Too Friendly, Too Dead

3

“Goddamn it,” said Shayne angrily. “That’s one way of breaking the news to a newly-made widow.” He slid his left arm gently beneath Linda’s knees and lifted her limp body. “Where can I take her? Got some smelling salts?”

“There’s a sofa in my office. I’ll get a doctor if necessary… if she isn’t faking it.” He opened the door and strutted out, and Shayne followed him down the hall to the chief’s private office.

Looking down into Linda’s white face as he carried her, Shayne saw her closed eyelids begin to flutter and knew she was coming out of it.

He laid her carefully on a sofa in the office, sat beside her and took both her hands in his, rubbing them gently between his palms. “She doesn’t need a doctor,” he said shortly. “She just needs a moment to recuperate from one shock before she receives another. You could have taken me aside and told me privately…”

“When I need lessons from you in how to interrogate a suspect, I’ll ask for them, Shayne.”

“A suspect?” Watching her face, Shayne saw the color slowly coming back; her eyelids opened briefly to allow her to see his concerned face looking down into hers, and closed again as she breathed a faint sigh.

“What else?” said Painter sharply. “The man was poisoned, Shayne. It’s not a simple mugging. Closer to home than that.”

“How do you know it isn’t a new M. O. for your Beach muggers?” demanded the redhead angrily. He released her hands as Linda opened her eyes wide and struggled to sit up, slid his hand beneath her back to help her and said soothingly, “Take it easy, Linda. Your husband is dead. That’s a fact you have to live with. How he died isn’t really important.”

“I say it’s extremely important,” Chief Painter cut in incisively. “I need every tiny detail I can get about the man in order to proceed intelligently. I’ll call in a stenographer and take down a complete statement… if you don’t mind, Mr. Shayne,” he added sarcastically, moving behind his desk and reaching for the intercom button with pointed forefinger.

Shayne said bluntly, “I do mind, Painter. She’s my client and she’s in no condition to make a statement at this point. Goddamn it, man! There are two small fatherless children at home waiting for her to come back and tell them what happened to daddy. You can get a statement from her later, but right now I’m taking her home.”

“Your clients aren’t immune to interrogation, Shayne. If you continue to interfere with the due process of law, I’ll have you locked up here and now.”

Shayne didn’t bother to reply to that. He told Linda, “Listen to me carefully. When you do make a statement, I want you to be out of shock and in full possession of your reasoning faculties. If this idiot is stupid enough to hold you here against your will, refuse to answer any questions. Do you understand, Linda? Call a lawyer. That’s your legal right, and I want you to promise me you’ll do it.”

She nodded, her face grave, her eyes intent on his. “I promise.”

“Okay, Petey.” Shayne stood up and grinned at the infuriated detective chief. “Am I under arrest?”

“By God, Shayne, I ought to throw you under the jail. Get out of here. And stay out of this case, do you hear?”

Shayne said, “I’ll get out gladly… for now. But I told you Mrs. Fitzgilpin is my client, and my license entitles me to practice my profession in Miami Beach as well as any other municipality in this state. Come on, Linda. The little man wants us to go now.”

He arose, holding out his hand to her, and she took it and he pulled her to her feet. He said, “She’ll be at home and available to you at any time, Painter. But you keep it clear in your mind that you have no jurisdiction across Biscayne Bay. When you question her it will have to be in cooperation with the Miami police.”

He stalked to the door, holding Linda’s arm tightly and leaving Peter Painter standing behind his desk transfixed with frustration and rage.

When they reached Shayne’s car and Linda subsided weakly in the seat beside him, she asked in a low, frightened voice, “He did say Jerome was poisoned, didn’t he, Mike? I’m not dreaming that.”

Shayne nodded, backing out carefully. “That’s what he said. Just a preliminary medical report, of course, but we can take it pretty well for granted there’s no mistake.”

“It’s so horrible. So utterly vicious and unthinkable. Poison! That means premeditation. Someone who wanted and planned Jerome’s death. Who could? Everyone he knew loved him. He was gentle and generous and kind. It’s appalling and impossible to try and realize that there’s such a monster alive who would do that to Jerome.”

Shayne drove toward the Causeway very carefully several minutes before answering her. “These are questions you’re going to have to face, Linda. Not only will they be asked by the police, but you must ask them of yourself and try to know the answers. We don’t know what sort of poison it was yet… how it was taken. There’s always the possibility of suicide in a poisoning. Can you positively rule that out?”

“Oh, yes.” Linda sounded honestly and completely shocked. “Not Jerome. He loved living. He really did… as much as any person I’ve ever known. Though we weren’t wealthy, we lived comfortably and his business was increasing all the time. He never wanted to make a lot of money, and was determined to keep his business small, to have personal contacts with his clients. That was one of the things he liked most… his feeling that he really was of help and service to the people who came to him. He was such a friendly man. I can’t conceive him having an enemy.”

