Brett Halliday - What Really Happened

“Lucy has a friend in this building, so we plugged the recorder into an outlet in her apartment. Prentiss simply watched the time and started the wire running at a few minutes before eight, and then came down to see what kind of reception we were getting. We recorded everything you heard, including the last lines of a Bing Crosby song, out at Prentiss’s studio this afternoon.”

Shayne reached in his pocket and took out two sheets of folded notepaper and handed them to Chief Gentry. “Those came in another envelope from Wanda Weatherby in a later mail. Maybe she neglected to enclose them in the envelope you saw, or maybe they were an afterthought when she realized that both Flannagan and Henderson also had a motive for killing her, as well as Gurley,”

“I’m holding Gurley,” Gentry rumbled. “That hood of his should be able to talk tomorrow.”

“That’s up to you and the federal boys, Will. Attacking a federal employee is out of my jurisdiction. But getting back to my case,” he hurried on, “Tim can tell you what Flannagan’s motive was. You’ll have to figure out Henderson’s reason for yourself. He thinks it’s a plot of the Communists to discredit him in his fight against public housing, but I have a crazy hunch that this picture might have something to do with it.” He took a folded 8x10 print from his pocket and handed it over to the chief.

He had completely blacked out Sheila Martin’s face from Jed Purly’s flash photograph so that it was impossible to recognize her. Watching the chief’s face as he studied the picture, he said, “If the Commies figured that one out, we’ll have to give them credit for being smart operators. You can see they used Wanda Weatherby’s bedroom for their stage-setting.”

Carefully avoiding Sheila Martin’s eyes, he said lightly, “And now Lucy has probably chewed her fingernails to the quick upstairs wondering how things went off, so I’ll trot along.”

He went out the door fast, while Gentry was still looking sourly at the picture and the notes, and before he could ask embarrassing questions.