Shayne said mildly, “You know I never tell a lie that can be disproved.”
He opened the door and started out, and Rourke said hastily, “I’ll go with you, Mike. Grab an eye-opener of cognac, huh?”
He hurried out after the redhead and caught his arm as he went into the empty waiting room. “Where are you headed?”
“How do you know I’m headed anywhere special?”
“Because I’ve been on too damned many cases with you not to know when you’ve suddenly thought of something and want to check it on your own.” Rourke went down the steps with him. “That your car at the curb?”
“Yeh. Where’s yours?”
“Headquarters. I rode up with Will.”
Shayne got under the steering wheel and said, “I’ll drop you there.”
“After you’ve checked whatever’s on your mind.” Rourke settled himself firmly in the seat beside the redhead.
Shayne said, “Okay. We’ll have that eye-opener at the office. I think there’s still a bottle of Cordon Bleu left over from my last case.”
11
“Yeh, there is,” Rourke agreed as Shayne pulled away from in front of the morgue. “Couple of snorts lighter than it was yesterday.”
“You and Will hit it?”
“Just a couple of small ones last night while the boys were checking the office. I knew you’d want me to act the gracious host… with you away and all.”
“He went over everything carefully, huh?”
“With a fine-tooth comb. I don’t know what you hope to find there that they didn’t.”
“There happen to be one or two very small things about my business that you and Gentry don’t know,” Shayne told him acidly. “What about fingerprints?”
“Mostly inconclusive, I guess. They dusted everything. O’Keefe’s prints were plainly inside your office… in the right place for him to have left them while he sat in the client’s chair and talked to you.”
Shayne nodded and muttered, “Which makes it look more and more as though someone was there pretending to be me. No prints to indicate that fact?”
“I wouldn’t say a positive no.” Timothy Rourke hesitated. “You know how it is. Prints get messed up and blurred. And they weren’t looking for proof of anything like that at the time, Mike. We all supposed you and Lucy had been there all day. No reason to think otherwise.”
Shayne grunted a surly acknowledgement of this. He turned into the light early-morning traffic of Flagler Street and drove a block and a half to pull up in front of the office building that had housed his business for many years.
Only one elevator was in operation this early in the morning. The operator was a wizened, little, garrulous man who knew all the tenants in the building and greeted most of them by name when they entered his car.
He exclaimed, “Mister Michael Shayne in person. And it’s Mister Rourke, isn’t it? All kinds of excitement around here last night, huh? Never a dull moment when Mike Shayne’s around.”
“Were you on duty last night?” Shayne asked as the doors closed on the two of them.
“No, I went off at four. But they disrupted a cribbage game me and the old woman was having about ten o’clock when they came around asking their questions.” He stopped at the second floor and opened the doors, but Shayne didn’t get out at once.
He said, “I understand neither you nor the other man were able to say when either Miss Hamilton or I went in or out yesterday.”
“I guess that’s a fact. You know how it is… hundreds going up and down, in and out, all day. I can swear both of you were here, and probably went in and out about your regular times, but that’s about all. Today, now, you see, I’ll remember this trip all right if anybody comes around asking next week even, because I never seen you up and around so bright and early before. But on just a regular day…”
“I know. And you didn’t notice anything else funny? Any other people going to my office?”
“I’m sure sorry, but I didn’t. You know how it is.” He gestured out to the hallway. “You let a man out… you don’t wait to watch and see what office he goes to. And nobody asked for your number yesterday, the way they’ll do sometimes.”
Shayne nodded absently and got out. Rourke followed him down the hall to a doorway with his name on it, which he unlocked and thrust open.
He stepped inside slowly, flipping the wall switch that turned on the ceiling light in the small reception room, and he stood there for a long moment with his gaze going somberly over the room that was Lucy Hamilton’s domain, a curious questing, questioning look on his gaunt features as though he hoped there might be some aura or emanation from this familiar room where violent death had taken place that would trigger off something for him.
Watching him very closely and curiously, Rourke could have sworn that the redheaded detective was unconsciously sniffing the air as though he hoped to get some clue there, and for a moment he seriously wondered (as he had a few other times in the past) if Michael Shayne did actually possess some sort of extrasensory perception that helped make him one of the most successful detectives in the country.
The moment passed quickly and (Rourke sensed) unsatisfactorily. Shayne relaxed with a sigh and moved across to the low railing behind which Lucy normally sat. He stood with his hands on his hips looking down broodingly at her desk and chair and typewriter, unable to note anything out of place, anything different, except the fact that the heavy steel filing spindle that generally stood near the railing at the left of her typewriter was not there this morning.
Behind him, Rourke cleared his throat and said, “If they found any fingerprints around Lucy’s desk that didn’t belong to her, nobody mentioned it. Of course, they weren’t looking for that sort of thing…”
Shayne nodded his head slightly. He opened the gate that let him behind the railing, went to the other side of Lucy’s chair and leaned down to open the middle drawer of her desk on that side. He picked up a ten-cent-store ruled tablet with a blue cover, opened it and glanced inside. Then he turned with it in his hand and told Rourke pleasantly, “This is one of those few little things that you and Will don’t know about my business.”
He came out and closed the gate behind him. “For a couple of years, Lucy has made a habit of jotting down notes about anything important or interesting that happens while I’m out of the office. If I don’t return before she leaves, she types them up and leaves a copy on my desk for me to see if I should drop in later. I take it you and Will didn’t find anything like that on my desk last night.”
Rourke said, “No. I was with Will when he went into your office the first time after the body was found. Your desk was clean.”
Shayne said, “That means Lucy wasn’t here at five o’clock, or else she was prevented from doing the job.” He led the way in long strides toward the inner office, snapped on the light and circled the big desk to sit down and open up the tablet in front of him.
“Break out the cognac,” he told the reporter. “Whatever you and Will left of it, and we’ll see if we can make sense out of Lucy’s notes on her interview with a Mr. Rexforth at eleven-thirty yesterday morning. Thank God she doesn’t use shorthand for stuff like this, but her personal abbreviations are just about as bad.”
The sheet was headed cryptically:
“11:30 A. Rex N. A. Bond Jax”
Shayne pondered over that briefly while Rourke nested paper cups together, got a bottle of cognac from the second drawer of a filing cabinet behind Shayne and poured drinks. Shayne read aloud, “Rex. N. A. Bond. Jax. There’s a North American Bonding Company with state headquarters in Jacksonville, I think.”