soothingly. “If this man believes I have the information, he may come to me to buy it.”

“But if he does, you won’t deal with him!” She looked up into his eyes, her own wide and pleading. “You wouldn’t do that-not after-what happened to Bert.”

“If he killed Bert or had him killed,” Shayne promised soberly, “I give you my word he’ll pay for it. I wish you’d try to think back and recall all the things Bert must have told you about everything,” he urged. “Any names at all on this story of his, any facts. He must have talked about it to you, at least back in the beginning when he was so enthusiastic and didn’t realize quite what it might lead into.” Shayne put a small amount of whisky in her glass and sprayed it with soda, then resumed his seat and waited.

Marie lifted the drink with trembling hands, swallowed half of it, and said, “Bert didn’t talk to me about things like that.” A poignant sadness in her voice caused the detective to wince involuntarily.

What had they talked about, he wondered, these two young people caught up in a passion that could not be legalized. He raked blunt fingers through his hair as he compared Marie with Betty Jackson who vowed she was in love with her husband, and gave a forelock a savage jerk recalling Tim Rourke’s anomalous position in the situation. Tim, who had always preferred unattached blondes, had evidently beaten a triangle into a square, intentionally or not, and left Shayne with many unanswered questions, vague relationships, contradictions, and all because of a brunette.

Shayne came to his feet impatiently. The first light of dawn was streaming through the triple windows. He didn’t want Gentry to find him here when the police chief got around to connecting the lone key in Bert Jackson’s wallet with the Las Felice apartments.

Marie roused and stood up. In spite of her claim that she seldom drank, she was steady on her high heels after three stiff drinks of Scotch. She took a couple of steps and looked up at Shayne with a wan smile.

“The police will be here to question you about Bert Jackson,” he said, placing a big hand lightly on each of her shoulders. He kept his voice even, neither pleading nor warning as he continued. “Tell them as much of the truth as you wish about Bert being here last night-and so forth. But thus far, they don’t know anything about his extortion plan. You don’t have to tell them about it if you don’t want to. Not right away. I’d rather work on it alone.”

“Nothing matters very much to me now,” she murmured, lowering her lids.

“Nonsense,” said Shayne cheerfully. He shook her shoulders gently and took his hands away. “You’re young, and tomorrow is another day. I’ll be in touch with you.” He picked up his hat from the floor where he had tossed it and went toward the door, jamming it down on his heavy hair and pulling the brim low over his forehead. He stopped suddenly, turned, and asked, “Do you know Bert’s home address?”

“It’s not far from here,” she said, “on Sixtieth Street. I don’t know the house number. Only the telephone number.” She repeated the telephone number without hesitation.

Shayne hid his surprise by pretending to admire the lamp on the Japanese table. None of the figures Marie gave him coincided with the number Rourke had asked for in his apartment when he called the Jackson home to find out whether Bert had returned last night. “Are you positive?” he asked.

“Of course. I’ve called there often enough.”

“But-you must be mistaken,” he protested. “That’s not the number-”

“It is,” she interrupted loftily, “unless it has been changed in the last day or so. There’s the telephone book.”

The telephone was on a small stand that just missed the front door when it was wide open. Shayne stalked to it, picked up the directory, and began leafing through it, positive that he could not be mistaken.

He found Bert Jackson’s street address on Northwest Sixtieth Street in the directory, but a tingle crawled up his spine when he saw the telephone number. It was identical with the one Marie had given him. It was not the one Rourke had called.

Shayne kept his back turned to Marie as he scowled at the stippled wall. He had heard that number before, and recently. Very recently. He had not consciously memorized it, but the peculiar circumstance under which he had heard it had impressed it upon his memory.