Date with a Dead Man

13

Shayne reached the body in two long strides and dropped to his knees beside her though he knew she was dead before he felt for a pulse. He couldn’t detect any trace of a pulse beat but the flesh felt still normally warm to his fingers, and he knew she hadn’t been dead many minutes.

His face was deeply trenched when he stood up and stepped over her body to the telephone on the center table. He gave Will Gentry’s private number and when the chief’s gruff voice answered, said, “I’ve got a murdered woman in my room, Will. Beatrice Meany.”

Gentry wasted no time with questions over the telephone. He said, “Sit on it, Mike,” and hung up.

Shayne replaced the telephone and turned to look down at Beatrice Meany with bleak eyes.

The girl’s eyes were open and glazed, her tongue protruded slightly and looked faintly bluish, her head was twisted in a way to indicate a broken neck. Yet her naturally childish features had taken on a sort of dignity with death. She did not look like an immature dipsomaniac as she lay there. There was a troubled expression on her face as though she did not understand why this had happened to her.

Shayne turned slowly, his brooding gaze searching the familiar room that had seen more than its share of violence and tragedy. Everything was in place and there was no sign of a struggle. A wide-brimmed, floppy leghorn hat lay on the sofa, and there was a handbag beside it. An open cognac bottle stood on the table beside the telephone, and there was an overturned highball glass on the rug halfway between the door and the corpse. There was a wet stain in front of the glass, and a single cube of ice melted in the center of the wetness.

Shayne went to the kitchen door and saw a tray of ice cubes melting in the sink.

He glanced into the bathroom and bedroom, noting that everything was neatly in order as the maid had left it that day.

He turned back into the living room without touching his hands to anything, strode to the wall liquor cabinet and lifted down a sealed bottle of cognac. In the kitchen he opened it, got a clean glass from the cupboard and poured a stiff slug into the bottom of it. There was a knock on his door as he went back into the living room. He opened it and nodded to a young, uniformed officer who stood there. He said, “Mr. Shayne? We got a flash on our radio…”

He paused and gulped as Shayne stepped aside, jerking his head toward Beatrice’s body. “I’m to stay until Homicide gets here,” he said formally. “Don’t touch anything.”

Shayne said dryly, “I won’t.” He moved to one side and sat down with his drink while the young officer remained stiffly on guard in the doorway.

Less than three minutes later Chief Gentry came trooping down the corridor with a police doctor and three men from Homicide. Gentry nodded to the radio patrolman who saluted sharply and drew away in the hall. Gentry glanced at Shayne who remained seated, nursing his drink, then strode to the body and looked down at Beatrice for a moment. He hunched his heavy shoulders and nodded to the doctor and his men who were already unlimbering their apparatus, then walked back to Shayne and stopped in front of him. “Beatrice Meany, eh?” he said in a tired voice. “The Hawley daughter.”

Shayne nodded. “She came here about an hour ago, Will. After phoning Lucy to get my address. The clerk let her in. About half an hour ago”-he glanced at his watch-“she phoned Lucy from here to ask when I’d be in. Lucy reached me in Mrs. Theodore Meredith’s suite in the Biscayne Hotel. I told Lucy twenty minutes, and I assume she passed that word on to Beatrice. She was like that when I walked in. My door was latched and the lights were on. I didn’t touch anything after getting here except a fresh bottle in the kitchen and this glass.” He held up the cognac and took a sip.

“How soon did you leave the Biscayne Hotel after Lucy phoned you in Mrs. Meredith’s suite?”

“At once. I was on my way out when the call came through. She can verify that, and also a man who was in her suite at the time. A Mr. Cunningham.”

Will Gentry’s rumpled eyelids moved upward like Venetian blinds. “The last survivor of the airplane crash in which the Hawley boy died? Meredith?” Gentry tested the name on his lips, savoring it. “Would she be widow of Albert Hawley… since remarried?”

“She is exactly that,” Shayne told him blandly. “In Miami to claim her ex-husband’s estate.”

Gentry lowered his lids while he considered that. “What claim has she on her ex-husband’s estate? Didn’t she divorce the guy? Seems to me I remember some stink…”

“Your memory is okay,” Shayne agreed. “But she’s still his legal heir. Seems he made a new will after the divorce leaving everything to her.”

“Even though she remarried?”

Shayne nodded, his gray eyes very bright.

“Never heard of that before,” snorted Gentry.

“You never met another Mrs. Meredith either,” Shayne told him with a grin. “That’s it, Will.” He spread out the fingers of his right hand. “I stopped downstairs in the Biscayne to chat with Kurt Davis a minute… then came on home because I knew Beatrice was waiting. As I came up in the elevator,” he went on slowly, “the operator told me a man had asked for my room number about ten minutes before and insisted on getting off at this floor even though the operator told him he didn’t think I was home. He wasn’t seen leaving, so probably he went down the stairs. For my money, he’s your man.”

“Did the operator describe him?”

“I didn’t ask. I wasn’t particularly interested… at the time.”

Gentry turned and went to the door to speak to the patrolman outside. When he turned back, the doctor had completed his examination of the body and was turning away with his bag.

“What have you got, Doc?”

