Camilla Steele lived in a garden apartment in Buena Vista.
Michael Shayne and a city detective named Squires approached the building. Squires rang the bell. Getting no answer, he opened the door with a skeleton key. Entering, they turned on all the lights and carefully searched the empty apartment.
The air-conditioning was on high. A double bed in the bedroom was unmade. The condition of the sheets showed that whoever had slept there last had done considerable tossing and turning. In addition to being a restless sleeper, Camilla was a compulsively untidy housekeepeer. A container of cream had been left out in the messy kitchen. Numerous empty liquor bottles, torn pill containers and partially smoked cigarettes were scattered about. Shayne made a careful inventory of the medicine cabinet. There were several kinds of headache remedies, different brands of prescription tranquillizers. Amphetamine and barbiturate prescriptions had been written by different doctors. Her birth-control pills were dated in sequence so she wouldn’t lose track; she was currently three days behind.
There were more barbiturates in the bedroom, again from different drugstores, with different prescription numbers. The bureau was littered with unopened bills, loose change and a checkbook. She hadn’t added up the checkbook for three months. One of the bills was from a doctor named Irving Miller. Shayne tore this open. Dr. Miller was a psychiatrist, with a Miami Beach office, and Camilla Steele owed him for professional services which the doctor valued at $950.
Squires phoned headquarters and read a list of numbers he found scrawled on the card at the beginning of her phone book. Gentry, at the other end of the connection, asked to speak to Shayne.
After taking the phone, Shayne said, slowly, “I think we’d better get out an all-precinct call, Will. Her car’s not in the garage. She’s forgotten to take her birth-control pill for three days running. From the looks of the apartment she hasn’t been paying much attention to routine lately. There are enough pills in the place to kill three people. A week’s newspapers scattered around. There’s a picture of Crowther on the front page of today’s News, and somebody’s stuck three pins through it.”
“Hold on, Mike.” He told somebody in his office to get on another phone and find out the make and license number of Camilla Steele’s car. Coming back to Shayne, he said, “Does it look as though she was home today?”
“Yeah. She left out some cream and it hasn’t turned sour. I hope the photo morgues can find a recent picture, because from all the medicine lying around I doubt if she’s as good-looking as she used to be. Another thing-there are four different hair colors in the bathroom, from ash-blond to black. I’ve seen two wigs, one black and one platinum. She was blond once. That doesn’t mean she’s still blond.”
“What kind of feel does the place have, Mike? You know what I mean. Does it look as though she’s planning to put bullets in Crowther tomorrow instead of pins?”
“God knows,” Shayne said, looking around. “She’s certainly been thinking about him. Berger kept talking about playfulness. Sticking pins in a photograph is a playful way to kill somebody, and collecting three times too many sleeping pills is a playful way to commit suicide. No sign of a gun.”
Squires had picked out something else while Shayne was talking-a photograph of a man standing beside a car.
“It was at the bottom of a bureau drawer,” he said. “Underneath everything. A funny place for a snapshot.”
“This lady is not in the best of mental health.”
“You know it.”
It had been decided that they would leave the apartment dark, and that Squires would wait outside in his unmarked car. Shayne returned to his Buick and started south on Biscayne Boulevard, heading for the Julia Tuttle Causeway to the Beach.
An open convertible came up behind him rapidly and pulled out as though to pass, honking. In his side mirror Shayne saw that the driver was waving him over. He braked and slid in against the curb.
The other car passed him and parked. When the driver came into Shayne’s headlights, Shayne saw a well-built young man, getting bald too early. He had had more hair in the photograph Camilla Steele had squirreled away at the bottom of a bureau drawer.
“You’re Mike Shayne, aren’t you? I thought it was you. Can I get in?”
Shayne cut his headlights. Leaning over, he unlatched the front door. As he straightened, he activated his tape recorder.
“Look, I’m Paul London,” the young man said quickly. “I’m a friend of Mrs. Steele’s. I know she’s in some kind of a jam, and I want to find out if there’s anything I can do.”
“What kind of jam do you think she’s in?”
