Shortly afterwards Shayne got up and walked back to his office. He spent the next couple of hours on the phone, long distance, to newspaper offices, banks and stock brokers in Harvey Peckinbaugh’s home town in the west. Tim Rourke was also busy talking to friends and news sources in the financial community of Miami.
XI
At nine o’clock the same evening Mike Shayne, Tim Rourke and Police Chief Will Gentry were in the lobby of the hotel where Della Peckinbaugh was staying waiting for the elevator to the penthouse apartment. From a distance they had watched Dolly Dawn take the elevator, followed shortly afterwards by the Peters.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Mike,” the Chief was saying.
“I’ve got this place staked out just like you said. You know that’s all I can do. Without some evidence I can’t even get a search warrant, let alone arrest anybody.”
“I think I can show you some evidence within the next half hour,” Mike Shayne said.
“I certainly hope you can. My boys haven’t been able to turn up a thing so far, any more than Sam Hill has down at Key Paradiso.”
“This isn’t that sort of evidence,” Shayne said. “This isn’t the sort that you can leave lying around for a cop to pick up, not even the best cop in the world. This evidence is what’s inside the killer. He doesn’t leave it lying around, but he can’t hide or destroy it either. He has to carry it wherever he goes. In a few minutes I’m going to give him a chance to show it to us.”
“All I can say is you’d better know what you’re talking about,” Chief Gentry said. “Well, come on. Let’s go.”
They found the group from the Key Paradiso party waiting in the luxurious, softly lighted living room of the hotel penthouse.
Della Peckinbaugh sat at the head of a carved mahogany library table. Her hair was beautifully coifed and she wore a midnight blue evening dress, which set off her superb figure to perfection, and a rope of sapphires and pearls around her neck. Bill Buzby, in a tuxedo, and two dignified men who were introduced as members of the late Harvey Peckinbaugh’s legal staff were at the table with her.
Dolly Dawn sat in an upholstered wing chair over by the big picture window. She looked calm, aloof and faintly withdrawn from the whole affair.
Slim and Sally Peters were side by side on a big couch near the library table. Slim wore a white linen suit and a black bow tie. The jacket was loose enough to conceal a shoulder holster. Shayne couldn’t tell if the lanky gambler was wearing one. Sally was in a matching white linen pants suit. Her magnificent red hair was piled high on her head and fastened with a flaming pearl and diamond beret.
Chief Gentry and Tim Rourke sat on another sofa facing the Peterses. Mike Shayne went to the library table and took a chair at one end.
A servant served a round of drinks, in which no one seemed particularly interested.
“I’ll get right to the point,” Della Peckinbaugh said then in a cool and incisive tone. “You all know Mr. Mike Shayne. I think you know who he is and why I’ve asked him to be here tonight. I hired Mike Shayne to find the killer of my husband after it became apparent that the police were not doing so. This morning Mike told me that he had succeeded and would name that person tonight.
“Mike Shayne — you have the floor.”
Apart from the two attorneys, the room exhibited the finest collection of inscrutable poker faces that Will Gentry had ever seen. No one said a word or even stirred a finger.
“Mrs. Peckinbaugh is right,” Shayne said after he had let the pause drag itself out until every nerve was tense. “I know who killed Harvey Peckinbaugh. I am going to name him tonight.”
He paused again, took out a cigar, and preceded to light and puff it slowly and carefully.
“My God, man,” one of the attorneys said, “Why don’t you cut out the theatrics. Name the killer.”
Shayne kept silent almost a moment longer. “All in good time,” he said. “First I think that all of you, and particularly the killer, are entitled to know how I came to my conclusions. You see, it was the killer in person who gave me the answers one by one. If he hadn’t made one basic error and then compounded that error over and over, this crime might have gone forever unsolved, and the killer been perfectly safe.”
“Tell us,” Della Peckinbaugh said.
“Tim Rourke blundered onto the scene of the murder,” Shayne said. “The killer saw and recognized Tim. His fatal mistake was that he thought Rourke also recognized him. Tim didn’t. All he saw was a confused scuffle in darkness. He didn’t even know he’d seen a killing, let alone who the parties were.”
Shayne looked from face to face. None of them changed expression in the slightest.
“The killer wasn’t a professional,” Shayne said. “If he or she had been, then Tim would never have left that shadowed grove by the sea alive. His body would have been put in the skiff along with Harvey Peckinbaugh’s to sink into the Gulf Stream too.
“The killer was an amateur who would kill only for a personal reason. He didn’t think fast enough or realistically enough. He let Tim walk away.
“That was his second mistake. His first and worst was to assume that Tim had recognized him. All the other mistakes grew out of that first one.
“Of course the killer didn’t know Tim Rourke. Tim is a brave and honest man. If he had realized a murder had been taking place, he would have interfered even at the risk of his own life. If he had recognized the two people in the thicket, he would have gone to Sam Hill as soon as he knew that Harvey was murdered.
“The killer didn’t even consider this. The killer thought that Rourke was a blackmailer, as he himself would have been. This in itself tells us a lot about the killer.
“He tried to buy Tim Rourke’s silence. When that failed and he found out I was associated with the case, he tried to kill us both. He tried and failed more than once. Each time he did, he made more mistakes that pointed more and more clearly to his own identity.
“At first all of you here tonight were possible suspects, except for you gentlemen,” Shayne turned to the lawyers, “because each of you had the opportunity and a possible motive to kill.
“By his actions the killer eliminated you one by one until the only suspect remaining was the right one.”
Shayne’s cigar had gone out. He took his time striking a match and relighting it. The tension in the room almost reached the breaking point.
“Miss Dawn was a suspect because she was in Harvey’s will for a very large sum,” Shayne said. “On the other hand she seems to have really been fond of him. She was too small and slight to have overcome him in a fight. She had nothing to gain by his death at this particular time. Most important of all, it has been established that she couldn’t have tried to bomb Rourke and myself last night. At the time that happened she was eating dinner in a public place. You might say the killer cleared her himself by the time of the bombing.
“That yacht where we were to have been bombed belonged to Slim Peters. I don’t think he would have planned to destroy it. It was worth a lot of money to Slim, and not insured against bombing. I talked to the insurance people today. In Slim’s business they’re careful what insurance they write.
“Besides, I think Slim would kill with a gun, not a bomb.
“Of course even Della Peckinbaugh could be a suspect. Her motive? To free herself from a man she found intolerable, a man who flaunted his mistresses before her, who treated her with scorn and whom she dispised.”
Della Peckinbaugh stirred in anger.
Shayne raised one big hand. “Hold on. You could have been a suspect. I’m not saying yet you are the killer. You had the most to lose by killing and to gain by waiting till Harvey died a natural death of anyone. If you killed him and were caught, you couldn’t inherit one dime. Why risk that?