Gentry nodded. "I think it's time we took a look at the Hibiscus. We can go to the morgue from there."
They went out together, parting at the end of the corridor with Gentry going ahead for his own car, Rourke and Shayne turning out a side door to ride together in the detective's Hudson.
They made it to the Hibiscus in a few minutes, and as Shayne pulled into the curb in front, Gentry's automobile with two uniformed men in the front seat nosed in behind them.
The trio entered the hotel together, and Dick and the bell-captain snapped to attention when they recognized the bulky figure of Miami's Chief of Police.
Dick spoke hurriedly over his shoulder to Evelyn, and as they came up to the desk he said brightly, "Good evening. Do you want Mr. Patton? He'll be right out."
Gentry nodded. He asked, "What third-floor rooms front on the bay? Either three-sixty or three-sixteen?"
"Why, three-sixteen does. Chief. Three-sixty is-"
Gentry nodded, a pleased look on his face. He turned from the desk as the house detective came wheezing around the corner toward them. He said, "Evening, Ollie," shaking hands briefly. "You know Shayne and Tim Rourke, don't you?"
"Sure." Patton nodded at the reporter and detective. "Tried to call you a short time ago, Mike. You know, you asked me to keep in touch if anything more came up on the Paulsons?"
"Yeh. What?"
"Her brother was in here asking for her. Big guy with a scar on his face. Just drove in from Jacksonville, he claimed, and she was supposed to be expecting him and he wanted to wait up in her room for her. Funny thing was, he decided he didn't want to wait when I offered to go up and sit it out with him. In fact, he made a funny excuse to beat it-saying he'd be back."
Gentry said, "Interesting. Let's go up and have a look at this room where you keep your bodies hidden, Ollie."
As they went to the elevator in a solid group, Patton said forlornly, "Hope you don't think I was negligent about not reporting all this crazy stuff, Chief. As a matter of fact, we're not even sure which room the body was supposed to be in. And then when there wasn't any body at all-"
Shayne said flatly, "It was three-sixteen, Oliver. Miss Paulson explained to me about the mix-up in room numbers. After seeing her brother's body in three-sixteen, she rushed out to find another phone to report it on. Three-sixty was conveniently open and she used the phone in there. When she got back a few minutes later, the body had disappeared."
"Her brother's body?" Patton asked in puzzlement as they went up. "But I've just been telling you he was here looking for her."
"Not her brother," Gentry said. "We got a description of him from Jax."
"He had plenty of identification," Patton protested. "I made him sJhow it when he wanted in to her room."
The elevator stopped and they got out. Shayne said, "Yeh. He showed me his identification, too."
As Patton led the way down the dim-lit corridor, he said thoughtfully, "Maybe that begins to add up then. Though the guy said he just got in from Jacksonville, the elevator boy swears he's been around before. Either earlier in the evening or the last day or so."
"Yeh, it adds up," Shayne agreed. "He was here about nine-thirty. Just when the body was doing its disappearing act."
Patton had stopped in front of 316 and he knocked perfunctorily before fitting a key in the lock. He opened the door and reached inside to turn on the overhead light, then stepped back. "There it is," he muttered defensively. "See if you can find a body."
The three entered and stood staring at the smoothly made-up bed standing directly beneath two closed windows. The only way to reach the windows to open or close them was to get on the bed or move it from the wall. Gentry went to the rear and told Shayne, "Take the front and let's move it out. None of you touch the bed. These windows closed when you looked in before, Ollie?"
"Yes. I remember noticing because it was hot. Most guests keep them open all the time."
Gentry grunted as he and Shayne moved the bed two feet nearer the center of the room. He and Shayne circled from opposite ends of the bed and stood side by side studying the windows without touching them. Through the panes, they could see the riding lights of half a dozen yachts in the Municipal Basin not far distant. They were ordinary sash windows that could be raised or lowered, and they weren't latched. There were outside screens with hooks and eyes to hold them shut. Both screens were hooked now, but without closer examination it would be impossible to know whether either had been unhooked recently or not.
Looking downward as directly as they could without opening the windows, they could see tiny whitecaps rolling in from the bay, and could hear them breaking lightly on the stone wall directly below.
Gentry stepped back with a shrug, saying, "Nobody touch anything. I want this room kept locked, Ollie, until my boys go over it. Did you touch anything at all when you were first up here? Smooth the bed or anything?"
"Nothing, Will. I just looked in the bathroom and closet and peeked under the bed to make sure there weren't any corpses."
"Water directly below these windows?" pursued Gentry. "No strip of sand to catch a body if it were shoved out?"
"Only at low tide. There's about ten feet of sand then. It was high tide about nine tonight. Going down now."
Will Gentry nodded, moving toward the open door. "About all we can do here. Lock the door, Ollie. I'll send a man up to guard it until the Identification Squad gets here. And for your information, there's an All Cars out on both Nellie Paulson and the lad with the scar who's carrying her brother's wallet around with him. I'll put a couple of men downstairs in case either of them show."
"Sure. Whatever you say. Chief. Uh-you got reason to believe a man was killed in this room tonight? His body shoved out the window into the bay?"
"Right now, it's a good bet," said Gentry placidly. "I'm not blaming you for anything-yet. Just keep your nose clean and for God's sake don't try to cover up if anything else funny happens. Your job's one thing, but accessory-after-the-fact is something else again."
Outside the hotel, Tim Rourke and Shayne got into Shayne's car while Gentry sent one of his men up to watch outside 316 and called headquarters over the two-way radio in the police car.
Halliday, Brett
The blonde cried murder
Shayne pulled away slowly, and Rourke slouched down beside him and lit a cigarette, speaking for the first time since they entered the hoteclass="underline"
"What do you make of it now?"
Hunched over the wheel, Shayne growled, "Let's take a look at what's waiting for us in the morgue before we do any more guessing. You know every damn bit as much about all of it as I do. I didn't hold out anything on Will."
"Only difference is-you talked to the girl personally and we didn't. If she isn't nuts-"
"Doesn't it begin to look more and more as though she isn't?" demanded Shayne. "It sounded hay-wire at first when she claimed she'd seen her dead brother and then scar-face claimed he was her brother. Now we know he isn't. And with this body picked up in the bay, there's a hell of a good chance we'll discover he was in three-six teen just as she said, and was shoved out the window while she was looking for a phone."
"By scar-face?"
"It looks reasonable. Helll" said Shayne with irritation, "I don't know. If he is the murderer and knows she's the only one who's actually seen the body in three-sixteen, it would give him a good motive for tracing her to my place and then trying so desperately first to make me think she's nuts and then to get his hands on her. Without her to testify about her brother's body, the corpse might well have drifted out to sea and never been found-or, at least, not until it was unrecognizable."
"Yeh. And it would explain how he came by Bert Paulson's wallet. If he killed the guy. But what's the Roney Plaza angle she handed you? Why didn't she tell you she was staying at the Hibiscus?"