He expostulated to Rourke, “I told you to take Lucy out to your car…”
“Michael!” Lucy stood inside the door staring at the handcuffed man seated on the floor. “That’s the man. He brought me here in his car…”
“Erskine?” Standing beside her, Timothy Rourke said wonderingly, “He’s from Washington, Lucy. The State Department.”
“He’s as much from the State Department as you are,” Shayne said angrily. “My God, Tim, don’t tell me you’re as naive as Peter Painter. He and Peralta were in cahoots all the way along.”
Rourke shook his head from side to side. “I don’t get it. Why would he tell that long, involved story about Communism and all that? Mike, I’m afraid you’re making a hell of a mistake.”
Shayne grinned at him sardonically. “You heard Lucy, didn’t you? Alvarez can fill you in on the rest of it. Don’t you see how it was, Tim? He and Peralta had this operation going, and they needed a little more time without police interference. The theft of the bracelet was a monkey-wrench, and when Painter insisted officiously on pushing the investigation despite Peralta’s protests, Albert Tatum went to Painter with his State Department-Communist story which Petey swallowed hook-line-and-sinker. After all, the one thing no red-blooded, patriotic American can do today is to question the State Department. Oh, hell,” Shayne ended in disgust. “Of course Painter didn’t question the man’s credentials. Will Gentry might have been a little harder to convince, if he’d been approached directly, but you know yourself that Tatum came to Will with Painter’s seal of approval. So Will accepted him at face value.
“They had everything all set until yesterday when Peralta upset the apple-cart by calling me in,” Shayne went on swiftly. “It was a personal thing with him, reflecting on his wife, which he didn’t want to divulge even to Tatum.
“As I say,” Shayne ended up with an angry wave of his hand. “Ask Alvarez who ‘Erskine’ actually is. While he fills you in, I’m going to take a quick look-see upstairs where the caretaker lived.”
He swung on his heel and climbed the stairs to the small, compact, bedroom-sitting-room apartment above the boat-house. It took him less than five minutes to find the emerald bracelet. Brad had been so sure that Tatum and Peralta would forestall any search by the police that Shayne found it thrust carelessly underneath some clean shirts in a top right-hand drawer in a chest in the bedroom.
He held it up for a moment and admired the light reflected by the emerald-green facets, and then dropped it into his pocket and hurried back downstairs.
Timothy Rourke was deep in conversation with Alvarez, and the loading of the crates of munitions into the two power cruisers was continuing methodically. Lucy Hamilton, looking wilted and forlorn, stood drooping by the doorway.
Shayne went to her and put his arm about her waist tightly, and announced in a loud voice, “Lucy and I are getting out of here, Tim. The headlines are all yours.”
“Wait a minute, Mike.” Rourke turned on him with a worried scowl. “What about the emerald bracelet that started the whole thing to cooking?”
With a look at the still-unconscious Julio Peralta, Shayne said blandly, “I never did take a retainer on that case, Tim. I think I’ll just drop the whole thing and forget about it. Let’s go, Lucy. My God, I just remembered I haven’t had any dinner.”
“Neither have I, Michael.” She pressed her head against his shoulder and allowed him to half-carry her out the door. “Do we have to go any place? I’ve got some hamburger at home.”
“And some cognac?” he demanded teasingly.
“You know there’s always cognac, Michael.”
“Come on then.” He led her out the side gate with his arm tightly around her, and toward the street. “We’ll take my car,” he decided. “I don’t believe Mr. Geely or Mr. Harris will get in our way tonight.”
“Who are they?”
“A couple of drunks,” he told her cheerfully.
SIXTEEN
It was comfortably and cozily homelike in Lucy Hamilton’s apartment. Sprawled on the sofa in a completely relaxed posture with his jacket off and sport shirt open at the throat, Michael Shayne allowed himself to think (as he had often done on other evenings like this) what a thoroughly comfortable person Lucy was to be with.
Close at hand on the low coffee table in front of him was a four-ounce stemmed wine-glass half full of cognac, with a tall glass of ice-water beside it, and within easy reach was an uncorked bottle of Monnet. A rich, garlicky odor drifted tantalizingly from the kitchen into his nostrils, and there were the small domestic sounds of Lucy preparing her special “poor-girl steaks” to which she had first introduced him in New Orleans many years ago.
“Like an old shoe,” he told himself complacently. That’s the way Lucy was comfortable. Then she came out of the kitchen wearing her absurd, frilly, little apron and with her face rosily flushed from the heat of the stove.
She carried a highball glass in her hand and said, “I’ll let the sauce simmer another five minutes while I finish this drink.”
He studied her appreciatively and said, “You don’t look old-shoeish.”
“What?” She sat down hard at the other end of the sofa and stared at him with narrowed eyes.
“Well, you don’t.” He grinned sheepishly and lifted his own drink in a salute. “In fact, you’re pretty damned beautiful.” He spoke angrily, as though defending her.
“What are you talking about, Michael Shayne?”
“You,” He sipped his drink and dropped his gaze from her challenging eyes. “And you can cook, too,” he added lamely.
“Michael.” She deliberately made three syllables out of his name. “Tell me what you’ve been sitting there thinking while my back was turned.”
“You know what?” He sat up enthusiastically and put his glass down. “I know just what you need to make you into a real glamour-puss.”
“I don’t know that I care to be a glamour-puss.” She lifted her firm chin and glared at him. “On the other hand, I don’t particularly appreciate…”
“I know, I know,” he interrupted placatingly. “It just slipped out while I was sitting here feeling so comfortable.” He got to his feet and crossed the room to his jacket neatly hung over the back of a chair, and fumbled in a side pocket. “Close your eyes,” he directed her, and turned about slowly with the emerald bracelet concealed in the palm of his hand.
Lucy hesitated a moment, trying to remain angry, and then obediently closed her eyes like a little girl. Shayne crossed to the sofa and knelt beside her, took her wrist and laid it flat on the arm of the sofa, and carefully draped the bracelet across it. Then he said softly, “Open your eyes, Angel.”
Lucy opened her eyes wide, and a rapturous, “Oh!” came from her lips as she looked at the flexible golden bracelet with six large, square-cut, green stones brilliantly reflecting light from the table lamp beside her.
“Michael.” She touched it gently with her fingertips, lifting her arm so that it hung about her wrist. “You lied to Tim out there. You did find it. It’s… heavenly.”
“Let’s see if it fits.” He bent over her arm to fasten the catch.
“You shouldn’t, Michael. It frightens me. A hundred and ten thousand dollars,” she said in an awed voice.
“Just what you need to set off that apron. It’s a trifle loose on you, but that can be fixed, I guess.” He stood back, smiling down at her admiringly.
“Michael! I shouldn’t even try it on. It frightens me just to think…”
“Keep it,” he said casually. “The thief is dead, and, if Peralta goes off on that boat to Cuba tonight, I don’t think he’ll be in a position to do any complaining.”
“That’s terrible, Michael,” she said severely. “You’ve got to return it to Mrs. Peralta. You can’t even think…” Her door buzzer rang three times loudly from downstairs. Shayne said, “That’ll be Tim hoping to soak up a nightcap. Keep it on your wrist, Angel,” he urged her as he crossed to press the release button. “Let’s see anybody compare you to an old shoe with that on.”