The Homicidal Virgin (13 page)

“Tell me about it.” Shayne sprawled his rangy body into a chair near him.

There was a bottle of Drambuie and a stemmed liqueur glass on the table beside Henderson’s chair. The glass held a small portion of the thick liqueur, and he picked it up and drained it, asking Shayne, “Would you care for some? Or something else perhaps?”

Shayne shook his head. “I switched to coffee an hour ago. What have you to tell me?”

“There was an anonymous telephone call. Mysterious and definitely threatening.” He settled back and half closed his eyes and repeated what Shayne had said to him over the telephone almost word for word.

“Yet I swear I don’t know anyone named Harry Gleason,” he protested as he finished. “I can’t make head nor tail of it. But it does indicate that… that my life is still in danger. I beg you to take the case, Mr. Shayne. Find out who is threatening me, and why.”

“I’ll consider it if you’ll come clean with me.”

“But I have… ah… come clean with you.”

Shayne said, “You can make a start by telling me what name you used before you started calling yourself Saul Henderson.”

All the color drained from Henderson’s face at the same time that the strength oozed from his body. He wilted in his chair, white-faced and panicky. Then he called on some inner reserves and swung angrily to his feet.

“I don’t know what your game is, Shayne, but whatever it is, I don’t like it. You’ve been throwing out veiled hints and implications ever since yesterday afternoon, and I’ve had enough of it. I’ll see you to the door.” He swung on his heel and walked stiffly toward the archway and Shayne came quickly to his feet to follow him, pausing by his host’s chair to pick up the empty liqueur glass carefully by the fragile stem, and drop it into the side pocket of his jacket.

Henderson was standing holding the front door wide open when Shayne ambled out. He stood in frozen-faced silence while Shayne paused to say, “My secretary will bill you for this visit, Henderson,” and he closed the door loudly behind the detective.

Shayne drove swiftly back to Miami and stopped at police headquarters where he found Sergeant Calhoun on duty in the Identification Department. He took the liqueur glass carefully from his pocket, handling it by the flared bottom, and told the sergeant:

“This should have some pretty good prints that might have a bearing on that Beach killing. Get an authorization from Chief Gentry if you need it, but I wish you’d rush them to Washington fast.”

Sergeant Calhoun said cheerfully, “I’ll get them off first, and ask for the authorization later, Mike,” and Shayne hurried out of the building to his car and drove directly to the airport.

It was two minutes after seven o’clock when he got his car parked and reached the coffee shop. Timothy Rourke occupied a stool near the door, nursing a cup of black coffee. Shayne sat beside him and said, “The same” to a white-jacketed waiter. “Any luck, Tim?”

“About what you’d expect. A few unimportant items going back past his marriage to Mrs. Graham. Reading between the lines, there’s nothing to indicate he was very much of anybody or had too much dough until he latched onto the rich widow. As soon as offices open in New York, there’ll be a squad of legmen going around interviewing everyone who had contact with him before his marriage.” He looked at his watch as the waiter put a cup of coffee in front of Shayne. “Plane’s due in about three minutes. On time, they say.”

Shayne nodded absently, taking a sip of hot coffee and wishing he were home drinking his own brew. “Watch out for Henderson to blow a gasket when I try to grab hold of the girl for a quiet talk. Shove him around a little if you have to in order to give me a crack at her.”

Rourke nodded as the loudspeaker announced the arrival of Muriel Graham’s flight from New York. They got up and joined a small group of waiting people moving toward the gate through which incoming passengers would come. As they worked their way toward the gate, Shayne nudged Rourke and pointed toward Peter Painter flanked by two Miami cops standing squarely in front of the barrier. “Petey isn’t missing a bet.”

“And there’s Henderson, who doesn’t look too happy to see him,” Rourke rejoined, jerking his head toward the harried-looking mayoralty candidate pushing his way through to come up immediately behind the chief of detectives.

The redhead and the reporter watched with interest as deplaning passengers streamed toward the gate. There weren’t too many arrivals on this early flight, and Shayne didn’t see Jane Smith among them. He was beginning to wonder if she had missed the plane or had intentionally stayed away when he saw a very tall and slender, dark-haired girl at the end of the line stop in front of Henderson and say something to him, and then languidly accept his outstretched hand.

With a bleak look of questioning on his face, Shayne shoved forward just as Painter moved in officiously and took the tall girl’s arm.

