Murder in Haste

Chapter Twelve

He waited a moment, thinking, his hand on the phone. It was too soon to ask Joe Wing to walk into the St. Albans ballroom and pick out Klipstone and the others. The identification was too shaky. One big trouble with this kind of information was that the source couldn’t be mentioned, if he wanted to go on getting information like it. If asked a direct question by someone in uniform, Kincaid would cheerfully swear on the Bible that he hadn’t been near the St. Albans lobby in weeks, and had never set eyes on Jack Klipstone in his life. Shayne still had some work to do before he could pass this on to the cops.

He found a Western Union office, where he put a hundred dollar bill in an envelope, addressed it to Kincaid at his hotel, and paid the messenger fee. Then he drove to the nursing home on the Beach, where he had arranged to meet Rose Heminway.

It was a rambling three-story building inside a tall spiked fence. It looked out over the lower bay, and was reached by a narrow shell road off West Avenue. Squire, the Beach detective who had been assigned to look after Mrs. Heminway, was rocking gently in a glider on the wide porch, half asleep.

He started to his feet as Shayne came up the steps. “Oh, you, Mike,” he said. “It’s been a long day. Do you think I could go home?”

“Why not ask Wing for relief?”

“What do you think I’ve been doing? I’ve been asking for relief all afternoon. But it seems we’re on emergency shifts, and if I fall asleep it’s just too damn bad.”

“Keep your eyes open,” Shayne said. “You want to find Painter, don’t you?”

“Oh, sure,” Squire said dryly.

Hearing voices, Rose came out from inside. She was wearing a simple pink dress with large buttons, and in spite of the dark shadows beneath her eyes, Shayne thought she looked as fresh as if she had just stepped out of a shower. He corrected himself hastily, remembering that morning. For one thing, she had more clothes on.

She put her hand on his arm. “Mike, you’re a comfortable sight. Detective Squire has been wonderful, but he’s getting a little drowsy. He was up all night, he tells me.”

“He’s not the only one,” Shayne said. Squire was looking at him hopefully, and Shayne said, “I’ll see what Wing thinks. I’m going to be with Mrs. Heminway for a while, and there’s no point in doubling up.”

Rose showed him a phone booth inside, and Shayne called Wing, who grudgingly gave permission for Squire to quit for the day. The detective left in a hurry before they could change their minds.

Rose indicated the glider. “Or we could walk down to the water, Mike.”

“Let’s walk,” Shayne said.

They started down the steps, and Shayne said, “Can your father move in any way? If you asked him a question, could he react enough to say yes or no?”

“Not now,” she said hopelessly. “I tried just that, as soon as he was able to move his right arm. But he can’t seem to communicate between his brain and his muscles. I’m convinced there’s no brain damage, no matter what the doctors say. I think he knows me part of the time. It’s terrible to see how he looks at me, as though he’s struggling to say something. What did you want to ask him?”

Shayne didn’t answer. They were walking down the long lawn toward a sandy beach. “Apparently you didn’t have any trouble with the Lüger this morning.”

“What do you mean, I didn’t have any trouble?” she said indignantly. “I finally worked myself up to pulling the trigger, and the wretched thing jumped right out of my hand. I mean it, that’s exactly what happened. It leaped up and went sailing over my shoulder. I only managed to fire the one shot, but you were right, the man outside was as nervous as I was. He didn’t wait to find out what had happened to his friend. The police must have passed him on the causeway. Did you find out where he went?”

“Yeah. I’ll get to that in a minute.”

“Mike, I thought I’d better say — I’ve been feeling embarrassed about the way I acted when you climbed in through the window.” She touched her face, which had reddened, and looked resolutely out across the water. “I thought you were — I know it was silly, and I don’t even know exactly what I’m trying to say now except that I hope you don’t think—” She broke off, flushing.

Shayne grinned. “You were very cute, as a matter of fact, and that’s enough of that, if we’re going to get anything done.”

She gave him a sidelong glance. “Yes, Mr. Shayne,” she murmured.

They came to a wooden bench at the edge of the grass and sat down.

“Quite a few things have happened since I saw you,” Shayne said. He offered her a cigarette and took one himself. “But first I’d like to ask you some questions. Don’t try to figure out why I’m asking. Just answer them as they come, and then we’ll see how they add up.”

His lighter flared between them. “That sounds sensible,” she said, breathing out smoke.

“To start with the robbery. Did you or your husband ever have anything to do, at any time, with either Sam Harris or Fred Milburn?”

She shook her head. “I can’t be positive about George, but I certainly never heard either name.”

“How much was your husband earning at the time he was killed?”

