Too Friendly, Too Dead

7

Linda Fitzgilpin was alone when she let Shayne into her apartment half an hour later. She still wore the simple black dress she had worn to the morgue, but now there was a look about her as though she were beginning to come apart at the seams.

Her lip rouge was mostly gone, but there was higher color in her cheeks than previously. The red hair that had been softly waved was now slightly dishevelled and her hands trembled as she held both of them out to Shayne. Her voice was higher-pitched, with an almost strident note in it:

“Mike! I’ve been wondering when you’d come. Lucy’s taken the children out… you know she promised them a picnic in the park… poor darlings, they don’t seem to quite realize what has happened to their daddy… and I’ve been sitting here all alone, thinking and wondering…”

She drew him into the room with her hands grasping his, and she talked too fast and too nervously. Her eyes were slightly dilated and Shayne caught a strong whiff of liquor from her breath as he was drawn close to her.

He disengaged his hands gently and told her, “I’ve been around. Gathering up bits and pieces as I went.” He moved across to a deep chair near the sofa and sank into it with a sigh. She closed the door and stood indecisively in front of it for a moment while he got out a cigarette and lit it. Then she said with forced gaiety, “I’m going to confess I’m having a wee bit of a drinkee. Would you like one? There’s bourbon and gin in the kitchen.”

“No reason why you shouldn’t relax with a drink,” he told her amiably. “Sure. I’ll have a small gin… with tonic if you have it.”

She swayed very slightly as she turned and went into the kitchen. Through the open door, Shayne saw her pick up a tall glass as she went by, and take a gulp from it before getting down a fresh glass for him.

Her “wee bit of a drinkee” he thought wryly, was quite an understatement. He hoped she knew how to handle the stuff because there was certain information he hoped to get from her.

She held two tall glasses in her hands when she returned. One was colorless with gin and tonic, the other a deep, brown hue that betokened lots of bourbon and not much else.

Shayne accepted his glass gravely, took a sip and discovered she had not spared the horses in pouring his gin either. She sat on the sofa and crossed her nice legs, and he asked, “Have the police been around yet?”

“No. Not a word from them. Not a word from anybody.” She drank from her glass and grimaced. “I’m… afraid, Mike,” she said in a small voice. “Help me. Please help me.”

“Of course I’ll help you, Linda. Why are you afraid?”

“Of the police. That nasty little man at the Beach. You see I… I lied to you this morning. And now I don’t know…” Her voice quavered into silence and she took another drink, her round eyes peeking at him anxiously over the rim of her glass.

Shayne sat very still, expelling a lungful of smoke. “What did you lie about specifically?”

“About… Jerome and last night. I was so confused and frightened when I first woke up and they told me,” she rushed on. “I thought… oh God! how can I tell you what I first thought? You see, they didn’t say it was poison at first. Just that Jerome had been found dead beside his car. I just naturally supposed that… that he’d been murdered. You can see that, can’t you? So when I called Lucy I told her… well, that I’d taken a sleeping pill before Jerome came home from the office and that’s all I knew about it.”

“And you hadn’t?”

“Oh, I took a sleeping pill, all right, and then a big drink of whiskey, and I woke up groggy and confused. I didn’t know he hadn’t come home until I looked over at his bed and saw it was empty. So it wasn’t really a lie… except…”

“Except what, Linda?”

“He did come back from the office. A little after ten o’clock. At least an hour before I expected him. It was one Friday night he didn’t stop to have a beer with the boys,” she went on with a trace of bitterness in her voice. “And he had a big drink of whiskey and… and we had a sort of argument, and then he had a phone call and went right out again. That’s when I took my pill and went to sleep.”

“Sodium amytal?” Shayne asked sharply.

“What?”

“What kind of sleeping pills do you take?” he asked grimly.

“Nembutal,” she faltered. “I have a prescription. Oh, Mike! You don’t think…?”

“Right now I don’t know what I think. Your husband was killed last night by a lethal dose of a sleeping drug called sodium amytal probably administered in whiskey. I’ve been told he never drank whiskey in a bar. Just beer. Is that correct?”

