“Like?”
“Like?” She cocked her head, looked up at Shayne quizzically for a couple of seconds. Then she sighed and lowered her voice. They suddenly seemed to be conspirators. “Mind if I lay a little something on you?”
He shrugged.
“I’m about to send you to Miss Scorn. Sorry, man, it’s the only route to the Inside around here. Just figure you’re on a mountain, almost to the peak. There’s just thing one road and you’re sailing along, okay, see. Then you round this curve and there it is, a roadblock. Her name is Elizabeth Stewart.”
The blonde smiled suddenly, sat back and took a deep breath. “Of course,” she said, “the alternative is you could stand here and we could rap for what little there is left to this working day — which is about ten minutes. Then we could go down the street to this place I know and have a cocktail or two and you could explain this Cola-Dylan jazz to me and—”
Shayne made his grin large as he cut in, “Roadblocks fascinate me.”
She shook her head. “Okay, so pass around me, go down that corridor you see behind me — but when you get there tell her you raped me to get in. I’m not supposed to let anymore of you guys past this desk.”
V
Elizabeth Stewart was fortyish, thin, prim, hair a glistening artificial brown color, eyes gray slate. There was a large, polished closed door behind her which she was guarding with her life.
Shayne displayed identification and said, “You didn’t get a call from the young lady out front because I scared hell out of her.”
“The fact that you found one of the young ladies at her desk surprises me, Mr. Shayne,” Elizabeth Stewart said coldly. “Normally, they are congregated at the drink-dispensing machine. Your business?”
“Old Singie.”
She became an iceberg. “I’m not at liberty to discuss Mr. Singleton.”
“Is anyone around here?”
“No.”
“I bet I want to talk to the guy hiding in the office behind you,” said Shayne.
“No one at Tiener South hides, Mr. Shayne,” she said frostily. “Nor is anyone in — which happens to be the truth at this hour. However, I would tell you the same thing if it were ten o’clock in the morning and each member of the board of directors was congregated in plain view behind me.”
“Why?”
“Because we at Tiener South know absolutely nothing about why Mr. Singleton was murdered. It had to be for a reason totally without association with this company. Too — what information we do have has already been passed to the proper investigative authorities, the police.”
“The cops ask you people anything about Burns over at Brooks and Associates?”
She remained stone. Only new light in the gray eyes mirrored the jolt. Then her lips thinned and she said, “We are not acquainted with Mr. Bums.”
“He didn’t happen to be doing some work for you people over there?”
“Please leave, Mr. Shayne!”
He felt as if he were spinning wheels in a beach rut. He suddenly went around Elizabeth Stewart to the polished door. He opened it, poked his head into a vast office. The office was empty. He closed the door, moved past the startled woman again.
“See you,” he said.
Carole Ayers was still at the orange desk out front. Shayne went past her on long strides, growled out of the comer of his mouth, “You were raped, honey.”
“Thanks,” she called after him. “And I’m still curious about Cola and Dylan.”
“Another day,” he said over his shoulder.
“Make it a night, Red. At four-five-three-two Palm Tree Road. It’s small, but it’s cozy and I live alone. You can...”
Mike Shayne lost the rest of her words as he moved out of range. Outside the building, he lit a cigaret, sucked deeply on it and got into the Buick. He sat for a moment, thumping the steering wheel, then moved to kick on the motor. Shayne stopped. Elizabeth Stewart had come out of the building and turned down the sidewalk. She was moving away from him. Sixth sense came alive in him. The woman was in a hurry. Why?
She turned into a pay parking lot, drove out in a bright blue Volkswagen. He trailed her. She had a heavy foot. The Volks darted in and out of the lanes, using holes in traffic too small for the Buick. But he managed to keep her in sight. Finally she turned into a crowded parking lot at a supermarket, found a slot and braked into it.
Shayne was forced to move into the next traffic aisle. He inched along. No parking holes. He cursed under his breath, stopped, opened the door, hooked a hand under the edge of the Buick roof and stood on the edge of the floorboard. A woman driver behind him slapped a hand on a horn button.
He waved to her, looked out over car tops. Elizabeth Stewart had stopped at a public phone stall in the lot. The detective saw her dial without looking in the phone book. He dropped back inside the Buick and drove it around behind Elizabeth Stewart. She was talking.
He inched on down the aisle. No cars behind him at the moment. He stopped, watched Elizabeth Stewart in the rearview mirror. She hooked the phone and went on into the supermarket without looking to right or left. A driver to Shayne’s right blasted a horn. He sat twisted in the front seat of a station wagon, wanted out of a parking hole. The Buick was blocking him.
Shayne eased out to the busy avenue, cruised along, driving reflexively. Elizabeth Stewart’s use of a public pay phone in a supermarket parking lot didn’t have to figure in his investigation of a double murder. Actually, it could be a pretty damn simple daily routine — woman leaves work, stops at a grocery store, phones husband, daughter, son, mother, apartment roommate, says, “Start mixing the cocktails. I’m on my way.”
Everyone is in a hurry in 1976. So the rapid walking pace leaving the office, the zipping in and out of traffic lanes, didn’t have to mean anything either.
Except...
Elizabeth Stewart was implanted at Tiener South. Elizabeth Stewart could use a Tiener phone to make personal calls. So why go to a parking lot pay telephone booth? Two possibilities — Elizabeth Stewart had had a sudden thought while driving. Or she didn’t want the call to go through a switchboard, even though it might be a computer switchboard.
All right, if the latter were so, she could make the call from home. That is, if she lived alone...
Or could it be necessity that made it imperative for her to make a private phone call as soon as possible after walking out of Tiener South?
Shayne spotted a bar, parked the Buick, went inside. Over a cognac and ice-water chaser, he decided he was reading too much into Elizabeth Stewart. After all, she was only a secretary-receptionist at Tiener South, not privy to all inner workings at the conglomerate even though she might live with that fantasy, waft it over secretaries of lesser stature. And it just could be, just could be...
...Elizabeth Stewart was a double personality. Miss Cool, Miss Efficiency, Miss Thin Lips, Miss Straight Spine, Miss Conservative at Tiener South, Miss Uptight.
Until 5 p.m.
At 5 p.m. daily, Elizabeth Stewart could become Miss Hot-To-Trot, Miss Uninhibited, a woman who wore gold-spangled pants and no more when she answered a maintenance man’s knock.
Shayne put Elizabeth Stewart aside with a second cognac and concentrated on two dead men. Their unknown relationship to one another tormented. He gave brief thought to a steak somewhere, dumped the thought and went to his apartment, where he stuffed a TV dinner into the oven, poured cognac into a glass and took the glass into the bath. He put down the lid of the toilet. The drink was handy while he showered.