The Corpse That Never Was

CHAPTER NINE

Michael Shayne got in his car and drove away from the Nathan residence thoughtfully. Had Nathan or Armbruster lied about the divorce that had been discussed between the couple? Why would either one of them lie about it? If it had been Elsa’s idea, as Nathan stated so positively, it might indicate that her affair with Lambert had been going on for several months. Eli didn’t believe that… or didn’t want to believe it. Would that be sufficient cause for him to lie about the divorce?

Yes. Shayne guessed it would. He didn’t have very many illusions about Eli Armbruster. With his implacable determination to clear his daughter’s name and somehow put the blame for her death on Nathan’s shoulders, the old man was perfectly capable of telling any lie that fitted his purpose. He wondered idly if Max Wentworth had been Eli’s idea. Nathan had mentioned the fact that Eli had used a private detective in the past to break up his daughter’s marriage plans. Max Wentworth?

Shayne knew the man only slightly. He ran a one-man agency in Miami, and had been in business for a decade or more. His reputation was none too good among other members of the profession, although Shayne knew of nothing that had ever been proved against him. He was simply one of those fringe operators who serve to bring an aura of disrepute to all private detectives. Specializing in divorce cases and marital disputes, and probably not above framing evidence to fit his clients’ needs if factual evidence was not obtainable.

Another matter for thought was Paul Nathan’s clearly evident disinclination to discuss his dinner partner of the preceding evening. A secretary from the office was all he had vouchsafed. And last night he hadn’t even told the police that much. There might be something there.

Though, for the life of him, Shayne couldn’t see why any of these things were particularly important. What good would it do Eli Armbruster if he could prove that Nathan was involved with another woman? It didn’t change any of the plain facts in the case. It didn’t put Elsa’s obvious relationship with Robert Lambert in a better light. All that Shayne had managed to do thus far was to dig up more evidence to clinch the cut-and-dried aspects of the suicide pact.

And he still didn’t know any more about Robert Lambert than when he started. That irked Shayne. Maybe it wasn’t important to the final solution of the case, but damn it! a man couldn’t just come out of nowhere and carry on a passionate liaison with one of the wealthiest women in Dade County without leaving some traces behind him. How had a man like that met Elsa Nathan… and courted her? What, he wondered, had Elsa been in the habit of doing with her Friday nights while her husband was conveniently going the round of gambling places? At her insistence, too. Paul Nathan had made it very clear that it had been her idea from the very beginning of their marriage. And it was she who had decreed that the servants should have Friday nights off. How far did Robert Lambert go back into her past?

By the time Shayne reached this point in his thinking he was back in the business section of Miami Beach, and he slowed while he watched for a public telephone sign. He parked in the first convenient place near to one, and looked in the Miami directory for Max Wentworth’s office number.

He dialled it and let it ring six times before hanging up, and looking again for a home telephone number. He found that Wentworth lived in the Northwest section, not far from Miami’s central business district, and he tried the number listed.

A woman’s voice answered after the second ring, and Shayne asked, “Is Max Wentworth in?”

“Not just this minute. Can I take a message?” Her voice sounded listless and disinterested.

“Do you expect him soon?”

“He shoulda been home an hour ago. Said he’d be back for lunch and he never is this late. Probably be here any minute… hungry as a bear. Who’s calling?”

“Tell him it’s Mike Shayne.” He glanced at his watch. “And that I’ll be out to see him in about twenty-five minutes.”

“Mike Shayne?” Her voice became interested. “Say, ain’t you in his line of work?”

Shayne said, “We’re practically buddies,” and hung up. He went back to his car and drove across the causeway to the mainland, continued westward across Miami Avenue and found the address he was looking for on a shabby street a few blocks beyond the avenue.

It was a two-family, one-story house on a larger corner lot. Three young boys were playing on the sparse grass in the unshaded yard, and they all turned to look at Shayne with unabashed curiosity as he went up the dirt walk and rang the doorbell on the right-hand side.

The door opened and a thin-faced, middle-aged woman looked out at him inquiringly. She wore fresh make-up that looked as though it had been applied hurriedly, and her hair was in frizzy little curls which had evidently just been released from curlers.

She said, “Mr. Shayne?” and he nodded, and she said, “Max hasn’t showed up yet. Won’t you come in?”