“Fifty-six hundred. Everybody in the bank assumed he was on his way up, being the president’s son-in-law. But Father’s old-fashioned about things like that. I even think he leaned over backward, so people wouldn’t think he was playing favorites. He passed George over for one promotion which he really should have had, in my biased opinion. George had the responsibility, without the money or the title to go with it. I will say that George was too easygoing. He let people walk all over him. He didn’t care.”

“You weren’t living with your father then?”

“No, we had our own apartment. Mother was still alive. She was in and out of hospitals the last few years. It was a bad time for all of us.”

“Did you and George live within your income?”

“Why do — no, that’s right, I’m not supposed to ask any questions. Most of the time we came close, Mike. We had to borrow from Father now and then, but usually we managed to pay it back when we said we would.”

“Was your marriage happy?”

“Very,” she said quietly.

“He wasn’t involved with any other women?”

“Involved! Certainly not.” She looked at him directly. “I don’t care — I have to ask a question. Are you implying that he had something to do with the robbery?”

“That’s what I’m implying. It’s not necessarily true. When people are given responsible jobs and not enough pay to make ends meet, they’ve been known to make ends meet by dipping into the till. I’m not saying that happened, but it would explain a few things.”

She smoothed her dress. “Mike — I know strange things happen, but I honestly don’t think I could be that wrong about anybody. We were married three years. We were still as much in love as when we were on our honeymoon, and we just didn’t have any secrets from each other. We spent our free time together. When could he get mixed up with other women? In the morning coffee break? They didn’t have a coffee-break at the bank. It’s physically impossible. I managed our checkbook. I knew what came in and went out, to the penny. On top of all that, I knew George.”

“Tell me again why he worked overtime that night.”

“There was some kind of department deadline, something was moved up and he was the only one who could handle it. I don’t suppose anyone would remember now.”

“But it wasn’t a regular thing?”

“If it had been, I would have suspected he was seeing another woman.” Her face clouded. “He was depressed about something, though. It was a rare thing for him to worry. Our finances were pretty tight just then, and the way the hospital bills were piling up, Father didn’t have anything to spare. It was probably that. I couldn’t get him to cheer up. He went around with a gloomy face on all the time, very snappish and cross, and we had some bad fights. Not about anything, really. He was in such a rotten frame of mind that anything could set him off.”

Shayne smoked for a moment in silence. “Did he ever belong to a union?”

“No, he went to work at the bank just after he got out of the service, and there weren’t any unions there.”

“Do you know the name Harry Plato?”

“The name, but that’s all.”

Shayne flicked his cigarette into the grass. “Or Luke Quinn? He’s an official in the international now, but he used to be head of the Miami local.”

“Luke Quinn?” she said thoughtfully. “A serious-looking man?”

Shayne nodded. “About thirty-five. He wears glasses now, and he looks more like a TV announcer than the popular idea of a labor leader.”

“I think that’s the one. There was some kind of city-wide committee, I think for the Red Cross, with representatives from business and labor and the Kiwanis Club and so on. Father was chairman, and they sometimes met at his house. They divided the city in sections, like a military operation, and Father was very pleased when they raised more money than anybody ever had before.”

“Let’s jump to the present,” Shayne said. “Did your father say anything to you before he went to see Painter?”

“I’m ashamed to say, Mike, that we weren’t on very good terms. I don’t mean we weren’t speaking, but we weren’t speaking very cordially. We’d disagreed bitterly when I wanted to help Norma. The day of his stroke he just called a cab and put on his hat and left. He didn’t even say where he was going.”

Shayne pulled reflectively at his earlobe. “Rose, I know you’ve been thinking about what happened this morning, and I hope you’ve come up with something.”

She shook her head. “I had a long session with Lieutenant Wing, and we both kept thinking of the most far-fetched possibilities. But nothing helped. The name Cole means nothing to me. Baltimore means nothing to me. It’s very creepy, and I’ve been grateful for having a detective looking after me all day, I assure you. But what’s going to happen, Mike?”

“There’s some kind of deadline,” Shayne said. “The obvious one is Sam Harris’s execution, but that’s not enough. The Truckers are electing officers tomorrow, but I can’t see that that means anything. Well, my next stop is the St. Albans, which this week is no place for a lady. I don’t want you to go home. I’ll put you in an out-of-the-way hotel, and you’d better register under a different name.”

She stood up when he did, her face troubled. “Mike, that scares me. I don’t like to be all by myself in a hotel.”

“Wing will assign you another detective if you ask him,” Shayne said. “But bodyguards work both ways. They give you a certain amount of protection, but they also attract attention. It’s safer just to drop out of sight. I’ll make sure that nobody follows us.”

