“And I’m sure it’s a gold mine,” Shayne said, “in more ways than one.”
He thumbed his lighter and held it in front of the crypt’s dark opening. The others crowded around to see what the little flame would reveal.
“A fiasco!” Rourke said. “There’s nothing there.”
“Look again,” Shayne told him. “How did you get it that far back,” he asked Eda Lou, “climb in after it?”
He tugged at a cord running the length of the seven-foot space, and slowly a long cardboard box slid into view.
It was a florist’s box, long and narrow. Shayne lifted it out. He broke the string, stripping off the thin cardboard, and exposed a wooden box underneath, the same size and shape.
“You couldn’t carry a brassbound treasure chest into a mausoleum,” he said. “You’d have to keep coming back. With long stem roses you’d only have to make one trip.”
He set the box on the floor. Eda Lou made a small anguished sound as he raised the hinged lid.
There were two golden candlesticks on top. He lifted them out. There was a jeweled dagger, a golden chain, a goblet, then something long and angular wrapped in wash-leather. Beneath this layer the box was filled with loose coins, oddly-shaped silver pieces-of-eight, gold doubloons the size of a silver dollar, a cross on one face, a shield on the other. Each coin had been lovingly polished before being put away, and they glowed warmly in the dim light.
“It’s mine,” Eda Lou said. “Cal gave it to me instead of leaving me a share in the Key.”
“When?” Shayne asked.
“Two years before he died, and I have a paper to prove it.”
“He gave you something else too, didn’t he?”
He unwrapped the object in the washleather, and took out a long ugly Luger equipped with a silencer.
chapter 20
He snapped back the slide.
“It’s loaded. The safety’s off. I can see the scene, can’t you, Kitty? Soft music. The smell of flowers. Corpses stacked up five deep all around.” He picked up a handful of coins and let them clink one by one back into the box. “It looks a lot more authentic than a check for the same amount. You wouldn’t be able to take your eyes off it. Maybe she’d let you dig your fingers in to see how deep it went. And meanwhile, she’d be unwrapping the Luger.”
A light shiver passed over Kitty. “What a terrible way to die, with your hands in money.”
“Mike, be serious!” Rourke said. “There are people all over the place. How would she get rid of the body? Wait a minute. You don’t mean-”
Shayne stood up and handed the Luger to Gentry. “Why not? Simply unscrew another face plate and slide the body in. It’s true that after a few days-” He looked at the attendant. “Would the air conditioning take care of it? You couldn’t open up every crypt on this level to see who’d done the bad embalming job.”
“How morbid can you get?” the attendant exclaimed.
Shayne turned back to Kitty. “What did she say when she called you in New York?”
“Kitty baby,” Eda Lou warned her. “There are three or four cops here. It’s time we all talk to a lawyer.”
“I haven’t killed anybody,” Kitty responded. “Speak for yourself.”
Barbara said, “I don’t suppose you set Ev’s mattress on fire? Oh, no. Certainly not.”
“Babs!” Eda Lou said sharply. “Don’t you see what Shayne’s trying to do? Shut your flytrap and keep it shut.”
Shayne continued, watching Barbara, “Eda Lou set that mattress on fire.”
The old lady gave a laugh like a parrot. “I thought you said I killed Shanahan. Make up your mind.”
“You killed them both,” Shayne said coldly. “And it’s a bum rap, in a way, because here’s the real killer.” He kicked Tuttle’s headstone. “He’s been pulling the strings all the way. Calvin Charles Tuttle, Amid Turmoil, Peace. If we all keep quiet a minute, maybe we can hear him laughing.”
He paused, and they actually heard the sound of ironic laughter. It came from Eda Lou.
“You’ve been smoking the wrong kind of cigarette, Mike. You’re hallucinating.”
“Am I?” Shayne said. “I don’t think so. This has been a strange set-up. Everybody kept telling me that everybody else treated Cal like a dog, but Cal always forgave them. Like hell he forgave them!” He swung savagely on Barbara. “Did he forgive you for the way you treated him after he got out of jail?”
“Of course. We had a very warm relationship at the end.”
Shayne snorted. “And Brad. All Brad did was tip off the cops to save his own neck, and Cal spent the prime of his life in jail. Cal forgave him. Shanahan? When I first heard about Cal’s will I couldn’t make out what Shanahan was doing in it. People like Cal never get too fond of lawyers, who make a living out of crime without running any risks. Then I was told that the minute Cal was locked away, Shanahan hit the sack with Cal’s girl. But Cal forgave him! I don’t know what Cal had against Ev, maybe just having to keep him in drinking money all those years. Have I left out anybody? Kitty.”
“Yes, what about me?” she said coolly. “That’s where your argument breaks down.”
“Come on,” Shayne said. “You think he forgot about that badger game you pulled on him, just because he went on sleeping with you? And I think he had another big reason for including you. All the other heirs are clods, in one way or another. They might have been willing to settle for a percentage. Not you, Kitty. He knew you’d want it all.”
Sims chuckled. “Mr. Shayne, you’ll have to stop making insulting remarks about my wife or I’ll ask you to step outside.”
“Any time,” Shayne said evenly. “So Cal wasn’t doing anybody a favor by putting them in his will. He knew what would happen. But they wouldn’t start killing each other until they were sure the Key was actually worth something, and that’s where the treasure came in. If he and Eda Lou found it two years before he died, it puts those holes she dug later in a different light, doesn’t it? Please don’t anybody tell me that if she wanted to dig for buried treasure, she couldn’t do it without getting caught. Of course we don’t want to forget-I think she forgot it-that Cal had something against her, too.”
She looked startled. Shayne said gently, “Cal never forgave Shanahan for that old affair. Why would he forgive you? He blocked out a script for you to follow, and you followed it. Somebody had to make the first move. One of the five had to die, in a way that would make the other four start thinking. Kitty was with Ev the night he died. I doubt if that was a coincidence. I think you were waiting for it. You knocked on his door and he was glad to let you in-his successful brother’s mistress, he’d probably lusted after you for years.”
Barbara cried, “How do you know all that, were you there?”
“There’s a witness,” Shayne said. “He was planning to burglarize Ev after he passed out. He saw a woman come out of his room. Apparently he only had one quick glimpse from the rear. She was blonde, with a sexy walk. Shanahan and everybody else assumed it was Kitty. I had a different idea. I’ve seen Eda Lou walk across a room in short shorts, and she has one of the sexiest going-away motions I’ve seen in years.”
“Why-you angel!” Eda Lou cried. “Nobody’s said anything that nice about me since World War Two.”
Shayne gave her a half grin. “It’s almost worth being convicted of murder for, isn’t it?”
Her face clouded. “But my defense would have to be-”
“Yeah,” Shayne told her. “That the burglar couldn’t possibly be talking about you because you’re so dried-up and unsexy. Your lawyer will establish your true age and make you wear a girdle in court. O.K. Ev’s dead. Four more to go. Kitty was the outsider. Everybody took it for granted that she burned Ev. Kitty and Hank, meanwhile, pretended to split up to give her more freedom of action. They set up a listening post in Barbara’s old tree house. There were discussions between Brad and Barbara, Shanahan and Barbara. Brad offered to take care of the Kitty problem, and Kitty knew exactly what was going to happen, and when. She could have arranged not to be home that night but she decided that if she had an armed man in her apartment, Brad would end up dead and the survivors would be down to three. Barbara and Shanahan, at the same time, were making separate plans for disposing of Brad after he disposed of Kitty. Shanahan arranged to have cops waiting when Brad ran out. Barbara stole a tank of nitrous oxide and pumped it into Brad’s aqualung.”