“On the other hand,” Adele Miller said, and with a new glint in her eye this time, “maybe it ain’t quite all over for me yet. Maybe little Adele can still stay in the picture anyhow.”
“Clue me in,” the big man said.
“You can see it,” Adele told him. “I know for sure by both you guys showing up that Ellen Barker really is looking for a sister. You claim to represent her. This other shmoe says he has proof to give a phony the right face. You catch?”
“I’m beginning to see the light,” Shayne said.
“You go on and look real hard till that light shines bright,” Adele said. “Suppose I say I change my mind? Suppose I get all this proof given me, whatever it is? What do you suppose sweet Ellen would pay me for that?”
“It could be worth money,” the big redhead admitted. “That is it could if there really is any proof. Who is this guy says he can supply it?”
“I ain’t fool enough to tell you that,” Adele said, and Shayne could see that she meant it. “Right now that name is the only thing I got that’s worth money. I ain’t going to throw it away. You go see Ellen and you get me an offer. If it’s big enough, I’ll see what I can do.”
And that was all Mike Shayne could get out of her.
Ten minutes later he left the apartment after promising to talk to Ellen Barker.
He barely got out the front door onto the sidewalk when he was rushed by the man he’d thrown out of Adele Miller’s apartment. The man was still shirtless. He had a heavy rock in his hand. He was still high on whatever he’d been taking.
Mike Shayne dodged the clumsy rush and stuck out one foot.
The man tripped over it and stumbled out into the street, and that’s when the car hit him.
The car was a small black ‘bug’ and it was coming up the street very fast from the direction of the bay. It hit the man hard, slamming his body into the trunk of a palm tree.
The little car didn’t stop, but shot on up the street and out into Biscayne Boulevard traffic.
VII
Neighbors who had seen the accident ran out onto the street. Mike Shayne knew they would call police and an ambulance. He didn’t want to get further involved. One look at the crumpled body in the gutter told him that the man was dead. Apparently no one had seen the attack or noticed Shayne trip the man.
He went and got his own car out of the parking lot.
The last half hour had given the big man plenty to think about. Of course he couldn’t really be sure that the little black bug which had run down and killed Adele Miller’s ex boy friend was the same car which had tailed him all the way from Police Headquarters to this street. At no time had he been able to see who was driving the little car — or even if the driver was a man or a woman.
Suppose it was the same car. Was the driver out to kill the man he had struck in the street, or was he really aiming for Mike Shayne himself? Well, that could wait. No way of getting the answers to those questions right off the bat.
The most important thing Mike Shayne had learned, the thing that needed answering first of all, was the identity of the man who had propositioned Adele Miller to impersonate the long lost sister.
Here was a factor Shayne had neither expected nor reckoned on. A sister full of resentment, hate and bitterness and lurking in the wings was menace enough, but a man smart and ruthless enough to plan such an impersonation was quite a different thing. Such a man could be very dangerous indeed.
Whoever he was he probably knew all about Ellen and her letter from her sister and the search that followed. That didn’t narrow the field very much though. Plenty of people from the police forces of Miami and Chicago to the private agencies Ellen and her dead husband had hired knew about that. Some body could have talked too much. The thing wasn’t a secret anyway.
Mike Shayne took one big hand off the wheel and tugged an ear lobe between thumb and forefinger.
The man’s offer to supply Adele Miller with proofs of her new identity was another big question mark in the case. Did he have such proofs? And where could he have gotten them unless he was acting for the real sister? But if he was, then why did they need Adele? Why didn’t the real Adele just come forth and make herself known?
Of course a clever man with money who knew the story could have bought forged evidence good enough to have fooled most people.
Why then offer it to Adele Miller? Apparently the man didn’t know how vulnerable her past police record made the beauty operator.
He didn’t think Adele knew anything about Ellen’s will leaving the whole fortune to her missing sister. Adele was thinking in terms of a gift to the sister or a price to be paid for information, perhaps even of future possibilities for some very lucrative blackmail.
It was a very tangled web that had been spun about Ellen Barker — and now about Mike Shayne himself.
Shayne drove straight across the Julia Tuttle Causeway to Miami Beach and then to the Barker mansion. The front door was closed and bolted and Ellen Barker and Tim Rourke both came to the door to let him in.
Shayne had decided not to tell Ellen Barker what he had learned until the next morning. Time enough then to upset her with his news. In the meantime he wanted her to get a good night’s rest. She would probably need it, the way things were shaping up.
Lucy Hamilton went up to share the big bedroom and the kingsized four poster bed with Ellen Barker. Lucy saw to it that doors and windows were securely locked. She knew that one or both of the men would be awake and alert during the balance of the night.
Both women were soon asleep.
Downstairs in the study Tim Rourke and Mike Shayne sat over a bottle of the best imported French brandy. Now that the women were safely out of earshot Shayne told his friend everything that had happened that evening.
Rourke was smart enough to catch the implications behind the facts.
“After that grenade business I knew Ellen was in danger right enough,” the lanky news ace said, “but I thought it was simply a jealous sister. I was half ready to believe the whole thing might be just to scare her, like you said that grenade might be. But now—”
“Pass me over that brandy,” Shayne said. “Yes, now it begins to look like a professional job. It’s no longer an angry woman but somebody who can and will plan things out. The motive has to be different than jealousy or revenge.”
“The big motive,” Rourke agreed, “to be specific, is a handful of millions of dollars. To a planner and a schemer on that scale it makes a motive worth killing for.”
“Yes, it does,” Shayne said, “and I think he or she has already killed for it once tonight. I don’t think that poor slob who tried to jump me was run down by accident. I think somebody figured he knew too much and saw a chance to knock him off without any fuss and without it looking like murder.”
“Or he could have been trying for you, maestro.”
“Maybe when he started the car. That is when he saw me come out the door of the apartment house. Then rumdum jumped me and the driver of the car must have seen that too. He came right on and picked off the guy in the street. If he’d wanted me most, he could have hit me, but he’d have to swerve the little car up onto the sidewalk. There wasn’t any swerve. He hit the man he wanted.”
“You say ‘he’,” Rourke said. “Did you see the driver?”
“No I didn’t, and it could have been a woman. Could even be the missing sister. However, I think it was a man. The only one I’m sure it wasn’t is Adele. I left her upstairs.”
“Speaking of Adele,” Rourke said. “Isn’t she likely to be the next one they go for?”
“Sure she is, but if I warn her she’s likely to jump the county, and she knows things I need to know. I can’t be over there to watch after her and here guarding Ellen Barker at the same time, and Ellen’s my client. I’m going to have to bet Adele is smart enough to keep herself alive for a while longer without any help.”