Murder and the Wanton Bride

7

Denham was a small town in the citrus belt, inland from Ft. Pierce and normally a good two hour drive from Miami. By pushing hard, Shayne made it just under an hour and a half, and it was twelve o’clock when he took his heavy foot off the accelerator and slowed at the neat, residential outskirts of the town.

The highway led directly through the Main Street shopping center, and there was one traffic light where Shayne paused for yellow to turn green. Directly across the intersection on the corner was a neat, newish, one-story stucco building with a sign over the entrance, FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF DENHAM.

Shayne eased past the light and angle-parked just beyond the bank building, got out and strolled back. The lobby was neat and modern, with a breast-high counter behind which two tellers were busy, another counter right-angled from it that said SAVINGS ACCOUNTS and SAFE DEPOSIT, presided over by a dumpy young woman wearing harlequin glasses, and to the left of the tellers’ counter was a low-railed enclosure with one desk just inside the railing.

A tall, gaunt-faced man sat at the desk busy with some papers in front of him. Shayne crossed to the railing and he glanced up, a look of interest crossing his face when he saw the tall, red-headed stranger. “Something I can do for you?” he asked politely.

Shayne said, “I’d like a few minutes with whoever is in charge.”

“Yes. Won’t you sit down?” He nodded toward a gate in the railing at Shayne’s left, arose and held out his hand with a questioning look as the detective came to his desk.

“I’m Mr. Martin, vice-president. Mr. Carson is not in today.” He ended on a note of inquiry that asked if a vice-president would do.

Shayne took his hand and said, “I know. I’m Michael Shayne from Miami.” He paused momentarily to see if the name struck any chord, but it didn’t appear to do so. He dropped into a chair beside the desk and went on smoothly, “Mr. Carson had an appointment with me this morning and that’s why I’m here.”

Mr. Martin resumed his seat and said, “I see,” in a tone that indicated to Shayne he didn’t see at all.

Shayne said, “I’m a private detective from Miami, Mr. Martin, and Mr. Carson has retained me to make an investigation for him. I thought perhaps you knew all about it.”

“A private detective?” Martin didn’t sound exactly frightened, but he was certainly perturbed. But no more so, Shayne thought, than any vice-president of a small bank would be under such circumstances. He fitted the tips of his fingers together in front of him and regarded them intently. “Mr. Carson has not... ah... confided in me that he was retaining a private detective for any purpose. Do you have some authorization from him?”

Shayne reached in his hip pocket for his wallet and took out Carson’s check. “This retainer should be sufficient authorization until Mr. Carson returns to verify it. I may as well cash it right now.” He reached in front of Martin for a pen, and endorsed the check and dropped it in front of the vice-president.

Martin studied it a moment and nodded slowly and said, “I see.” He turned and called to the teller nearest him who was not engaged with a customer at the moment: “Harvey. Would you please step here a moment?”

The teller was plump and boyish-looking, with blond hair and a thin blond mustache, and washed-out blue eyes that bulged slightly. As he came around from his counter to stand respectfully beside Martin, Shayne thought there wasn’t much of the Don Juan about him, but then he supposed a banker’s wife in a town like Denham didn’t have too much choice.

“This is Mr. Shayne, Mr. Barstow. Mr. Shayne is a private detective from Miami who has been retained by Mr. Carson to make some sort of... ah... investigation. Perhaps he told you about it.”

Watching the young man’s face closely when Martin spoke his name, Shayne saw an unmistakable flash of fear on the pudgy features. Barstow blinked several times and swallowed hard, and Shayne wondered if his accounts were in the perfect order his wife thought, or whether he, like his wife, actually believed Carson had intended to consult Shayne on a more personal matter than anything pertaining to the bank’s affairs.

His voice was slightly hoarse and forced as he said, “Mr. Carson did dictate a letter to me a few days ago requesting an appointment with Mr. Shayne. But I did not presume to ask him for what reason.”

“I see,” said Martin. “Then I assume this check is perfectly in order and you may cash it for Mr. Shayne.”

Harvey Barstow took the check between thumb and forefinger and held it away from him as though it were a snake that might strike at any moment. In the same strained voice, he asked, “How would you like the money?”