London hesitated. “I don’t want to answer that. It might turn out to be something you didn’t already know. The other guy’s a cop, isn’t he? I can’t go up to a cop and ask him why he’s searching somebody’s apartment. They don’t give out that kind of information. But I thought you might be halfway human.”
“Mr. London, are you or Camilla Steele affiliated with any group that’s working for the forcible overthrow of any Latin government?”
“What?”
Shayne put a cigarette in his mouth and waited. After a moment, London said, “I’m not, certainly. I guess I really don’t know about Camilla. She works for a foundation that gives research fellowships to Latin American scientists, but she doesn’t talk much about it. All that stuff in the papers. Is that why you’re-”
He stopped. Shayne’s lighter flared.
“How well do you know her?”
“We were in high school together. We dated for a couple of years until-well, you know the story.”
“Are you married?”
“Not any more. If you’re wondering about my interest in this, I want her to marry me. She’s turned me down. Nevertheless-” He drew a deep breath. “I’m on vacation. I went away for a couple of days, but I couldn’t relax. I finally decided to come back. I’m-damn it, I’m afraid she’s going to try to kill herself or something equally stupid. If she can get through this weekend I think she may be all right.”
Shayne smoked for a moment in silence. “She keeps a picture of you at the bottom of one of her bureau drawers.”
“You’re mistaken,” London told him seriously. “She doesn’t care that much about-” He swung around. “You mean you found one?”
“Yeah. I’d judge it was taken about three years ago. What were you doing parked outside her house?”
“Waiting for her. She specifically said she didn’t want me hanging around, and she really meant it. But the way she drove off tonight-”
“What time?”
“About eight thirty. She was carrying a scarf, and one end was dragging on the ground. That’s what decided me. She doesn’t do that kind of thing, no matter how many drinks she’s had. She jumped in her car and took off like a drag-racer. By the time I got organized it was hopeless to try to catch her. I decided to wait and see if I could-” His grip on his knees tightened. “Did she have an accident? You can at least tell me that.”
“We don’t know where she is. Do you think this funny behavior has anything to do with the medal Attorney General Crowther is getting tomorrow?”
“Those letters!” London cried. “They don’t honestly mean anything, Shayne. It’s a game she’s been playing.”
“Did she ever say anything to you about Supreme Court Justice Jenkinson?”
“Who? What’s he have to do with this? The answer is no, but if you’d tell me what’s going on, maybe I could help. I’ve been seeing her fairly often.”
“Does she own a gun?”
“A gun,” London breathed. “Jesus. I doubt it like hell. You don’t believe she’s thinking about-?”
Shayne snapped on the overhead light and asked to see London’s identification. He was thirty-one, an office-furniture salesman. Making up his mind abruptly, Shayne told him about the anonymous tipster who had warned him that an attempt was to be made on Crowther’s life, and that the potential killer was a woman. Then he described the tableau in the airport ladies’ room.
“There’s more, but those are the two main items. Somebody’s putting up a smoke screen. We don’t know what the real move is going to be, or where. Whatever it is, it has to be serious. Three different people have pointed guns at me since four o’clock this afternoon, and I’ve been slugged from behind with an ax-handle, for no particular reason, because I don’t know much more about what’s going on than you do. I hope Camilla’s not planning to play any games with Crowther tomorrow. A battalion of airborne infantry’s coming down from Bragg. Every cop in town is going to be on duty with a loaded weapon.”
“Oh God,” London said unhappily. “I’d better tell you everything that happened yesterday and today. Can you give me a cigarette?”
Shayne shook one out of his pack.
“As soon as I got in yesterday I called her office. She wouldn’t talk to me. I’d already decided I couldn’t afford to be too touchy, so I waited downstairs. She really looked like a ghost when she came out-very tired and sick and jumpy. We had a fight in the lobby about whether I had any right, etc. She used some strong language. She was trying to make me mad, and she succeeded. But she overdid it. She wouldn’t be yelling like that in a crowded office-building lobby unless something was wrong. I followed her over to one of the hotels on the Beach.”