“Yes. It was one of his idiosyncracies. He just hated the thought of paying all that money for a little drink. Seventy-five or ninety cents for one ounce. He used to lecture me about it, pointing out that there are twenty-six ounces in a fifth that costs about five dollars.”

“So he did his whiskey drinking at home in order to save money,” Shayne said harshly. “And he did take a drink here with you last night, and he did die of poison administered in whiskey. What do you think the police are going to make out of that, Linda?”

“I don’t care what they think, it isn’t so.” She sat up angrily and glared at him. “He made his own drink in the kitchen. If there was any poison in it, he put it in.”

“You said this morning it couldn’t possibly have been suicide,” he reminded her.

“I know I did. And it couldn’t,” she cried out. “Don’t browbeat me, Mike. I thought you were on my side.”

“I am. I was,” he amended angrily, “and I will be again if you give me reason to be. But, Goddamn it, Linda, you’ve got to tell me the truth. Look at the spot I’m in with Painter right now… assuring him that you didn’t see your husband last night and couldn’t possibly be guilty. It’s bound to come out, Linda. Every tiny detail. This is a murder investigation. Every facet of your private lives is going to be explored and put on the record. Now, don’t keep anything back from me. You mentioned a phone call that took him away… to his death. Don’t you see how important that may be? Who was it from? Where did he go?”

“I do see… now,” she faltered. “I didn’t at first. It was about ten-thirty, Mike. He was just finishing his drink. I was going into the bedroom when he answered the phone, and I just paused in the doorway long enough to know it wasn’t for me. I heard him say, ‘Kelly? Yes, this is Fitzgilpin,’ and that is all I heard. I went in and closed the door. When I came out he had hung up the phone and was putting on his jacket. All he said to me was, ‘I’ve got to go out. Be back in an hour or so.’ Then he slammed out. As I said, we’d been quarrelling,” she ended miserably, “and I didn’t even ask him where he was going.”

Shayne said, “Kelly? Man or woman, Linda?”

“How do I know? He answered the phone.”

“You’re sure he didn’t say Mrs. Kelly?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“He wouldn’t necessarily,” he ruminated, “even if it had been a Mrs. Do you know any Kellys? Did the name mean anything to you?”

“Nothing. I just supposed it was one of his clients. In some sort of jam probably. He was always ready to dash out in the middle of the night to help anybody who called on him.” Again, there was a trace of bitterness in her voice which Shayne had detected once before.

“And you have no idea where he was going?”

“None at all.”

“All right. Let’s go back to this morning when the police woke you with a telephone call. You were confused and groggy, and surprised to discover that your husband hadn’t come home. What was your process of reasoning that caused you to deny to Lucy that he had been home last evening and had gone out again?”

“I… don’t know exactly. I was frightened and… and I guess I felt guilty because we’d quarreled and he’d slammed out that way. I didn’t see how it would help,” she went on piteously. “I didn’t know who the call was from or where he went.”

Shayne said slowly, “You know what the police are going to think, don’t you?”

“Do they have to know, Mike? Do you have to tell them?”

“Of course they have to know. My God, Linda! I could lose my license for withholding vital information like that. This is murder. Get that fact firmly implanted in your pretty red head.”

“All right.” She tilted her chin defiantly. “What will the police think?”

“That you knew all the time he’d been poisoned,” he told her inexorably. “That you were afraid to admit he’d been home and had a big drink of whiskey with you because you had dosed it for him. All we need now is to find some sodium amytal around the place,” he added disgustedly.

“But I didn’t know,” she cried out helplessly. “That’s why it was such a shock to me in the morgue when they said he’d been poisoned. You know I fainted practically in your arms.”

He said drily, “I know. And I also know that Peter Painter suspected you were faking it at the time.”

“But I wasn’t faking, Mike. You know I wasn’t.”

“Right now,” he growled, “I’m not positive I know anything about you for sure. And no matter what I think… what Painter thinks is more important at this time. You say you quarreled with your husband last night,” he went on abruptly. “What about?”

