“He called me from the Beach a little while ago. Wants me to locate a taxi driver who picked you up at the Play-Mor last night. You and the girl that got murdered right after she got in the taxi with you.”
“Have you located the driver?” Shayne asked.
“Not yet. But we’ve got a pickup out on him. How do you do it, Mike? Painter was frothing over the phone. Claimed you were sitting on top of the case like a damned ghoul when he got in on it this morning. He thinks you bumped the girl last night just to work up some business, and then hurried around to get yourself retained to solve it.”
Shayne grinned. “Business has been bad lately, Will. Does he figure I’ll put a noose around my neck to earn a fee?”
“Painter says you’ve got some sort of slick frame planned,” said Gentry, ignoring Shayne’s attempt to be funny. He sighed and folded his hands over his belly. “It’s just a matter of time before we locate the driver, Mike,” he went on seriously. “I don’t know what his story will be, but you do. If it puts you within a mile of the girl at the time she was killed Painter’s going to force me to pull you in.”
“What time was she killed?”
“They make it before eleven o’clock. The doorman at the Play-Mor says you and she rode off in a taxi together about ten-thirty. We’ve got a good description of the driver,” he ended.
Shayne was tugging at his left ear lobe. He asked, “Do they know where she was bumped?”
“They’ve pretty well fixed it right at the rear of the Hudson house where she worked. If you took her there from the club, Mike, it puts you on the spot at exactly the right time.”
“Not,” said Shayne, “if the driver testifies that I merely let her out of the cab at the front gate and had him drive me straight home.”
“No,” Gentry agreed. He had the cigar in his mouth but made no attempt to light it “Not if that’s what happened. But there’s a catch in that Painter claims he can place you at the front door of the house about fifteen or twenty minutes before eleven.”
“At the front door,” Shayne said. “Not the back door. Mrs. Morgan answered when I rang. And by the way, Mrs. Morgan told Painter she was a very sound sleeper, that she was asleep when Natalie Briggs was murdered and that she didn’t hear a sound. Tie that in,” he ended with a broad grin.
Gentry rumbled, “It’s not anything to kid about, Mike.”
“You’ve got to admit that Painter always picks on me,” said Shayne, “when he has a dozen other suspects to go after. But thanks for tipping me off, Will,” he added gravely.
“I just wanted you to know what you were up against.”
He pushed himself up from the chair with both hands on the arms.
The young sergeant arose from the couch and Shayne walked to the door with them.
He said, “Good luck on picking up that taxi driver, Will,” and stood in the doorway watching them until they stepped into the elevator.
Closing the door, he went leisurely to the bedroom door, opened it, and was thankful that neither of his captives snored. They lay side by side, sleeping off their overdose of sidecars.
Shayne went carefully through Ira Wilson’s pockets until he found the keys to the taxi. Wilson was as limp and unconscious as a rag doll. Shayne went out and closed the door.
He found the visored cap tucked in the chair seat where Will Gentry had been sitting. He pulled it out, muttering an oath as he did so, tried it on for size and found it a half-size too small.
He tilted the driver’s cap forward, went into the bathroom and looked in the cabinet mirror. He decided that it didn’t look too bad.
Then he took it off and went out into the corridor, closing his apartment door, and went down in the elevator with the cap tucked inconspicuously under his arm.
Shayne found an empty taxi outside the hotel and got in. Wilson’s keys fitted the ignition. He put the cap on at a jaunty angle and started the motor and drove across the County Causeway to Miami Beach.
Brett Halliday
Blood on Biscayne Bay
Chapter Fifteen: A TIMELY LETTER
MICHAEL SHAYNE and Christine Hudson were alone in the living-room of the big bayfront house. Neither Leslie nor Floyd Hudson was at home.
Shayne said, “Don’t hold out on me, Christine. For God’s sake give it to me straight. Did Victor Morrison write those letters to you?”
She said, “No-not unless he was completely out of his mind. And they were never mailed to me. I have never seen the originals of those photostats.”
Shayne said, “Everything I’ve turned up thus far points to their genuineness. I’m sorry as hell, but it’s your word against a lot of facts.”
“Does Mr. Morrison claim he wrote them to me?”
“Naturally not. He declares they’re forgeries. But we know they’re not.”
Christine sighed faintly but her chin remained defiantly lifted. “I can’t help it, Michael I’ve told you the truth. I swear Mr. Morrison never so much as made a pass at me during the two and a half years I worked for him.”
Shayne argued quietly, “It doesn’t make sense that way, Christine. At first I worked on the theory that he was secretly in love with you and had worked out a devious plan for discrediting you with your husband so you’d be forced to go to him to avoid public scandal. But it looks now as though he had no part in sending those men here to find the letters. Hampstead, the lawyer, is retained by Mrs. Morrison to file a divorce suit against her husband. A man with his sort of ethics wouldn’t lend himself to any legal trickery. The detective was also employed by Mrs. Morrison to get evidence against her husband. She freely admits she had planned something like this in New York when she urged Morrison to go out with you after you resigned your position. Don’t you see that I have to know the truth?”
Christine said, “How many times do I have to tell you I’ve told you the truth-about everything,” in a tone of exasperation.
Shayne sighed, leaned back, and lit a cigarette. He spun the match away and said savagely, “All right. You dope it out on that basis. The letters mentioned a plan to get rid of the present Mrs. Morrison. I’ve discovered that Morrison put that plan into effect as soon as they reached Miami. He put a private detective on her trail and got enough evidence to kick her out without a dime. Don’t you see what an utter fool he would be to let those letters get into her hands? It slashes his case against her all to hell. She can enter countersuit and demand a whopping big cash settlement. So he certainly didn’t have the letters planted here for her to find. Then who did? Who else could have?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps they are forgeries and Mrs. Morrison arranged it all.” Her voice was cold and distant.
Shayne shook his head. “Bernard Holloway doesn’t make mistakes like that. No. I’ve got to believe Morrison wrote them but didn’t plant them here. That leaves only one answer.”
“That I’m lying,” she said listlessly. “That he did write them to me and I did tie them up in a pink ribbon and hide them in my vanity drawer.”
Shayne said, “I’m sorry as hell, Christine.”
“So am I,” she murmured.
“There are some other things you haven’t told me,” he pointed out. “For instance, that the Morrisons have visited you here since your marriage.”
“They dropped in for a picnic supper on the lawn one evening.” She sounded surprised. “I didn’t think that was important.”
“Was your husband here to help entertain them?”
“No.” Christine lowered her eyes and bit her underlip. “I admit Leslie has some foolish notion of being jealous of Mr. Morrison. He pretended he had to go to the office that night and refused to stay here and help entertain them.”
“What reason has he for being jealous?”
“None at all. I don’t think he really is.” She paused thoughtfully, then said, “I believe it’s a sort of false pride in Leslie. His family have always been wealthy, and I was just an ordinary working girl. I think he didn’t relish the idea of having the man whom I’d worked for around.”