“Twenties and tens will be fine,” Shayne said easily.

When he walked away with the check, Martin asked uneasily, “What... ah... exactly are you here to investigate, Mr. Shayne? Anything we can do, of course...”

Shayne said, “I think it’s up to Mr. Carson to tell you whatever he wishes you to know. But to expedite things before his return, I’d like half an hour in his private office. There are certain things that must be looked into at once.”

For a moment he felt certain that his bluff was going to fail, that Martin was going to refuse him access to the banker’s private files before Carson returned and authorized it, but after a period of thoughtful contemplation of his tented fingers, the vice-president nodded and said, “Of course. If that’s Mr. Carson’s wish.”

Barstow returned with a sheaf of bills which Shayne accepted carelessly and stuffed in his wallet without counting. “Mr. Barstow,” said Martin stiffly, “acts more or less as Mr. Carson’s assistant, and I’m sure he’ll help you all he can. Take Mr. Shayne into Mr. Carson’s office,” he directed the teller, “and tell him whatever he wishes to know.”

Shayne got up and followed Barstow along the rear of the counter, conscious of curious glances from the other employees. Barstow took him into a small office enclosed with frosted glass, and stood aside with his full lips working apprehensively. “I don’t understand...” he burst out. “I don’t know exactly... I’m not at all sure that Mr. Martin has the proper authority to authorize this.”

Shayne closed the door tightly and made his gaze coldly bleak as they searched the washed-out blue eyes of the younger man. “Pretty nervous about this, aren’t you, Barstow?”

“Not at all. It’s just that I...” He dropped his gaze and swallowed twice, then valiantly lifted his eyes to Shayne’s hard stare and went on defiantly. “It seems to me rather high-handed for you to walk in here like this. What are you after? How do we know what Mr. Carson authorized you to do here? Why didn’t he return with you?”

“Perhaps,” said Shayne, “because he wanted me to gather my own impressions of the staff first-hand without taking any cue from him.” He opened the door and took Barstow firmly by the arm and steered him out. “If I need your help I’ll call you.”

“But Mr. Martin said I was to... well...”

“He said you were to tell me whatever I wanted to know,” Shayne reminded him shortly. He pushed the reluctant young man out and closed the door firmly behind him, then turned and surveyed the neat office with a sigh, wondering where to start looking for the reason behind Carson’s letter asking for an appointment — for some clue to the “extremely confidential matter of the utmost importance” which Carson had wished to consult him about.

Half an hour later, after checking through all the papers in the desk drawers and pawing through the contents of two filing cabinets, Shayne was no closer to the answer than before. So far as he could tell, there wasn’t a single personal paper in the bank president’s office. So far as his limited knowledge of banking procedure went, everything seemed in perfect order and devoid of the clue he sought.

When he went out of the office, only one teller was behind the counter, and Harvey Barstow was not in sight. Martin was still at his desk, and he looked up with curiosity as Shayne came around and stopped beside him.

“Everything all right, I trust? That is... ah... surely you can understand our natural consternation when a private detective is called in to investigate a bank.”

“I can understand that thoroughly, Mr. Martin.” Shayne made his voice sound grim, and kept his face unsmiling. “Unfortunately Carson did not authorize me to discuss the matter.” He glanced at his watch. “Some place in town I can get lunch?”

“The hotel dining room is best. It’s a little late for lunch in Denham, but I’m sure they can accommodate you. The Traveller’s Rest. Up the street one block on your right.”

Shayne nodded and strode out of the bank. He got in his car and drove a block west, found the Traveller’s Rest was a three-story frame structure badly in need of paint, its wide veranda holding a dozen unoccupied rocking chairs. He parked and got a suitcase out of the back seat which he had hastily packed after leaving the office, carried it up creaking steps and into a musty lobby that had an old man with a seamed and leathery face and palpably false teeth behind the desk.

He watched Shayne’s approach with bright-eyed interest and clicked his teeth and said, “What can we do for you, Mister?” when the detective set his suitcase down in front of the desk.

“I’d like a room and I was told I could get lunch here.”

“We got lots of rooms, that’s for sure. And I reckon we can still scrape up some vittles. Ain’t had my own yet, ’s matter of fact. Fried pork chops a special today, with stewed tomatoes and home-fried potatoes. Mebbe some apple pie left.” The old man smacked his lips and Shayne winced as he swung a register around and handed him a pen.