“He… oh, it was stupid, but… Jerome was very jealous, Mike. Any little thing sent him off into a tirade.” She took a long drink from her glass, fluttering her eyelids down to conceal her gaze from his.

“What sort of little thing?”

“Oh, you never could tell. Last evening, for instance. When he came home there was the butt of a cigar in an ashtray still smouldering. He accused me of having entertained a man in his absence. I told him it was Emily and Ernie Cahill from down the street who’d just dropped in for a few minutes. He knows Ernie smokes cigars, but would he believe me? Oh, no. Not Jerome. It’s a sort of neurosis with him. It was, I mean,” she amended hastily. “Because he had a sort of inferiority complex about women. You know. You saw him. He wasn’t particularly dashing or masculine. And he was eleven years older than I. It’s plagued our marriage from the beginning. If I so much as looked at another man at a party…” She shuddered delicately. “He was… well, I used to tell him he was masochistic about it.”

“So he didn’t believe it was the Cahills?” Shayne prompted her when she paused.

“No. For no reason on God’s earth, he suspected it was some other man. He insisted he was going to call them and find out the truth. That’s when I blew up.”

“You didn’t want him to call the Cahills?”

“I didn’t mind. That is, well, I did mind, too. I was so ashamed that he didn’t believe me. I would have been so humiliated to have Emily find out that my own husband was checking up on me. I told him that if he dared to call the Cahills and ask them that I’d bundle up the children and march out of this apartment and he’d never see any of us again in his life.”

“How did he react to that?”

“Well, it made him angry, but… that’s when he went out to the kitchen and made himself that strong drink I told you about.”

“So, he didn’t call the Cahills?” Shayne asked lightly.

“No. We were still arguing about it when he had that phone call I told you about.”

Shayne said quietly, “Linda. Remember now. I want the truth from you. How much reason have you given your husband to be jealous of you during your married life?”

She met his gaze squarely. “Never. Nothing. I loved Jerome. He was just obsessively possessive.”

“You’re a very beautiful young woman,” mused Shayne. “You must have attracted a lot of men.”

“I’ve had my share of passes made at me,” she agreed easily. “But I married Jerome. I had two children by him. Why couldn’t he accept that instead of suspecting me?”

Shayne said, “Men are like that.” He paused and took a long drink of his gin and tonic. He set the glass down and asked Linda, “Where do Ernie and Emily Cahill live?”

“Down the street a block and a half. They’re old friends and often drop in unexpectedly.”

Shayne got up and went to the telephone stand. “What is their telephone number?”

“The Cahills?” Her face showed real consternation. “You’re not going to call them, Mike?”

“I’m going to call them,” he told her grimly. “Do you know the number offhand, or shall I look it up in the book?”

“But why, Mike?” she wailed. “Don’t you believe me either?”

“At this point I’m not taking anything for granted. You can’t really object to my calling them, Linda. This is different from your husband doing it out of jealousy. I’m investigating your husband’s murder. If I don’t call them, you can be sure the police will.”

“Don’t do it, Mike!” She rose slowly from the sofa and her eyes were wide and glazed. “You make me feel unclean,” she whispered throatily. “I thought you… Please trust me, Mike.” She closed her eyes and swayed toward him like a sleepwalker with hands extended, groping for him.

“Don’t do this to me.” Her voice was low and throbbing with emotion. She stumbled against him and nuzzled her forehead beneath his chin like a frightened, exhausted child.

Shayne said wearily, “It’s a good act, Linda. I’m impressed as hell. But right now I want to know whether it was Ernie Cahill who left a cigar in the ashtray last night, or someone else.”

She shrank away from him as though he had struck her, her face white, eyes glinting with anger.

“All right,” she grated. “You men are all alike. Every damn one of you. All right.” Her voice rose shrilly. “If you want the truth, it wasn’t Ernie. It was another man, though I didn’t know he was coming and I tried like hell to get him out of here before Jerome returned. Make what you want of that, damn you to hell.” She turned her back on him, sobbing.

Shayne took his hand off the telephone. “You tried to get rid of him,” he said softly, “but you didn’t succeed? Is that it, Linda? Now, suppose you tell me exactly what did happen here last evening?”