“Miss Muriel Graham?” he demanded.

She looked sideways and down at his hand on her arm while Saul Henderson thrust his face close to Painter’s and grated, “This is my stepdaughter, yes. But she’s very tired from her trip and I’ll have to ask you to excuse us now. Later… after she’s rested…”

“I want to talk to her now, Henderson.” Painter kept his hand firmly on her arm and drew her away, nodding curtly to one of the uniformed policemen, who interposed his bulk between the girl and Henderson.

Shayne tapped Painter on the shoulder as the little man turned away with the girl, paying no heed to Henderson’s loudly voiced objections.

“You’re making a mistake, Petey. This girl is…”

“An important witness whom I’m taking into custody for questioning,” Painter told him officiously. “I don’t need any advice or interference from you, Shayne.”

The redhead shrugged and stepped back with a quizzical grin on his face while Painter triumphantly led the girl inside the terminal building with Henderson still being forcibly detained from following them by the policeman.

Timothy Rourke studied his friend’s face speculatively, and muttered, “You might have known Painter wouldn’t pass up a bet like this. Hell! You might as well quit covering for Henderson. Let the girl tell her story.”

“I’m not covering for Henderson. I was trying to tip Petey off. That girl isn’t Muriel Graham, Tim.”

“She isn’t? Didn’t you hear Henderson introduce her as his stepdaughter?”

“I heard him,” Shayne agreed grimly. “But she’s a ringer, Tim. That’s not my Jane Smith. Remember that Henderson made the contact in New York personally and arranged to have her fly down. God knows what sort of story this one will tell Painter.”

“Well, you hoped to keep Muriel out of it,” chuckled Rourke. “It’s not your fault that Painter wouldn’t listen when you tried to tell him the truth.”

Shayne muttered, “Yeh. You can be a witness that I tried to warn him, Tim. But he was so damned afraid that I would horn in…”

He grinned suddenly and delightedly, and moved toward the building entrance with long strides. “Maybe I’ve still got time to wrap this up while Painter is listening to whatever story Henderson wants him to hear.”

In the airport parking lot, Shayne paused beside the reporter’s car while Rourke got in. He said “I’m headed home for a cup of decent coffee and some heavy thinking. Keep in touch with Painter on the Beach for anything they turn up on Gleason… and push those New York inquiries on Henderson. Tim, I’m getting a stronger hunch all the time that this whole case had its beginnings ’way back in his past.”

“Who do you suppose the girl is that Henderson has brought in to impersonate his stepdaughter?”

The redhead shrugged. “He was really on the spot there. He must have sweated blood early this morning knowing Muriel would almost certainly break down and spill her guts if she were hauled back here to testify. Give the guy credit for thinking fast,” he went on angrily, “and arranging things neatly. She’ll load Painter with a story about what a wonderful father Henderson has been to her, and he’ll swallow it hook, line, and sinker.” He turned and strode off to his own car while Rourke lifted a hand in farewell and drove away.

Two hours and four mugs of coffee later, shaved and freshly dressed, Michael Shayne entered his office on Flagler Street and found Lucy already at her desk in the anteroom. She glanced at her watch meaningfully and said, “Practically the crack of dawn, Mr. Shayne. I don’t suppose you’ve even had time to glance at the morning paper?”

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t, angel. Anything important?”

She shrugged and pursed her lips. “A little matter of a midnight killing at your friend’s, Mr. Henderson, house on the Beach. I don’t suppose it interests you particularly.”

He paused with his back half to her, in the act of hanging his hat near the door, realizing suddenly that she was completely unaware that he had been mid-wifing the case since about two o’clock. He said, “You know how badly I need my beauty sleep in the morning. Got a copy of the paper?”

She held it out to him. “Peter Painter has it all solved anyhow. You’re to call Tim Rourke at his office.”

Shayne said, “Get him,” turning toward the open door of his private office and reading the headline:
Prowler Shot By Householder.

In his office he tossed the paper down and sat wearily behind his bare, flat-topped desk. He slowly lit a cigarette and dropped the match into a tray as his phone buzzer sounded. He scooped it up and said, “Tim?”

