Brett Halliday - Killers from the Keys

“He was all excited and I thought he was drunk, but later I decided he wasn’t. But he had this conch shell with a long sharp point that he kept brandishing in my face and threatening me with, and I kept trying to tell him that I wasn’t Mrs. Renshaw or Shephard either one, and to prove it I told him to come around in front with me and I’d show him Mrs. Renshaw waiting for me.

“So he finally did, holding onto me tight and keeping that sharp shell in his hand pressed up against my side and threatening to cut me with it if I tried to get away.

“And when we got around in front, she wasn’t there. Mrs. Renshaw just wasn’t there. And Ralph asked the doorman… because that was his name, I found out… Ralph Billiter… he’s Sloe Burn’s dancing partner, Michael… from the Keys… where they grow up from babies learning to use those sharpened conch shells instead of knives to fight with… and kill each other, too, the way he talked about it… well, he asked the doorman if there was any woman waiting and where she had gone, and he denied it… the doorman, I mean… and so then Ralph was convinced I’d lied to him and I was Mrs. Shephard… and he wouldn’t have it any different.

“And I’d never even heard of any Mrs. Shephard, and I told him so, and he kept calling me a liar with a lot of four-letter words mixed in, and asking where was the money and where was Baron McTige. I didn’t understand anything about it, or what to do. He just seemed frothing at the mouth crazy, and he waved that conch shell around and kept saying how he’d purely love to cut my throat with it and would except he knew I could get the money from McTige and that’s what he wanted me to do.

“I thought it would settle things if I could get hold of Mr. McTige and have him tell that crazy boy that I wasn’t Mrs. Renshaw or Mrs. Shephard, or whatever, and I offered to call him at his hotel and ask him to come out, but he got suspicious and said, ‘Oh, no you don’t. Not out here, you don’t. We’ll go some place I pick out and you can call him from there.’

“So he dragged me around back to where he had his car parked, still holding that shell up against me all the time, and he made me get in and he drove off, and I kept asking him what he meant by calling me Mrs. Shephard, and what money was he talking about, and then it came out in little bits and pieces which I didn’t understand and still don’t, but maybe it’ll make sense to you.”

Lucy Hamilton paused in her long recital to look anxiously at Shayne. “Does any of this make any sense at all to you, Michael?”

He nodded grimly. “Some of it. Go on and tell us what Ralph told you.”

“You know Sloe Burn told us Fred Tucker had been there and the two men came looking for him… Baron McTige was one of them, I think, Michael… and how she’d slipped him out the back and had Ralph take him away to the Pink Flamingo?”

Shayne nodded when she paused, and she took a deep breath and went on: “Well, Ralph did, I guess. Drive to the motel with him. And when they got there, he claims Fred Tucker offered him a whole fortune in money to take back to Sloe Burn, and there was something about it being hidden in a loaf of bread and Tucker gave it to him, and then those two men came in… the ones Sloe Burn described to us, Michael… and they saw the money and there was a big fight over it, I guess, during which Tucker… or Renshaw… or Shephard, as Ralph insisted was his real name… ducked out of the motel and got away.

“And McTige had a gun and the preacher-looking one got knocked down and hit his head on the leg of the refrigerator and got knocked unconscious, and then McTige told Ralph he was a detective from Chicago and that Tucker’s name was really Shephard, who had stolen the money from his wife and McTige was going to keep it and give it back to her. And he chased Ralph off with his gun, and Ralph had to walk back through the palmettos to the Bright Spot, and with him getting it thoroughly set in his mind that I was Mrs. Shephard, he said I had to call Baron McTige and make him bring the money to me… and then he was going to take it for himself. Except that he did have some other lovely ideas about how we might go off together and share the money… a whole hundred thousand dollars, he kept repeating, and so he drove to the Dolphin Bar and I tried to call Baron McTige from there.

“I tried his number three times without any answer… and the fourth time I called, you answered the phone, Michael. Ralph was standing right over me with that pointed shell in my side, listening to every word I said, and I had to go on and pretend I was talking to Mr. McTige even when I knew it was you after the first word you spoke.”

Lucy Hamilton stopped speaking suddenly, and the stenographer’s pencil ceased racing over his notebook.

Will Gentry was leaning back in his chair studying the tips of his blunt fingers which he had arched together in front of him, and when Lucy was finished, he sighed deeply and asked Shayne, “Any of this mean anything to you, Mike?”

“Some of it. If Ralph Billiter was telling Lucy the truth, it’s the first indication we’ve had of what happened at the Pink Flamingo before I got there. The money in the loaf of bread seems to tie in all right.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Gentry agreed mildly. “And it might, just possibly, tie in with the identity of the dead man, too.”

“Have you identified him, Will?” Shayne asked eagerly.

“Oh, sure. We stodgy police do have our own methods of turning up certain odd bits of information now and then.” He paused and got a cigar out of his pocket and sniffed it happily before biting off the end.

Shayne said resignedly. “All right. Who is he?”

“Name of Brannigan. We’ve got his fingerprints on file. Investigator for the Nationwide Bonding Company. Does that mean anything to you, Mike?”

Michael Shayne hesitated before answering the chief’s question. Then he replied carefully, “Not really. But if we put our heads together and add things up, we might make it mean something. Know what Brannigan was working on?”

“We have no idea. He’s the Miami representative for his company, but he hasn’t asked us for any help or information recently.”

Shayne said, “It could be the Steven Shephard case from Illinois.”

“Shephard?” Gentry’s voice was grim. “What might the Steven Shephard case from Illinois be, Mike?”

Shayne reached in his hip pocket and took out the photograph of Mrs. Shephard and her two children which he had removed from the frame so it would be easier to carry. With it, he had the folded newspaper clipping he had preempted from Rourke.

He held the picture out to Gentry and said, “This was on the bureau in the Pink Flamingo. Remember it?”

“What are you doing with it?”

Shayne was unfolding the clipping, and he spread it out in front of him, running his finger swiftly down the lines of newsprint.

“Tim Rourke thought it had a familiar look,” he mumbled. “So he took it back to his office to check it out. And sure enough it did check. And here’s our tie-up with Brannigan, Will.” He read aloud from the clipping: “It is stated that the loss is completely covered by a bond on Shephard issued by the Nationwide Bonding Company, and that depositors need have no fear…”

“Tim Rourke thought it looked familiar,” snarled Gentry. “Why didn’t he tell us? What in hell has been going on… give me that clipping, Mike!”

Shayne passed it over to him. “Tim and I did try to tell you as soon as he discovered he was right. I came straight to headquarters looking for you, Will, but you hadn’t got back yet. Then I went to my office for Mrs. Renshaw’s address, and have been on the go ever since.”