Lucy sighed as he drove away, and said in a small voice, “So you found out I was telling the truth, Michael. What else did you accomplish?”
“Not much,” he admitted. “Except the small pleasure of slapping the truth out of that punk. So now you are going home, and let’s hope Will Gentry hasn’t sent around for you yet.”
At her apartment building, Shayne got out and went in with her, explaining, “I need a drink and I want to call Tim. Then I’ll get out of your way.”
“You needn’t sound so defensive about it,” she told him merrily as she unlocked the outer door and preceded him inside. “You can have two drinks if you want… and make two telephone calls.”
When she opened her own door and turned on the light, the first thing she saw was the telephone pad with his message where he had left it lying on the floor. She picked it up and read it, then suddenly turned and crumpled against him. “Oh, Michael. I was so damned scared.”
“So was I.” He held her tightly, looking down at the top of her smooth brown head just beneath his lips, and thinking how very dear Lucy Hamilton was to him.
Her telephone started ringing as his arms slowly tightened around her taut body. She said, “Oh, damn!” and moved out of his arms to answer it.
He chuckled and went to the coffee table to pour himself a drink, listening unashamedly to her end of the telephone conversation.
“Oh, Tim. I just this moment got in. I know Michael was worried, but I doubt that you were. Yes, he’s right here. He was just going to call you, believe it or not.” She turned and extended the telephone toward him, saying unnecessarily, “It’s Tim.”
Shayne took a sip of cognac and put the instrument to his ear and said, “Yeh?”
“Mike. Have you got the word on McTige? Your fellow Eye from Chicago?”
Shayne said placidly, “I’m ’way ahead of you on him. I found the guy.”
“You what? Oh, hell, I might’ve known. An anonymous telephone call they said. All right. Trump this one too. Go on and tell me you found Shephard also.”
“Shephard?” Shayne didn’t try to keep the astonishment out of his voice.
“I just got the flash from headquarters and I’m on my way out.”
“Where?”
“About two miles west of the Bright Spot on the Trail. He got it just like McTige, Mike. A conch shell into his temple.”
Shayne said, “I’ll see you,” and pronged the instrument. He turned, tossing off the rest of the cognac, and met Lucy’s anxious eyes.
“Shephard is dead, too. That makes three in one evening, angel. Two of them with a conch shell, according to Tim. Put the chain on your door.” He was on his way out as he finished.
17
Shayne had no trouble locating the murder scene. Driving west on Tamiami Trail, he saw a collection of headlights and several flashing red lights of police cars in a cluster on the right side of the highway leading through the Everglades to Florida’s west coast, and he slowed down to pull off the pavement behind the other parked cars.
Walking forward, he passed Timothy Rourke’s shabby old sedan and Will Gentry’s official car, and beyond there was a culvert with a tall, lone pine standing as a sentinel just beyond it. The Trail was built on about four feet of fill at this point. Beyond the culvert there was a group of men standing around in a circle about the corpse of Steven Shephard brilliantly lighted by spotlights focussed on it from two police cars parked on the edge of the pavement above.
Shayne stopped and looked down at the macabre, floodlighted, midnight scene. The dead man lay on his back. He wore a conservative sport jacket and white shirt with a neat bow tie beneath his chin. His brown hair was thinning in front, and his upper lip wore the mustache Sloe Burn had described to Shayne that afternoon. From this distance and this angle, Shayne could see no wound that had caused Shephard’s death. Beyond the body near the base of the lone pine, Timothy Rourke and a detective sergeant were kneeling beside a hole in the soft loam, about a foot deep and a couple of feet square.
Will Gentry was one of half a dozen men standing about the body and looking down at it. While Shayne hesitated above them on the edge of the pavement, Gentry waved a beefy hand at the body and said something, and turned to plod up the slope. He saw the redhead standing above him, waiting, and his square face tightened impassively as he came level with Shayne. He said, “You got anything to add to what you’ve already told me, Mike?”
Shayne shook his head. “Is that Shephard?”
“I guess. Have to check his fingerprints to be positive, but Rourke says he fits a newspaper picture. He’s got a motel and a rental car receipt in his pocket in the name of Fred Tucker.”
“How long ago, Will?” Shayne pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lit one.
“Couple of hours, maybe. There’s a stab wound in his temple that looks like it would fit the conch shell sticking in McTige’s head… a twin to the one Ralph Billiter had in his coat pocket and threatened Lucy with.”
“What did you get out of Billiter, Will? Did he confirm Lucy’s story?”
“Mostly. He’s a nasty piece of business, and his biggest gripe is that he feels he’s been done out of a big piece of money that he somehow thinks he should have.”
Will Gentry paused, studying Shayne with shrewd, tired eyes. “Are you holding out on me, Mike? Remember, we’ve got three dead ones already tonight.”
Shayne said earnestly: “Will, I didn’t even hold out on you this afternoon. I swallowed Mrs. Renshaw’s story about the Syndicate, hook-line-and-sinker.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Hell, you probably already know how I threw my weight around on the Beach looking for Little Joe Hoffman in order to get a line on a Syndicate killer who’s already been dead for months.”
“I heard about that. And you know what I figure, Mike?”
“No. What do you figure?”
“That it’s just the kind of stunt you might have pulled if you knew who Shephard was all the time and how much money he was worth. Just to throw me off the track,” Gentry spelled it out bitterly, “so I’d do your work for you and give you a chance to either get your hands on the money… or at least collect the reward.”
Shayne said evenly, “You’re going to regret that after you think it over. Tell me one thing, Will.” He gripped the chief’s arm urgently as Gentry started to turn away.
“When you questioned Ralph Billiter about the Pink Flamingo. What actually happened in that motel room?”
“He still claims it was about the same as Lucy got it from him… without a shred of proof, of course. There was a hundred grand in that loaf of bread and he was gathering it up in handfuls off the floor when the two men walked in… McTige and Brannigan, it looks like. In the excitement, Shephard ran out, and McTige took possession of the money at gunpoint after slugging Brannigan who fell and got knocked unconscious by hitting his head. He swears the guy was alive on the floor, but passed out, when he and McTige left. And the whiskey bottle was still standing on the bureau. McTige wasn’t wearing any jacket, and he stripped the black coat off Brannigan to fill the big side pockets with bills. That’s Ralph’s story. Believe as much of it as you like.”
“Yeh,” Shayne said slowly, “so that accounts for one hundred grand. How about the other half of Shephard’s loot?”
“Hasn’t Will told you?” Tim Rourke came panting up the slope in time to hear the question. “From down there it looks like he had the rest of it buried under that tree, and stopped by to dig it up. There was somebody with him or somebody saw him, and that’s when he got the conch shell treatment.”
“Is that right, Will?”
Gentry said gruffly, “It looks like he dug something up with his hands just before he was killed. Who knows whether it was money or not?”