Shayne went to the bullet hole in the wall, bent down and took inventory. The slug was in there. He got a knife from the kitchen and dug it out. It obviously had come from a high-powered hunting rifle. Had it hit him between the eyes it probably would have put his head in the wall.
He dug out the phone book. No Elizabeth Stewart was listed. He muttered an oath, flipped pages. There was only one Carol Ayers listed. And the address was 4532 Palm Tree Road.
She was home, she sounded perky, but she was bored. TV was horrible.
The Scorn Machine? Yeah, she lived in the Towers. “Hey, man, what’s with you? You got a hangup on the Stone Age?”
“Vintage can be beautiful.”
“Sh—”
Shayne had dropped the receiver in its hook on the expletive and was rolling. The corridor outside his apartment was empty. He moved on long strides to the elevator doors. The cops were still checking apartments below, asking questions. It was a good place for them to be. He didn’t need them. He’d get a discreet job done on wall and window in the morning. It wouldn’t be the first time. He had lived in the building for years and management was used to him — and used to occasional violence in his joint.
The Towers was an old, solid, conservative apartment house. After nine of an evening, silence and only occasional stirring by a resident prevailed. Large rugged-looking strangers eyeing lobby mail box names and numbers made a pale desk clerk nervous.
“C-can I be of assistance, sir?” asked the desk clerk politely.
“Yeah,” said Shayne. He put a business card on the counter. “You can call upstairs and tell Elizabeth Stewart I’m coming her way — and that I’ll buzz her buzzer until she answers.”
The clerk danced to the phone and Elizabeth Stewart stood in an apartment doorway down the corridor when Shayne walked out of the elevator. She was pale, unpainted, wore a flowing housecoat, and her hair was a chopped off gray-black, the gray dominating. Her glistening brown coif was being shaped for tomorrow’s wearing at Tiener South.
“P-please, Mr. Shayne,” she stammered, even before he reached her. “Go away!”
“You called someone from a parking lot pay phone this afternoon,” he asked her. “Who?”
She blanched and recoiled. He put a foot against the door, stopped its closing.
“P-please...” she stammered.
“You alone?”
Her eyes widened. “Y-yes.”
“Let’s talk.” He took a step forward.
But she put her body against the door. “No! Go away! I don’t want you here!”
Then he lifted his foot and the door was slammed in his face. He heard the lock click home. But he didn’t move. He stood scowling in thought, without seeing the wood that was only an inch from his nose.
She was frightened by his presence. Why?
Was he supposed to be dead?
He walked slowly to the elevator and rode down, his thoughts whirling. A young well-dressed man was waiting for the elevator in the lobby. He said nothing, stepped aside politely for Shayne.
The detective moved halfway across the lobby before stopping. He turned and stared at the closed elevator doors. Something about the young man tingled his nerve-ends. He couldn’t tag it. He attempted to remember the face. Smooth, almost boyish, eyes bluish, full head of pale yellow hair styled by a dresser, no scars.
He went to the desk, eyeing the elevator indicator. The needle hand had stopped on Elizabeth Stewart’s floor. He gave the desk clerk a hard look. “The man who just went up,” he said. “He’s a resident?”
“No, sir.”
“Who’s he going up to see?”
“I don’t know, sir. He didn’t stop at the desk.”
“You didn’t stop him?”
“People can come and go at the Towers.”
“You ever see him before tonight?”
“Yes, sir. This is the third occasion — and if he follows the pattern of the other two visits, he will be leaving soon.”
But Shayne waited an hour in the Buick. And the man didn’t come out of the Towers. He was on edge without knowing why. He had searched his memory repeatedly, attempted to fit the guy into some past investigation. No success. The face didn’t register. Yet he had the feeling the man was important to him.
He took a deep breath, fired an umpteenth cigaret butt off into the dirkness and left the Buick. Hell, the guy could be visiting anyone in the building. It didn’t have to be Elizabeth Stewart.
Shayne went past the desk clerk without a word and upstairs. He put a thumb against Elizabeth Stewart’s buzzer and kept it there. Nothing. He tried the door knob. It was locked.
He returned to the lobby in the elevator, motioned to the clerk from the doors. “Bring the house keys, buster.”
She lay sprawled on the carpeting of the neat front room. The sole indications of violence were the twisted body and the blood that had stained her dislodged dentures.
Elizabeth Stewart had been strangled to death.
VII
The desk clerk dashed across the room and into a bath. Shayne stood listening to his spastic reaction to the murder, then stuck a cigarett into a comer of his mouth and called out, “When you get finished, buster, call the cops.”
Shayne moved out swiftly. He lit the cigaret while riding the elevator down to the lobby, yanked the Band-Aid from his cheek. Outside he stood at the Buick door for a few seconds and stared up at the apartment lights. Was a killer still inside the building or had he faded down a dark fire escape?
Shayne pointed the Buick downtown. A mental image of the man with the boyish face loomed. He couldn’t seem to shake the man. Yet there was nothing about the man to tag him important. He didn’t have to be the killer just because he got off the elevator on Elizabeth Stewart’s floor. There were other apartments on that floor. The man could have been going to any of them, could still be inside and unaware that there had been a murder in the building.
Shayne shook his head in an attempt to put the man out of his mind. A hunch about someone was nothing to go screaming to the police about. Even if the man hadn’t lived up to pattern. The desk clerk said he had made two previous visits to the building. Both visits had been short. Tonight the man had not reappeared.
Shayne drew deeply on the cigaret, snapped the butt out the window. He spotted a greenish neon sign ahead. A watering hole. He braked the Buick, went inside. It was a small, dark untidy joint with only a scattering of customers. He straddled a stool away from the others and got a cognac with ice-water chaser. The muddy looking bartender slid change back to him.
“I’ll appreciate it, Mac, if you keep the heat packed,” he said, staring straight at the slight bulge in the detective’s coat.
“I’ve got paper for it.” Shayne waved him off and pinned his thoughts on Elizabeth Stewart. She had been frightened by his appearance at her door. How come?
She hadn’t been frightened of him at Tiener South in the afternoon. So something had changed for her from afternoon to evening. What? Did it have anything to do with her making a phone call from a supermarket parking lot? Had she tipped someone about his poking at Tiener South? But who the hell would she tip?
Shayne spotted a phone booth in a dark comer. Carole Ayers was still hooked to the TV, was still bored. “Stone Age action too slow for you?” she inquired.
“Elizabeth Stewart is dead,” Shayne said flatly.
“Wh-at? You’re sh—”
Shayne cut her off. “Strangled.”