Michael Shayne grimaced and tugged slowly at his earlobe. He moved back to his chair and sat down. “George being your lover,” he said calmly. “That was a close call. How often did you entertain him here?”
“I hadn’t seen him for more than a year until last night. Nor heard a word from him. He turned up completely unexpectedly about nine o’clock. He’d been out in California and just returned to Miami.”
“George who?” Shayne kept his voice amiable and interested.
“Nourse. He’s a professional gambler. I had an affair with him a year and a half ago. It happened while Jerome was in New York attending a convention,” she went on wearily. “I thought I was in love with him and I asked Jerome for a divorce. He refused point-blank. He was convinced in his own mind that it was just an infatuation which would soon wear off. He threatened to enter a counter suit if I tried to get a divorce, naming George as corespondent and demanding custody of the children. He even consulted a lawyer about it, and I knew he would have done it, so I gave George up and he went away. No matter what else you may think about me,” she ended defiantly, “I do love my children. Better than I loved George, I found out then. So Jerome and I patched up our marriage and we’ve got along. Only he’s been terribly suspicious and jealous ever since.”
Shayne said, “All right. We’ve got Jerome slamming out the door to keep some sort of appointment. Is that the last you saw or heard of him?”
“Until the police telephoned this morning and I looked over and saw his empty bed.”
“How long did George stay here?”
“That’s just it.” Suddenly Linda crumpled up on the sofa and began sobbing. “That’s the awful part. That’s why I didn’t know what to do this morning. He didn’t stay at all. He went right out behind Jerome saying, by God, he was going to settle it once and for all. And so this morning… don’t you see… my first thought was that George had followed him and they’d had a fight and… and Jerome was dead.”
Shayne said slowly and deliberately, “So you believed your lover had murdered your husband, and your only thought was to cover up for him.”
“Not murdered,” she cried out desperately. “I thought they’d had a fight. George has a terrible temper. Don’t you see, I didn’t know what to do?” She pleaded with him tearfully. “If I did tell the truth and it was George, don’t you see it would all have come out? The scandal! Don’t forget, there were two innocent children involved. I needed time to think,” she cried desperately. “I had to find out what had happened. I wouldn’t have protected George in the long run. You’ve got to believe that. But I thought maybe he was already arrested. In that case, what would have been gained by my telling? That’s why I fainted when they said Jerome had been poisoned. It was such a wonderful relief. Because then I knew it wasn’t George after all, and I wouldn’t have to implicate him.”
“How could you be sure it still wasn’t George?” demanded Shayne.
“George Nourse poison a man?” Linda stared at him disbelievingly. “You just don’t know George. He has a violent temper and associates with a tough crowd, but poison? Oh, no. As soon as I heard that, I knew it couldn’t be George.”
“Did Jerome know him by sight?”
“George? No. They never met face to face. George wanted to meet him man to man to discuss a divorce, but I wouldn’t let him. I was afraid of what might happen.”
“Then it’s possible he did follow Jerome last night… to some bar, say… start buying him drinks there and load Jerome’s with sodium amytal. You’ve said your husband was the type to be friendly with any stranger he met in a bar.”
“Yes. He was. But George isn’t that type. If he had approached Jerome he would have told him right out who he was and what he wanted to talk about.”
Shayne shrugged, unconvinced. “Tell me more about Nourse. Describe him.”
“I’ve told you he’s a gambler. Quite a successful one, I guess, though I never could understand how a man could be a successful gambler. I thought they always ended up broke. But he seemed to have plenty of money. He’d just laugh when I asked him why he won money and other men lost. He claimed it was luck and good judgment… that he worked at it as hard as other men work at any other profession.”
Shayne nodded. “Professional gamblers do,” he agreed. “The operating phrase among that fraternity is: ‘Never give a sucker a break.’ Never mind that. I want a full description of him… where he’s staying in Miami… who his associates are.”
“I don’t know much about that. He told me he’d just come back to Miami from the West Coast. I never did meet any of his friends or know very much about his personal life,” she added wistfully.
“What does he look like?”
“He’s tall and… dark… and handsome. About thirty, I guess. There’s something dashing about him. A quality of recklessness, I guess you’d call it. You just feel he’s a man who lives dangerously and loves it.”
Shayne said grimly, “Just the qualities to appeal to a woman married to an unimaginative, steady provider like Jerome Fitzgilpin. All right, Linda. I’m not going to preach you a sermon on morals. Those are your own affair. You’ve got to live with your conscience in the future. I haven’t. Answer a few more questions. Did you ever hear Jerome mention the Sporting Club on the Beach as one of his hangouts?”
“The Sporting Club?” she repeated. She shook her head. “I don’t think so. He had two or three favorite places where he used to drop in for a beer, but I don’t know the names of them. Why?”
“His body and his car were found near the Sporting Club last night. I wondered if that’s where he went when he left here.”
“I don’t know. Wait a minute, though.” Linda sat erect on the sofa with excitement and hope in her voice. “I always emptied the pockets of his suits when I sent them out to the cleaners and there were often half-used matchbooks in the pockets. I’ve a wicker basket in the bedroom where I always dumped them, and then we’d take one out whenever we ran short of matches. Let me get it.”
She hurried into the bedroom and returned with a round wicker basket filled to the brim with partially used matchbooks. She dumped the contents onto the coffee table in front of the sofa, and began pawing through them.
“The Sporting Club?” she asked. “I think I may have noticed one…”
“Here.” She sat back and held up a matchbook, her face flushed with excitement. “The Sporting Club.”
“See if there are any more like it. If I can establish the fact that he went there often, it may give me the wedge I need.”
She went on through the collection of matchbooks and ended up with a total of seven that had come from the Sporting Club.
Shayne pocketed them happily and said, “That’s plenty. That’s fine. Now, there’s one more thing, Linda.” From his pocket he withdrew the restaurant menu from New York City and opened it in front of her, displaying the faded yellow rosebud and the small photograph. “Do any of these mean anything to you? Do you recognize either one of the couple in the picture?”
She shook her head in what appeared to Shayne to be honest puzzlement. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Have you any idea why he would have this menu and rosebud carefully put away in his office desk?” Shayne paused and added, “The menu is dated November nineteenth, nineteen sixty-one.”
“From New York,” she breathed. “That’s when his convention was. He stayed in New York a week. That’s when…”
“You had your affair with George Nourse,” Shayne completed for her. “Do you remember him mentioning anything about this when he returned home? Anything about attending a wedding, perhaps? That looks like a wedding corsage and picture to me,” he added.