Rourke’s voice said, “A couple of interesting things from Beach homicide. Item one: A fast report from Washington on Gleason’s fingerprints identify him as an ex-con. He did a ten-year stretch in the Colorado pen for arson. Released twelve years ago. Item two: Ballistics says that the twenty-two pistol Gleason carried is the same gun that fired the bullet into Henderson’s automobile in the first murder attempt against him a few days ago.”

Shayne said, “I didn’t know that was a twenty-two also.”

“It was. Until this comparison the Beach police had theorized it was fired from a rifle in the hands of some fool kid. That’s one reason they had written it off as probably accidental.”

“Anything else?”

“One more curious thing, Mike. Henderson called in to report another threat against his life early this morning. An anonymous telephone call from someone who claimed to be a friend of Gleason’s. Henderson swears he didn’t recognize the voice and has no idea who it was. But it scared him plenty.”

Shayne chuckled happily over the telephone. “Keep this under your hat, Tim, but don’t you waste any time chasing down that lead. The guy’s initials are M. S.”

There was a very brief silence over the wire. Then Rourke sighed, “Why, Mike?”

“Just trying to foul the waters a little,” Shayne told him cheerfully. “Anything else from your pipelines to Henderson’s past?”

“Nothing yet. And that’s sort of curious in itself. Right now it looks as though he appeared from nowhere a few years ago and feathered his nest with nice soft banknotes by marrying a wealthy widow.”

“With a nubile stepdaughter,” said Shayne grimly.

“With a nubile stepdaughter,” agreed Rourke no less grimly.

Shayne said, “Keep on digging,” and hung up.

He leaned back in his swivel chair and took a lazy drag on his cigarette as Lucy hurried into his office with color flaming in her cheeks.

“I heard everything Tim said, Michael.”

“No reason why you shouldn’t.”

“You
are
mixed up in the Henderson case, aren’t you?”

“Sort of.”

“Why didn’t you tell me… instead of pretending you didn’t know what I was talking about when you came in?”

He said mildly, “You went to some lengths to tell me Painter had it all solved while I was sleeping late.” He yawned wildly. “Get Will Gentry on the phone and ask him…”

His desk telephone interrupted him. Lucy compressed her lips firmly and reached for it. She said, “Michael Shayne’s office,” then nodded and said in a subdued voice, “He’s right here, Chief Gentry.”

Shayne took the instrument from her and said, “I was about to call you, Will.”

“Sure. Any time you want a job done for free, just call on the Miami Police Department, Mike.”

“That’s what I always figured,” said Shayne cheerfully. “Service with a smile. What you got this time, Will?”

“Some hocus-pocus about fingerprints you turned in to Sergeant Calhoun without bothering to get an authorization from me.”

“And?”

“Where’d you lift those prints, Mike?

“You know that crazy hobby I’ve got… lifting fingerprints? It’s a sort of compulsion with me. Every time I see a nice set of prints…”

“Come off it, Mike.” Gentry’s voice was bluntly forceful. “Calhoun says they tie in with the Henderson kill on the Beach.”

“They do.”

“How?”

“That’s Painter’s baby, Will. You wouldn’t want to horn in on his territory.” Shayne made his voice mildly reproving.

“Goddamit, Mike!” Gentry paused to regain control of his temper. “The man’s a fugitive, Mike. Don’t cover up for him.”

“I won’t. What’s the rap against him?”

“Arson and manslaughter. Twenty years ago in Endore, Colorado. The man’s name is Ernie Combs.”

Shayne frowned and tugged at his left earlobe with right thumb and forefinger. He repeated aloud, “Endore, Colorado?” nodding at Lucy to make a note of it. “That’s all you got, huh?”

“That’s all Washington gave us. I’ll tell you this right now, Mike…”

Shayne said, “Thanks a million,” and hung up. He looked at his watch and told Lucy, “It’s too early in Colorado to call anybody, but try it anyway. Get the police department or sheriff’s office in Endore, Colorado.”

She nodded efficiently and hurried out to the other office.

Shayne mashed out his cigarette and his gray eyes were very bright. He got up and went behind the desk to a filing cabinet and took a bottle of cognac from the second drawer. He uncorked it and turned to a water cooler where he nested two paper cups together and was pouring amber liquid into them when his buzzer sounded. He strode back to the desk and lifted the instrument to his ear, took a sip of cognac as Lucy said, “I have Chief of Police Dyer of Endore, Colorado, on the wire, Mr. Shayne.”