“You have some idea who might have wanted him dead then?” the big detective asked her.
“Ideas? Course I got ideas! So does everybody else ever knew that mean old man. Every living soul ever came close to John Wingren wanted him dead one time or other.”
“So?”
“Don’t look so surprised, you big cop. Ask around and you’ll find out for yourself. He was a mean man, John was. A nasty, mean old man.”
“Was he mean to you, too?”
She looked up at the big redhead out of beady, suspicious old eyes. “I ain’t talking about that. Think you’re going to blame something on me, don’t you? I know how you bums work it. Well, I ain’t going to take the rap for nobody. I said I used to work for John, not that I did lately. Oh, no. I wised up. I did, and good riddance to him. It’s two full years since I been inside that house.”
“What happened?” Shayne asked. “Did you have a fight with the old man?”
“You go on, get out of here,” she said. “Sure, I had fights with him. Everybody did. But ‘a fight,’ something big I’d want to kill him about? No, indeed. No. You ain’t going to make no murder suspect out of me that way. Now go on, get off my property before I call a real cop to put you off. You want I should do that?”
Mike Shayne stepped back and she slammed the door in his face.
“Old John wasn’t exactly popular with that one,” he told himself as he went on down the walk to the street. “Chances are if she knew who killed him she’d just want to pin a medal on the guy’s chest. Let’s hope somebody else around here will want to be a little more cooperative.”
The next house he stopped at was a duplicate of old Mrs. Mullen’s place, but whoever lived there had kept it up better. The place had had a coat of blue paint not more than a year or so back, and there was an expensive teevy aerial bolted to the side of the chimney.
An old man answered the door. He was thin. One of his legs had been broken and poorly set in the past so that he leaned on a heavy, old-fashioned natural oak cane to support himself as he talked.
“You here about old John being killed?” he said. “Come in. Come right in. I’ll gladly tell you anything I know, though it’s not much. It sure isn’t much.”
“You didn’t see or hear anything suspicious the night of the murder then?”
“Sure. Sure I did, mister, but not to do with the killing of old John. I watch out. This whole side of town is dangerous after dark.” The man’s face was intent, his lips pulled back in what might have been a smile or just a nervous affectation. His eyes fairly glittered. Shayne was wary. He’d seen just that look on emotionally disturbed patients in Jackson Memorial Hospital.
“Maybe you better tell me what you mean,” Shayne said. “By the way, I didn’t get your name.”
“Smith,” the old fellow said. “Just Smith. Buck Smith, to be exact. Corporal Buck Smith, used to be.”
He gestured toward the rock fireplace at the back of the room. Above it on the wall was a faded photo of a troop of cavalry in turn-of-the-century uniforms and a tattered guidon.
More to the point, a long rifle leaned against the corner of the mantel. Shayne recognized it as a government issue 1903 Springfield. He walked over to pick it up.
“Watch out now,” Smith said. “That gun’s loaded. You take care, mister. Wouldn’t want nobody hurt.”
“Neither would I,” Mike Shayne said. He checked the gun. It was loaded, all right, and when he sniffed the muzzle he could tell by the acrid tang that the weapon had been fired recently.
“It’s all right,” he told Smith. “I understand guns. How come you keep this one loaded anyway?”
“Because I got good sense, that’s why,” the crusty old veteran said. “Like I was going to tell you, this neighborhood has got real dangerous after dark. Prowlers. Hoodlums. Crazy kids with their dope. Robbers. I tell you a man ain’t safe unless he’s ready to defend himself.”
“Have you actually seen any prowlers?” Mike Shayne asked.
“Of course I have, mister. So has everybody this side of town, if they was honest with you about it. Sneaking, thieving, murdering prowlers. They comes round at night, but they leave old Buck alone.”
“Because you’ve got the gun?”
“Because I’m ready for him, that’s why. Had old John Wingren kept a gun he’d be alive right now, most like.” The old fellow started snickering.
“What’s so funny?”
“What’s funny is old John’s dead and I ain’t. All that money he stole and cheated from folks don’t do him no good now. No good at all. I told him I’d spit on his grave, and I will. I surely will.”
“You aren’t sorry he’s dead then?”
“Course not, mister. Nobody ever knew old John will be sorry he died. We’ll all be glad. You was talking to old Jane Mullen. I seen you come from her place. Didn’t she tell you?”
“Well,” Mike Shayne admitted, “I got to say she didn’t seem real unhappy about it.”
“You bet she didn’t. Not since he cut her out of his will,” Corporal Smith chortled. “Fight like cats and dogs they did, ever since that.”
“Recently?” Mike Shayne asked.
“Sure. Last night early she was over to his place again fighting with him. Yelling like a couple of wildcats they was. I could hear them going on and on.”
IV
When Mike Shayne left Buck Smith’s house he decided to go downtown and have a talk with his old friend Will Gentry, the rugged and highly efficient Miami chief of police. He needed some background information on the late John Wingren, and he figured the chief might have it.
He didn’t mention to Sergeant McCloskey what Smith had said about Jane Mullen being in the Wingren home the night before. Smith had regretted letting it slip out at all, Shayne had observed. After that one statement the old man had clammed up and said no more. The big detective had preferred to leave without pressing the old soldier any further.
Actually Shayne wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for at that point. After Lucy Hamilton had opened the subject, he had talked briefly to Anna Wingren on the phone. She had engaged him then for the purpose of finding her grandfather’s fortune.
“He’s supposed to be rich,” she had said. “I know he was the sort who never trusted banks. Whether he has stocks and bonds or jewels or cash or what, I don’t know, but I’ll bet any amount he had it hidden around the house.”
“Some folks think that’s safe,” Shayne had said.
“I begged him to keep it in the bank,” Anna said. “He wouldn’t listen to me any more than he did to Mother when she was still alive. He didn’t trust us, I guess.”
“You realize, of course,” Shayne said, “that if there really was a large sum of money in the house, the killer may very likely have found it and taken it away. It’s the most likely thing to have happened.”
“I know,” she said, “but if he did, then surely you’ll be able to find evidence of it. You don’t have to worry about your fee even in that case, Mr. Shayne. I’ll inherit the house and contents and that will be a good sum.”
“I wasn’t worrying,” Shayne said. “Not where any friend of Lucy’s is concerned. I just wanted to know how far you want me to go to find and recover any money your grandfather may have had in the house.”
“Go as far as you have to,” Anna Wingren had said.
That was where they had left the matter. Now Mike Shayne was beginning to think the case would turn out more difficult than he had expected. Old Wingren was widely hated. It meant any number of people would have had a motive to kill him. The motive might not have been concerned with his money. If it hadn’t been, then the money was probably still in the house. In time, a search and inventory would turn it up.