The line went dead from the Miami end.
The little summer house on the Barker estate was just a thing of tile flooring and white wooden pillars roofed over against the hot South Florida sun. It sat just back of the sea wall and fence which separated the beautifully manicured lawn from the waters of Indian Creek. Ellen Barker already had an ice bucket, bottles and glasses on the table under the roof.
She and Rourke put whiskey into their glasses. Mike Shayne took brandy after an appreciative look at the bottle’s label. None of them touched the ice bucket or bottles of mixers.
“You may think I’m losing my mind,” Ellen Barker said to the two men. “There are times when I think maybe I am. Still, when I found out this morning that the brake line on my car had been cut, I knew I couldn’t sit around and wait any longer.”
“Could it have broken by accident?” Rourke asked her.
“No it couldn’t. Pete, my mechanic, is a top man and he says it was cut. Besides this isn’t the first time someone has tried to kill me.”
“Tell us about the other times,” Mike Shayne said with interest. “How can you be sure?”
“I sleep in an air conditioned bedroom,” Ellen Barker said gesturing towards the house. “The second floor corner windows you see there. I like the conditioning on at night. Since they built all those high rise condominiums across Indian Creek there’s a lot of noise at night.
“Of course the conditioner is reverse cycle for heat in cool weather, but there’s also a fireplace with a gas log that I use sometimes. Two weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night. I’m usually a sound sleeper, but something disturbed me. It’s lucky I did. The air conditioning was turned off and the gas log turned on but not lit. The room was filling with gas.”
She stopped there.
“I see,” Shayne said. “If you hadn’t come awake you’d have been overcome with gas within minutes. Are you sure that couldn’t have been an accident either?”
She gave him a long, level look. “Of course I’m sure. I distinctly remember turning the air conditioner on. This time of year I don’t touch the gas log. I’m absolutely sure somebody else came into my room after I fell asleep.”
“Mike had to ask,” Tim Rourke said.
“I believe you, Mrs. Barker,” Shayne said.
“Call me Ellen, Mike.”
“Okay then, Ellen. Who could have gotten in the room besides yourself?”
“Anybody could, I guess,” she said frankly. “Since that happened I’ve kept the bedroom door locked and bolted at night. I never did before. After all, why should I? Any of the servants could have walked in. For that matter any intruder who got into the house itself and knew where I slept could have also walked through the door.”
“So anybody had the opportunity, as pretty near anybody who knew what they were doing could have gotten to your car. That doesn’t narrow the field much, does it?”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t, Mike Shayne,” she said. “But aren’t you forgetting something?”
“He probably is,” Tim Rourke said and laughed.
“What did I forget?” Shayne asked.
“From what I know about police work,” Ellen Barker said seriously, “they always look for two things when they try to find a killer. One’s opportunity, and in my case that doesn’t help at all. The opportunity was wide open.”
“The other is motive,” Shayne finished for her. “Does that help?”
“Of course it does. Only one person really has a reason to want me dead bad enough to try to kill me. Like I tried to tell Tim, it has to be my sister.”
“Then where do I find your sister?” Shayne asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s what you’re hired to do.”
III
A yacht went north through the sparkling blue waters of Indian Creek and the waves of its passing lapped against the sea wall where they sat.
Mike Shayne finished the brandy in his glass and leaned back in his chair.
“You’re going to have to explain that,” he said to Ellen Barker.
“I told Mike I never knew you had a sister,” Tim Rourke added as he refilled his own drink.
“Nobody knows,” Ellen said. “At least nobody but Rod and I and the lawyers.”
“Rod was Ellen’s husband,” Rourke explained. “He died last year.”
“That’s right,” Ellen Barker said. “You knew I was a widow of course. Rod died very suddenly of a heart attack. He was a lot older than I, and all the money — this house, the trust funds, all of it — was his.”
She paused. The two men nodded but said nothing.
“Rod and I were both orphans,” Ellen Barker explained. “The difference was that I was raised in an orphanage and then a foster home, and Rod grew up in a palace with attorneys and trustees and an old maiden aunt to look after him. By the time we married Rod’s aunt was long dead and buried. As far as we knew, neither of us had anyone at all but each other.”
“No one?” Shayne asked.
“My parents died together in a car accident. Father was a working man. They left nothing but a little insurance. The State put my baby sister and myself in an orphanage and we were adopted out in different foster homes. By the time I got old enough to try to trace things nobody had any record of why my parents’ relatives might have been.”
“Surely a name can be traced?” Tim Rourke asked.
“Smith?” she said. “My parents had just moved to the State where they died. After I married, Rod and I tried, but whatever trail there might have been was long cold by then. All we really knew was that a sister a year younger than I had been adopted, but not by whom or where they’d gone.”
“Surely the orphanage kept records,” Shayne said.
“Of course they did, but there’d been a bad fire many years back. A lot of their records had been destroyed at that time, including those we really needed to see. You have to believe me we could find nothing.”
Shayne said, “These things happen. But there’s still one thing that puzzles me.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “If I couldn’t find any trace of my sister, then how could she possibly have traced me? I had all Rod’s money and connections to help, and I couldn’t locate her. How could she find me?”
“That’s what I was thinking,” the big private eye admitted.
“You forget one thing,” Ellen Barker reminded him. “When Rod and I were married his money and position was important. It was a social event. The wedding was featured in the papers here and on the syndicated social pages, and in the big picture news magazines. Anyone in the country could have seen the photos — my picture — and read about my being an orphan. There was no secret made of it at the time.”
“That could have done it,” Shayne agreed.
“I know that did it,” she said. “It was right after the wedding that I got the letter.”
“Letter?” Shayne asked. “What letter?”
“A letter from my sister. A letter threatening me and saying that now she knew who I was she wanted money.”
“But surely, Ellen,” Tim Rourke broke in, “with that letter you knew where your sister was and what name she was using then.”
“I wish we did,” she said. “The letter was unsigned with any name. The last line: ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you.’ It was typed on inexpensive store stationery and postmarked from downtown Chicago. We tried to trace it. Believe me, we tried, but it all came to nothing.”
“Maybe if I could see the letter,” Shayne said.
“Our lawyers have it,” Ellen Barker said. “My lawyers now. With our other papers. I’ll give you a note instructing them to let you see it. I don’t think it will help though.”