Murder in Haste

Chapter Five

Michael Shayne dialed Mrs. Heminway’s number again. Joe Wing was standing close enough to the phone so he could hear both ends of the conversation. This time it rang only twice and the voice that answered was both sleepy and irritated.

“Hello? Who is it?”

“Michael Shayne again, Mrs. Heminway. I hate to do this to you. I know you were probably just getting back to sleep. If I came over in half or three quarters of an hour, could you see me?”

“Good heavens, no,” Mrs. Heminway said. “I’m anything but an early riser. As far as I’m concerned this is still the middle of the night. Why the urgency, Mr. Shayne? Only a few minutes ago you were saying—”

“I know. But things have changed. I’d like to get going on it right away.”

“Now wait a minute. Has Mr. Peter Painter been throwing his weight around, by any chance?”

Shayne looked at Lieutenant Wing. His shaggy eyebrows rose. “No, I haven’t seen Petey for a couple of weeks. What makes you ask that?”

“Oh — you said something about detectives, and it occurred to me that Mr. Painter might have been rash enough to try to put pressure on you directly. I understand you two aren’t on very good terms, I mean personally.”

“That’s a fair statement,” Shayne said, grinning. “Personally and every other way. No, these were Petey’s boys, but he wasn’t with them. Put pressure on me to do what?”

“Not to take the case. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man as upset as he was when I told him I was planning to hire you. But I made that promise in good faith, and I’m afraid I’ll have to stick to it, Mr. Shayne. One o’clock, then?”

“Mrs. Heminway, did you run into a Lieutenant Wing when you went to see Painter?”

“I believe I did. But—”

“I’m putting him on the line.”

He handed the phone to Wing, who said, “Joe Wing speaking. Mrs. Heminway, you’ll be doing us a favor if you’ll talk to Shayne now instead of waiting. The Chief isn’t here now, but he wouldn’t want to hold you to that promise.”

“He certainly wanted to hold me to it last night. Well, you’ve succeeded in arousing my curiosity, if that was what you were trying to do. Tell Mr. Shayne I’ll want a full explanation. Half an hour?”

Wing hung up. “What do you make of that, Mike?”

“What do I make of it? What do you make of it? Did he have anything on his calendar for this morning?”

“Nothing but routine.”

“Nothing but routine!” Shayne said angrily. “Didn’t he have anybody he could trust?”

“Not in the police department, I guess. Mike—” He broke off. “LaBanca. Heinemann. Go on downstairs. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“Won’t you need some help, Lieutenant?” Heinemann said, looking at the redhead.

“No, I won’t need any help!” Wing snapped. “We’re not arresting Shayne after all.”

“He talked his way out of it, did he?” Heinemann said.

Wing made a threatening gesture. When the two detectives were out of the room he turned to Shayne.

“I still don’t know if I’m doing the right thing, but maybe we’ll get a little extra this way. Just don’t try to play it too cute with me, Mike, because if you do—”

“I’ll live to regret it,” Shayne said impatiently. “Save your breath, Joe. I’ve heard it from Painter.”

“I happen to mean it,” Wing said.

“And while we’re laying down the ground rules,” Shayne went on, “don’t put a tail on me. That’s what Petey would do in this situation, but if I spot anybody behind me our deal is off and it’s every man for himself.”

“Sure, sure,” Wing said. “Now we don’t want to keep the lady waiting.”

Shayne finished knotting his tie. He poured a last shot of cognac. Then he found a fresh package of cigarettes and they went out.

The Bay Harbor Islands are several small man-made keys in upper Biscayne Bay, joined by the Broad Causeway. Michael Shayne parked on the white clamshell driveway beside Mrs. Heminway’s handsome house. The grounds were carefully landscaped and they seemed to be well looked after. As he crunched along the shell path to the front door, he noted the boathouse and dock, the smooth putting-green lawn, the flowering shrubs, and he put a price-tag of $65,000 on the property.

Rose Heminway opened the door for him. Shayne saw a good-looking athletic woman with blonde hair, widely spaced blue eyes and a pleasant mouth. She was wearing a dark-red belted wrapper and high-heeled slippers. Shayne had given her ample time to put on make-up and brush her hair, and she had done both.

She looked at him with approval. “You couldn’t be anybody else but Mr. Michael Shayne. I’ve heard you described. Come in. I think the coffee’s done.”

She took him all the way through to a large kitchen, filled with the agreeable smell of freshly-percolated coffee. “You’ll have a cup, Mr. Shayne?”

“Mmm,” he said. “Yes, thanks.”

“That doesn’t sound too enthusiastic.” She looked over her shoulder. “I was a littly fuzzy when I talked to you on the phone. I took a pill to get to sleep, and I’m afraid I didn’t make much sense. Did I gather that you haven’t been to bed yet? Maybe you’d rather have a drink. Or some brandy in your coffee?”

