“Well, I— No, as a matter of fact. For heaven’s sake,” went on the voice excitedly, “whatever is this all about? A policeman was here not more than half an hour ago asking all the silliest questions about Arlene, and he wouldn’t tell me why.”
“I see.” Of course, Lucy thought. Will Gentry would have contacted the New Orleans police and instituted inquiries at once. It was silly of her not to have realized that. After a brief pause, she asked, “Who is this speaking?”
“I’m Esther Grant. I share the apartment with Arlene. Are you the Lucy Hamilton in Miami I’ve heard Arlene mention?”
“Yes. What—”
“They asked me about you, too. The policeman did. Have you seen Arlene?”
“Not since I left New Orleans.”
“Oh, I thought— She’s in Miami, you know.”
“What? Who is?”
“Arlene. Now I am beginning to wonder what this is all about. From the first I had a funny feeling about it. It just wasn’t like Arlene at all to go off like that.”
“Like what?” demanded Lucy sharply.
“The way she did two days ago. Without even a word to me. And not even packing a bag from what I could tell from looking at her clothes. But she said everything was all right over the telephone, and for me not to worry and to call her office the next morning and say it was an emergency and she’d be away a few days. And that’s when she asked me to look in her book and get your address and phone number for her, and so I thought of course she’d call you right away.”
“I think you’d better tell me everything about it,” said Lucy firmly.
“There isn’t much, really. I went to work that day — day before yesterday, and Arlene stayed home with a little cold. It wasn’t anything bad but she was taking aspirin and thought she’d better rest. Then she wasn’t here when I came back after work. I thought nothing of that — she might have felt better and gone to a movie or something, and then about seven o’clock she called me on the telephone.”
“What did she say?”
“Well, she sounded kind of funny. I don’t know. Worried, I guess, or scared. But she said I wasn’t to worry and everything was all right, but she had to make a trip to Miami unexpectedly and would I look in her book for Lucy Hamilton’s Miami address. She was in an awful hurry and didn’t want to talk any, so I did and then she hung up. And that’s just all. I told the policeman about it and he seemed to think it was funny, too.”
“Do you know her brother Jack?”
“I had the pleasure of meeting him a few months ago.” Miss Grant’s voice was disdainful. “Once was enough.”
“Has Arlene mentioned him recently?”
“I don’t think so. I told her what I thought of the way he acted, and she—”
“I know. But I wondered if you knew he was in Miami. Do you think she was coming here to meet him?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. She didn’t say why she was going. Just that it was important and she’d explain it all to me when she got back. Say, this phone call must be costing you a mint from Miami. Want to hang up?”
“I... guess so. Thanks so much. If you hear anything from Arlene, please call me collect.”
“I’ll be happy to. Well... good night.”
Lucy told her good night and cradled the phone. She sat very still, resting her throbbing forehead in one palm and trying to think what this news meant. So Arlene was in Miami! Yet she hadn’t contacted Lucy, even though phoning at the last moment to get her address.
Her trip had to do with Jack, of course. That seemed obvious. Some sort of trouble he was in involving seventy or eighty thousand dollars that had caused Arlene’s emergency trip.
Some sort of trouble that had culminated in Jack’s death tonight — and the death of a girl in an Eighteenth Street rooming-house and of another girl also from New Orleans who had told Shayne she had planned to meet her husband in front of the rooming-house and whom a mysterious stranger had identified as a Mrs. Allerdice over the telephone.
A horrible thought struck Lucy as she sat there. Could either of the two girls be, in fact, Arlene Bristow? She thought back frantically to everything she had heard said about the first victim.
Either Will Gentry or Timothy Rourke had mentioned her extreme youth. About sixteen, hadn’t they said? Arlene must be almost thirty. And Gladys Smith was said to have been staying at the rooming-house for some time. Obviously, she couldn’t be Arlene.
But the other? The one who had accosted Shayne at the scene and whom he had taken to a motel for the night?
What was known about her? Michael hadn’t described her in any detail. Shabbily dressed and hungry and pathetic, was the impression Lucy had gained. And she had claimed she was meeting her husband. Arlene certainly couldn’t be married or her roommate would have mentioned it.
And, Lucy told herself at last with flooding relief, Michael had taken Jack Bristow’s corpse out to her in the hope she would identify him as her husband. So, she couldn’t be Arlene. Because she had not recognized Jack.
Wait a minute, though. Michael had mentioned something queer about her reaction when she saw Jack. He was ready to swear it wasn’t the man she had expected to see when he said he was bringing her husband in, but at the same time there had been something odd about her denial of knowing him. Shayne had sensed it at the time.
Could Arlene have recognized her brother and denied it? Possibly. If the situation were desperate enough to call for that. After all, it was pretty obvious that Jack was mixed up in something and Arlene knew it. To admit that she recognized him would have been to give away her own identity. With two murders already unsolved—
Lucy Hamilton got up shakily, but her features were set in a mold of grim determination. This was one thing she could do. Something she alone could do.
She could make certain that the young woman who had drowned horribly in the trunk of the gray sedan in Biscayne Bay either was or was not Arlene Bristow.
Either way seemed awfully important to Lucy. And probably no one else in Miami could do it.
It was terrible to think of her old friend dying that way, and she tried not to let her mind dwell on it as she hurried into the bedroom for her bag and a light wrap. After all, she and Arlene hadn’t been really close friends.
She hesitated a little as she came back, shuddering in revulsion at what she must do, yet determined to go through with it.
Let’s see. Where would she go? To the morgue, she supposed. But would the body have been taken there already? She closed her eyes and tried to remember what she knew of police routine. An unidentified body would inevitably end up at the morgue, she knew, but not how soon it might be expected to reach there.
She went to the telephone and called police headquarters, explained what she wanted to know to the first voice that answered, and was switched to two other gruffly official voices before a member of the Harbor Squad supplied the information.
“Yes, ma’am. She’ll be at the morgue pending identification or maybe an autopsy. You think you maybe know—”
“I’m not sure. It might be — my sister Maggie. I just don’t know. I’m scared to death to go down there, but—”
“Nothing to be afraid of, miss. It’s your duty to go down and check.” She listened silently while he gave her explicit directions as to the procedure so late at night, and thanked him for his courtesy after a time and hung up.
Then she telephoned for a cab and hurried out of the apartment, waited impatiently downstairs in the small foyer until a taxi drew up outside.
The driver was middle-aged and round-faced, and when Lucy got in and gave him the address she had been provided over the telephone, he looked back at her disapprovingly over his shoulder and asked, “Ain’t that the morgue, miss?”