Brett Halliday: Too Friendly, Too Dead

“But you kept a light in the window for me,” Shayne teased, looking past her at the coffee table in front of the sofa which held a tray containing a bottle of cognac, a pitcher of ice cubes, and three glasses.

She nodded happily. “You know there’s always a light in the window for you. What’s happened? Are you getting any place?”

“We’re already there,” he told her. “It’s all over. Did you hear that, Linda?” He lifted his voice and looked toward the open door into the dark bedroom. “I’m alone. You can come out now.”

“Michael! How did you guess Linda was here?”

He laughed and rumpled her hair, moving into the room toward the sofa. “I know you, Angel. And the way you operate. Do you realize all the cops in Dade County have been looking for Linda since five o’clock this afternoon?”

“Of course not.” Lucy’s eyes widened innocently. “I admit I haven’t turned on the radio or anything. But Emily Cahill is keeping the children tonight and I thought Linda would be more comfortable with me.”

“I’m sure she was,” Shayne said emphatically as the widow came eagerly from the bedroom wearing a trailing dressing gown and with an anxiously hopeful look on her face. “Did I hear you say it’s all over. Do you really mean…?”

“I mean the case is closed. Your husband’s murderer is safely locked up in the Miami Beach jail, and she’s made a full confession.”

“She?” both girls exclaimed at once.

“That’s right.” Shayne poured himself a slug of cognac and sniffed it happily. “A woman neither one of you have ever met and probably haven’t heard of. Except by the name of Kelly, Linda. Which she used when she visited your husband’s office that one time.

“The woman who wanted to take out a huge policy on her husband without him knowing about it?”

“That was just a dodge she used to get in to see him. She knew it was against the rules and he’d throw her out, and that was what she wanted him to do. Then last night she called to say she’d changed her mind and wanted to discuss the policy legally. By that time she had a handful of her husband’s sleeping pills which she slipped into his drink at the Sporting Club.”

“But why, Michael?” protested Lucy. “If she didn’t want a policy…?”

“It’s a long story and goes back to the convention trip Jerome made to New York more than a year ago. One thing I should tell you at once, Linda. The police have established to their complete satisfaction that George Nourse was in Los Angeles all the time. The investigation is closed and there’s no need for his name to come into it.”

“Who is George Nourse?” asked Lucy.

“A friend of Linda’s and her husband’s whose name came into the case. Both of you have a drink and I’ll tell you all about it. Actually, Linda, you were right. Your husband didn’t have an enemy in the world. He was killed because he was just too damned friendly.”

Twenty minutes later, Shayne finished his second drink and concluded, “Betsy Ann had lifted his car keys from his coat pocket while they sat together in the bar and when the drug was taking effect. She waited a few minutes and then followed Jerome and the two muggers out, and saw them going down the street in the moonlight with Jerome practically out on his feet. She got in his car and followed slowly, thinking that the farther she got it away from the Sporting Club the less likely the place would be investigated and the better chance she’d have that no one would remember she had been in there buying Jerome drinks. When he finally staggered off the road to die, she left the car near his body and wiped her fingerprints off it. Then she went back and got her own car and drove calmly home where her unsuspecting husband was sound asleep.”

“What a fiendish woman, Michael,” exclaimed Lucy fervently.

“That’s hardly the adjective I’d use. If you’d seen her… when that louse of a husband rejected her at the last. Pitiable is a better word. She was fighting the only way she knew for the one thing in life that was important to her. There’ll be a dozen top-notch psychiatrists to testify at her trial that she was temporarily insane when she committed both murders.”

Shayne got up and yawned widely. “It’s been a long day, children. Let’s all catch some sleep. The sun will come up again tomorrow in the east and at its appointed time… and life will go on.”