“Where have I got her hidden?” Michael Shayne looked as though he would choke over the words. “I haven’t seen Lucy or heard a word from her since eleven o’clock yesterday morning. Can’t you get it through your thick head that I caught a noon plane to Los Angeles and just got back?”
“Can you prove it?”
“Do I have to?” Shayne’s eyes were hot. “I’ve never lied to you, Will.”
“Yes, you have,” Gentry told him coldly. “When you felt the end justified the means… and were pretty sure you could get away with it. Yeh. I think you’d better try to prove where you were yesterday afternoon.”
Shayne drew in a deep breath and fought back his anger. “I reached L.A. about two o’clock… their time. I had an appointment with Miss Cornell here between two-thirty and three. She didn’t show up for it. Let her tell you why. Actually, it was a little after five o’clock when we finally made contact at a restaurant named the Cock and Bull in Hollywood. That’s eight o’clock here, Will. About the time you were finding a corpse in my office.”
“Is that true, Miss Cornell?”
She had not seated herself, but still stood near the door. She shook her head and said, “I will not answer any questions. I demand that I be allowed to see a lawyer.”
Shayne said angrily, “Come off your high horse, Elsa. All you have to do is tell the man you finally met me at five o’clock… after keeping me chasing my tail around town for a couple of hours.”
The expression on her lovely face hardened. She repeated, “I demand that I be allowed to see a lawyer. I have a right to counsel before I answer any questions.”
Gentry said curtly to Rourke, “Go outside and ask Ed Corby to come in.” When the reporter went out, he studied the blonde appraisingly and said, “So you won’t verify Mr. Shayne’s story? Any of it?”
She clamped her lips together and lifted her chin in reply.
Rourke came back, followed by the detective sergeant. “You and Greene take this woman to headquarters. Hold her for questioning without booking her.”
He waited until the door was closed behind them, then settled back and said, “Now there’s just the three of us, Mike. Suppose you start out by telling us what the dead man was doing in your office yesterday.”
“How do I know?” Shayne began bitterly. “I’ve told you…”
“I know what you’ve told us, and I happen to know it’s not the truth. Not the full truth, at least. He was a client of yours, Mike. Stop denying it.”
“He was no client of mine, Will. You know that Lucy and I practically never kill a client.”
His attempt at levity didn’t get a smile from Gentry. He demanded, “And you still deny you ever saw him before?”
“Sure, I deny it. That is, not to my knowledge. I may have passed him on the street some time.”
“You visited him in the penitentiary twice in the last three months.”
“I didn’t. I haven’t been to the pen for a year.”
“The records say different, Mike.”
Shayne hesitated, savoring the shock of Gentry’s accusation, trying to adjust his thoughts… see where all this was leading.
“This means you know who the dead man is, Will?”
“Oh, sure. We got a fast make on his fingerprints. He’s an ex-con named Julius O’Keefe… as if you didn’t know. Pardoned yesterday morning, and it looks as though he came straight to Miami and went to your office where he got himself stabbed to death.”
“And I’m supposed to have visited a prisoner named O’Keefe in the pen twice in the last three months?” Shayne demanded incredulously.
“That’s what their records show.”
“Then their records lie,” Shayne told him hotly. “Maybe someone claiming to be Mike Shayne visited a man named O’Keefe, but it wasn’t me, Will.”
“Then why did he go straight to your office after being released yesterday?”
“I don’t know, but I’m beginning to get the glimmer of an idea. If you’ll listen to me for a minute instead of trying to pin a murder rap on me, maybe you’ll get the glimmer of an idea, too.”
He reached in his pocket for the scented envelope with the message signed Elsa Cornell still inside, and tossed it in front of the police chief. He also got out his wallet and removed the two halves of the thousand-dollar bill which he placed in front of Gentry while the chief removed the letter and read it, with Rourke peering down over his shoulder to read it also.
“That was delivered to my office by Special Delivery yesterday morning,” Shayne told the two of them harshly. “One of these torn pieces of currency was inside, along with a roundtrip first-class ticket to Los Angeles by United Airlines. I got that other half of the bill when I finally caught up with Elsa Cornell at the Cock and Bull at five o’clock. I also got a completely incredible story from her supposedly explaining why she needed my help in LA., and finally a different story which was slightly more credible, but not much. Let me tell you the way it happened and you can judge for yourself.” He swiftly sketched in the salient details of his experiences on the West Coast the preceding day, ending with, “When I finally got hold of Tim on the phone about seven o’clock and he told me about the dead man and Lucy being missing, it suddenly came to me that I’d been hoaxed. That the letter and all was a device to get me out of town and away from my office. I still hadn’t the slightest idea why, of course. I accused Elsa of it, and she finally broke down and told me a different story, saying she thought it was a practical joke.”
He related her tale of being hired by a television producer to lure him away from Miami and keep him away at least overnight. “Then she made the mistake of telling me she hadn’t been in Miami for years, and I found Lincoln Road labels in all her clothes. To top it off, in her purse she had the return half of a round-trip airplane ticket that had been issued in Miami two days previously. That clinched it, so I brought her back with me to see how she fitted in.”
“But why, Mike?” protested Gentry. “Why the devil would anyone go to all that trouble and expense to get you out of town for a couple of days?”
