Bodies Are Where You Find Them (8 page)

He could discern the dark shape on the grass now, not more than fifteen feet ahead, and suddenly there was the horrible glint of yellow eyes in the darkness just beyond the still body.

As Shayne lunged forward, a lean gray cat leaped aside with a defiant mew, sped away across the lawn lashing her tail angrily.

Bending over the rigid body of the girl, he lifted her up. There was no challenge from the darkness, no outraged outcry from a near-by householder.

As he reached the opening into the alley and started toward the street, another car was stopping. Shayne dropped back into the shadow of the hedge as the lights on the car went out. Then he heard footsteps coming toward him and Rourke’s loud whisper, “Mike, where are you? I brought the car over to this side.”

“Here.” Shayne leaped forward, and Rourke jerked the rear door open, Shayne awkwardly crammed the body inside, and Rourke looked on, shaking his head in disapproval. He muttered, “She looks like country come to town for fair. First time I ever realized how indecent a gal could look without make-up. Hair stringing down around her face and no nail polish—” He shuddered and averted his face.

“Don’t forget she’s been hitting a fast pace since she was murdered,” Shayne growled. “You can’t expect her to be in the best of trim.” He slammed the door shut, swore when her dress caught in the hinge and wouldn’t let it latch. He leaned in to throw the hem back out of the way, and Rourke whistled shrilly.

“Lookit! That dress is all she’s got on. Not even any pants.”

“This,” said Shayne, “is a hell of a time to get technical about a thing like that.” He slammed the door shut again and shoved Rourke under the wheel, ran around to jump in beside him. “Get moving,” he panted. “As far as the bay, then south.”

The short-wave radio came to life again as the car surged forward. Both men bent their heads to listen.

“Calling car sixty-three. Car sixty-three. Go back to your position. Disregard previous instructions. Disregard previous instructions. Body of young woman floating in the bay has been cared for. Emergency ambulance answered call. That is all.”

Shayne sat erect and emitted an explosive sigh. Rourke laughed shakily. “God! What a coincidence. I needed a diaper while I was waiting for you back there.”

Shayne said musingly, “I wonder if Phyl will like me with gray hair. By God, I can’t—”

“Careful of your language, there,” Rourke interposed. “We have a lady with us.” Then his bravado cracked. “I can’t stand much more of this, Mike.”

“We’ll get rid of her quick,” Shayne promised. “But we don’t want to leave her too close to where my car was wrecked. Why don’t you cut back across the boulevard and drive out into the residential section? We’ll find a nice quiet lawn where corpses are a novelty and deposit her there.”

Rourke turned east across the boulevard, forcing himself to hold the car to a speed within traffic restrictions.

After he had driven some twenty blocks Shayne suggested, “This looks like a respectable neighborhood where people have sense enough to go to bed early. There’s not a single light showing and not a car in sight.”

“Sure,” Rourke grunted sourly. “These people lead drab lives. Everybody is entitled to some excitement.” He slowed in the middle of the next block at a point where the corner street lamps did not interfere, edged to the curb, and stopped in front of a row of small stucco houses.

Shayne leaped out and took the mortal remains of Helen Stallings from the rear seat and deposited her gently on a damp green lawn.

When he returned to the car Timothy Rourke had moved out of the driver’s seat. “You take over, Mike. I’ll come unhinged if I try to drive another foot.”

“We could both use a drink and some quiet meditation,” Shayne decided. “Home is just the place for that, and we’ll hope no more bodies have popped up during our absence.”

“WHY,” ASKED TIMOTHY ROURKE for the fifth time, “did the killer first snatch the body out of your possession and then stage a public wreck to give it back to you?”

“When we know the answer to that we’ll have something.” Mike sat relaxed in a deep chair in the luxurious corner apartment which he had taken after his marriage to Phyllis. Rourke was sprawled out on the lounge across from him. A low coffee table was between them, bearing up under an array of ash trays, a cognac bottle, a heavily depleted quart of Scotch, a siphon bottle, and a large bowl of ice cubes. They had been sitting thus for more than an hour, and Rourke had put a lot of Scotch inside of him. Shayne, tormented by his two-o’clock appointment with Lucile, had been more sparing with the cognac.