Shayne grinned. “The service seems to be very good around here.”

“Sit down, Mr. Shayne. I don’t often see this room at this time of morning. It’s actually quite pleasant, isn’t it?”

She waved at an alcove which was getting the early sun. She clicked from the refrigerator to the stove, to a counter, back to the refrigerator and then across to the table with a tray. He was satisfied to sit and watch. She moved well, and the robe moved in interesting ways of its own, opening and closing. She produced a bottle of brandy and poured a large slug in Shayne’s cup, and filled the cup with hot coffee.

“Now,” she said. “Scrambled eggs. Canadian bacon. Croissants. All right?”

“That sounds wonderful,” he said. “I didn’t know I was coming for breakfast, but I can’t turn it down. Do you mind if I ask some questions while it’s on the way?”

“Go ahead, Mr. Shayne.” She began breaking eggs into a mixing bowl. “But tell me one thing first. Were those detectives trying to — I don’t know quite how to put it — well, intimidate you?”

Shayne grinned again. “They started off with that idea.”

“That settles it,” she said briskly. “After I told Mr. Painter what I planned to do, he stalked out with a look of black determination on his face. He told me to listen to the twelve o’clock news. I thought that meant he was planning to do something about the Harris case, finally, but apparently he was planning to do something about Michael Shayne!” She glanced at him. “Though I can’t imagine how he thought he could get any place with you.”

“The only thing he wanted you to do was not to see me till afternoon?”

“He didn’t really want me to see you at all. He went off like a Roman candle when I mentioned your name. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.” She gave a low laugh. “He was so excited he spilled his drink in his lap.”

“I seem to have that effect on Petey,” Shayne said.

“He probably doesn’t like you to call him Petey either, does he?” When Shayne laughed she went on, “The whole thing was over my head. He said you’d crucify him. That was actually the word he used. But I couldn’t change my plans unless he gave me a reason, and that he positively refused to do. He tried to talk me into hiring somebody else, if I insisted on hiring a private detective. The idea being, I suppose, that he wasn’t in danger of being crucified by this other man. Well.” She poured the beaten eggs into a frying pan. “I’ll have to begin by telling you some ancient history.”

“I saw the newspaper clips on it yesterday,” Shayne said, “but I’d better hear it from you.”

She began stirring the eggs with a wooden spoon. “You wouldn’t think I’d still have so much trouble talking about it, after three years. But here goes. My husband George worked in the estates department at the Beach Trust. He worked hard, but except during the tax rush every spring he kept regular hours. And it just so happened that one night he had to meet some kind of filing deadline and he worked late. A day earlier or a day later, and he’d still be alive. For some reason that’s the thing I can’t get out of my mind.”

Shayne sipped his hot, aromatic coffee. “Accidents are like that, Mrs. Heminway. He could have been hit by a taxi on the way home.”

“I know, I know. And I’ve got to stop thinking about it. He heard a noise in another part of the building and went to see what it was. It couldn’t have been much of a noise, because everything else about the robbery was highly professional. All the alarms were blown out. The watchman had been chloroformed. The vault was cut open neatly and efficiently, and when George, who shouldn’t have been in the building at all, suddenly got in the way, the thief shot him, neatly and efficiently.

“I came down to drive George home, and I got there just in time to see somebody walking out of a side entrance with a suitcase. Sam Harris was arrested a few weeks later. He looked like the man I saw. Somebody else saw him as he got into a car, and her identification was more positive than mine. He was convicted. It was terrible, how much I wanted it. And when he was found guilty, I wanted him to be sentenced to death.”

“That’s probably natural,” Shayne said.

“Is it?” she said bitterly. “I’m not sure that it is. I’m only sure of one thing — for a long time, too long, I let it poison my life. It changed everything about me. All I could think of was how much I wanted this man to die for leaving me without a husband. Me. To think that some unfeeling murderer could do such a thing to me! All I knew about this man Harris was what the newspapers printed about him, and I actually wished I could attend his electrocution and watch them clamp the electrodes on his ankles and behind his ear... This is quite a subject for before breakfast.”

She gave a sudden cry and snatched the frying pan off the burner. She said ruefully, “I overdid my reaction then, and I’ve overdone the eggs now. I’ll have to start over.”

“They look fine to me,” Shayne said.

She stirred them doubtfully. “If you’re willing to think of it as an omelet—”

She served the eggs and brought a platter of Canadian bacon and a basket of crescent rolls from the warming oven.