“You know about these things,” she said doubtfully, “but I can promise you I won’t get any sleep. I’ll just look in on Father before we go.”

Shayne’s eyes were bleak as they went up the sloping lawn. He was doing some hard thinking. Somewhere there had to be a link, and he knew that much depended on how fast he could find it. In a city as large as Miami, he could hide Rose where she would be perfectly safe so long as she followed a few simple directions. He was worrying about Peter Painter. Rose had talked to Painter, and a gunman was sent to call on her. Fred Milburn talked to Painter, and he was knifed.

The longer Shayne thought about it, the worse it looked. And yet the only constructive thing he could think of to do about it was to collect Joe Wing and a few cops and walk in on the leadership of the Truckers. And that was only constructive by comparison with other ideas he’d had. He didn’t expect it to get him anywhere. He didn’t know what questions to ask. The Trucker officials weren’t amateurs; they wouldn’t break down at the sight of a badge.

He went inside with Rose. In the front hall she forced a smile and started upstairs. Shayne turned into the waiting room, which had been the living room of the house when it had been a private residence. It was nicely furnished, with comfortable chairs and sofas. Several old people were watching a television program, and in one corner of the room a young doctor was talking to a man and woman, probably relatives of one of his patients. A small adjoining room had been turned into an office, where a young girl was serving a telephone switchboard.

She was saying, “I’m afraid there hasn’t been any change. Mrs. Heminway is here now, if you’d care to speak to her.”

Shayne listened idly, his attention divided between what she was saying and the loud dialogue from the TV screen. She went on, “That’s perfectly all right. I’m just sorry I haven’t any better news.”

Shayne sauntered over to the doorway as she accepted another incoming call. “Sunset Nursing Home, good evening.” She seemed too young to be earning her own living, but girls of that age had a way of looking younger to Shayne each year. She plugged a jack into the board and looked up.

Shayne said, “Doesn’t this job get monotonous?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “You’re — Michael Shayne, aren’t you?”

Shayne admitted that was who he was.

“That detective who came with Mrs. Heminway wouldn’t talk to me at all,” she said. “Is it true” — she lowered her voice and her eyes widened — “that somebody tried to kill her?”

“I’m afraid it is,” Shayne said.

She shuddered slightly. “I couldn’t believe it.”

“Does her father get many calls?”

She cheered up. “Oh, all the time, from all over. He must have a terrific circle of friends. It keeps me real busy, not that I mind. I try to say something cheerful, but the doctor doesn’t think there’s really much chance the paralysis will wear off, after this long. I probably should not say this, but I don’t think it matters, do you, I mean to tell somebody like you? Excuse me.”

She answered another call and rang an extension.

Shayne said, “When you said he gets calls from all over you mean long-distance?”

“Yes, but I probably shouldn’t have said all the time. He does get a call every single night from his brother in Baltimore, and that’s just to mention one.”

Shayne stopped smiling abruptly. “Baltimore? Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes. It comes in around six-thirty. Ordinarily I wouldn’t know if a call was local or long distance, but one night there was a mix-up in the circuits, and I heard the Baltimore operator trying to straighten it out.”

Another light flashed on her board. As she was attending to it, Rose came up behind Shayne.

“There you are,” she said.

Shayne lighted his cigarette. “You have an uncle in Baltimore, I hear.”

“Of course I don’t. I have one uncle here in town and one on the West Coast.”

Shayne went on smoking until the operator was free. He asked her, “Are you sure this Baltimore call was one of the regular six-thirty calls from his brother?”

She smiled. “Oh, we’re on quite friendly terms by now. This was only a few days after Mr. Chadwick came here from the hospital. When I found out it was an out-of-town call, I asked him why he didn’t make it person-to-person, and then if his brother couldn’t answer the phone, the call wouldn’t be completed and it wouldn’t cost him anything. But he said he’d rather talk to somebody and find out if there’d been any change, one way or the other.”

“How did he identify himself?” Shayne said.

“The first couple of times, just that he was John Chad-wick, Mr. Chadwick’s brother. After that I recognized his voice.”

“What kind of voice is it?”

“I wouldn’t know how to describe it, Mr. Shayne. Sort of deep, no particular accent.”

Shayne looked at Rose. “Do you have an Uncle John?”

“He’s the one in California. He’s seventy-nine, and he hasn’t done any traveling in years. He’s called me at home a few times, and he knows I’ll phone him if there’s any news. He wouldn’t call here. It must be somebody using his name.”

Shayne looked at his watch, a plan taking shape in his head. “Who’s the doctor in charge, Rose? This may be just the break we’ve been waiting for.”