What Really Happened

Chapter two

SHAYNE’S GRAY EYES were bleak, and a muscle twitched in his lean jaw. He stepped away from the lighted window and lit a cigarette. A feeling of revulsion came over him, followed by an outraged sense of disapproval and disappointment. He had been exceedingly curious about Wanda Weatherby — who she was and what she wanted from him, and what she meant to the other persons who had contacted him earlier.

Now she wouldn’t be able to tell him. She couldn’t answer any of the questions that had boiled up in his thoughts as he drove toward the address she had given him. It was now abundantly clear that she had good reason for the hysterical panic in her voice when she pleaded with him to come to her.

Thirty minutes had made the difference. She had said that it was a matter of life or death, he recalled grimly. But she could not have realized how close she was shading it, or she would certainly have made the appeal even more urgent. Yet, she had been just about as urgent as a woman could possibly be. She had hung up before he could argue with her, leaving it strictly up to him to get there in time to save her from the death she had reason to fear.

Standing there on the lush green lawn, he was conscious of the quiet, serene beauty of the moonlit night and the cool, humid breeze on his face. It seemed incongruous that a woman lay dead inside the house. His mouth tightened, and he berated himself for not being fast enough. He had wasted five, maybe ten minutes trying to check her phone number to call her back. And then there had been Rourke’s call. Another two or three minutes’ delay. At a time when minutes were precious!

He whirled suddenly as a thought struck him, dropping his cigarette to the grass. He knew, from long observation and experience that Wanda Weatherby was dead, but the urge to get in to her seized him, to see if there was anything that could possibly be done for her.

Going back to the screen, he reached out a big hand to rip it out. He stopped when he saw the small round hole in almost the exact center of the wire just above the frame. It was not necessarily fresh, and it wasn’t necessarily a bullet hole, but that’s what it looked like. He withdrew his hand before touching the frame, turned, and went swiftly around to the rear of the bungalow.

Two wide concrete steps led up to the kitchen door. The screen was unlatched, opening outward, but the wooden door with glassed upper portion didn’t open when he turned the knob. He hit the thin glass with his elbow, stepped back to let it clatter to the floor, then reached in and turned the key.

The door opened into a dark kitchen. Shayne prowled across the linoleum toward a dim rectangle of light marking the entrance to the dining-room, and found the wall switch. He flipped it and strode on through a pantry lined on both sides with glass doors, behind which crystal and hand-painted dishes and silver gleamed.

He didn’t pause or slacken his long-legged strides, but he noted the expensive furnishings in the dining-room. The thick rug, the shining mahogany table centering it, the crystal bowl filled with fresh roses, the four silver candlesticks arranged in perfect symmetry — all outlined by light from the open archway leading into the living room.

After assuring himself that Wanda Weatherby had been dead for at least half an hour, he straightened up and looked around. There was a fireplace to the left of the window through which he had peered, cozily equipped with antique andirons, a hearth brush, and an attractive basket filled with wood. Two wing chairs stood, one on either side, each with its small, inlaid table holding an ash tray and silver cigarette box. A long period couch with a low back, elaborately carved above the tapestried cushions, ranged along the space beneath the big picture window.

Wanda Weatherby lay on an expensive Herat rug that reached from the hearth to the opposite wall, and directly in front of the couch near the end table which held the telephone. She wore a sea-green hostess gown with a tight bodice brocaded with dull-gold threads, and the full skirt spread out around her slim body as though she had pivoted suddenly, billowing it out, then dropped to the rug, and the fullness had settled just above her bare ankles. The left foot was crossed over the right and was bare. The toes were curled downward in an attitude of agony which had allowed the dull-gold mule to drop from her foot.

Otherwise, her appearance was composed. Her right arm was outstretched above her head with slender, tapering fingers lying flat and relaxed The left hand was curved beneath her breast.

Studying the body intently, standing less than two feet away, Shayne could now see a large, bloody hole high in the back of her head which was not quite hidden by the thick reddish-gold ringlets. A soft-nosed bullet, he surmised, entering from the front and ranging upward to emerge at that spot.

He moved to stand directly in line with the prone body and the screened window, gauging the position of the hole in the wire, then pivoting slowly in an arc of one hundred and eighty degrees. From this position he carefully examined the rug, and nodded with satisfaction when he saw the small, shapeless mass of a mushroomed bullet lying three feet away.

Shayne studied the bullet moodily, but it didn’t tell him anything except that Wanda Weatherby had been shot through the screen, probably from a rifle, just as she arose from the couch after telephoning him. She had heard a sound and turned toward the window, and then—

He shook his red head slowly. That must have been the way it happened. The pool of blood had glazed over, confirming his first guess as to the time of her murder. Just about the length of time that had elapsed since her telephone call and the time of his arrival.

He tried to visualize the whole scene — the telephone call, her extreme panic. There was something about it that worried him. She hadn’t made it sound so imminent, or was he growing callous to frantic women calling him at all times of the night? She had been frightened, but not by something she expected to happen before he could reach her. He was certain of that as he searched his memory for the exact words she had spoken, and the intonations.

No. She had hung up on him, and, somehow, this fact gave Shayne a certain sense of release from his feeling of guilty negligence. If she had heard any suspicious noise outside before or during her brief conversation, she would have told him or screamed, or perhaps fainted from fear and left the receiver dangling

But she had hung up.

Another twinge of conscience struck him when he remembered that she had tried to reach him by telephone twice that day, and he had not been on the job. The motive for her letter which would reach him in the morning mail was clear. The letter which he had been warned to tear up without reading it if he wanted to stay alive. The letter that a woman named Sheila Martin wanted to talk to him about at midnight, and which a friend of Timothy Rourke’s was now waiting to discuss with him.

Only they had the answers now. Wanda Weatherby had made her final pitch half an hour ago when she telephoned him with her urgent plea for help.

Shayne shook his head angrily and ran troubled fingers through his coarse red hair. He went to the telephone. As he lifted the receiver he noticed that there was no number in the blank inside the dial.

That meant the telephone was unlisted and explained why he had been unable to obtain her number from the directory or from Information. This seemed odd for a woman who lived in a small bungalow on a quiet side street.

He dialed police headquarters. At this point, the homicide squad could accomplish a lot more than he could.