He followed her down a hall that was littered with roller skates and a velocipede, and into a cluttered living room where the shades were drawn at the windows.

She snatched a magazine off the most comfortable looking chair in the room, and said uncertainly. “Sit right down. I know Max won’t be long. He always calls me if he can’t make it for lunch. Can I get you a beer… or anything?”

Shayne said, “No, thanks. You’re Mrs. Wentworth?”

She nodded and backed away to a shabby sofa where she seated herself with the magazine in her lap. “Is it something about Max’s work you wanted to see him about?”

“Couple of questions about a case he’s on,” Shayne told her. “He is working, isn’t he?”

“Oh, he manages to stay pretty busy. Not today though. That’s why I don’t understand him being late for lunch. He promised yesterday that he’d be home all day and take me’n the kids to the beach. Then this morning he made a phone call and said he had to go down to the office for a little while, but he’d be back for lunch sure.”

“Anything to do with the job he was doing for Mrs. Nathan?” Shayne asked casually.

“Max hardly ever tells me anything about his cases.” Then the name struck her hard and she drew in her breath and leaned forward intently. “You mean that Mrs. Nathan from the Beach? The one you busted in on last night with her paramour?”

“Wasn’t Max doing some work for her?”

“Not that he ever told me. Not even this morning when it was all on the radio. But he never does,” she added bitterly. “You’d think a private detective would come home with all kinds of interesting stories to tell, wouldn’t you? But not Max. He always says it’s just a job like anything else. From what I read in the paper, you don’t find it like that, Mr. Shayne. Murders and suicides and all. Beautiful blondes. Just like they showed it on TeeVee when your program was running. I used to get Max to watch it and I’d say, ‘Now, why don’t you get cases like that?’ and he’d just sniff and say detecting wasn’t anything like that in real life, and it was just a story they made up, like, out in Hollywood.”

“Did he work last night?” Shayne asked idly.

“Last night… and every Friday for the past month. Out till all hours. Some cheap divorce case, I guess.” Her upper lip curled. “That’s all Max gets mostly.” There was defeat in her voice and Shayne felt obscurely sorry for the woman who had married Max Wentworth expecting to share the glamour and excitement of his work.

He lit a cigarette and assured her, “My cases are pretty humdrum most of the time, too.” He glanced at his watch, aware of an obscure sense of foreboding that was tugging at him.

Every Friday night for the past month, she’d said. Out till all hours.

“How late was he last night?” he asked abruptly, without knowing he was going to ask her until he heard the words come out.

“I don’t know for sure. Midnight I guess, anyhow. I went to sleep about eleven and didn’t hear him come in.”

“And he didn’t say anything to you this morning… after he heard the broadcast about Mrs. Nathan?”

“No. That was at ten o’clock. He’d finished his breakfast and was getting ready to go to the office when we heard it. I hadn’t turned it on before that so he could sleep late. He said he’d just be a little while. I don’t know what’s keeping him.”

Shayne looked at his watch again and got to his feet. “I’m afraid I can’t wait any longer, Mrs. Wentworth. When Max comes in tell him I’d like to have him call me. Either at my office or my hotel.”

“I’ll surely tell him, Mr. Shayne. But I know if you just wait a little minute longer…”

Shayne said, “I’m sorry. I must go.” He went out and she followed him to the door, protesting that Max always came home for lunch when he said he would, and Shayne thanked her again and found himself unconsciously hurrying down the path to his car.

It took him less than five minutes to reach an empty parking space in front of the building on West Flagler Street that housed Wentworth’s office. There was a dingy lobby that was empty on this Saturday afternoon, an air of desolation and decay about the premises. There was an elevator at the rear but it wasn’t in use today, and a directory on the wall listed Wentworth’s office as 212.

Shayne climbed the stairs to the second floor without hearing anything to indicate that any of the offices were occupied. He stopped in front of 212 and knocked on the door perfunctorily, studying the simple lock at the same time and getting a ring of keys from his pocket.

He selected one which entered the lock but refused to turn inside it.

The second key he tried opened the door. He pushed it open directly onto a gloomy, square room with a big desk in the middle of it.

Max Wentworth lay on the floor in front of the desk. His head was smashed in and lay in a pool of thickening blood.