“And you think Lucy and she fixed up a story between them?”
Timothy Rourke sighed and said equably, “Not if she told Lucy the truth. I don’t think the girl would actually connive at covering up murder, but I do think it’s quite possible that Mrs. Wallace sold her a bill of goods and Lucy has some private information she’s aching to pass on to you. You know damn well Gentry will have the phone bugged at her daughter’s house and you don’t dare call her. That’s why I thought you might be headed for the Beach.”
Shayne hesitated a long moment before deciding not to explain to Rourke the real reason why he didn’t feel it necessary to confer with Lucy privately. They were long-time friends and the reporter had often played along with him in the past, keeping certain information confidential while Shayne was investigating a case, but the knowledge of the airline tickets in his pocket was a little too much to burden Rourke with at this point. Instead, he argued:
“Don’t you and Will realize that the timing makes it impossible for Mrs. Wallace to be the murderer? There was no gun in the apartment. Don’t tell me you think Lucy helped her dispose of it.”
“No. But what was there to prevent her slipping out and ditching the gun before she called Lucy?”
Shayne frowned, thinking back to Mrs. Wallace’s statement to Gentry which Rourke knew he had overheard. At that juncture, Gentry had previously listened to her story of what happened after the plane landed, and this was information Rourke didn’t know Shayne possessed. To avoid disclosing that he had already heard the account from her own lips, he suggested, “How about you filling me in on that part of it? I assumed she phoned Lucy as soon as she walked in and found her husband dead. Let’s stop some place for a drink.”
“Fine.” Rourke looked at his watch. “The bar at the Olinar should still be open.”
“Why that joint?” protested Shayne. “Sammy’s is closer.”
“The Olinar is the restaurant where she claims she stopped for a dinner she didn’t want on her way from the airport,” explained Rourke. “She claims she and her husband are known there and she signed the tab. Won’t hurt to check.”
Shayne shrugged and checked the cross-street, drove on six blocks and turned to the right one block to pull up across the street from the Olinar, a quiet and sedate restaurant mostly patronized by native Miamians.
They got out and crossed the street, and Shayne said, “Oh, oh,” when he recognized one of the vehicles parked in front as an unmarked police car. He grunted, “Looks as though Will had the same idea,” and they went through a side door into a well-lighted cocktail lounge, and paused to look at the half-dozen drinkers at the bar and the few tables that were occupied so late at night.
Rourke nudged Shayne and jerked his head toward a corner table occupied by a man who sat alone with a glass and a bottle of beer in front of him. They moved toward the table together and he looked at them with pretended disinterest as they pulled out chairs.
“If you don’t mind our joining you, Sergeant,” Shayne said with exaggerated politeness. “I’ll even buy you something better than that swill you’re drinking.”
Sergeant Adams of Homicide looked distastefully at his glass. “Guess I’ll stick to beer. I’m waiting for the chief.”
Shayne said, “We’ll wait with you.” He told a hovering waiter, “Cognac with water on the side, and a rye and soda.”
“What you got, Sarge?” Rourke asked eagerly. “Mrs. Wallace’s story check out okay?”
“I’ll save what I got for the chief.” Adams’ voice was cool but not particularly unfriendly. He knew that both Shayne and the reporter were close friends of Gentry’s and didn’t wish to antagonize them, but he was also disinclined to give out information without Chief Gentry’s okay.
Shayne said, “We’ll wait and listen to it with him.” He stretched out his long legs and lit a cigarette, lifted the inhaler glass when it came and took a sip while his gaze roved over the room to an archway on the right leading into a now-darkened room. “Dining room in there?”
Adams nodded. “And the telephone booth is there behind you.” He was facing the door and he half-rose as he spoke, lifting one hand to attract Will Gentry’s attention as the chief hurried in.
Gentry came to the table frowning heavily at the detective and reporter. “Thought you were making a deadline, Tim.” He sat down and took a long black cigar from his pocket, pursed his thick lips to hold it while the sergeant struck a match for him.
“Thought we might pick up something here to add to my story. Do we get it from Adams or do we have to do our own sleuthing?”
Gentry said briefly, “Let’s have it, Adams.”
The sergeant drew a notebook from his pocket and consulted it. “The maître knows Mrs. Wallace all right and confirms she came in with a travelling bag, alone, around nine… little before, maybe. She checked her bag there,” he nodded toward a check stand beyond the archway, “and ordered a club sandwich and iced tea and came in here to make a phone call before the food came. She didn’t eat much, but sat for half an hour or so dawdling with her tea, then signed the check. He was going to have a boy take her bag out, but she said no, she had to make a phone call first, and came in here again and that’s the last he noticed her. Says it was maybe around ten o’clock.”
Gentry nodded. “That checks,” he told Shayne absently. “Claims there was no answer and she sat in here for another half hour before trying home once more and then getting a taxi. Claims it was exactly ten-thirty-five when she finally left.” He rolled the cigar to the other side of his mouth and asked Adams, “Any confirmation of that?”
The sergeant shook his head decisively. “Nothing either way. When she and her husband eat here they sometimes have a drink at the table but never hang out here. So they don’t know her in here. No one noticed a woman of her description waiting here, but the place was pretty crowded and they wouldn’t necessarily. Check girl was just leaving when I got here and she recalls a dame checking a bag and taking it out, but no recollection of the time.”
“So that leaves the time element up in the air,” said Gentry stolidly. “There’s at least a half hour we’ve just got her word for. Unless we find the taxi-driver and he says otherwise, she could have got home about ten… just about the time Doc says hubby took the slug. Lucy says she called her about ten-fifty. Fifty minutes is plenty of time to stash a gun and fix things up the way she wanted it to look.”
“You’ve got no proof at all,” said Shayne hotly. “If it was that way, why didn’t she conceal the fact that he was packing for a trip when he was shot? That’s the strongest clue to a possible motive for her.”
Gentry shrugged and said blandly, “You never know how a dame’s mind works… particularly just after she’s gunned a two-timing husband.” He sighed and got up. “Maybe we’ll turn up the taxi-driver. Want a lift this time, Tim?”
Rourke finished his drink, studying Shayne anxiously. “I guess so. Nothing else we can do tonight is there, Mike?”
Shayne said, “I’m going home to sleep on it. Don’t get out on the Mrs. Wallace limb too far, Will. If Lucy says she’s okay, she is.”
Gentry said, “I have the greatest respect for Lucy’s intuition, but I’m not running my department on that basis. You stay off a limb, too.”
Shayne broodingly finished his cognac after they left, and paid the check, noting without surprise that Sergeant Adams’ beer was on it also.
The situation was really messed up now. The airplane tickets in his pocket were the best proof there was that Mrs. Wallace had not killed her husband because certainly even an hysterical woman would have realized the two tickets were damning evidence against her and would have destroyed them at once.