“That’s right,” Chief Gentry said. “If Slim really is in trouble either with the syndicate or the island governments, he could need a lot more than ten million.”
“Sure,” Shayne said. “Old Harvey alive and maybe willing to back him with a really big bag of money, could have been worth a lot more to Slim. He’d want to keep him alive, not kill him.”
“But suppose Harvey had already turned down the idea of staking Slim,” Gentry said. “We don’t know that he didn’t.”
“We don’t know that he did either,” Shayne said. “Of course if that was so, the ten million would look better than nothing. But I think Slim’s the frugal type. He wouldn’t want to waste his own yacht.”
“The crew was ashore,” Gentry said. “They say Slim phoned and told them to take the night off. On the other hand the man who took the call can’t swear it was Slim’s voice. It sounded like him... So where does that leave us all? With one dead millionaire and three red headed women for suspects is where?”
“Correction,” Mike Shayne said. “For suspects we have three beautiful redheads, Slim Peters, and everybody else who was on Key Paradiso the night old Harvey Peckinbaugh died.”
“This is in my jurisdiction since they all came up here,” Chief Gentry said. “I’m going to have my boys look into this. I’ll have a tail on Slim and Sally Peters too. He won’t be throwing any bombs now for, sure.” Gentry shifted his cigar.
“I’m not satisfied he was the one,” Shayne said again. “Maybe, maybe not. We can’t even be sure it was a man threw that bomb. Gould have been a woman in man’s clothes — or a goon hired for the one hit. By then it was pretty well dark.”
“What are you going to do then?”
“Della Peckinbaugh said she was going to set up a ‘family’ conference,” Shayne said. “That will be sometime tomorrow. Since I’m supposed to be working for her, I’ll invite myself in. By that time I think I’ll know enough to expose the killer.”
That was all he would say.
X
Mike Shayne spent the rest of the night in Tim Rourke’s apartment. Not only did he want to be there in case another attack was made on his lanky friend, but there was also a chance that the killer might make another attempt to contact the ace writer by phone.
“Sooner or later he’ll have to call or kill,” Shayne said. “He can’t just sit and wait to see what we do. Not as long as he thinks you really do know his identity, he can’t.”
“I don’t envy his frame of mind right now,” Rourke agreed. “He must be pretty sure we escaped both his bombs. After that the natural thing would be for us to spill our guts to the cops. He must be wondering if there’s already a warrant out for him.”
“On the other hand he won’t dare break and run for it,” Shayne said, “for two reasons. In the first place that would be a dead giveaway. Anybody innocent right now has got to stick around. In the second place, if he runs...”
“Don’t you mean if she runs?”
“Maybe so. Maybe not. Anyway it’s easiest just to say he. If he runs he loses whatever it was he killed for. That is, he does if it was money that was the motive. Of course if it was hate or jealousy...”
“That’s an interesting word, jealousy,” Tim Rourke said. “How come you suddenly start using it? Of course all three of the beautiful redheads have some reason to be jealous of each other.”
“So they do,” Mike Shayne agreed and tugged his ear lobe with one thumb and forefinger. “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind though. I suppose it’s the idea of motive that bugs me most in this case. All three women stand to get a lot of money by the murder, but not exactly the sort that makes for murder. Della gets the most of course, but she’d get it anyway. They’d all get it anyway. Nobody has to kill.”
“Dolly Dawn might lose hers if Harvey cooled off on her and changed his will,” Rourke pointed out.
“Harvey was a long way from cooling off on that one,” Shayne said. “Remember she was the only girl friend that actually got in the will without marrying him. No, I’m just not satisfied. There has to be another motive, or somebody else with a motive.”
“Maybe one of the men close to Harvey,” Rourke said. “Maybe even Buzby, though I don’t think so. What would he have to gain? As far as we know he’s not in the will, and besides he’s been like a member of the family for the last five years since Della married Peckinbaugh. He should be loyal to his boss if anyone in the world was. How about the servants?”
“If it was the servants, Sam Hill would have smelled it out. Sam’s no fool.”
“What are we going to do then?”
“First of all I’m going to try to make sure nobody gets close to you with another bomb. Then I’ll give the killer a chance to give himself away, Killers are like cats on a hot tin roof, Tim. They can’t sit still, and anything they do, anything at all, has a tendency to give them away. I want this one to make another move.”
The night wore on, and the two friends took turns getting some sleep. Nothing untoward happened.
In the morning Tim Rourke phoned down to the condominium restaurant and had hot breakfasts sent up.
About nine o’clock nothing had happened and Mike Shayne was getting restless. He and Tim Rourke went on down to Shayne’s second floor Flagler Street office. Lucy Hamilton was already there.
Shayne called Will Gentry and learned that Della Peckinbaugh had a suite of rooms in the largest and most expensive of Boulevard hotels facing Miami’s Bayfront Park.
“The hotel’s part of the Peckinbaugh estate, so she moved right in,” Gentry said. “In case it matters to you, we have the place staked out.”
He also gave the addresses of the, less pretentious hotels where Dolly Dawn and the Peters had taken rooms.
“Harvey’s confidential man Buzby is in the same hotel as the widow,” he added. “He and a couple of secretaries and lawyers who flew in from the west have rooms four flights down from Della’s suite. Incidentally, we found the guy who owned the Dolly. He wants to sue you for causing the destruction of his boat.”
“Just what I needed,” Shayne said. “Tell him to sue the thief.”
“We already did,” Gentry said. “What are you up to, Mike?”
He put through another phone call to Della Peckinbaugh.
“It’s important that I see you this morning, Mrs. Peckinbaugh,” he said. “I think I know who killed your husband, but I’m going to have to have your cooperation to prove it.”
“Oh thank God you’re alright, Mike Shayne,” she said. “I was afraid you’d been injured last night. Of course you can have all the help and cooperation I can possibly give you. Just tell me what I can do.”
“I’ll have to see you in person,” he said. “I’ve got a long standing rule not to trust phones with the really important conversations. Can I come to the hotel?”
“Of course you can. I just woke up though and I’ll have to bathe and dress and have some breakfast. Suppose you come at twelve noon. I’ll be expecting you then.”
Shayne said: “Fine. I’ll be there,” and hung up.
Tim Rourke looked at him across the desk with a quizzical expression. “So you think you know who killed her husband?” he said. “Come on, boy, and let me in on the secret. Don’t forget he’s trying to kill me too.”
“And me,” Shayne said. “I wish I really did know, but I’m afraid that was mostly bluff for the beautiful widow’s benefit.”
He picked up a copy of the Miami Daily News which Lucy Hamilton had put on his desk. “I see our little bombing spree didn’t hit the front page.”
“It’s on page two of section B,” Lucy told him. “Will Gentry didn’t give out much to the reporters. Just a couple of mystery explosions in North Bay. The police are looking into it. That sort of thing. A couple of the teevy stations didn’t even use the item at all.”