He said, “Just a couple of hamburgers will be fine,” and signed, “Michael Shayne, Miami, Florida.”

The old man turned the register back and squinted at it. “From Miami, hey. Here on business?”

“Sort of.” Shayne got out a cigarette and lit it, wondering how long it would be before everyone in town knew exactly what his business was.

“Be here long?” The old man wrote 110 behind Shayne’s name and reached behind him for a plain house-key attached to a numbered metal disk. “Michael Shayne, huh? Seems like that name’s mighty familiar.”

“Just over night. Possibly not even that.” Shayne bent to pick up his bag and the old man pointed and said, “Right up them stairs and to your left, less’n you want I should carry your bag up. We ain’t fancy-like but we aim to make our guests comfortable. You just holler case you want anything and I’ll have cook fix you up something.”

Shayne went up the stairs and to his left, past a door marked GENTS BATH and to Number 110. It was a small, humid room, with an iron bedstead and a rust-streaked lavatory in one corner. He opened his bag and lifted out a bottle of brandy, got the single glass from above the lavatory and poured it half-full. He took a sip of the warm liquor and recalled that he was supposed to holler in case he wanted anything, turned and went out of the room, locking it behind him, and went down stairs carrying the glass in his right hand.

The leathery-faced old man came from behind the desk as he reached the bottom, moved toward an archway on the right, saying, “In here’s the dining room. Everyone else has et, but cook’ll fix you something real tasty.” He looked at the glass half-full of amber liquid in Shayne’s hand, and asked disapprovingly, “Some sorta medicine you got there? You look like a healthy young feller, too.”

Shayne grinned and said, “This is how I stay healthy. Thought I might get some ice water to wash it down.”

“We got that, for sure,” cackled the old man. He ushered Shayne to a small table near the kitchen entrance, and the detective said, “Why not sit with me if you haven’t already eaten?”

“I take that right neighborly. Yessir, I’ll do that very thing. Ice water, Mary,” he called toward the kitchen door, and gathered a table-setting from a nearby table and placed it opposite Shayne’s place.

A neat colored girl brought ice water for both of them, and placidly agreed to serve Shayne a rare hamburger steak instead of the fried pork chops, and to substitute a bowl of grits for home-fried potatoes.

Shayne settled back and alternately sipped from his water-glass of brandy and the tumbler of ice water, and parried pointed questions about his reason for being in Denham while he learned that his luncheon companion owned the hotel and was named Ira Stone, and that Denham was a right nice little town though the hotel business was terrible, quite a modern little town some-ways, with a real good super-market down the street that’d just been opened last year, but not much tourist business and none of them nightclubs like Mr. Shayne was most likely used to in Miami.

Yessir, the bank was real nice. So, Shayne had noticed it down the street. Real up-to-date and all since Mr. Carson had took over and put in city ways. But still a real hometown bank. Accommodating as all get-out and a farmer could get a loan on his crop there without a lot of red tape, if Mr. Carson said so.

A real nice feller, Mr. Carson. At first the folks hadn’t cottoned to him too much, but he had a real good community spirit and then when he first began taking an interest in Miss Louella and it looked like sure enough she’d made a real catch at last, folks got friendly. Miss Louella was quality and it sure looked like the makings of a wedding until Mr. Carson made the mistake of advertising in the city papers for a stenographer and getting Belle Brand to work in the bank.

Well, not a mistake, maybe. Not from Mr. Carson’s way of looking at it, Ira Stone was forced to agree. But there was a lot of talk in town when the new president of the bank dropped off with Miss Louella all of a sudden and began squiring his new secretary around to all the town affairs.

Not that any of the men-folks blamed him, you could bet your life. The way she swished around and looked at a man and was ready to take a drink with any of them — straight corn likker or whatever.

Yessir, that Belle was something in Denham all right, and no one was much surprised when they slipped off to the County Seat at Logan and got hitched.

So she quit her job in the bank and Harvey Barstow went back to helping Carson like he had before Belle came, and Mr. Carson bought the old Olmstead house out in the country and had it all fixed up with new furniture and all.