“But I got over it,” she said. “I won’t go into all the stages. I started going to church again, for one thing, and after about a year or so I was able to get to sleep without wishing that some kindly prison official would invite me to throw the switch at Sam Harris’s execution. My father moved in with me, and he helped a lot. I started going out with men, and that helped. I even had one or two mild flirtations. I think I’m more or less normal now. But those execution dates — they keep postponing them and postponing them, and it’s beginning to seem less and less like Sam Harris’s execution and more and more like mine. I don’t suppose that will convince you I’m normal. I can’t sleep without drugs, or did I say that?”

“Eat,” Shayne said gently.

She stared down at her scrambled eggs and picked up her fork. “I think the one thing that kept me sane was that there didn’t seem to be any doubt that Harris was guilty. He was caught with a powerful cutting torch and some of the money. He’d already served a long term in prison for bank robbery, and he was known to carry a gun. He claimed that he hadn’t done it, but he didn’t convince anybody — certainly not me. At the same time, I kept running across stories about cases where eye-witnesses had been positive about an identification, and it turned out later that they had identified the wrong man. And I began to wonder. Could I really be sure I had seen Sam Harris, or did I just want to make certain that somebody was punished? Then Norma Harris came to see me.”

“That’s the wife?”

“Yes. She found a letter that seemed to bear out her husband’s story that he was somewhere else that night. The trouble is that it wasn’t dated, so by itself it wasn’t conclusive. But it was something to start with. Her lawyer’s trying to get a stay of execution with it, but it doesn’t seem to Norma that he’s trying too hard. She took the letter to Painter. He was very hostile and reluctant at first. Then suddenly, for a few days, he seemed to get interested. Then he dropped it again. It seems very strange.

“Norma thinks he’s afraid of probing too deeply for fear of finding out that he was responsible for a miscarriage of justice. He’s a funny man, and I don’t know. Norma asked me to help, and I said I would. And when I went to Painter he acted just as coy with me. Coy’s the wrong word. Strange, certainly. He keeps telling us to leave it to him. And day after day goes by, and we still haven’t the faintest idea what he’s up to, if he’s up to anything. Yesterday he wouldn’t even let Norma in to see him.”

“What’s the letter say?”

“Norma has a copy, and you’d better get it from her.” She gave him a direct look. “Does that mean you’re taking the case?”

“Hell, yes. I’m just as curious as you are about what Petey’s been up to.”

She leaned forward impulsively and pressed his hand. “That’s wonderful. If you’d turned it down, I’d have to go ahead with an idea Norma has. She wants to call a press conference, where we’d stand up in front of a lot of reporters and cameramen and charge Chief-of-Detectives Peter Painter with deliberate sabotage. I’ve been dreading it. I’m not the type for that kind of thing. And Norma. We-el, you’ll meet her. She gets carried away sometimes, and she might do more harm than good. And my father would really hate it. He practically blew the house down around my ears when I told him I was going to Mr. Painter. You probably don’t know — he’s Benjamin Chadwick. Does that name—”

Shayne sipped at his coffee, thinking. “President of the Beach Trust.”

“He retired last year,” she said. “He has a violent aversion to publicity, and it was rather unpleasant in the house for awhile after I put in with Norma Harris. He couldn’t understand that it was something I had to do, because of that horrible year when I was eaten up with thoughts of revenge. He couldn’t see any point in raking everything up all over again. He was afraid I’d go into another tailspin, as bad as the one I’d finally pulled myself out of. I usually take his advice, but this time I couldn’t. Then an awful thing happened. He went to Painter himself, I think to warn him about letting me get too involved. He collapsed on the steps, and he hasn’t been able to speak since. He was totally paralyzed for a few days, and he still can’t move his left side.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, he’s seventy-six. This may sound cruel, but I can’t let him put pressure on me. He lies in bed and stares at me, willing me to do what he wants, but I can’t.”

“Did he tell you he was going to Painter before he went?”

“No, and it was the last thing in the world I expected him to do. The first thing I knew about it was when they called me. They got his name and address from his driver’s license. Mr. Shayne, you know Peter Painter better than I do. What do you think of Norma’s theory? That to protect his own reputation, he’d suppress evidence that would cost a man his life?”

Shayne shook his head soberly. “No. Painter wouldn’t do that. Is there more coffee?”

“Of course.”

She poured more coffee and added cognac. Shayne went on, “But what he’s perfectly capable of doing is keeping a piece of evidence in the safe until he can bring it out at the most favorable time, in terms of publicity. He doesn’t share your feelings about press conferences. He enjoys them.”

“And while he’s holding onto this evidence, it wouldn’t occur to him that a fellow human being is sitting in a condemned cell, counting the minutes?”

“No, that wouldn’t occur to him. He wouldn’t class an ex-con as a fellow human being, and that might include the ex-con’s wife. On the other hand, maybe the little so-and-so just took it into his head to get stubborn. He doesn’t like to be pushed, even by a good-looking widow.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said.

