He saw that he had finally managed to reach her. There was a tense line between her eyebrows. Her eyes were steady on his face.
He said less harshly, “How did you make the arrangements, by phone? You couldn’t accept anonymous material. You had to have a name to go with it. I’ve been telling you how this will look to a jury. That doesn’t mean I think it happened that way. I think you were fooled, Candida, badly fooled. There’s only one person who could do it, and only one way it could be done. One important thing is missing. Until I get that, the rest of it isn’t worth a goddamn.”
“Stop!” Forbes said. “Tell me one thing. Do you think Ruthie was murdered?”
“Yes,” Shayne said bleakly. “And I think it was meant to be written off as a suicide. The fact that you and Candida were with her before she went to sleep couldn’t have been arranged in advance. But it gives me a lever, and I mean to use it. You have a choice: talk to me now or the D.A. in the morning.”
“I haven’t concealed anything,” Forbes said sullenly. Candida picked up her drink. It was a Scotch highball, nearly full. She tilted the glass higher and higher and set it down empty.
“Forbes sold me the folder,” she said.
Forbes shot out of his chair. “How can you lie like that? Whatever Shayne wants to think happened when Ruthie went to bed, I know what happened! She took two sleeping pills and her birth-control pill and asked me to get in with her and hold her until she fell asleep. Then the phone rang. I don’t know what you said to her, but it woke her up. She told me to go. If anybody gave her any extra pills, it was you! When I worked on the proofs of the report, I took them home one weekend. Ruthie was with me. Did you hire her to sneak them out to you? Did you?”
He started for Candida. Shayne moved between them.
“Shut up, Forbes! Candida’s going to tell us what happened. Sit down and listen.”
He backed Forbes into his chair and then returned to Candida.
“O.K., it’s the middle of April,” he said. “You can see there’s no hope of getting what you want out of Walter Langhorne. You’re about ready to start putting the heat on Jose Despard. Take it from there.”
She held out her glass and he poured Scotch over the ice.
“Hal got a phone call at the office,” she said. “It was a man’s voice. Hal buzzed me and I listened on an extension. The voice was faint and very fuzzy, as though he was speaking through a tissue stretched over the mouthpiece. Walter had a way of using synonyms for common expressions, and this man did the same thing. But I knew instantly that it wasn’t Walter. It was somebody else who wanted us to think it was Walter. He offered us the T-239 material.”
“Who suggested the country-club locker?”
“He did. He gave us precise instructions. There were two packages. The first one had every alternate page of the report, pages one, three, five and so on. Hal picked it up. We checked with United States. They were delighted and told us to go ahead. We wrapped thirty thousand dollars in fifties and hundreds and Hal left it in the locker. Somebody picked it up and left the even-numbered pages.”
“Somebody!” Forbes said. “We all belong to that club-the company pays for our memberships. What makes you think you can pin it on me?”
Shayne explained,
“The club bartender was one of their people. They gave him a list of Despard executives. He clocked them in and out on the crucial dates.”
“And we ruled out everybody but you, Forbes,” Candida said. “But we had to be really sure. Walter had told me enough about you and your friends so I knew where to look. I found out about Ruth and your poker losses. I went to New York and tracked down Lou Johnson. I offered to buy your IOU’s. He didn’t have them. He’d mailed them to a Miami P.O. box. He got his money April twenty-fourth, in fifties and hundreds.”
Forbes pushed back his long hair with both hands. “Is that true? It can be checked.”
“It’s true, Forbes.”
He looked from Candida to Shayne. “It looks bad, doesn’t it? But I didn’t do it. I went through a kind of semi-crackup after Mother died. If you have proof I was in the club on the right days, I suppose I was there, but I wasn’t playing golf. I didn’t call Begley pretending to be Walter. I know nothing at all about this exchange of packages. I didn’t give Johnson any money.” He threw out both hands. “I’ll take a lie-detector test.”
Shayne grinned sardonically. “I believe everything you say. That doesn’t mean I won’t turn you in at seven o’clock tomorrow unless you can give me something more than a simple denial.”
“What else can I give you? I’ve been thinking about it for six months. I haven’t been able to move it an inch.”
Shayne looked at his watch. “You’ve got four and a half hours. We won’t get anywhere with questions and answers. Whoever rigged this thought of all the questions and made sure of the answers in advance. I wasn’t impressed with this soul-session technique when I first heard about it, but I can see it might have possibilities if the people involved really want to make it work. You and Candida have a pretty good incentive-think up an explanation or go to jail.”
He refilled his glass and looked at Candida.
“Forget about T-239 and those locker-room arrangements. All that is incidental. What I want to find out is what you’re doing in that crummy job.”
“But what possible connection-”
He rode her down. “You’re sleeping with Begley, aren’t you? Do you have any respect for him, in bed or any other place? It took me ten seconds to see that you have the makings of a very nice girl. What happened to you?”
She had fallen back, her eyes burning in her dead-white face. He continued to hold her eyes. “You recognized the real thing when you met Walter Langhorne, in spite of the fact that he was twice your age. You couldn’t bring yourself to set him up for the usual blackmail squeeze. That left you with Jose. Think about those infrared photographs for a minute. You didn’t want to go ahead with that mess, did you? You’re not as tough as you think. You jumped at the telephone offer without insisting on a face-to-face meeting, which is against all the rules. Even so, how do you think that kid Deedee is going to turn out? She’s seventeen. Her parents threw her out of the house-I think I’ll get her in on this,” he added suddenly. “It might do her some good.”
“Don’t,” Candida said faintly.
Shayne wheeled on Forbes. “What attracted you to Ruth Di Palma? Forget about the jams you’ve been in over the years. Just stay with that one point. I only saw her for ten minutes, but I liked her. But she wasn’t for you, and she had the sense to know it. What hooked you?”
There was a thoughtful expression on the boy’s handsome dark face. He poured some whiskey. Candida moved to the terrace. After waiting a moment, Shayne made several quiet-voiced phone calls.
When Candida came back, she sat on the foot of the bed facing Forbes’s chair.
“I think he’s right. I don’t want to talk about the points he raised about me. Not right now. Later I think I can. I’m wondering about the stories you write. They meant something special to Walter. Do you think you’re really a writer, or is it just something to keep from thinking of yourself as a rich boy with a rich father?”
Shayne checked the level in the cognac bottle and put it on the floor. He sat down with his back against the wall, lit a cigarette and settled down to listen.
CHAPTER 18
When Jose Despard arrived, looking gray and distraught, Shayne took him to the terrace and explained the ground rules. If they found the answer he wanted by seven in the morning, it was possible that Jose’s adventure with Deedee would never become public knowledge.