Brett Halliday - Date with a Dead Man

Shayne managed a weak grin and said, “Believe it or not, Cross, this isn’t exactly the way it looks. Have you met Mrs. Meredith?”

Cross advanced angrily toward them, shoulders hunched aggressively, putting each foot down flat and hard. “Before God, Shayne. You’ll pay for this.”

Shayne drew in a deep breath and expelled it slowly. “You tell him, Matie. Maybe he’ll believe you.”

She patted his shoulder reassuringly and stood up to turn her allure full on Cross. “Someone else searched your place and knocked Michael out before I got here to keep my appointment with you. He didn’t see who it was. We’re both wondering whether he got the diary.”

Cross said, “I don’t believe a word of it.” He circled Mrs. Meredith to the bedroom door, disappeared for a moment and returned almost immediately with a revolver in his hand. “Both of you stay right here,” he said ominously, “while I telephone the police.”

Mrs. Meredith moved in front of the telephone stand as he turned toward it. “You don’t want the police, Mr. Cross. The only important thing is the diary. Is it gone?”

“What do you mean… I don’t want the police?” he raged. “When I walk in and find my place burglarized and you two calmly making love on the sofa?”

He stepped close to her, waving his gun, but she stood her ground in front of the telephone and reminded him, “I made an appointment to discuss a private matter with you, Mr. Cross. Can’t we discuss it before you bother with the police?”

Shayne got to his feet. From Cross’s reactions in not seeming worried about the diary, he felt certain it had not been in the apartment at all. He said, “I’ve got the great grand-pappy of all headaches and I could use a drink. How about offering me one?”

Cross didn’t look at him. He tossed a surly aside over his shoulder, “I told you I never touch the stuff.”

“In that case,” said Shayne, “I’ll go find one for myself and leave you two to your private discussion.”

He started for the door on rubbery legs, and Cross barked from behind him, “Don’t leave this room, Shayne. I’ll shoot if I have to.”

Shayne didn’t think he would shoot. Not as long as he kept his back turned and kept going. He heard Matie Meredith’s full-throated voice say persuasively, “You know Mr. Shayne isn’t going to disappear. Please, let’s settle this calmly just between the two of us.”

Shayne reached the door and was going out without a bullet in his back, when her voice lifted and lilted to him, “I’m at the Biscayne Hotel, Michael. Phone me later?”

He said, “Sure,” and turned toward the elevator.

Half an hour and three slugs of cognac later, the throbbing in Shayne’s head had subsided to a dull ache behind his left ear and he felt prepared to discuss Jasper Groat’s death with Police Chief Will Gentry.

The chief was alone in his office when the redhead walked in without knocking. He looked up from his littered desk and shifted an evil-smelling black cigar from left to right in his mouth and growled, “Another half hour I’d have had a pick-up out for you, Mike.”

“Why?” Michael Shayne seated himself carefully in a straight chair beside the chief’s desk and wrinkled his nose distastefully at the aroma that drifted into his nostrils from Gentry’s cigar.

“Jasper Groat is why. His tie-in with the Hawleys. I want the straight of it.”

“I’ll give it to you, Will.” Shayne leaned back and locked his two hands at the back of his neck to ease the pain, and gazed up at the ceiling. “First: Tell me exactly what you’ve got, then I’ll fill in.”

“Damned little.” Gentry took the chewed cigar from his mouth, glared at the soggy end of it, and hurled it into a brass spittoon in one corner. “We got a taxi driver who picked him up outside his place before eight last night and delivered him in front of the Hawley residence. There was a chain across the driveway so the taxi couldn’t turn in. Groat got out and that’s the last record we have of him. That Hawley outfit!” Gentry went on angrily. “A bunch of screwballs. The old lady serenely swears she didn’t know Groat and didn’t want to. Even though he nursed her son for several days on the life raft and was the last one to see him alive. What kind of mother is that?”

“I gathered this morning that she resents the fact that Groat and Cunningham survived while her son didn’t.”

“So what? Well… then there’s Beatrice.”

“There is, indeed,” agreed Shayne soberly but with a twinkle in his eye.

“She admits asking Groat out to the house to meet her at eight last night, but won’t say why. What with her asinine giggling and sucking on her finger, it’s hard to tell what’s in her mind.”

“In addition to sucking on a whisky bottle,” said Shayne cheerfully. “All right, so you’ve got Groat bumped off after getting out of a taxi in front of the Hawley house and before anyone there saw him…”

“According to their stories.”

“According to their stories,” agreed Shayne.

“What about this Mrs. Wallace who turned up at Groat’s place this morning? According to Mrs. Groat, she claims Jasper phoned her yesterday and made the appointment… promising to give her some word about her husband who’s been missing for a year. What do you know about that? I understand Mrs. Groat sent her to consult you.”

“She did,” Shayne told him. “I know this much about it.” Without reservations, he repeated the story Mrs. Wallace had told him that morning. “My best guess right now,” he concluded, “is that Albert Hawley had some guilty knowledge of the reason for Wallace’s disappearance a year ago, and when he faced death on the life raft, he confided the secret to Groat. Groat was ready to tell Mrs. Wallace this morning, but before he could do so he got himself knocked on the head and dumped into the Bay.”

“Somewhere near the Hawley house where he had gone to keep a date with Beatrice,” amplified Gentry.

Shayne nodded, his eyes very bright. “There’s another angle, Will. Did you read the News this morning… and the story about Groat’s diary which they’re going to publish?”

Gentry, nodded absently, getting out a fresh cigar and frowning as he bit the end off it.

“It’s supposed to be a minute-by-minute true and accurate account of the time they spent on the life raft. It’s reasonable to assume that Groat wrote down whatever Albert Hawley told him before he died. So, if someone killed Groat to prevent him from telling Mrs. Wallace the truth about her husband, they must have had a shock when they read in the News this morning that the complete diary was going to be published.”

“Whoever it was would be after the diary now,” Gentry agreed.

“Which is evidently in the possession of Joel Cross, a News reporter. Have you had any word from him on it, Will?”

“Joel Cross?” Gentry lit his cigar and sniffed the blue smoke unappreciatively. “No. Why should I?”

Shayne shrugged. “I just happen to know that his hotel room was searched today by persons unknown… who I’d guess were looking for the diary. Wondered if Cross had reported it.” He got to his feet, shrugging casually. “That’s about it, Will. I promised I’d come clean.”

He turned to go out, but Gentry stopped him with a growled, “Hold it, Mike.”

Shayne stopped halfway to the door, turned his aching head slowly and carefully so it wouldn’t fall off.

“Assuming Groat learned something from Albert Hawley about Leon Wallace’s disappearance that was detrimental to the Hawleys… would he have tried to blackmail them?”

“I didn’t know Groat. But from what I gathered from his wife and Lucy, I think the exact opposite. He was a sort of religious fanatic. One who would insist on telling the truth and letting the chips fall where they might.”