Brett Halliday - Die Like a Dog

The Miami Chief of Police was a solid man, with square, rugged features that were the color of raw beef. He had a thick black cigar in his mouth, and he bit down on it hard when he saw the redhead’s companion. “What the hell, Mike? I thought you were anxious to keep this thing quiet.”

Shayne said, “Tim’s got to be in on it. He already is. He dug up Daffy last night and was with me when I got Bud Tolliver’s report. And he knows about Lucy, too. He won’t print anything.”

“It’s up to you,” Gentry conceded. “Now, what is this about Lucy? Give it to me straight.”

Shayne got out the two sheets of yellow paper and laid them in front of Gentry. “These were delivered to me and Miss Henrietta about midnight last night. By a messenger who’d picked them up at a Miami Avenue bar.” He went on to describe their visit to the Shamrock Bar while Will Gentry read the two notes.

“I went straight to Lucy’s place, Will, and found she’d been there a couple of hours during the evening… probably after dinner… and had left hurriedly. I’m sure she didn’t know why she was leaving because there was nothing left for me. Then there was the phone call from her later that I told you about.”

Chief Gentry had curiously rumpled eyelids which he habitually raised and lowered much in the manner of Venetian blinds. He leaned back in his chair and folded them up as he demanded:

“Who out at the Rogell place knew you had dug up the dog’s body. How did they know you did it… and how to get at Lucy?”

Shayne lit a cigarette and briefly recounted the ruse he had employed to discover where Daffy was buried, and how he and Tim had gotten possession of the body.

“They guessed why I was there at night, of course,” he concluded, “and after I left with Dr. Evans somebody must have checked Daffy’s grave. How they knew how to get to Lucy, I don’t know. But someone was desperate enough to kidnap her to try and stop me from having the dog’s stomach contents analyzed.”

“The chauffeur sounds most likely,” rumbled Gentry.

“I know. The two notes sound like him. But I knocked hell out of him, Will, and Mrs. Blair swears he went to bed at once in his own room over the garage with a sedative strong enough to put him out for eight hours.”

“The widow and her brother?” demanded Gentry.

“I swear I don’t know. The brother appears weak, and was pretty drunk. Anita is… capable of anything. On the other hand, Henrietta plugs for Harold Peabody as the mastermind. And I wouldn’t put anything past the coldblooded bastard,” Shayne went on angrily. He described his brief visit to the broker’s apartment. “I suppose the party gives him a sort of alibi, although I wouldn’t suspect him of personally pulling a snatch anyhow. I think he’s perfectly capable of arranging such a job though. But guessing is no good,” he went on somberly. “Someone has Lucy put away on ice, and all we can hope right now is that they think I’m sufficiently scared to not have the dog analyzed.”

Gentry leaned back with a sigh and rolled his sodden cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. “You think she’ll be safe as long as they think that?”

“Until after the funeral anyhow.” Shayne met his gaze squarely. “If you don’t upset the applecart by doing anything to indicate the Rogell case is being reopened.”

“And after the funeral?”

Shayne shook his red head and said doggedly, “If it goes off all right and the killer thinks Rogell is safely cremated and all proof of murder has gone up in smoke, I think there’s a chance Lucy will be released.”

“Or?” asked Gentry significantly.

“Or killed,” Shayne said bluntly, the trenches deep in his cheeks. “But they’ll keep her safe until after the funeral, Will, and I want that much time with no official interference.”

“You’re asking me to sit on a murder.”

“A murder you wouldn’t know a damned thing about if I hadn’t handed it to you on a silver platter,” flared Shayne.

Gentry said soothingly, “Sure, Mike. I grant you that. Sure, I’ll give you all the time you want,” he added generously. “Up until… say… three o’clock this afternoon.”

“That ought to be plenty,” said Shayne bitterly, “for me to solve a murder that the whole goddamn police force of Miami has had in their lap for several days.” He got up and demanded abruptly, “Where’ll I find Petrie and Donovan?”

“They’re waiting for you right inside.” Will Gentry gestured toward a closed door. “I’ve told them to give you everything, Mike, and in addition to that, they’re under your orders if you want to make use of them.”

“Until three o’clock?”

Gentry said, “Until three o’clock,” and Shayne jerked his head at Rourke and went to the side door to interview the two detectives who had handled the Rogell investigation.

Shayne and Rourke both knew the two city detectives casually, and the men greeted them without particular enthusiasm as they entered. Petrie was thin and sour-faced, and he said sneeringly, “Gentry tells us you’re going to turn the Rogell thing into murder… and then solve it for us.”

Donovan was flabby-fat and easy-going. He grinned amiably and told them, “Don’t pay no heed to Jim. He’s sore because the chief wouldn’t let him haul in that hot little dish of a widow and give her a going-over. Not that I wouldn’t like to work over her myself, if you get what I mean.” He rolled his eyes and smacked his lips suggestively. “Like the guy comes home from the office and when the wife complains about all the work she’s did that day, he says, ‘What about me, doggone it? Slaving in the office over a hot secretary all day.’”

Shayne said, “Ha-ha. Why don’t you two start by telling us exactly what happened the night Rogell died.”

With Petrie doing most of the talking and Donovan filling in some details, they related how they had been called to the Rogell house by an insistent telephone call received from his sister at twelve-forty, which was exactly eleven minutes after her millionaire brother had died quietly in his bed.

On arrival, they had been met at the door by Henrietta, fully clothed and tearless, loudly insisting that she was convinced John Rogell had been poisoned by his wife. In the small library off the right of the hall, they had found Marvin Dale, soddenly drunk and obviously quite pleased that his brother-in-law had passed on. With Marvin had been Harold Peabody, sober and shaken, who told them he had spent the latter part of the evening alone with the millionaire in his second-floor sitting room, going over business affairs with him until Anita had interrupted them precisely at midnight with a hot drink for her husband which she invariably brought to him each night at that hour.

It had been a normal evening, Peabody insisted, with Rogell in the best of spirits and apparently in perfect physical condition, and he had left husband and wife together at twelve with no premonition of what was to come, had paused in the library for a nightcap with Marvin, and they were together when Anita called down frantically that John had had a stroke and to call Dr. Evans immediately.

The doctor had arrived within ten minutes and found his patient already dead. He was upstairs with the body when the detectives went up, and had not the slightest hesitancy in positively declaring that death was the normal result of Rogell’s heart condition, and had signed the death certificate to that effect.

Mrs. Blair, the housekeeper, had been in Anita’s boudoir consoling the grief-stricken widow whom they found fetchingly attired in a lacy nightgown and filmy black negligee. Mrs. Blair was also wearing slippers and robe, and told the officers she had retired to her third-floor quarters about eleven as was her custom, after preparing a silver thermos pitcher of hot chocolate milk for Mr. Rogell and leaving it downstairs on a tray on the dining table for Anita to take up to him at midnight… a nightly service which she insisted on performing for him herself every night.