Soon after that folks got to feeling sorry for Carson instead of resenting the way he’d played fast and loose with Miss Louella’s affections. Well, maybe some of them figured he got just about what was coming to him, but others hated to see a nice feller like him get the wool pulled over his eyes by his own wife.

Getting high and dancing with younger fellers while her husband sat on the sidelines and didn’t seem to notice. Rubbing up against them in public, too, until several wives was fit to be tied. There’d been plenty of talk, all right, but that had all sort of simmered down now.

Mostly it was agreed around town that Mr. Carson had finally put his foot down, and mostly his wife stayed at home now, drinking a lot alone and in the daytime from what you heard from the two house servants, and if she did do any stepping out these days it was at night when Mr. Carson was working at the bank or maybe away like he had to be sometimes on business.

Shayne had finished his chopped steak and his grits by the time the garrulous old man across from him had supplied that much information, and he accepted a large wedge of apple pie and a cup of murky coffee and let the discussion trail off naturally to the state of the weather and the prospects for a good crop and the sad state of local moonshining since old Jake Wirt and his two boys had been caught by the Feds and sent up for a long stretch.

And Ira Stone tried again to probe into Shayne’s identity and the nature of his business in Denham, and the detective parried his questions good-naturedly, complimented the waitress and hotel owner on the food they served, and left the table with a full belly and a lot of things to think about.

He knew what his next stop would have to be, though he hesitated about asking Stone for directions, so when he left the lobby and went out into the hot afternoon, he paused and looked up and down the street and then strode west a few doors to a sign that said John Hutchins, Real Estate.

A bony-faced female greeted him in the dim reception room of the real estate office and Shayne said, “Perhaps you can tell me if the old Olmstead property is still on the market. I remember a few years ago...”

“Oh, no, sir. It’s been sold. In fact, we handled the transaction for Mr. Carson, the local banker. Are you interested in...”

Shayne shook his head and looked disappointed. “I recall it as a beautiful place. Do you suppose the present owner would consider an offer now?”

Her hesitation was hardly more than momentary. “I hardly think so. He’s spent a great deal of money fixing it up. But we have several other listings...”

Shayne said, “I may ask you to show me some of them later. But I would like to see what’s been done to that place. Let me see now... I guess I’m a little turned around. Was it out this road...?”

“Three blocks west and then you turn to the right off Main about a quarter of a mile. You can’t miss it.”

“Of course,” Shayne murmured. “I’ll just drive by to get a general idea again. Thank you very much and I may be back to look at some other places.”

He turned away firmly before she could go into a sales talk about their other listings, went back to his car in front of the hotel and drove west three blocks, turned off on a shady street with old homes and nice lawns on either side.

At the end of a quarter of a mile he was practically in the country again, and a winding driveway led up to a white-pillared early colonial mansion on top of a small knoll guarded by magnificent oak trees.

The driveway led past the house and Shayne followed it around to the rear where he parked in a wide gravelled area in front of a three-car garage with all the doors closed.

He got out and followed a flagged walk back to the front and up wooden steps to the wide veranda where he pressed a button in the casing beside wide double doors.

A cool breeze swept through the oak trees in front of the house and the country silence was somnolent as he waited to interview the widow of the village banker who probably didn’t yet know she was a widow. He sincerely hoped she didn’t know, although he realized it was likely that Steve Frazel had notified Painter by this time, and it was quite possible that the Miami Beach detective chief had been in touch with Mrs. Carson by telephone.

In that case she might well be warned against Shayne, though if Frazel had handled the matter the way he had promised, Painter had no reason to believe that Shayne would be in Denham ahead of him.

One of the wide doors opened as he stood there, and an aged Negro looked out at him and bowed slightly and said, “Yes, suh?”

“I’d like to see Mr. Carson.”

“Mista Carson, suh, am not in.”

“I understand that he planned to return from Miami today?”

“Yes, suh. But he didn’t come yet.”

A throaty voice floated out to them from the interior, “Who’s at the door, Abe?”

“Genmun to see Mistah Carson, Ma’am.”

“I’ll see him, Abe.” The voice was closer and the Negro stepped aside and a moment later the banker’s widow confronted Shayne in the doorway.