“There wasn’t any difficulty recently? Nothing to upset him?” probed Shayne.

“Nothing at all. Well, there was a funny thing happened about a week ago at the office, and we laughed about it. Some woman wanted to insure her husband’s life for a quarter of a million dollars without him knowing about it… the husband, I mean. That’s absolutely against the rules, you know, and Jerome told her so point-blank. He didn’t know her from Eve, and didn’t know why she came to him with such a proposition, but he suspected it was because he has such a small business and she hoped he’d be tempted by the fee. Because it would be huge, you know, on such a yearly premium. And that made him angry. Because she had the effrontery to think he’d do something like that just for the money involved. He told her off flatly, I guess. It was funny,” she added wistfully. “For one whole evening, we both felt rich. You see, she called one day to make an appointment to see him the next day and discuss the policy and he told me about it that night. Naturally, she didn’t tell him she wanted to take out the policy without her husband’s knowledge, so it was a shock the next day when he came home and told me it was all off.”

Shayne was driving westward quite slowly over the Causeway, staying in the right-hand lane and letting other cars scoot past on the left, letting the widow talk herself out because he realized that was the best possible therapy under the circumstances and also because these were exactly the sort of things he needed to know about Jerome Fitzgilpin if he was going to investigate his death.

“This woman,” he asked, “didn’t come back?”

“No. I’m sure she didn’t or Jerome would have mentioned it. I’m sure he made her understand emphatically that he would have no part of such a scheme.”

“Was he attractive to women?” Shayne asked abruptly. “Did he ever give you reason for jealousy?”

“Jerome?” She laughed with the happy indulgence of a woman who knew herself well-loved. “They liked him, of course. Everybody did. A lot of his clients were widows or spinsters who had to earn their own livings, and they trusted him and asked for business advice. But we’ve been married fifteen years and I don’t believe he ever as much as looked at another woman.”

“I can believe that,” Shayne told her sincerely with a sidelong glance. “You’re a very beautiful woman. And a lot younger than Jerome, I’d guess. How much? Fifteen years?”

“Eleven,” she replied promptly. “I was only nineteen when I married him and I’ve never regretted it.” She sighed deeply and relapsed into silence, and despite his procrastination they were approaching the mainland.

Then she laid her hand on his forearm and asked timidly, “Will you work on the case, Mike? I can afford to pay you. Jerome left quite a lot of insurance, and I’d feel so much better if I knew you were working on it. That little man at the Beach! Ugh.” She shuddered. “He gave me the creeps somehow. Lucy Hamilton talks about you and your cases a lot and I know how successful you are. I suppose you know Lucy is hopelessly in love with you,” she confided.

Shayne laughed. “Not hopelessly. Sometimes she hates me. Right now, for instance, I’m sure she’d hate me if I didn’t take your case… or if I accepted a fee for solving it.” He had turned north a few blocks off the Causeway, and now drew up in front of Linda’s apartment house.

“I’ll go up with you,” he suggested, “and see if I can induce Lucy to invite me down to her place for a cup of coffee and a slug of cognac.”

“I can make coffee,” she offered. “And there’s whiskey, but I’m afraid no cognac.”

“Lucy always keeps a bottle on hand,” he assured her, “and I think you’ll want a few minutes alone with the children.”

He took her arm as they climbed the stairs together, and released it when Lucy opened the door of the Fitzgilpin apartment and he saw a boy of nine and a little girl of six clinging to his secretary’s two hands.

They both started talking at once when they saw their mother in the doorway, “Mommy… Mom… Lucy’s gonna make a picnic… take us to the park… to have a picnic lunch,” little Sara explained soberly, and then Ralph pulled away from Lucy and straightened his shoulders manfully and asked, “Where’s daddy, Mom? Lucy said there’d been an accident…?”

“… cident,” echoed Sara, and Linda dropped to her knees on the floor and held out both her arms, and the two children crowded into them.

Looking over their heads into Lucy’s mutely questioning eyes, Shayne shook his head and said, “Have you got a drink downstairs, Angel? I need one.” She understood at once, and circled the little family trio to go out the door with him. Shayne pulled it shut firmly, and told her, “Linda will be okay. She’s got what it takes. Right now she doesn’t need us.”

“It was Jerome?” she breathed as she went down the stairs with him to her apartment

He nodded absently. “Not only that, Angel, but it’s not as cut and dried as we thought. He was rolled, all right. Even a fairly inexpensive ring taken off his finger, but it wasn’t just a conventional mugging. He died of poison.”

Lucy had unlocked her door and pushed it open. She turned to him with exactly the same exclamatory words with which Linda had greeted the same announcement. “Poisoned? Oh no!”

