“A while ago you were working hard to prove it would have been impossible for anyone to impersonate you.”
“Yeh,” he muttered absently. “I still don’t see how it was worked. Suppose somebody finds out that Bates is thinking of hiring a private detective in Miami for a job, and that he is inclined toward me. Suppose this man simply has a letterhead printed, gives his own address instead of mine, and writes Bates a letter saying he’s heard about the job and is willing to take it on. Bates would naturally reply to the printed address and I would never know a damned thing about it.”
“A pretty elaborate hoax just to collect a small fee,” said the chief.
“I agree. If that were the only thing that came out of the impersonation. But don’t forget that the setup actually culminated in murder.”
“You mean it was planned that way in the beginning?”
“I don’t know.” Shayne spread out his big hands. “I don’t know a damned thing more than you do. Carrol was murdered at just about the time his wife was supposed to be with him. The only reason she didn’t discover his body is that she had been sent to my room instead of to his.”
The waiter came with his order, and when he went away Gentry said, “So you think it was pure accident that she had the wrong key?”
Shayne spooned a portion of stew onto his plate, took a mouthful, and chewed it with relish. “I just don’t know what to think,” he confessed. “I certainly don’t believe it was pure coincidence that Carrol was murdered just a few minutes before she was slated to slip into his bed. Somebody evidently had the right key. I understand he was murdered in his bed. That doesn’t sound as though he got up to let his killer in.” He buttered a hard roll, took a bite, and chewed ruminatively.
“Who is in a position to pull this impersonation of you?”
Shayne shrugged. “Margrave, for one. He must have been aware that Mrs. Carrol was arranging with Bates to hire me to locate her husband. Being Carrol’s partner, he probably knew where Carrol was all the time. He may even have offered to look me up for Bates when he came down here. That would make a letter from me to Bates, on a forged letterhead, perfectly plausible. Margrave was on the ground, and it looks as though he might have had a motive.”
“Maybe you’ve got something there, Mike. But what about the man who got you on the bayfront and tried to kill you? That wasn’t Margrave. You saw him.”
“It certainly wasn’t Margrave,” Shayne agreed. “But he could have hired somebody for that while he was stealing the letter back from Mrs. Carrol’s hotel room. Then, he could have flown to Wilmington, and stolen the rest of the fake letters from Bates’s office so there’d be no way of tracing them to him.”
“Sounds complicated as hell,” Gentry growled, “but I’ll check with the airlines to see if he did make such a trip.”
“He wouldn’t have used his own name. Much more likely, just to complicate matters further, he’d have bought a ticket in my name.”
Gentry laid his knife and fork on his empty plate and said sourly, “I guess that’s out. I checked this morning with the only line flying a schedule that would fit, and they haven’t reported back yet.”
Shayne avoided the chief’s gaze when he asked casually, “What results did your boys get on my car? You willing to accept my story about being creased by a bullet and staying knocked out for five hours?”
“I’ll accept it,” said Gentry, “unless further evidence turns up to disprove it. They didn’t get any fingerprints, but everything else reads the way you told it. If you did arrange the bullet hole and the blood on the cushion, it was a pretty damned elaborate setup, and I don’t know when you had time to do it and get up to Wilmington and back.”
“Thanks,” said Shayne gravely. “Then I guess you won’t throw me in jail if I tell you that a man using my name did fly to Wilmington and back early this morning.”
He held up a hand to cut off Gentry’s grunt of surprise. “The airline called my office right after you’d left,” he explained swiftly, changing the facts a little to soften what he had done. “You’d left my number for them to call, you know, and the clerk thought it was you on the phone and gave me the report before I realized what it was. A man who said he was Michael Shayne flew to Wilmington at four-twenty and returned at nine-ten, giving him just about enough time in Wilmington to burglarize Bates’s office and get back.”
“Damn it, Mike!” Gentry exploded. “You didn’t tell me.”
“Hold it a minute, Will. The thing was dumped into my lap without my asking for it, and you know the mood you were in about then. You would have had to arrest me while you investigated further. And I had already had the call from Margrave that sounded like an important lead. But I’m giving it to you for what it’s worth now.”
“Margrave,” rumbled Gentry. “He fits like a glove. He is familiar with Bates’s office, probably knows just where his files are kept.”
“Right. Now if you can get hold of the employee who sold the plane ticket, and the hostesses who flew up and back, and if any of them can identify Margrave, we’ll have a case.”
“But there’s still one thing that doesn’t make sense,” Gentry protested. “If Margrave had been impersonating you, aren’t you the last person in the world he’d call in to work on the case? He’d stay as far away from you as possible.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a murderer called me in on a case, hoping I’d pin it on somebody else,” Shayne pointed out.
“We damn sure have some questions to ask him,” said Gentry firmly. “And right now I’d better get back to my office. Bates is due to fly in from Wilmington about now.”
“That’s one session I want to sit in on.” Shayne hastily finished his lunch, and they went out together.
At headquarters the chief stopped at Homicide to order an immediate and thorough investigation of Margrave, with particular emphasis on his movements since the preceding midnight. From there, they went back through the corridor to Gentry’s private office where they found Bates waiting for them, accompanied by Patrolman Hagen who had been detailed to meet him at the airport.
Attorney Bates was a medium-sized, middle-aged, precise sort of man. He offered a cold, limp hand to Chief Gentry, and studied the redhead with disapproving interest when Gentry said, “Michael Shayne, Mr. Bates.”
“So you are the so-called private detective,” Bates observed icily, “who now denies having had any part in this affair. Also, if I did not misunderstand Mrs. Carrol on the telephone this morning, either intentionally or through sheer stupidity, you furnished her with a key to your apartment instead of her husband’s; and you lured her there at midnight under false pretenses, at about the same time, it appears, that someone was murdering Ralph Carrol under this convenient arrangement. Do you mean to say this man isn’t under arrest?” he continued, turning to Gentry.
“You can cut that out right now,” growled Gentry, his ruddy face purplish with anger. “This is Miami, and I’ll ask the questions.”
“Very well, sir. What questions have you for me?” He sat down in a straight chair near Gentry’s desk and waited.
The chief sat down and started to speak, but Shayne broke in swiftly. “Most important is this — when and how do you claim you first contacted me to take on the job of locating Ralph Carrol in Miami?”
The lawyer frowned and said, “It was about two weeks ago when I first wrote. I do not have the precise date because my office was burglarized early this morning and all the pertinent correspondence removed.”
“We’ve only your word for it,” Shayne reminded him. “It’s the sort of lie you would tell if asked to produce proof that was nonexistent. Is there anyone else who can testify to such correspondence?”