Murder and the Wanton Bride

13

There were no street lights in Denham, but several of the business establishments were lighted as Shayne turned into Main Street, and the Traveller’s Rest Hotel was one of them. Shayne drove past the hotel slowly and without slacking speed when he saw a police car parked conspicuously in front. His suitcase with its half-bottle of cognac would have to remain there under police guard until a more opportune time to pick it up.

Beyond, at the town’s single traffic light, the plate-glass windows of the modernistic bank building blazed with light. Shayne calculated his speed so he had to ease to a stop for the changing light, and a side glance showed two figures inside the bank busily at work at their desks. One of them was Harvey Barstow.

The redhead pulled smoothly ahead when the light changed, and turned in at a filling station a few blocks ahead. He told a coveralled youth to fill his gas tank, and got out to stand beside him while gasoline gurgled through the flexible tube.

He agreed that it was a nice night, a little cool, mebbe, for Florida even in January, but real nice anyhow. Then he asked, “Doesn’t a man named Barstow live in Denham? I’m just driving through from Tampa and I’ve been trying to remember...” He let his voice trail off as though he were still trying to remember, and the attendant said briskly: “Harve Barstow? Works in the bank?”

“Yeh. Harve.” Shayne chuckled. “Working in a bank now, huh? Married, too, isn’t he?”

“Sure is. Say, you hear about the excitement here in town? Harve’s boss in the bank was murdered in Miami last night. Way I heard it there was a gang figgering on holding up the bank and Mr. Carson, he went in to put the law on ’em and they shot him dead.”

Shayne said, “That’s a hell of a note. Where does Harve live? I might stop by a minute.”

The gasoline stopped gurgling and the youth removed the metal nozzle and hung it up. “Right ahead two blocks and you make a right turn and it’s the second house on the right. That’ll be four sixty-five. Puhlenty of excitement here today, I can tell you. Detectives from Miami all over town. Some says there was FBI men too.” He took Shayne’s five-dollar bill and asked briskly, “Check your oil and water?”

Shayne said, “Everything’s okay.” He waited to get his change, got in and drove two blocks more and made a right turn. The second house on the right was an old frame two-story house that needed paint but had a wide well-tended lawn. There was one car parked in front and another in the driveway. He slowed almost to a stop as he passed, and grimaced when he saw three women seated in the living room through uncurtained front windows.

He increased his speed to the next corner, turned left and then left again back to the highway, and then right in the direction of Miami. He pulled in to the next open filling station he came to, parked inconspicuously beyond the lighted area of the gasoline pumps, and walked back briskly to the small office, noting the name over the door, MONTY’S SERVICE STATION.

He told the attendant he wanted to make a phone call, and looked up the number of the Barstow residence in the well-thumbed book hanging by a chain beside the public telephone.

He called the number and Mrs. Barstow’s voice answered after several rings, “Hello?”

He said, “Listen to me for a moment, Mrs. Barstow, and don’t say anything out loud if you can be overheard. This is Michael Shayne. I’m in town and I must see you at once.”

He heard a sibilant gasp of surprise from the other end as he hesitated, and he guessed that the telephone must be where her visitors could hear her.

“Just answer yes or no,” he went on swiftly. “Can you get away at once and drive out on the Miami road to meet me without telling anyone where you’re going?”

“Y-yes. Of course I can. Right away.” Her voice was stronger on the last two words.

“I’m calling from Monty’s Filling Station. As soon as I hang up I’ll drive down the highway toward Miami to the first turn off to the right. I’ll turn there and stop just off the road and leave my parking lights on. Do you understand all right?”

“Of course. I’ll be down to pick you up right away, Harvey. Mrs. Eldreth and Sue Parson are here and they’re just dying to hear all about everything. They’ll stay with the children.”

She hung up and so did Shayne. He went out into the coolness of the night and back to his car with a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. A dilapidated pick-up truck was getting gas and the attendant didn’t glance at him. Had Mrs. Barstow been a little too pat, a little too quick to agree to meet him? It was a cinch that Painter had interviewed Harvey this afternoon, and warned him against Shayne, and Harvey would certainly have told his wife. Under the circumstances, would she have confided in Harvey that she had driven to Miami last night to interview Shayne? If so, might Harvey have arranged with her to trap the detective if he tried to contact her later?

Shayne just didn’t know. What man could ever know what any woman was likely to do? It was a chance he had to take because he desperately needed a certain piece of information which only Mrs. Harvey Barstow could furnish him.

He drove slowly away from Monty’s Filling Station, followed the highway eastward to the first road turning off to the right.

He pulled to the side two hundred feet beyond the highway, and turned off the ignition and switched his lights down to “Parking.” Then he lit a cigarette and relaxed behind the wheel and waited to see whether Mrs. Barstow or a police car would keep the rendezvous with him.

He hadn’t long to wait. His cigarette was not more than half-smoked when headlights made a sweeping curve off the highway behind him and were brilliantly reflected in his rear-view mirror for a moment as the car pulled in behind his and stopped, and the lights were turned out.

Shayne exhaled deeply as he leaned forward to turn his out also. Then he got out and walked back to the four-year-old Plymouth in which he had watched Mrs. Barstow drive away from his hotel the preceding midnight.

She was at the wheel, and alone. Her plump features and taffy-colored hair with the Dutch bangs looked out at him in the moonlight, but they were strained now, and her eyes were rounder than when he had first introduced himself to her.

“Oh, Mr. Shayne,” she ejaculated in a wretched voice. “I’m so horribly worried and frightened. I just don’t know whatever I should do.”

Shayne put a reassuring hand on the round arm that lay along the top of the door. “Just take it easy, Mrs. Barstow. You’ve done fine, coming out to see me like this.” He squeezed the soft flesh, went around the car to get in the front seat beside her. “No one knew you came?”

