Brett Halliday: Michael Shaynes' 50th case

“Yes, it does. To let off passengers, if there are any. It says so right on the time-table. I looked it up there in my hotel room, and then was when I decided. One of the reasons I decided,” he went on in a suddenly hushed voice, “was because there was the prettiest pair of earrings in a little store next to the hotel that I wanted to buy for Ellie for a present, but they cost twenty-eight dollars and I didn’t feel like I could afford it. But I figured I’d save at least that much by skipping last night and coming straight home, and so I went into the store and bought them.”

He raised his right hand slowly and hesitantly to his breast pocket and drew out the gaily wrapped box. “They’re right here.” His face worked convulsively and he paused to swallow twice before he could go on. “She’ll never see them now,” he half-whispered. “She’ll never know.” He blinked back tears and smiled entreatingly at them. “I just can’t believe it. Not yet I can’t. They were just right for her. The earrings, I mean. I just couldn’t wait to see her face when I came home and surprised her and she opened up the box.” He paused, looking down at the box and turning it over and over in his hands.

Chief Ollie Jenson cleared his throat loudly. “Well, now, Marv, what I say is none of us know for sure. What a body knows or doesn’t know after… well, what I mean is, it don’t do any good to think about that now. It’s the intention that counted.”

“Maybe… Sissy will like them when she grows up,” said Marvin unsteadily and somewhat vaguely. He sighed and put the earrings back into his pocket. “Where was I?”

“You’d just checked out of the hotel and bought those earrings to bring home to Ellie on the ten-twenty Express,” Jenson reminded him.

“That’s right. Well, I walked on down toward the station carrying my suitcase. I had plenty of time and didn’t want to waste any money on a taxicab. And I thought I’d better get a bite to eat because even if there was a diner on the train they charge like the dickens for even a sandwich and a cup of coffee.

“So I stopped at a place about a block from the station and went in and set my bag down to rest and get a bite to eat. And I still had almost two hours before the train, so I thought I’d have a highball first before I ate. And it tasted real good, and I was sort of celebrating because I was feeling so good about coming home ahead of time and surprising Ellie and all… and so I had another one, and I guess maybe another, and then it was getting on toward train time and I’d already spent as much on the drinks as I’d planned to pay for a whole supper, and so I decided I just as well have one more drink and skip the food altogether.”

He shook his head and looked shame-faced at the recollection. “It was a cock-eyed, dam-fool thing to do. I’m not used to drinking much, and I guess they hit me… without any supper and all. I just sort of vaguely remember getting out of there and going on to the station in time to board the train before it pulled out, and I got a seat in the smoker, and I remember putting my return ticket up in the little metal clip on the back of the seat in front of me where the conductor would see it when he came through, and then the train started out and I dozed off.

“I was pretty sleepy, you see,” he added by way of a weak explanation. “Being up all hours at the convention every night when I’m used to getting to bed at ten o’clock at home at the latest. That and the whiskey I’d drunk. So I guess I slept straight through until I woke up suddenly thinking I’d heard somebody call Sunray Beach.

“And there we were stopped at a station and I looked out a window and it looked like the Sunray station, and I heard somebody yelling ‘All aboard’ outside, and I jumped up and grabbed my suitcase and ran back to the door and got off the steps just as the train pulled out.

“And there I stood.” He looked at them blank-faced, seemingly reliving the appalling moment of realization that had come to him. “I saw right away it wasn’t Sunray,” he explained. “It was Moonray Beach instead. The first big town south of here,” he explained to Rourke and Shayne. “About thirty miles down the road. I felt like the biggest kind of fool there is. Standing there in the middle of the night and not another train until this one today. And the liquor I had drunk was dying inside me and I had a headache, and I was just plumb disgusted with myself and everything. I never did feel like such a fool in my life before. And I decided right then and there that the best thing for me to do was spend the night and just catch this train on up here today and say nothing about it to anybody, and so that’s what I did.

“There was a restaurant still open down the street from the station and I walked down there and had a couple of drinks and then got a sandwich, and then I went on up to a hotel that’s only a couple of blocks away and got a room for the night.”

“Haven’t you listened to a radio or talked with anybody all morning?” asked Ollie Jenson incredulously. “I’d think Moonray Beach would be plumb full and bubbling over with a murder right up the road here. Seems mighty funny you didn’t know anything about what happened to Ellie when it went out over the radio at seven o’clock this morning and has been on all the newscasts ever since I guess.”

Marvin hesitated as though trying to make up his mind about something, then shrugged and shook his head. “Tell you the truth, I slept right straight through until just before time to catch the train on up here. Didn’t talk to anybody or hear any news on the radio.”

“From ten-thirty or eleven o’clock last night until three o’clock this afternoon?” Jenson said disbelievingly. “That’s a mighty long time to sleep straight through in a hotel room, Marv. I hope to God you can prove that’s what you did. Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Shayne?” he asked importantly.

The readhead nodded. “I’d like to have the name of the hotel… and the restaurant where you went after getting off the train.”

Marvin rubbed his hand tiredly across his eyes. “It’s the Elite Hotel. Right on Main Street. I don’t know about the restaurant, but it’s right down the street. Oh, hell,” he added miserably, “if you do any checking up you’ll find out anyhow, so I might as well admit it. Just to finish off being a complete damn fool last night, when I finally got to the hotel the liquor I’d drunk in Miami was still churning up inside me and I didn’t feel like I’d ever get to sleep. So I asked the desk clerk if he had a bottle he’d sell me, and he did have one with only a couple of drinks gone from it. So I took that up to my room and poured out about a water-glass full and drank it off straight, and that finished me up, I can tell you. I passed right out cold on the bed and didn’t move a finger until two-thirty this afternoon. Then I went straight to the station and got on the train and came home, and here I am. Now it’s time you did some talking, Ollie. I think I got a right to go see Sissy now.”

Jenson glanced at Shayne, who nodded and said, “I think so, too, Chief. I’ll just check his story as a formality, but I think you’d better go on looking for your transient killer.”

Alonzo Peters lived alone in a decrepit three-room shack in a creek bottom about ten miles inland from Sunray Beach on a winding dirt road that eventually came out on the other end on State Highway 419. It was a desolate stretch of low, hummocky country, covered mostly with scrub palmetto, that resisted cultivation and yielded little to man’s best efforts to wrest a living from it.

Alonzo Peters had given up making much of an effort many years ago. He did a little fishing in the creek, a little trapping and hunting in and out of season, and he had a couple of acres of cleared-off land where he grew some straggly vegetables when he was of a mind to plant and cultivate them.