“The St. Albans?”
“That’s right, where Crowther is getting his medal tomorrow. I don’t know what else she did, but she picked up a man in one of the bars and took him home. At that point I decided the hell with it, not for the first time. I didn’t wait to find out how long he stayed, which was just as well. I saw him leaving this morning.”
“She didn’t take her birth-control pill yesterday,” Shayne remarked.
London had been tightening up noticeably during his account of Camilla’s evening, and now he flared. “Damn you, Shayne, you don’t care what you do, do you?”
“The medicine cabinet is always one of the first places I look. Did she know you were following her?”
“I suppose. I wasn’t trying to keep out of sight.”
“Then maybe the reason she picked somebody up was so she wouldn’t have to argue with you any more.”
“Maybe. But it wouldn’t be the first time she slept with somebody she just met. I wish she wouldn’t do it, but it’s a symptom of something else, and when she gets over that, whatever it is-” He broke off. “And of course the truth is that it’s driving me out of my skull! The guy was such a slob!”
“The slobbier the better, if the object was to get you to leave her alone. We need a recent photograph. Do you have any?”
“A couple. I took some Polaroid shots a few weeks ago, and one of them made her look just the way she used to.”
“I want one of the way she looks now. Has she ever attempted suicide?”
“Several times. Once she came pretty close. I know she thinks about it whenever she gets depressed. The last few days just before she menstruates are the bad ones. I try to keep track, so I’ll be available. When she feels really low she calls me and sometimes we stay on the phone all night. But one time last year I had to go out of town and I couldn’t reach her before I left. I kept getting a busy signal when I called. I caught an earlier flight back and got her to the hospital. Just in time, they told me.”
“What medical treatment has she been getting?”
“Various doctors. Different pills. Sometimes she’ll be almost normal for a few weeks at a time, and then all of a sudden-”
“Did she show you any of the letters she wrote Crowther?”
“No, but I heard enough about them. Did she actually mail them?”
“Apparently.”
“Part of the time I thought she was joking. She claimed she was shortening Crowther’s life by keeping him in a continual state of terror, which I tried to tell her was absurd.”
“Where is she in the menstrual cycle now, do you know?”
“That’s just it-she’s due.” He added grimly, “Unless she’s pregnant.”
Shayne stubbed out his cigarette. “OK, Paul, I want you to listen to a theory. If you collected everybody who has a reason for killing Crowther, you could fill the Orange Bowl. What if somebody else found out about these letters, and also knew she’d been thinking about killing herself? What if he offered to arrange an assassination? She wouldn’t have to know who he was. He could do it by phone. One way to get her the gun would be to put it in a suitcase and check it on a flight into International Airport, and send her the claims check.”
“You mean the phone rang and she picked it up and a voice said, Do you want to-”
“Something like that,” Shayne said. “‘You’ve been threatening to murder this man. God knows he deserves it. Put up or shut up.”
“Are you serious?”
“I’m asking your opinion. You know her. I don’t. You say these letters were partly a joke. Now here comes a genuine offer-someone who’s willing to work out all the details and tell her exactly what to do. It coincides with one of her low points, when she’s thinking about suicide anyway. This would be a much more interesting way to kill herself than swallowing pills, and she’d take Crowther with her.”
London was staring at him. “Do you know anything you haven’t told me?”
“I’m speculating. Would that kind of proposition appeal to her?”
“It might, but she wouldn’t do it.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, I’m not sure! You see I know her. We used to make love in high school. We stopped for a few years, and then we started again after her husband was condemned to death, and we’ve been doing it ever since. That doesn’t make me any kind of an expert on what she’s really like.”
Shayne didn’t comment.
After a moment London went on reluctantly, “But if that call came in at just the right moment, if he didn’t make any mistakes, she might decide-oh, that if she didn’t agree, it would mean admitting that she hadn’t ever been serious about anything, just fooling around. One thing would happen, then another, and before she knew it she’d be committed. But she wouldn’t go through with it! At the last minute-”
He thought about it, and then said helplessly, “No, I just don’t know.”