“It doesn’t add up to anything,” Rourke insisted. “He had you where the hair was short with the girl’s body in your room. Yet he conveniently carries the body away, then changes his mind and gives the gal back to you. It’s crazy, Mike.”

“Sure it is.” Shayne picked up his cognac glass and looked longingly at its contents, set it down, and took a long drink of ice water instead. “Trouble is, we’ve got a wrong slant somewhere. We can’t see any motive behind any of it. Our unknown factor is
why.
We’ve got a string of seemingly senseless events that won’t add up until we know the value of X. A simple algebraic equation.”

Rourke yawned and rattled the ice cubes in his tilted glass. He reached out waveringly for the bottle of Scotch and tipped it up, let the liquid gurgle into his glass.

Shayne frowned at him and warned, “You’re taking on a heavy load, Tim.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” He shuddered complacently. “I’m just beginning to feel human again after dealing corpses off the bottom of the deck.” He squinted at Shayne over the top of his glass. “Let’s solve for X since it’s a simple equation. How many people knew Helen Stallings was coming here to give you some dope against Stallings?”

“That would be guesswork. Jim Marsh for one—That is, he sent a girl to see me after talking with her on the phone. He claims he didn’t know who she was at the time—” He broke off, staring past Rourke, his features tightening.

“Then Jim Marsh is one man we can leave out. He sent her to you. If she had some low-down on Stallings that would give him the election he’d be the last man in the world to shut her mouth before she gabbed.”

Shayne said, “I wonder.” He cocked his head as if listening for a sound which eluded his big ears. He drummed finger tips on the arm of his chair.

Rourke stared at him in blank amazement. “You’re determined to complicate things,” he complained. “Seems to me Marsh is the one man we
can
eliminate.”

“I told you how he acted tonight.”

“Sure. He’s got the willies about the election. Every amateur politician gets that way. I’ve seen plenty of them ready to give up the day before the votes were counted.”

“It was more than that, Tim. Damn it, Marsh acted like a man who wanted to lose—who was
afraid
to win.” Shayne gave himself a hunch which brought his torso upright and he sat staring queerly as he continued.

“I don’t even
know
he sent the girl to me. He called me and said she was on her way. We don’t know but what he tried to prevent her from coming—that she insisted—” His voice trailed off. There was a faraway, questing look in his eyes.

Rourke swore angrily. “God, Mike, if you start suspecting Marsh where will you stop? Here’s something that knocks that theory into a cocked hat. The threatening note to Stallings, warning
him
to withdraw from the election. I suppose Marsh killed the girl so Stallings would win, then sent the note to force him to withdraw.” His voice was heavy with sarcasm.

Shayne shook his head stubbornly. “Someone else could have sent the note,” he pointed out. “Someone who knew
Helen Stallings
was on her way to my apartment.”

“It had to be the killer,” Rourke argued. “The note was sent to Stallings to hang a frame on you—by someone who knew the gal was dead and couldn’t testify that you hadn’t kidnaped her.”

“That’s right, too.” Shayne mopped his seamed forehead, then meditatively emptied his cognac glass. “Here’s what happened. Someone followed her here and waited until I started to the station with Phyllis, then came in and choked her with her own stocking. There was a struggle and she made an outcry, overheard by someone who pounded on the door and then called Gentry. I had left the door unlocked, and the murderer locked it. He was trapped in here, with the door locked on the inside. He had to unlock it in order to throw full suspicion on me. He escaped by the fire escape and hung around watching. He knew the body was undiscovered when I came back. Afterward, one of Bugler’s men followed me away, and as soon as the coast is clear the body is snatched before
you
can get back and take it away. Oh, hell! It’s not a simple equation. It’s got a dozen unknowns.” He poured another glass of cognac.

“And Arch Bugler is one of them,” Rourke reminded him. “He keeps popping up. He’s had enough practice in murder.”

“But he wouldn’t have killed a society girl who was pulling him up out of the gutter,” Shayne protested. “According to those newspaper accounts you gave me, he and Helen Stallings were practically engaged. And she’s due to come into a wad of money soon, isn’t she?”