“No. I had company when you phoned. I told them... that Harvey was ready to come home and I was going to pick him up. Please tell me what to do, Mr. Shayne. It’s just awful. About Mr. Carson and all. I can’t help feeling guilty. Maybe if I’d stayed home last night...” She began to sob piteously, and then turned to him suddenly and fiercely clutched his left bicep with fingers that bit to the bone. “Tell me you didn’t do it. I can’t believe you did, but tell me.” Her voice rose hysterically. “I’ve thought and thought and thought until I’m just about to go crazy with thinking.”

“Of course I didn’t do it.” Shayne was genuinely astonished. “Why should I have done it, for God’s sake?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know,” she moaned. “Harvey said the policeman from Miami Beach said awful things about you. And I remember how you looked standing there last night when I drove away, and how you promised me so nice that I wasn’t to worry and everything would be all right. And then I couldn’t help thinking and wondering about what happened... and thinking that if... well, if you did see Mr. Carson and he got real nasty about Harvey and all... that maybe you, Oh, I just don’t know. Can’t you see how I’d wonder?”

Despite the anguish in her voice, Shayne couldn’t repress a faint grin as he said, “You’ve been thinking that perhaps I did it for you? Killed Mr. Carson because you asked me to help Harvey? Forget it. You haven’t checked the time sequences carefully or you’d realize that Carson was dead before I ever met you. Your coming to Miami had nothing to do with it. Do you understand?”

“He was? How do you know?”

“I know,” Shayne told her shortly. “And I had nothing whatever to do with it. Moreover, I’m beginning to doubt whether the affair your husband and Belle Carson were having had anything to do with his murder either... except perhaps very indirectly. Get that in your mind and hold onto it.”

“You don’t? You really mean...?”

“At the moment, I’m doing a lot of guessing,” Shayne told her impatiently. “One thing I am sure about: Your trip to Miami had no bearing at all on Carson’s murder. He was dead before you reached the city... before I’d even ever heard of him. Right now, I need the name and present address of the first detective you contacted in Miami. The one who took your money to investigate Belle Carson in Atlanta and never turned in a report to you.”

“Didn’t I tell you his name last night? I thought I did. It was Walsh. Jeffery Walsh. He had an office in Miami. It was on First Street, I think. Or First Avenue. But I told you how my latest letter to that address came back saying he was no longer there.”

Shayne said, “Walsh?” ruminatively. The name was tantalizingly familiar to him though it didn’t strike any real chord in his memory.

“I remember you telling me about your letter being returned. But I want you to think hard and tell me this. In these last few months has your husband hinted anything about the possibility that Mr. Carson was being blackmailed by Walsh?”

“Blackmailed? No. I never even thought...”

“It was obvious from what you told me last night,” Shayne pointed out impatiently, “that your detective had withheld whatever derogatory information he dug up on Belle from you because he thought there were better pickings in it for him by blackmailing Belle or her husband. It’s an old stunt among unscrupulous private detectives,” he went on angrily. “Unfortunately, my profession has its share of crooks. I’m positive that’s what Walsh has been doing, and I wonder if Harvey wasn’t aware of it.”

“Harvey? Why would he know about it? I never even told him one word about going to Mr. Walsh.”

“But he acted as Mr. Carson’s secretary,” Shayne reminded her. “For instance, he typed the letter written to me making an appointment for this morning. I thought he might have just mentioned it to you in passing... something about Carson sending sums of money to Walsh at a new address...”

He paused hopefully, looking sideways at her in the moonlight, but Mrs. Harvey Barstow shook her head helplessly. “He didn’t. Not if he knew or even suspected, he didn’t.”

“So you haven’t any idea what Jeffery Walsh’s present address may be?”

“No. I don’t. If I did,” she added with unexpected spirit, “I’d been after him about all that money he got from me without giving me anything in return for it.”

Shayne sighed and lit a cigarette. “How late do you think Harvey will work at the bank tonight?”

“Goodness knows. He was all keyed-up at supper... about Mr. Carson being killed and the detective telling him he shouldn’t have talked to you in the bank at all. He keeps on acting like he thinks all of it had something to do with the accounts in the bank, and he keeps going over things trying to find out why Mr. Carson wanted to see you. Maybe that’s what he does think,” she added fiercely. “And maybe he was right all along. Maybe it was just in my own mind that I thought Mr. Carson wanted to see you on account of Belle and Harvey.”

“I think it was just in your own mind that you suspected that,” Shayne told her gravely. “Right now, I have strong evidence that points to another reason for Carson wishing to contact me. If you drive home now, without Harvey,” he went on abruptly, “what will you tell the women visitors in your house?”

“I’ll tell them... well, that when I got to the bank something else had come up to detain Harvey and he couldn’t come with me.”

Shayne said, “Then I think you’d better be getting back.” He unlatched the door on his side and got out, went around to her door and paused there. “You won’t tell anyone you saw me tonight?”

“Why should I? What could I tell them? No one knows I ever met you, Mr. Shayne. No one has to now, do they?” Her voice was warm and pleading.

Shayne said, “I don’t think so. Go on home to your children, Mrs. Barstow. Stop feeling guilty about last night. I give you my positive assurance that Mr. Carson’s death did not result from anything you did.”

She smiled tremulously at him in the moonlight, tears glinting in her round eyes and her lower lip caught tightly between her teeth.

She said softly, “Thank you, and... thank you.”

Shayne nodded and moved away from her up to his car. She started her motor and backed away, made a U-Turn, and he watched her tail-lights disappear in his rear-view mirror as she turned back onto the highway.

He lit a cigarette and sighed and started the motor and also made a U-Turn. He had one more stop to make in Denham before getting back to Miami as fast as he could.