Brett Halliday - Michael Shaynes' 50th case

“Terrible thing, wasn’t it? Mighty fine woman. First time anything like that ever happened in Sunray Beach, I can tell you. Gives the town a bad name. Say you’re here on account of it? State police, or like that?”

“Reporter,” Rourke told him. “Miami News. We’re offering a thousand-dollar reward for pertinent information.”

“Is that a fact? Well, I sure hope you get to pay out that reward money, Mister. Man that’d do a thing like that just isn’t human, the way I look at it. I’ll help string him up my own self when they catch him. Some damned hobo, you can be sure of that. Marvin and Ellie Blake was mighty well liked here in Sunray. I guess you might say there wasn’t a better-respected woman in town. Hanging’s too good for a bastard’d do a thing like that. Oughtta string him up by the balls and set a slow fire going underneath him.”

Rourke nodded soberly and said, “It was a mighty nasty thing. Tough on the little girl. The husband, too.”

“It’ll just about finish up old Marv. God! Think about coming home to that. After being off on a convention and all. He just about worshipped the ground his wife and little Sissy walked on, Marv did. I’m telling you I’d hate to be the man to meet that train this afternoon and tell Marv the news.”

“You mean he hasn’t been notified yet?”

“I reckon not. I was talking down the street in the drug store a little while ago and one of the fellows there had just been talking to Ollie Jenson… he’s Chief of Police here… and Ollie said he didn’t see any good in breaking the bad news to him till he had to. Stands to reason there’s nothing Marv can do about it. Bad enough when he does get home and has to find out.”

A party of three men entered the front door and seated themselves on stools. The sandy-haired man bustled to them and took their orders, and Rourke turned his head to watch them idly over the rim of his glass.

As the bartender set drinks in front of them, he leaned forward and spoke rapidly in a low voice, and all three of them turned their heads simultaneously to look at Rourke.

He blandly disregarded their interest, emptied his glass thirstily and set it down. When the bartender approached him again, he said, “I’d like another. Better make it a single this time.”

The bartender set it in front of him and said, “One of those fellows there is Harry Wilsson. He and his wife were about the closest friends the Blakes had in town, and Harry’s taking it mighty hard. Mrs. Wilsson’s the first one Sissy Blake telephoned to this morning after she woke up and found her mamma choked to death in bed, and she went right over there without stopping to get dressed and called the police and Doctor Higgens. They got Sissy at their house now, until Marvin gets back anyhow.”

Rourke took a sip of his drink and glanced at the three men. “Which one is Wilsson?”

“One on this end.”

The man seated nearest to Rourke was in his early thirties, tall and well-built, with carefully-combed, glossy black hair and a somewhat bushy black mustache. He was drinking whiskey, Rourke noted, straight from a shot-glass, with a small beer as a chaser.

Rourke nodded and said, “Thanks.” Then he looked at the still locked supply of bottled liquor at the end of the bar, and asked, “Do you sell stuff by the bottle?”

“To take out, yeh. I just haven’t got around to opening it up yet.”

“Let me have a pint. Four Roses, I guess.”

The bartender got a key from a hook behind him, unlocked the padlock and pushed the iron lattice back. He put a pint bottle in a brown paper sack and set it on the bar beside the reporter.

Rourke slid it into the side pocket of his coat, then got off his stool and with his drink in hand approached Harry Wilsson.

The man jerked around nervously when Rourke stopped beside him and asked, “Mr. Wilsson?”

He had very black eyes and full, almost pouting, lips beneath the heavy mustache. He said, very quickly, “That’s right,” and wet his lips nervously and glanced away.

The reporter said, “My name is Rourke… from the Miami News. I’m in town covering the Blake murder, and I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes.”

“I guess so,” Wilsson said huskily. He gave a little self-conscious laugh that turned out to be more of a snort. “Don’t know what I can tell you, though, except I’m mighty well broken up about it.”

“I understand you were close friends,” Rourke said sympathetically. “Why don’t you bring your drink and let’s go back to a table where we can talk a moment?” He turned and led the way to the farthest table in the rear, and Harry Wilsson followed him, carrying his half-emptied shot-glass in one hand and beer in the other.

Rourke took a chair and Wilsson sat down opposite him, grimacing and shaking his head slowly. “I just can’t get it through my head. I keep thinking about Marvin. How I would feel if a thing like that happened to my wife while I was off raising hell at a convention?” He closed his fingers tightly about his shot-glass, lifted it to his mouth convulsively and tossed off the remainder of the whiskey.

Rourke said sententiously, “It’s always hardest on those who are left behind. Have you got any idea who might have done it, Mr. Wilsson?”

“God, no! How could I? No one who knew them, certainly. Nobody in this town. It had to be a transient. Chief Jenson says he must have got into the house through the front window that was left unlocked. I told Ellie to lock up carefully while Marvin was gone, but she just laughed at me. Nobody does lock up in Sunray, hardly. First time anything like this ever happened.”

“When did you see her last?” Rourke asked smoothly. “I suppose you dropped in and more or less looked after things while her husband was away… being such close friends.”

“Well, Ellie knew she could call on me for anything she needed. But she was pretty independent that way. She stopped by the house yesterday afternoon with Sissy and that was the last time we saw her alive. We talked about Marv being at the convention and all, and I kidded her about how he was probably stepping out on her with some of those fancy city women, and she just kidded right back about how she didn’t worry about Marv in Miami. She didn’t come right out and say it, you know, but she practically said that old Marv knew he had something a lot better waiting for him right there at home than he was going to get from any woman in Miami. And then… oh, God!” Harry Wilsson groaned and spread out his hands and then ran his fingers through his glossy, black hair distractedly. “When you think about last night, and her up in her bedroom and sleeping there naked and dreaming, maybe, about Marv…” He groaned again and put the spread fingers of both hands over his face.

Rourke settled back in his chair and reached down to the paper sack in his coat pocket containing the pint of Four Roses and wriggled the mouth of the sack open in his pocket, and said, “Then that’s the last thing either you or your wife saw of her… when she stopped by your place late yesterday afternoon? Just for the record, I guess maybe that’s the last anyone saw of her alive?”

“I guess so.” Harry Wilsson took his hands away from his face and showed a strained and pain-racked countenance to the reporter. “Except Sissy, of course. And… whoever did it.”

Rourke nodded and emptied his glass. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that more customers had entered the bar and the bartender was busy serving them. He pushed back his chair and got up with his empty glass in his left hand, and said, “I’ll get us a refill. What are you drinking?”

“Bourbon. All right, just a shot. I’ve got plenty of beer.” Rourke nodded and put his right hand over the empty shot-glass on the table. He slid his first two fingers inside the glass and stretched them apart to lift the glass without touching the outside of it, and turned away quickly, transferring the glass to the paper sack inside his pocket and dropping it gently atop the pint of whiskey as he moved toward the end of the bar.