Brett Halliday - What Really Happened

“Where did you have dinner?”

“At the Palm Villa. She met me there a little after eight-thirty, and I sent her upstairs to bed about ten o’clock.”

“But she felt ill after dinner?”

Prentiss nodded emphatically. “She’d had a drink or two before I met her and was a little high. Then she got a tummyache. She thought it was the liquor on an empty stomach and then the heavy meal. Maybe it was.”

“Do you know where she had her drinks?”

“No. I didn’t ask. She was celebrating, you see, because she had just landed a new job.”

“What sort of job?” Shayne demanded.

“In a radio show. She wouldn’t tell me anything about it. Said it was a big secret, so I didn’t press her. Then, while we were eating dinner she began asking me if I’d ever heard of Michael Shayne. I said I had, and what about you? Then she got confused and tried to cover up, pretending it was just idle curiosity, but when I kept after her she asked me what I thought about a radio program featuring you in person and your exploits.

“So, I said it sounded wonderful and that she’d be damned lucky if she could land the lead in a show like that. She denied that was what she had been talking about, but I thought I could read between the lines and was pretty sure it was, and she had been told not to talk about it. When I heard she was dead this morning, I thought what the hell, it was a chance for Muriel to get an inside track, and I called her.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Shayne. “First, Helen told you she was celebrating because she had landed a new job and refused to tell you what it was. Later, she began talking about me, and when you pressed her to give a reason for her interest, she finally admitted she had heard someone was going to do a program featuring me. Is that the sequence?”

“Yes. As nearly as I recall.”

Shayne cleared a few facts in his own mind during the brief, ensuing silence. Helen Taylor had just come from Flannagan who admitted he had received Wanda’s letter at seven. True, the radio director denied having discussed the letter with anyone, but there was always the possibility that he might have left it lying around where a curious visitor might pick it up.

“Then it’s possible,” he said slowly, “that Helen Taylor might have been interested in me and asked questions about me for some entirely different reason? Something she didn’t want to tell you, when you pressed her for a reason, it’s possible that she just made up the stony about a radio show on the spur of the moment to explain her interest in me.”

“It’s possible, I guess,” said Prentiss dubiously. “It’s the sort of explanation that might spring into her mind, and one she knew I’d accept.”

“She didn’t actually tell you, then, that her new job was playing the lead in a mystery program?”

“N-No. I put two and two together and came up with that. Are you serious about saying there’s nothing to this radio-program idea?”

“Absolutely.”

“But that’s fantastic, you know. It’s a terrific idea,” said Prentiss excitedly, waving his bony hands in the air. “It’s a natural for television. My God! You’d be colossal playing yourself. Michael Shayne in person. You’ve got the looks and the voice for it. It’s worth millions. Come here, man!” He leaped to his bare feet and trotted to another desk where he pushed papers aside to disclose a tape recording machine.

While Shayne watched in amusement, he turned dials and started wheels turning, then picked up a small microphone and thrust it toward the detective. “Say something — anything. I’ll play it back and show you how good you are. I’ll produce the shows on film. It’ll be the biggest thing in television.”

Shayne grinned and said, “Come back to earth. I’m a detective, not an actor. You’ll have to go to the police and make a complete statement about meeting Helen Taylor last night.”

“That’s it!” Prentiss exulted. “That’s exactly it. You’ve got marvelous timbre and resonance.” He touched a control on the recorder and the tape whirled rapidly back ward.

Before Shayne could protest further, Prentiss turned another knob and the tape rolled forward and the detective’s voice came from the machine with startling clarity.

“… back to earth. I’m a detective, not an actor. You’ll have to go to the police and make a complete statement about meeting Helen Taylor last night.”

“See how well you come over,” the assistant director exclaimed. “We’re in, I tell you.”

Shayne stepped forward and looked down at the machine. “So that’s how they work. I always thought you had to process the tape — or something. Had to have another machine to play it back on.”

“No. That’s all there is to it. I’ll tell you what. I’ll work up a short script right away and we’ll make a real audition for you,”

Shayne shook his head and said grimly, “Right now, you’re going down to police headquarters with me and talk to Will Gentry. Do I take you barefooted, or have you got some shoes around?”

HAROLD PRENTISS DID POSSESS a pair of sandals. At Shayne’s insistence he reluctantly produced them from behind a door, protesting that he was needed at the studio and that it was outrageous to force a man in his position to go to police headquarters with no more relevant information than he had.

Shayne was adamant, and escorted him firmly down the stairs, waited impatiently while Prentiss shouted to someone in the studio that he would be back shortly, then took him out to his car.

Prentiss sat beside him in glum silence throughout the ride, and Shayne didn’t attempt to question him further. There would be plenty of questions thrown at him as soon as he admitted having taken Helen Taylor to dinner the previous evening; plenty of unpleasant suspicion focused on him for having failed to report that fact to the police.

Shayne parked in front of the police station just across from the F.E.C. tracks. They got out together and the detective led the way in through a side door and down a hall to Will Gentry’s private office at the end. The door stood ajar and he pushed it open without knocking.

Chief Gentry sat behind his desk chewing on the soggy butt of a cigar and frowning at a typed notation before him. He rolled his rumpled eyelids up when Shayne said. “I brought you a little present, Will. If I’d had time I would have wrapped him up in tissue paper and tied a red ribbon around his neck.”

Gentry shifted his cigar, looked Prentiss over from his bald head to the purple toenails peeking through the sandals. “On him,” he agreed, “tissue paper and a red ribbon would look good.”

Prentiss cleared his throat and started to speak, but Shayne intervened, “He wants to tell you about taking Helen Taylor to dinner last night. Don’t be too tough on him for not coming in sooner, because the morning paper just had a brief item about her death and didn’t mention poison. I’ve got to beat it, Will,” he went on swiftly, “and I’ve already heard his story. You turned up anything important yet?”

“Not much.” Gentry motioned tor the assistant director to sit down. “I just had this report from Detroit, but it’s not much. Just enough to show you were on the right track.” He looked down at the paper he had been studying. “Nineteen thirty-three is the only record the police have on Wanda Weatherby. Prohibition was on the way out and the rackets were busting up. In a city-wide roundup of one of the Capone mobs, a gal named Wanda Weatherby got caught in the net. No particular charge against her, and she was later released when the police doctor discovered she was going to have a baby. They have no further record of her.”