Gifford said, “I see. I’ll work on it tomorrow and call you. Will you be home late tonight, if I do run into something hot in the Catskills?”
Shayne said, “I’ll be home,” and hung up. He scowled thoughtfully as he renewed his drink.
“Getting somewhere?” Rourke asked with interest.
“Dead ends, I’m afraid.” Shayne told him about the hundred-thousand-dollar insurance policy, payable to either husband or wife in the event of the other’s death, and the possibility that the Harris’ were sailing pretty close to the wind financially.
“And he may have a thing with his secretary at the office,” Shayne added, in a disgruntled voice. “Damn it, you never can trust a guy. I would have sworn he was sincere when he talked about his wife in my office. He had the guts to ask me if I’d ever been in love… and married.”
Rourke shrugged cynically. “All this begins to look like the usual answer.”
“Except,” gritted Shayne, “that the bastard appears to be in the clear. Jim Gifford says positively it was impossible for Harris to have been in Miami either Monday or Tuesday nights. You did say the M.E. places her death as no later than Tuesday?”
“Positively no later than Tuesday night… and he much prefers Monday. Maybe Gifford slipped up on that,” Rourke added hopefully. “If Harris did have something like this planned when she left New York, he would have taken great pains to establish an alibi in advance.”
Shayne admitted, “Everybody can make a mistake. Even Jim Gifford. But he’s a hell of a careful operator, and he alibis Harris for those two nights so flatly that I’ll take his word for it until something else comes along.”
“Of course,” said Rourke, “it wouldn’t be the first time a husband hired someone to get rid of his wife… in order to collect an insurance policy and get into bed with another doll.”
“There’s always that.” Shayne sighed. “And those are the toughest ones to crack. One thing we’ll have in our favor. With a big policy like that up for grabs, we’ll have insurance investigators digging on it, too. They’ve got the money and facilities to go over Harris in New York with a fine-tooth comb. Have you talked to him, by the way?”
Rourke nodded. “Just after lunch today at the Beachhaven. He had just gotten the autopsy report, and he’s been getting some hints about the way she conducted herself around town Monday evening. Like you, Mike, I’d swear the guy had been pathetically in love with his wife, truly adored her, and is knocked for a loop by any suggestion that she would as much as look at another man. Yet it looks like he was carrying on with his secretary all the time.”
“We don’t know for sure. Jim didn’t have too much to go on in that direction.”
His telephone rang. He said, “Shayne,” and then, “Jim?” in a surprised voice.
“Yeh,” Gifford said, “I thought I’d better get right back to you, Mike. It begins to look like we may really have something by the tail.”
“What?”
“The Ruth Collins I mentioned. I called the hotel in the Catskills to see whether I could see her this evening. And… hold onto your hat, Mike. She isn’t there.”
“Where is she?”
“God knows. They don’t. They say she did have a reservation… made a month ago… starting Monday afternoon for two weeks. But she called up from New York the preceding Friday and said her plans had changed and she cancelled the reservation. That’s all they know.”
Shayne said, “I’ll be damned. But you’d already checked that she left all right on her vacation Monday?”
“I talked to her room-mate on the telephone this afternoon, Mike. They share an apartment on the West Side. That’s when she told me that Ruth left on Monday for the Catskills. I tried to call her back just now, but she’s out.”
Shayne said grimly, “Stay with it, Jim. Find her. And find out why she cancelled her reservation without telling her room-mate.”
“I’ll put a lot more on the expense account tomorrow,” Gifford promised him blithely, and hung up.
Timothy Rourke’s deep-set eyes glinted with real excitement when Shayne told him this latest development. “How much of this can I print in my story tomorrow?”
“Not a damned word about it until you check with me just before press time. I may have something else from Jim by then.”
“It begins to shape up,” said Rourke happily.
“Not in any shape I can see yet. It’s like one of those ink blobs that psychologists use in their tests. Rohrschach, isn’t it?”
“Something like that. What we both need is another drink… then maybe it’ll begin to make sense to us.” Rourke reached happily for the bourbon bottle.
17
When Michael Shayne returned to his office from lunch the next afternoon, Lucy Hamilton sat demurely typing at her desk and did not glance up as he entered.
He went past her into his private office, and stopped in surprise at sight of a large, square cardboard box sitting in the center of his desk.
Lucy stopped typing and got up and silently followed him into his office. She found him leaning over the desk staring in perplexity at the label on the box which was addressed to him.
Standing in the doorway, she said, “I couldn’t hear any ticking inside so I thought it was all right. But if you’re going to start ordering cases of liquor delivered here to the office, Mr. Shayne, I think you’d do better to close this place up and move back into your hotel.”
“I didn’t order a case of liquor, Lucy. How did this get here?”
“Delivered by messenger,” she told him sweetly. “It’s several months until Christmas, but they do keep moving the season up, don’t they?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” he declared, crossly. He moved around his desk, stopped with a frown and leaned over to remove a small, square envelope affixed to the side of the box with scotch tape. He opened it and took out a card and read aloud in a wondering voice: “With the compliments of Mr. and Mrs. John J. Benjamin.” He chuckled and added, “The ‘and Mrs.’ is in parentheses, and I’ll bet this would be a surprise to her if she saw it.”
“Who is John J. Benjamin?”
“He is an upright gentleman from Detroit who, one time in an otherwise blameless life, had the temerity to look into the melting eyes of a female whom he found more beautiful than his lawfully wedded spouse… that’s who John J. Benjamin is,” Shayne told her blithely. “Let’s open this here gift offering… and what’ll you bet it’s not domestic sherry?”
He took hold of a corner of the stapled cardboard top in strong fingers and ripped it back to display neat rows of bottles, each one carefully encased in white tissue paper. He lifted one out and stripped the paper off, and his bantering tone changed to one of pure incredulity and pleasure.
“Cordon Bleu, Lucy. A whole damn dozen of them. Why, the sweet, little guy. I’ll be double-damned. How did he know that I’d positively drool over such a gift?”
“He can probably read,” she suggested. “Brett Halliday has mentioned your taste in cognacs in several of his books.”
“Yeh, but I never thought Benjamin was the kind of guy… you never can tell… hell! let’s sample it.” He began opening the bottle he held in his hand.
“Michael! You just came back from lunch, where I’ll bet you had half a dozen drinks.”
“Sure, but not Cordon Bleu,” he agreed blandly. “You know what? We’re going to have to invest in some glasses to keep in the office for this. It’s sacrilege to drink it out of paper cups.”
“I certainly hope you won’t commit sacrilege, Michael,” she said sweetly. “I’ll go shopping for some glasses tomorrow morning…”
“It’s not all that sacrilegious.” He grinned at her infectiously as he set the open bottle down on the desk and turned to the water cooler to nest two paper cups together.
Filling the inner one reverently from the bottle, he held it aloft and murmured, “I thank you, Mrs. Benjamin.” He sank into the swivel chair behind his desk and said, severely, “So, to work. Get me Bob Merrill at the Beachhaven, Lucy.”