“You’re welcome. But he may have held off too long. It’s probably time to tell you that he’s missing.”

Her hand flew to her throat. “Oh, my God. Missing! You don’t mean he’s been — that anyone has—”

Shayne shook his head. “Things have to be serious before a cop is deliberately killed, especially when he’s a high cop like Painter. It makes for hard feelings. Of course a quarter of a million bucks is a serious sum of money.”

“You mean from the robbery?” she said, puzzled. “That’s one of Norma’s big points. If Sam has it hidden, why doesn’t he use some of it to hire a better lawyer? But doesn’t this — I know, it’s terrible and I certainly hope that nothing has happened to Mr. Painter, but doesn’t it show that the truth wasn’t brought out at Sam’s trial?”

“It probably shows that,” Shayne said. “It doesn’t mean that he’s innocent. I’ll need Norma Harris’s address, and the name of that lawyer. And while we’re on the subject of money, my secretary keeps telling me to be more businesslike, especially when she’s not around to handle it for me. I’ll charge you a hundred a day and expenses.”

“That’s fair enough.”

“And I have another incentive besides money. Life wouldn’t be the same without Peter Painter.”

“I thought you didn’t like him.”

Shayne’s eyebrows went up. “Did I say I liked him? I said life wouldn’t be the same without him.”

She laughed and offered him the coffee pot. When he shook his head she said, “It makes me feel hoggish, leaving your friends outside. If you still have a minute, why don’t I see if they’d like a cup of coffee and a roll?”

Shayne stopped with his hands on the edge of the table. “What friends?”

“Didn’t you bring two detectives with you?”

“Not that I know of. Don’t look out the window. Look at me. I didn’t spot them coming out, but they knew where they could find me. I can’t operate with cops on my tail, and they ought to know that by now. Can you get me a pocket mirror?”

“I think so.” She reached across to a sideboard and rummaged in a purse. “One of them walked past on the other side of the street a few minutes ago. Nobody out here gets up this early, as a rule, and if they do they don’t go out for an early morning walk. He got into a parked car down the street, and there’s another man in it.”

She found a mirror and passed it to him. He was looking out across the bay, his back to the street. He set the mirror on the table, careful to keep the sun from hitting it, and adjusted its angle so he could see the parked cars outside.

“Behind the yellow convertible,” she said. “Do you see it?”

“Don’t look at the street.”

He tilted the mirror and saw a black four-door sedan, probably a Ford. He smiled grimly. “If they want to find out where I’m going from here, I’m going to Beach headquarters. We’ll see what their boss has to say. Can you write down those addresses for me? And where will you be if I want to reach you later?”

“I’ll be here till the middle of the afternoon, when I go to the nursing home to see Father. I’ll put that phone number down, too.”

“Fine,” Shayne said. “Stay here at the table where they can see you. I’m going to give these boys a fast ride.”

She slid him a piece of paper, which he folded and put in his pocket. “I feel better about things, Mr. Shayne. Thanks.”

“Mike,” he said.

She smiled. “Mike.”

He pushed back his chair, moving slowly until he could no longer be seen from the street. An instant later he was out the front door. Cutting across the grass toward his Buick, he leaped in, hit the starter and went back fast. The crushed shells of the driveway spurted from beneath his rear wheels. He cramped the steering wheel sharply as he felt the pavement, reversed and shot forward. He watched the rear-view mirror. He had caught his two friends flat-footed. He went into the climbing turn to the causeway and the black sedan still hadn’t moved.

On the causeway he built his speed up rapidly. He slowed at the approaches to the toll station; he still hadn’t picked up the sedan in the mirror, and his smile was beginning to fade. He tossed a quarter into the basket, pulled past and stopped in the plaza beyond. When even now the sedan didn’t appear, he got out of the Buick and brushed past the toll-collector.

“Can I use your phone?” he said. “Emergency.”

“This is no phone booth, Jack,” the attendant said.

“It’s a local call. Will that cover it?”

He threw the attendant a dollar, which was promptly whisked out of sight. Shayne dialed a number and asked for Lieutenant Wing.

“Wing speaking,” a voice said a moment later.

“Shayne,” the redhead said abruptly. “You’re doing what I asked you not to, Joe. You’re crowding me.”

“What are you talking about, Mike?”

“Your two boys in the black Ford. I thought at first they were tailing me, but it seems you want somebody to ask Mrs. Heminway the same questions I asked her, to see if you get the same answers. I don’t like to be checked up on.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about. What two boys in what black Ford? I didn’t put anybody on you, Mike, and I didn’t send anybody to talk to Mrs. Heminway.”