Brett Halliday - Michael Shaynes' 50th case

There, he caught the bartender’s attention and pushed his own glass forward, ordering, “Another single with branch water for me, and another slug of straight stuff for Mr. Wilsson.”

He got out his wallet and extracted a twenty while his drink was being made, and he pushed it across the mahogany when his drink and a full shot-glass were placed in front of him. He said, “Take them all out of that… not forgetting the pint,” and he waited to get his change and left a dollar on the bar when he went back and sat down again in front of Harry Wilsson.

He pushed the man’s drink in front of him, and tilted his own glass up. He drank half of it and smacked his lips happily and said, “I never saw her, of course, but they tell me Ellie Blake was quite a piece. What I mean is,” he went on hastily, seeing storm signals in Wilsson’s black eyes, “she was the sort of woman that gave a man ideas about her whether she meant it or not. Which might, in a sense, explain what happened to her last night. Because some man got horny just looking at her.”

“Ellie did have a way about her,” said Wilsson broodingly and uncomfortably. “If a man didn’t know her real well, he might easily get the wrong idea just by watching her walk down the street. But she didn’t mean anything by it. She was just as innocent as the day is long.”

Timothy Rourke shrugged and said, “Some women just can’t help it.” He drained his glass and pushed back his chair and stood up. “Well, thanks a lot for your information, Mr. Wilsson. I’ll probably be seeing you around.”

He walked out, lifting one hand in a wave to the bartender as he passed behind the backs of the men seated at the bar, went down the street outside to his car and got in and drove a block where he made a U-Turn and drove back on Main Street, slowing up in front of City Hall which housed the police department, and looking for a parking space.

At that moment he saw Patrolman Leroy Smith coming down the walk to the street, and he double-parked and leaned out and waved to the young man, and Leroy saw him and hurried to the side of his car and said, “Hi, Mr. Rourke. Something you wanted?”

Rourke unlatched the door and said, “Climb in,” waited until he was inside and then pulled ahead slowly. He said, “I’ve got a little job for you. Where’s your finger-printing equipment?”

“I keep it all at home. I’ve got a little laboratory fixed up there…”

“Which way is home?”

“Just a couple of blocks. Turn to your right at the second corner. Matter of fact, I was going home for a snack. Then I have to go back on duty at headquarters at one. What kind of job, Mr. Rourke?”

Rourke said, “I’ll show you when we get there.” He turned at the indicated corner and Leroy pointed out a neat stucco house in the middle of the block. “Turn in the driveway and stop. We can go in the side entrance.”

The reporter followed him into a small, neat room with a bare porcelain table in the middle of it, a sink with running water, and shelves along one wall holding an array of neatly-labeled jars and bottles.

“I know it doesn’t look like very much,” Leroy said hesitantly, “but I’ve got all my reference books here, and all the equipment I’ve gathered together ever since I studied chemistry in high school. What was it you wanted?” Rourke pulled the paper sack out of the baggy side pocket of his coat and laid it on the table. He took hold of the end of it with the pint inside and lifted it, and the shot-glass rolled out on the porcelain surface.

“I want you to dust that for fingerprints,” he told the young policeman, “and then get your magnifying glass out and we’ll compare what you find with the prints you lifted off that highball glass in the Blake house this morning. A person doesn’t have to be an expert to make that sort of comparison.”

Leroy Smith’s jaw drooped incredulously. “Do you mean you’ve found out who was there last night and had a drink with her?”

“Get out your powder and duster and we’ll see. And be sure you keep it damn well under your hat if I turn out to be right,” grated Rourke. “Just because a man had a drink with her doesn’t mean he strangled her.”

At three o’clock that afternoon Harry Wilsson’s secretary entered the private office at the rear of his insurance agency and informed her employer that a Mr. Shayne was in the outer office and wanted to see him.

The name meant nothing to Wilsson, and he asked somewhat irritably, “Is he selling something?”

Miss Andrews said she didn’t think so. “He doesn’t look like a salesman, and he said it’s a personal matter of some importance.”

Wilsson nodded and said, “All right,” and she went out, and he picked up one of the papers scattered on the desk in front of him and was pretending to read it when a tall, wide-shouldered man with rumpled, red hair and cold, gray eyes came quietly through the door and closed it behind him. Wilsson put the paper down and looked at his visitor with a questioning frown. He was certain he had never seen the man before, and he said somewhat brusquely, “Shayne, is it? What can I do for you?”

“Just answer a few questions,” Shayne told him, pulling a chair close to the desk and sitting down without waiting for an invitation. “I’m a private investigator from Miami helping your local police on the Blake murder case.”

“Oh, you’re that Shayne? Michael Shayne. Well, I’ve heard about you, all right. I didn’t know Ollie would have the gumption to call someone like you in, but I’m mighty glad he did. Maybe we’ll get somewhere now.”

Shayne said briskly, “I hope so. Right now I’m gathering a little background, and I understand you may have been the last person to see the victim alive.”

“That’s possible. My wife and I, that is. Ellie Blake stopped by our house about four o’clock yesterday afternoon.”

“And that’s the last time you saw her?”

Wilsson nodded. “She stayed fifteen or twenty minutes, I guess.”

“Did you notice anything unusual about her, Mr. Wilsson? Was she nervous or upset? Anything at all to indicate that she had any reason to expect anything out of the ordinary to occur last night?”

“I don’t think so. I’m not sure I know just what you’re getting at.”

“I’m wondering,” said Shayne blandly, “if she might have had a date for later on in the evening. With some man, perhaps. I understand it was the last night her husband planned to be away from home and that Mrs. Blake was, well…” Shayne spread out his hands and shrugged. “An attractive woman to say the least.”

“There wouldn’t be anything like that.” Wilsson looked properly shocked. “Not with Ellie Blake. No. I think you’re barking up the wrong tree there, Mr. Shayne. It was some stranger in town. Some sex maniac.”

Shayne said, “You’re probably right, and that’s going to make it the most difficult sort of case there is. What did you do last evening?”

“Me? Do you mean you want me to give you an alibi?”

“It wouldn’t do any harm,” Shayne told him cheerfully. “What I would like to do is get a picture of what the people closest to Ellie Blake were doing last night. Every alibi I can clinch eliminates one more possibility. Nothing personal about it. Just tell me where you were.”

“Well, let’s see. As a matter of fact I drove over to Turner’s Junction right after dinner, to try and see a man and sign him up for life insurance. That’s about forty miles each way on a back country road. I got home around eleven, I guess. I remember it was just after eleven. Minerva, that’s my wife, was sitting up watching the eleven o’clock news, and we went to bed right after it ended.”