Shayne nodded, walking past her into the familiar, pleasantly cool living room. “It’s just a preliminary report, but the M. E. on the Beach doesn’t make mistakes. Painter tried to take Linda over the hurdles, of course, on account of that, but I put my oar in and shut him up for the time being.”

Having worked with Shayne for a lot of years on a lot of cases, Lucy Hamilton knew exactly what he meant without any further explanation. A poisoning almost positively indicated premeditation. Very few poisoners act on the spur of the moment. It also, in a large majority of cases, meant a woman murderer… particularly if the victim were a male. More than that, it was (too often) the preferred method for wives to get rid of unwanted husbands.

Lucy came to him in the middle of the room and clutched his arm fiercely. “Not Linda, Michael. I know her. I’ve seen them together a lot. She’s a lovely mother… crazy about those two kids. And they were nuts about their daddy. She’d never in the world…”

Shayne grinned down tiredly into Lucy’s intense face. “All right. So I’ve got a job cut out for me. A cup of your coffee might help.”

“I’ve got the percolator ready to plug in.” She released his arm and hurried into the kitchen. He dropped his angular frame on the sofa and lit a cigarette, and Lucy called out to him, “Could you stand a drink first?”

“First and with,” he told her firmly, and settled back on the sofa and drew deeply on his cigarette until she came in with a four-ounce glass of cognac in one hand and a tall glass of ice water in the other.

He accepted the drink with muttered thanks, a thoughtful scowl on his face. “Right now, I don’t know what the poison is or how taken, though Petey intimated he was well loaded with alcohol also. Any chance of suicide, Lucy?”

“No. I don’t think so. I’d swear on a stack of Bibles, no, Michael. He just… well… Lucy spread out her hands helplessly. “He wasn’t the suicidal type, Michael.”

“If there is such a thing,” growled Shayne, taking a long and thankful pull at the cognac glass and washing it down with ice water. “All right. We skip that for the moment. Any more ideas in that pretty head of yours?”

With the electric percolator making proper noises in the kitchen, Lucy sank down on the sofa close beside him and rested her brown head on his shoulder. “At the moment… none,” she told him firmly. “A poisoner means, to me, an implacable and vicious enemy. This, I cannot visualize for Jerome Fitzgilpin. I’ve told you, Michael, he was the sweetest, friendliest little man you ever saw. I never knew a man more eager to do favors for people, not fawning or servile, but with real generosity and a great big heart. That’s why they didn’t have too much money, I think. I suspect he was always carrying his poorer clients over bad times… paying their insurance premiums for them himself rather than allowing them to lapse.”

“Did Linda object to this generosity on his part? Did it gripe her that they had to live cooped up with two kids in an apartment like theirs?”

“Never,” said Lucy sturdily. “She loved him for being what he was, and didn’t try to make him over.”

Shayne drained his cognac glass and set it down on the coffee table in front of him with a thump. “You know what you’re handing me, Lucy? An impossible case. A man whom nobody wanted dead. Yet, he is dead. Someone fed him poison last night.”

“And then stole his ring and wallet with several hundred dollars in it,” Lucy reminded him spiritedly. “Why couldn’t it be that way, Michael? He often stopped in a bar for a few beers after he kept his office open late on Friday night. Many of his clients might have known this. Even a few hundred is a temptation to a lot of the sort of people who dealt with Jerome. Not professional muggers, of course,” she added eagerly. “Some person who would shrink from actual physical violence, but who wouldn’t be too squeamish to put some poison in his beer and then steal his wallet when it took effect.”

Shayne nodded unhappily. “This I shall attempt to sell Painter. But he’s a confirmed cynic, and he operates according to rules. In his experience, a poisoning is a close-to-home job. I’m afraid your friend Linda is in for a pretty rough going-over when Petey gets around to her.”

“She has nothing to hide,” Lucy told him strongly.

“I sincerely hope not.” Shayne turned his head toward the kitchen and sniffed pleasurably. “Hasn’t your coffee-pot stopped perking?”

“I think so.” Lucy jumped to her feet and gathered up the two glasses she had brought in previously. “With, Michael?”

“With,” he told her firmly, and when she returned shortly with a mug of strong black coffee giving forth the aroma of cognac, he accepted it from her gratefully and settled back on the sofa, saying, “Let me relax here alone with your heavenly brew, Angel. I think you’d better go back upstairs and take those two youngsters off Linda’s hands. By this time she must have told them whatever she’s decided to tell them, and she can probably use a respite.”

“Of course. What are you going to do, Michael?”

“Drink a couple of coffee royals and then hie me over to the Beach to get my teeth into a few facts before doing any more vain theorizing. Tell Linda I’ll be in touch.”

Lucy nodded and hurried out, leaving him alone with his cognac-laced coffee and his thoughts.