Patterson wouldn’t have known about Adele’s police record though. When he found out that, and that Shayne had been to see Adele, his plans would change. He could have killed Adele and her boy friend to cover his own tracks.
Then, in order to cash in what he could, he would think up the kidnap plot. He knew about the cash in the safe deposit box. A stranger wouldn’t have. He could give the money to Shayne and then pick it up himself. Then he would kill Ellen Barker. That would make the missing Adele her heir. All Patterson would have to do would be to find another sister in Adele Miller’s place and split the millions with her.
It had seemed simple and logical to Shayne.
If Millie, as Shayne thought, was Patterson’s contact inside the Barker home she would know him when he picked up the ransom and give herself away to Tim Rourke and Lucy Hamilton. At least Tim and Lucy would see him pick up the ransom and could identify him later.
If Patterson was the killer, he’d out-thought the big detective though. Now all he had to do when no kidnaper showed was to pick up the bag and take it away. Shayne couldn’t stop him or even object. The man was the Barker lawyer. He had provided the ransom and could legally reclaim it.
Once away from Mike Shayne, the man could kill Ellen Barker. Then he could choose between running for it with the two hundred thousand dollars or putting it back in the bank and betting on his ability to produce a “Sister” as Ellen’s heir.
“Time’s up,” Patterson said. “Let’s go, Shayne.”
“Wait a bit longer.”
“I can’t wait any longer. The kidnaper’s had plenty of time to get here, and hasn’t showed. That money is my responsibility and I can’t leave it lying around any longer.”
He started to walk back towards the shore end of the fishing pier and Mike Shayne had no choice but to follow him.
For the first time in many years the big detective wondered if he had met his match.
He had a wild impulse to take the money and refuse to give it to the attorney, but he knew he couldn’t. Patterson might be innocent. If he wasn’t, he could still defy Shayne to find proof while Ellen Barker lingered and died where she was hidden.
They reached the shore end of the pier and Nicholas Patterson picked the blue suitcase off the bench where it still rested.
“You can drive me back to the office now, Shayne,” he said. “I’ll look after this while we wait to see if the kidnaper makes another contact.”
It was then that the open convertible pulled out of the parking lot down the line and drove quickly up to stop a few feet from the two men.
Tim Rourke was at the wheel and Lucy Hamilton on the outside of the front seat. Between them sat a very grim faced Millie.
“That’s your man, Mike,” Tim Rourke called to his friend Mike Shayne. “The girl here fingered him.”
Nicholas Patterson said: “What—”
Millie let out a yell then. “No, don’t believe him. I never! Nickie, I never—”
“You did now,” Mike Shayne said.
Then he felt the gun muzzle rammed into his back. The lawyer held it in a steady hand.
“Don’t anybody move or I kill Mike Shayne,” Patterson said. “And I start on the rest of you.”
He set the bag down long enough to take Shayne’s gun and drop it into his pocket. Then he picked up the money again.
“Millie and Rourke get out of that car,” Patterson commanded. “Make it quick. Miss Hamilton, you stay in the seat. You’re my hostage. If the boys try to follow, you die.”
“Take me with you,” Millie said.
Patterson didn’t even answer her.
He got in the front seat of the car, held the gun on Lucy Hamilton with his right hand, and put the car in gear with his left. The car began to move.
The lawyer had never considered that Tim Rourke might have a gun.
Rourke got it out of his hip pocket and passed it to Mike Shayne. The big detective used it to shoot out both rear tires of the car before it had moved fifty feet away.
Patterson hadn’t the stomach to make a fight of it then. He got out of the car with his hands up.
“All right,” Mike Shayne said. “Where have you got Ellen Barker hid out? Who’s watching her... her missing sister?”
Patterson almost laughed.
“Her sister has been dead for years,” he said. “I should know. Her sister was my mother.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever understand,” Ellen Barker said when Mike Shayne and the Miami Police had found her tied and gagged in Patterson’s apartment. “If he was really my nephew, why didn’t he say so in the first place? I would have given him anything he wanted within reason.”
“What that sort want is never within reason,” Chief Gentry said. “If his mother had been alive or he could have produced a false mother, he’d have killed you anyway. You’re an attractive woman. You could marry again and have a child. His best chance was to kill you while that will was still good. Then I suppose he’d discover who he was and claim to be the heir. Once you were dead, he would be the legal heir since his mother was already dead. It was an accident he worked for that law firm and that you married Barker, but it seemed to him that gave him his chance for all that money.”
“The mind of a thief and killer isn’t like yours, Ellen,” Mike Shayne said. “Besides, both Nick and his mother hated you. That letter you got was genuine, he says. Nick had lost touch with his mother, but when he followed up the letter he found her again. When she died of a heart attack, he decided to go it alone. He might have gotten away with it too, if Millie hadn’t given him away to Tim and Lucy in the car.”
“She didn’t give him away,” Rourke said. “She never said a word when you two walked out on the pier. She stiffened up, though, every muscle tight as a banjo string. It had to mean something. While we waited for you to come back I decided to take a long chance and do what I did.”
“It’s a good thing you did,” Chief Gentry said.
“If you hadn’t he might have got away with the whole plot,” Lucy Hamilton agreed.
Mike Shayne said only: “Brandy. I think I need a double brandy and as fast as I can get my hands on a bottle.”
I Apologize
by Gil Brewer
Death was stalking me, out in the dark, even here by my side. They had planned it well. It was my last taste of Life— Unless...
I watched Myra come in the front entrance, cross the foyer, and step down into the broad living room. Something was the matter. She could not keep that fact from me. I knew her much too well. Glistening white teeth nibbled at her lower lip. One hand fussed with golden blonde hair, and the other slapped a black purse against the ice-blue skirt of her crisp suit.
I walked over to her.
“Oh, Harry—”
“Something troubling you?”
Abruptly, she gave a sob, and ran across the room, flinging her purse into a chair. She went to the mobile bar and began pouring a drink.
I put one hand across my mouth and stared at her back.
She turned, leaning lightly against the bar, holding the drink in a trembling hand.
“Myra, what is it?”
“Oh, Harry, it’s awful!”
I moved across the room, worried. “You’d better tell me what’s the matter, Myra.”