Brett Halliday - This Is It, Michael Shayne

“I think it would be smart to get over to the hotel and find out,” said Shayne gruffly. “Tell them you were detained on the way.” His eyes didn’t waver as he waited for a reply, but Paisly’s upward glance never reached higher than the round neck of his polo shirt, and Shayne turned abruptly away.

Paisly leaped up and caught his arm. “There’s something else I’ve got to know. Why did Sara call in a private detective today?”

“That’s my business.”

“It’s mine, too,” said Paisly fiercely. “We’re going to be married in a few days-just as soon as her divorce is granted. Doesn’t that make a difference?”

“I think you’d better ask her,” Shayne told the frightened young man.

“Oh, no. I–I wouldn’t want to do that.” His slender, manicured right hand slid into his pocket and came out with a platinum money clip holding a thin sheaf of folded bills. He removed a C-note, saying, “I simply want to know what she consulted you about. I don’t expect you to betray any professional confidences, but I have a right to know if there’s some hitch in the divorce.”

“Go peddle your pennies somewhere else,” Shayne told him roughly.

Paisly reluctantly unclipped another C-note. “I’m a little short of cash just now, but”-he tilted his head slightly and gave Shayne a shrewd, man-to-man smile-“things will be different after we’re married. I’ll be perfectly frank and admit it means a great deal to me, Mr. Shayne. Sara is a lovely person, and I simply don’t believe I could stand it if anything happened to interfere with our marriage. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

There were certain delicate nuances here which Shayne didn’t quite comprehend. Paisly was trying to thrust the two bills into his hand while he babbled on. “No matter what Sara may have told you today I want you to understand that I truly love her. No matter what she suspects or what she may have told you today. Please accept this as a token payment, and I give you my word of honor to double whatever fee she offered you-after our marriage, of course.”

Almost unconsciously one of Shayne’s fingers closed over the bills Paisly was pressing against his palm. He frowned at them, only half hearing Paisly’s words as he went on intensely:

“Every bit of this came out of that secretary’s nasty mind. She hates me. She hates any man Sara looks at twice. If any man ever looked at Miss Lally she’d probably faint. And that makes her hate all men, don’t you see? So she’s taking out her hatred on me right now.” He fluttered slim white hands in exasperation.

“And she influences Sara so. In an unhealthy way, I’m sure. After we’re married Miss Lally must go, at once. I imagine she realizes that, so she has deliberately set herself to poison Sara’s mind against me. That is what she consulted you about-the divorce, I presume,” he ended uncertainly.

Shayne straightened the one finger holding the bills and they floated to the floor. “Where were you between six-thirty and seven tonight?” he asked abruptly.

He thought Edwin Paisly was going to cry. His mouth primped up and he said, “Oh, you! What does it matter where I was?” and his tone figuratively stamped its foot.

“It may matter a great deal,” Shayne grated.

“You’re supposed to be a detective,” Paisly snapped. “Find out for yourself, nosey.” He reached down and snatched the two bills from the floor and hurried out of the lobby.

Shayne debated a moment whether or not to follow him, decided against it, and took the elevator up to his apartment.

Shayne was humming when he unlocked his apartment door and stepped inside. He heeled the door shut and stopped humming to raise bushy, questioning brows at Timothy Rourke, lolling in a big chair in the middle of the room with a highball glass in his hand.

“What are you doing here, Tim?” Then he registered what he hoped to be both surprise and pleasure when he saw Chief Gentry’s solid figure occupying more than a third of the couch. He was chewing on the frayed butt of a black cigar and nursing a half-filled shot glass.

“And our estimable chief of police. Glad to see you’re making yourselves at home. I know you’ll excuse me-” He started for the bedroom, stripping the polo shirt over his head. Tossing it through the open door, he turned and asked:

“By the way, Tim, did Miss Morton turn up at the hotel?”

“Hold on, Mike,” Gentry rumbled, forestalling Rourke’s reply. “What’s your rush?”

Shayne grinned wryly and rubbed the red bristles on his face. “I don’t mean to be inhospitable, Will, but I’ve got to grab a fast shave and change. There’s more liquor-”

“You’re not going anywhere, Mike. Not right now.” Gentry spoke flatly, not turning his head.

“I thought this was a social call,” said Shayne with pretended consternation. “There’s a dame waiting for me and I promised to make it fast.”

“Miss Morton’s secretary?”

Shayne strode to the couch and faced Gentry, his back toward Rourke. “See here, Will-” He caught the chief’s eye and made frantic gestures to indicate he didn’t want to answer questions in the reporter’s presence.

Gentry was not impressed. He rolled his rumpled eyelids down, studied the soggy, flattened end of the cigar butt, and asked, “Where is she, Mike? What have you and she been up to?”

“Dropping in a few places trying to get a line on Sara Morton,” Shayne told him. He made a half-turn and snapped, “What the hell, Tim? Did you call in the cops because I stole your girl?”

“Cut the clowning,” growled Gentry. “Where is Miss Lally?”

“What’s it to you?” Shayne growled back. “Miss Lally is free, white, and well past the age of consent.”

Gentry leaned forward and dropped the cigar butt in an ash tray, grunted as he leaned back, and said with deceptive mildness, “I want to question her as a murder suspect.”

“Murder? Beatrice a suspect?” Shayne said angrily, rumpling his hair. But Gentry wasn’t looking. He was calmly lighting a cigar. Shayne turned to Rourke and demanded, “What in hell is this about, Tim?”

Rourke’s slaty eyes were on his nearly empty glass. He said quietly, “Sara Morton is dead. She was evidently dead when you and Beatrice and I tried to rouse her around nine o’clock in her hotel room.”

“Suicide?”

“I said murder, Mike,” Gentry reminded him.

“But you didn’t say Sara Morton.”

Gentry glanced up at Shayne with eyes like streaked granite. “Suicides don’t jab a pair of long-bladed shears into the jugular and then go in the bathroom to wash the blood off the weapon, carry it back in the room, and then lie down to die. Not without dripping a little blood along the way, they don’t.”

Shayne swore softly and went to the wall liquor cabinet, got out a bottle of cognac, and poured three ounces in a wine glass. He drank half of it and took the glass with him as he resumed his standing position between Rourke and Gentry.

“How can you suspect Miss Lally, Will? She was in the Tidehaven bar with Tim from the time she came down after talking with Miss Morton through a locked door until I got there. Right, Tim?”

“Every minute-except maybe two minutes when she went to the ladies’ room,” Rourke declared. “I can swear it wasn’t more than two minutes. Not time enough by any stretch of the imagination to get up to the fourteenth floor and back, much less do the job in fourteen-twenty.”

“There you are, Will,” said Shayne. He sat down beside the red-faced, stolid chief of police. “We know she was alive at six when her secretary talked to her?”