“On her twenty-first birthday, I think. A couple of weeks from now. I think the whole story was printed in the paper when she started the suit against her stepfather and then dropped it.”

Shayne reached in his pocket for the sheets of newsprint he had wadded together at the Wildcat earlier in the evening. He looked at them curiously. It seemed very strange that he had seen them for the first time only a few hours ago.

Spreading them out, he found the one he wanted and began reading the story. He nodded thoughtfully and said, “The bulk of the estate was left to the girl in trust until her twenty-first birthday, in the event she didn’t marry sooner. If she married or died before then, it reverted to her mother. After Stallings married the mother, he adopted the girl legally, thus gaining control of the trust fund.” Shayne sucked in his breath sharply. “Do you recall her name before it was changed to Stallings?”

“Nope.” Rourke’s eyes were bleary and he had difficulty focusing them on Shayne.

“Get this. It was Devalon. Helen Devalon.” The note of suppressed excitement in his voice brought Rourke up straight on the couch. He blinked and shook his head roughly from side to side.

“That ought to mean something—Damned if I know.”

“Another drink and you won’t know anything,” Shayne said sharply. “Lay off. Where’s Smith College located?” he jerked out.

“N’Ham’shire ’r some place.” Rourke stifled a yawn. “One of those swanky girls’ schools in New England.”

Shayne got up and went across the room to a bookcase, dropped to his knees, and pulled out a volume of an encyclopedic set and thumbed the pages. He came back grinning. “Smith College is in Northampton, Massachusetts. That, my befogged comrade, is the whistle stop played by Beany Baxter’s Band a couple of months ago.”

“Beany Baxter’s Band? That sax player! The wedding certificate!” Rourke’s legs moved feebly. He put his palms down on the couch as if to thrust himself to a standing position, then fell back into soft comfort.

“There’s the Whit Marlow tie-up,” Shayne said cheerfully. “He and Helen Devalon were married in April. No wonder he went barging around to ask Arch Bugler what-the-hell. Can’t blame a bridegroom for getting sore about the way she and Arch have been playing around.”

“But she was on the spot when she came down here,” Rourke said. “She had to keep the marriage a secret until she was twenty-one or lose her father’s estate. To avert suspicion, she acted unmarried.”

“In a big way,” Shayne agreed with a grimace.

There was a thoughtful silence between them; then Shayne said, “I ought to have taken that train for New York.”

Rourke chuckled evilly. “Give your wife a chance to kick up her heels—away from a lug like you. Serves you right.” With his head resting on the upholstered arm of the couch, he looked down his long lean body at his shoes. He wriggled one foot feebly.

Watching him, Shayne chuckled. “Let Phyl have her fling. She’ll appreciate me more when she comes back.”

“Oh, yeh?” Rourke grinned disarmingly. His mind appeared clear.

“She and Marlow probably planned a public wedding later,” Shayne resumed, “without mentioning the one in April under her real name of Devalon.”

“So that’s why Marlow had the document hidden so carefully. But what does it get us, Mike? He wouldn’t have killed her.”

“Husbands have killed their wives for less than that.”

“But he couldn’t blame her so much. She had to pretend she wasn’t married as much for his sake as hers.”

“But not quite so wholeheartedly,” Shayne pointed out. “She could have announced her engagement to him without forfeiting a fortune. No, we can’t count Marlow out. Sex jealousy and greed motivate ninety-nine per cent of our murders. He had plenty of reason to be jealous.”

“He didn’t look like a killer to me—the glimpse I had of him in the hotel tonight.”

“He was a little off par,” Shayne explained. “No man puts his best foot forward when he’s wearing off a Mickey Finn. Bugler fed him a doped drink when he called on him this evening and began laying Bugler out for the way he’s been running around with her.”

Rourke’s head came up and his eyes wavered toward Shayne. “You get around, don’t you? Suppose Arch knew Helen was married to Marlow?”

Shayne tugged at his ear lobe. “I wasn’t in on much of the conference. From what I saw and heard, Marlow was getting nasty and Bugler eased him off with private stock before he could make a scene at the inn.”

