Two wide concrete steps led up to the kitchen door. The screen was unlatched, opening outward, but the wooden door with glassed upper portion didn’t open when he turned the knob. He hit the thin glass with his elbow, stepped back to let it clatter to the floor, then reached in and turned the key.
The door opened into a dark kitchen. Shayne prowled across the linoleum toward a dim rectangle of light marking the entrance to the dining-room, and found the wall switch. He flipped it and strode on through a pantry lined on both sides with glass doors, behind which crystal and hand-painted dishes and silver gleamed.
He didn’t pause or slacken his long-legged strides, but he noted the expensive furnishings in the dining-room. The thick rug, the shining mahogany table centering it, the crystal bowl filled with fresh roses, the four silver candlesticks arranged in perfect symmetry — all outlined by light from the open archway leading into the living room.
After assuring himself that Wanda Weatherby had been dead for at least half an hour, he straightened up and looked around. There was a fireplace to the left of the window through which he had peered, cozily equipped with antique andirons, a hearth brush, and an attractive basket filled with wood. Two wing chairs stood, one on either side, each with its small, inlaid table holding an ash tray and silver cigarette box. A long period couch with a low back, elaborately carved above the tapestried cushions, ranged along the space beneath the big picture window.
Wanda Weatherby lay on an expensive Herat rug that reached from the hearth to the opposite wall, and directly in front of the couch near the end table which held the telephone. She wore a sea-green hostess gown with a tight bodice brocaded with dull-gold threads, and the full skirt spread out around her slim body as though she had pivoted suddenly, billowing it out, then dropped to the rug, and the fullness had settled just above her bare ankles. The left foot was crossed over the right and was bare. The toes were curled downward in an attitude of agony which had allowed the dull-gold mule to drop from her foot.
Otherwise, her appearance was composed. Her right arm was outstretched above her head with slender, tapering fingers lying flat and relaxed The left hand was curved beneath her breast.
Studying the body intently, standing less than two feet away, Shayne could now see a large, bloody hole high in the back of her head which was not quite hidden by the thick reddish-gold ringlets. A soft-nosed bullet, he surmised, entering from the front and ranging upward to emerge at that spot.
He moved to stand directly in line with the prone body and the screened window, gauging the position of the hole in the wire, then pivoting slowly in an arc of one hundred and eighty degrees. From this position he carefully examined the rug, and nodded with satisfaction when he saw the small, shapeless mass of a mushroomed bullet lying three feet away.
Shayne studied the bullet moodily, but it didn’t tell him anything except that Wanda Weatherby had been shot through the screen, probably from a rifle, just as she arose from the couch after telephoning him. She had heard a sound and turned toward the window, and then—
He shook his red head slowly. That must have been the way it happened. The pool of blood had glazed over, confirming his first guess as to the time of her murder. Just about the length of time that had elapsed since her telephone call and the time of his arrival.
He tried to visualize the whole scene — the telephone call, her extreme panic. There was something about it that worried him. She hadn’t made it sound so imminent, or was he growing callous to frantic women calling him at all times of the night? She had been frightened, but not by something she expected to happen before he could reach her. He was certain of that as he searched his memory for the exact words she had spoken, and the intonations.
No. She had hung up on him, and, somehow, this fact gave Shayne a certain sense of release from his feeling of guilty negligence. If she had heard any suspicious noise outside before or during her brief conversation, she would have told him or screamed, or perhaps fainted from fear and left the receiver dangling
But she had hung up.
Another twinge of conscience struck him when he remembered that she had tried to reach him by telephone twice that day, and he had not been on the job. The motive for her letter which would reach him in the morning mail was clear. The letter which he had been warned to tear up without reading it if he wanted to stay alive. The letter that a woman named Sheila Martin wanted to talk to him about at midnight, and which a friend of Timothy Rourke’s was now waiting to discuss with him.
Only they had the answers now. Wanda Weatherby had made her final pitch half an hour ago when she telephoned him with her urgent plea for help.
Shayne shook his head angrily and ran troubled fingers through his coarse red hair. He went to the telephone. As he lifted the receiver he noticed that there was no number in the blank inside the dial.
That meant the telephone was unlisted and explained why he had been unable to obtain her number from the directory or from Information. This seemed odd for a woman who lived in a small bungalow on a quiet side street.
He dialed police headquarters. At this point, the homicide squad could accomplish a lot more than he could.
Chapter three
UTILIZING THE BRIEF INTERVAL before the nearest radio police car could reach the scene, Shayne hurried from the death room, went down the narrow hallway to the rear bedroom. It was a small room, with a single bed, unmade, with rumpled sheet and spread thrown back. The drapes at the two windows were drawn aside and hung limply. A cheap, soiled rug lay beside the bed, and when Shayne examined the closet, he found it empty. The only other article of furniture in the room was a substantial walnut desk in the corner between the windows.
An uncovered portable typewriter was on the desk, and a box of heavy, square notepaper with envelopes to match stood beside it. On the right-hand side of the typewriter there was a large glass ash tray with a dozen or more cigarette butts inside.
An envelope lying beyond the typewriter caught the detective’s eye. It was from a newspaper-clipping service and addressed to Miss Wanda Weatherby. Shayne picked it up, opened it, and found a clipping inside with a printed slip pasted to the top with the name of the service and the typed information that it was from a Nashville paper, dated two weeks ago.
Shayne unfolded the clipping for a quick look. There was a picture of a woman and a young girl, both smiling happily into the camera. The caption read:
MRS. J. PIERSON GURLEY AND DAUGHTER, JANET, OF MIAMI, FLORIDA
Shayne frowned as he glanced through the society item and read that Mrs. Gurley and her debutante daughter, prominent in Miami society, were guests at the Nashville home of Janet’s fiancé, Thomas Marsh, III, making final plans for the wedding which would take place in Miami two months hence.
His frown deepened as he refolded the clipping and put it back in the envelope.
J. Pierson Gurley, prominent member of Miami’s society, was actually Jack-The-Lantern Gurley.
It was quite true that he was well known in Miami’s social circle, but in a different way from that implied by the clipping. Shayne itched to go through the drawers of the desk to see what else he might turn up, but he knew there wouldn’t be time for that. He slid the envelope into his pocket and opened the door to the bathroom connecting the two rooms.