“Adding up both plane fares, it must have set somebody back a couple of grand,” Rourke put in.
Shayne spread out his big hands. “Doesn’t it begin to explain the penitentiary records showing that Mike Shayne visited this guy twice recently? Someone impersonating me visited him,” he went on angrily. “From where I sit right now it looks as though that same someone wanted to set things up to be in my office when O’Keefe was released, still impersonating me… and where in hell does that put Lucy?”
“Right behind the eight-ball,” Rourke exclaimed feelingly. “They had to use some ruse to get her away from the office, too. Probably put another woman in at her desk to pretend to be your secretary.”
“But why in the name of God?” demanded Gentry again.
“That’s what we’ve got to figure out. This O’Keefe? What was he in for? Was he mixed up with a mob? Was he a danger to somebody important as soon as he got out of jail?”
“Nothing like that. He was doing time on an embezzling rap from four or five years back. In Jacksonville, wasn’t it, Tim?”
“Yeh. It was a one-man job the way I remember it. O’Keefe was a bookkeeper or something, and he confessed. It was a big hunk of money, I think, and he’d wasted it all on wine, women and the bangtails. I don’t see how that could make him a danger to anybody after he was pardoned.”
“Hell of a long way around just to knock a guy off anyhow,” protested Gentry. “Why would anyone plan to pull the job in your office?”
Shayne shrugged and admitted, “I don’t say that’s the answer. It was just an idea.”
“To get you blamed for the job,” suggested Rourke. “You and Lucy both. Who hates you enough to go to all that trouble and expense?”
“A lot of people hate me,” Shayne growled. “None I know to that extent.”
“How about another case you’re working on?” Rourke guessed again. “To prevent you from getting on with it and maybe turning up some information somebody doesn’t want turned up?”
“I haven’t any other case at present. Not a single thing pending. In fact I had thought about going fishing yesterday until that Special arrived and I got sucked into a trip west.”
“I wouldn’t mind getting sucked into something by that gal,” said Rourke pensively.
Shayne disregarded that, and asked, “Haven’t you got any leads, Will? Nobody that saw him go into my office, or Lucy leave?”
“Everything negative so far. He wasn’t discovered until after eight, and by that time all the offices in the building were empty. Elevator man doesn’t particularly remember Lucy leaving… or you either for that matter. We’ll go through the full routine as soon as people begin reaching their offices. In the meantime we’re checking O’Keefe’s background, pals in the pen and so on. And we’re trying to trace his movements after he was released to see if he came direct here or contacted somebody outside.”
“Does the name Rexforth mean anything to either one of you?” Shayne hesitated, searching his memory. “Reginald Dawes Rexforth Third?”
They both shook their heads and Gentry asked, “Should it?”
“Tim asking about other cases we had on hand reminded me that there was a new client supposed to be coming in yesterday morning. Lucy had made the appointment the day before. He’d been very insistent that he see me. Life and death, he told Lucy.”
“So you just walked out without keeping the appointment?” Gentry demanded disbelievingly.
Shayne shrugged. “Half my clients think their cases are matters of life and death. Let’s see if we can find Rexforth listed in the phone book.” He reached for a directory on the desk and thumbed through it with a frown. “Six Rexforths. None of them with the right initials. Lucy didn’t mention whether he was local or not.” He hid a yawn behind his big hand and stood up. “I haven’t been to bed.”
“Neither have I,” said Gentry. “Where do you think you’re going, Mike?”
Shayne looked at his watch. “Not much to be done until about nine o’clock. I figure you’ll want to take a crack at Elsa’s story, and I’ve a strong hunch you may get more out of her without me around. She hates my guts,” he confided, “because I turned down her pure white body last night.”
“My God,” breathed Rourke. “That pure white body? I bet it’s something.”
“Juicy,” Shayne told him with a tired grin. “You don’t want any more from me right now, do you, Will?” he added innocently, turning toward the door.
“Wait a minute, Mike,” Gentry said sternly. “Don’t think I’m buying your story whole hog. Visitors to the penitentiary have to sign the register, and I’ll have those signatures of yours checked. I’ll also check the flight personnel on United’s noon flight yesterday. Just don’t do one thing.” His voice remained friendly, but it had the bite of steel in it. “Don’t walk out of this door leaving any lies behind you that can be disproved by the facts. Right now is the time to come clean if you’re covering anything up.”
Shayne said mildly, “You know I never tell a lie that can be disproved.”
He opened the door and started out, and Rourke said hastily, “I’ll go with you, Mike. Grab an eye-opener of cognac, huh?”
He hurried out after the redhead and caught his arm as he went into the empty waiting room. “Where are you headed?”
“How do you know I’m headed anywhere special?”
“Because I’ve been on too damned many cases with you not to know when you’ve suddenly thought of something and want to check it on your own.” Rourke went down the steps with him. “That your car at the curb?”
“Yeh. Where’s yours?”
“Headquarters. I rode up with Will.”
Shayne got under the steering wheel and said, “I’ll drop you there.”
“After you’ve checked whatever’s on your mind.” Rourke settled himself firmly in the seat beside the redhead.
Shayne said, “Okay. We’ll have that eye-opener at the office. I think there’s still a bottle of Cordon Bleu left over from my last case.”