The doctor was young and smooth-faced and had a wispy blond mustache. He said, “Death by strangulation and almost certain fracture of the vertebrae. Not more than half an hour ago, and probably not more than fifteen minutes. There was a lot of strength in the pair of hands that caused those contusions on her throat. That’s all until we do a P.M.”

The photographer had finished with his pictures and was putting away his equipment, and the other two detectives had finished fingerprinting the living room and had moved into the kitchen.

Timothy Rourke came hurrying in from the hall as the doctor went out. “Just got the flash.” He glanced at the body on the floor without much interest, and then confronted Gentry, “What gives, Will?”

“Ask Mike,” grunted Gentry sourly.

“Is it tied up with the Groat kill?”

“She’s the one who invited him out there last night,” Shayne reminded them both. “Ever since talking to her this morning I’ve had a hunch she knew more about his death than she admitted. Now it looks as though Groat’s killer had the same hunch.”

“You think she was killed to prevent her talking?” demanded Rourke, getting out a wad of copy paper.

“It’s evident she came here to tell me something important.” Shayne shrugged.

The uniformed cop appeared in the doorway, officiously holding the arm of the elevator operator who had brought Shayne up, an elderly man who held himself very erect with conscious dignity, but whose eyes sought Shayne’s in frightened appeal after they first caught a glimpse of the dead body on the floor.

Shayne said quickly, “It’s all right, Matthew. These gentlemen just want to ask you about the man you let off the elevator after he asked for my room. Remember telling me about that?”

“Of course, Mister Shayne.” He spoke with deference but without subservience. Some of his dignity deserted him as he stammered, “You reckon he the one that do that?” He fluttered one hand toward the body.

“That’s what Chief Gentry wants to find out.”

“Can you describe the man?” asked Gentry.

“Sort of… I guess. I didn’t pay too much mind, you understand. He was young, seems like. Twenty-five, maybe. Heavy built.” He hesitated. “I see them going up and coming down all day long. You know how it is.”

“Just concentrate and do your best,” Gentry encouraged him. “Notice what he wore?”

“Just a plain suit, I guess. Sort of gray-like. You know… there wasn’t nothing special I noticed.”

“Wearing a hat, Matthew?” Shayne interposed.

“I think he was… now you mention it, Mr. Shayne.”

“Reason I asked that,” Shayne told Gentry before he could comment, “is because Mr. Meany is quite bald in front for so young a man, and it’s something likely to be noticeable without a hat. Gerald Meany is also a well-cushioned young man,” he went on thoughtfully.

“The girl’s husband?” snapped Gentry. “You think he was sore about her coming here to see you, and strangled her. Jealous type, huh?”

“I’d hardly say that,” Shayne grinned wryly at recollection of the scene that morning in Beatrice’s bedroom. “However, she did make a very obvious pass at me in front of him, and he may have got the idea she was coming here for an assignation.” He shrugged. “You never know how a husband will react.”

Gentry nodded and turned to the detectives who had completed their work and were waiting for instructions. “Anything from the prints?”

“Nothing good, Chief. The place has been thoroughly cleaned today and we got Shayne’s and another set, probably the maid’s in places you’d expect. Those of the girl on the refrigerator handle and sink, and the bottle and glass in here.”

“Pick up Gerald Meany and bring him in,” Gentry directed them. “Find out where he’s been this afternoon. Get all the information you can at the Hawley residence about his and his wife’s movements this afternoon. Whether there was any quarrel… all that.” He waved the three men away, turned back to the elevator operator. “I hope you’ll be able to identify the man who asked for this room if we show him to you, Matthew.”

“Well, sir, now…” The operator paused and wet his lips, a frown of intense concentration on his face. He glanced appealingly at Shayne, and, following his glance, Rourke saw the detective nod his red head in an emphatic affirmative.

Matthew swallowed hard and said firmly, “I do believe I can. Yes, sir. I can’t rightly just describe him good, but it comes to me I’ll surely know him if I see his face again.”

“That’s exactly what we need. You stay around on tap, and I hope we’ll call on you for an identification.” He nodded a dismissal, and told the patrolman, “Go down with him and tell the boys to bring up the basket. You got anything further for me, Mike?” he asked as the others left.

“Not right now, Will. God knows,” he added strongly, “I want the guy who messed up my living room as badly as you do.” He turned his angry eyes on the body again. “I drank with that gal this morning… halfway smooched with her. If she’d only stayed sober and come clean with me then…”

Gentry clapped him on the shoulder and said gruffly, “There’s other gals for drinking and smooching. Coming, Tim?”

“I think I’ll hang around and get a little more background from Mike,” the reporter told him. “What’s that stuff in your glass, Mike?”

“This?” Shayne looked at the cognac as though he had forgotten he held it, and then tossed it off. “I’ve got a bottle of rye for you, Tim.”

Gentry went out, and as they turned back to the kitchen together, two white-coated young men appeared in the doorway carrying a long wicker basket. They looked at the body and one of them asked cheerfully, “This the place?”

“That’s a silly damned question,” Shayne said bitterly over his shoulder. “Of course this isn’t the place. I don’t feel that my living room looks lived in without at least one corpse cluttering up the floor. Grab a bottle of rye, Tim, and come on out.”