Rourke tested his strength once more with his palms flat on the couch, came shakily to a sitting position. He reached for the Scotch bottle and Shayne warned, “You’re hitting the bottle pretty heavy, Tim.”

Rourke nodded cheerfully. “Why not? You’re not one to deliver a temperance lecture.” He took a sight on the cognac bottle and saw that it was more than half full. “You’re not up to par tonight, Mike.”

“I have things to do.”

“Tonight?” Rourke attempted to register astonishment.

“Certain things,” Shayne explained, “are best accomplished under the cloak of darkness.”

Rourke squinted at him suspiciously. “I can think of only one sort of thing.”

“You’ve got a dirty mind,” Shayne accused.

“Need it to cope with you. Blond or brunette?”

“I don’t know. Ask me about her legs. They’re stumpy.”

“Damn it, Mike, it’s after midnight. You’re not going out frailing at this hour?”

“The date,” said Shayne, “is for two o’clock sharp. She has to slip out after the rest of them go to sleep.”

Rourke shook his head sadly. He tilted his glass, and a tear ran down his lean cheek into the Scotch. “It’s not right to kid about something like that, Mike. You had me hating your guts once tonight. Don’t pull another stunt like that.”

Shayne laughed shortly. “This gal’s the kind that has nine lives,” he said lightly. “Throttling wouldn’t kill her.” He got up and paced back and forth, ruffling his coarse red hair. “Thank God my morals are elastic enough to meet an emergency. How is a man to get information out of a frenetic maiden except—”

“Don’t do it, Mike,” Rourke pleaded. He slopped some whisky over his tie as he emptied his glass. “Let me go in your place. I’m not married. Nobody cares what I do.”

“You’re drunk,” Shayne said gravely. “You wouldn’t do either of us any good.”

“Going home,” Rourke said. “Not going to stay and abet adultery.” He swayed to his feet, tested his skinny legs carefully. He started forward and stumbled.

Shayne caught his arm and held on when Rourke tried drunkenly to fight him off. He guided the reporter’s shambling footsteps into the bedroom and pushed him down into a chair. He knelt down to untie his shoelaces, saying, “You’re not going anywhere tonight. Maybe I’ll bring my date back here and let you chaperon us. But you’ll have to sleep off your jag first.”

He got Rourke’s shoes off, then pulled off his trousers. He left him lolling in the chair while he went to the bed and turned down the covers, then hauled him up and shoved him down on the mattress.

Rourke waggled his head from side to side in disapproval, then closed his eyes and breathed heavily in sleep. Shayne drew only the sheet up over him, for the night was warm, and turned away. Rourke was snoring when he went back to the living-room.

Shayne glanced at his watch. It was one-thirty. He took a hat and a belted trench coat from the closet, left a shaded light burning in the living-room, and went out, snapping the night latch to lock the door behind him.

He took his time driving across the causeway in Rourke’s sedan. A lot of things bothered him, turning his normally rational thought processes into a kaleidoscopic blur. It was the screwiest case he had ever tried to unravel. Every time he thought he had a lead it branched out into a lot of unanswered questions. He refrained from thinking about what was going to happen when Helen Stallings’s body was found and identified the next morning. That was going to move the deadline forward a few hours. As soon as she was discovered, Stallings would have no reason for further deferring publication of the threatening note which he and Painter accepted as Shayne’s handiwork.

Shayne knew a lot of other people who were going to accept the same premise if he didn’t have the case solved before Stallings published the note. That was the danger of the sort of reputation he had deliberately allowed to grow up about him. Not only allowed—the popular idea that he would stop at nothing to gain his ends had been encouraged. A legend like that was good for business. It brought him the tough cases that paid big fees. And it was always hanging over his head, like a sword held by a hair, to destroy him if he dared to make a misstep.

Someone had taken that into account, he reasoned, when the kidnap note was sent to Stallings. He didn’t actually fear the final legal consequences. The election was the thing right now. There was no use kidding himself. An aroused citizenry would revolt and vote Stallings into office if the kidnap-murder charge was brought against him in the headlines.