“Tim asking about other cases we had on hand reminded me that there was a new client supposed to be coming in yesterday morning. Lucy had made the appointment the day before. He’d been very insistent that he see me. Life and death, he told Lucy.”
“So you just walked out without keeping the appointment?” Gentry demanded disbelievingly.
Shayne shrugged. “Half my clients think their cases are matters of life and death. Let’s see if we can find Rexforth listed in the phone book.” He reached for a directory on the desk and thumbed through it with a frown. “Six Rexforths. None of them with the right initials. Lucy didn’t mention whether he was local or not.” He hid a yawn behind his big hand and stood up. “I haven’t been to bed.”
“Neither have I,” said Gentry. “Where do you think you’re going, Mike?”
Shayne looked at his watch. “Not much to be done until about nine o’clock. I figure you’ll want to take a crack at Elsa’s story, and I’ve a strong hunch you may get more out of her without me around. She hates my guts,” he confided, “because I turned down her pure white body last night.”
“My God,” breathed Rourke. “That pure white body? I bet it’s something.”
“Juicy,” Shayne told him with a tired grin. “You don’t want any more from me right now, do you, Will?” he added innocently, turning toward the door.
“Wait a minute, Mike,” Gentry said sternly. “Don’t think I’m buying your story whole hog. Visitors to the penitentiary have to sign the register, and I’ll have those signatures of yours checked. I’ll also check the flight personnel on United’s noon flight yesterday. Just don’t do one thing.” His voice remained friendly, but it had the bite of steel in it. “Don’t walk out of this door leaving any lies behind you that can be disproved by the facts. Right now is the time to come clean if you’re covering anything up.”
Shayne said mildly, “You know I never tell a lie that can be disproved.”
He opened the door and started out, and Rourke said hastily, “I’ll go with you, Mike. Grab an eye-opener of cognac, huh?”
He hurried out after the redhead and caught his arm as he went into the empty waiting room. “Where are you headed?”
“How do you know I’m headed anywhere special?”
“Because I’ve been on too damned many cases with you not to know when you’ve suddenly thought of something and want to check it on your own.” Rourke went down the steps with him. “That your car at the curb?”
“Yeh. Where’s yours?”
“Headquarters. I rode up with Will.”
Shayne got under the steering wheel and said, “I’ll drop you there.”
Shayne said, “Okay. We’ll have that eye-opener at the office. I think there’s still a bottle of Cordon Bleu left over from my last case.”
11
“Yeh, there is,” Rourke agreed as Shayne pulled away from in front of the morgue. “Couple of snorts lighter than it was yesterday.”
“You and Will hit it?”
“Just a couple of small ones last night while the boys were checking the office. I knew you’d want me to act the gracious host… with you away and all.”
“He went over everything carefully, huh?”
“With a fine-tooth comb. I don’t know what you hope to find there that they didn’t.”
“There happen to be one or two very small things about my business that you and Gentry don’t know,” Shayne told him acidly. “What about fingerprints?”
“Mostly inconclusive, I guess. They dusted everything. O’Keefe’s prints were plainly inside your office… in the right place for him to have left them while he sat in the client’s chair and talked to you.”
Shayne nodded and muttered, “Which makes it look more and more as though someone was there pretending to be me. No prints to indicate that fact?”
“I wouldn’t say a positive no.” Timothy Rourke hesitated. “You know how it is. Prints get messed up and blurred. And they weren’t looking for proof of anything like that at the time, Mike. We all supposed you and Lucy had been there all day. No reason to think otherwise.”
Shayne grunted a surly acknowledgement of this. He turned into the light early-morning traffic of Flagler Street and drove a block and a half to pull up in front of the office building that had housed his business for many years.
Only one elevator was in operation this early in the morning. The operator was a wizened, little, garrulous man who knew all the tenants in the building and greeted most of them by name when they entered his car.
He exclaimed,
“Were you on duty last night?” Shayne asked as the doors closed on the two of them.
“No, I went off at four. But they disrupted a cribbage game me and the old woman was having about ten o’clock when they came around asking their questions.” He stopped at the second floor and opened the doors, but Shayne didn’t get out at once.
He said, “I understand neither you nor the other man were able to say when either Miss Hamilton or I went in or out yesterday.”
“I guess that’s a fact. You know how it is… hundreds going up and down, in and out, all day. I can swear both of you were here, and probably went in and out about your regular times, but that’s about all. Today, now, you see, I’ll remember
“I know. And you didn’t notice anything else funny? Any other people going to my office?”
“I’m sure sorry, but I didn’t. You know how it is.” He gestured out to the hallway. “You let a man out… you don’t wait to watch and see what office he goes to. And nobody asked for your number yesterday, the way they’ll do sometimes.”
Shayne nodded absently and got out. Rourke followed him down the hall to a doorway with his name on it, which he unlocked and thrust open.
He stepped inside slowly, flipping the wall switch that turned on the ceiling light in the small reception room, and he stood there for a long moment with his gaze going somberly over the room that was Lucy Hamilton’s domain, a curious questing, questioning look on his gaunt features as though he hoped there might be some aura or emanation from this familiar room where violent death had taken place that would trigger off something for him.
Watching him very closely and curiously, Rourke could have sworn that the redheaded detective was unconsciously sniffing the air as though he hoped to get some clue there, and for a moment he seriously wondered (as he had a few other times in the past) if Michael Shayne did actually possess some sort of extrasensory perception that helped make him one of the most successful detectives in the country.
The moment passed quickly and (Rourke sensed) unsatisfactorily. Shayne relaxed with a sigh and moved across to the low railing behind which Lucy normally sat. He stood with his hands on his hips looking down broodingly at her desk and chair and typewriter, unable to note anything out of place, anything different, except the fact that the heavy steel filing spindle that generally stood near the railing at the left of her typewriter was not there this morning.
Behind him, Rourke cleared his throat and said, “If they found any fingerprints around Lucy’s desk that didn’t belong to her, nobody mentioned it. Of course, they weren’t looking for that sort of thing…”
Shayne nodded his head slightly. He opened the gate that let him behind the railing, went to the other side of Lucy’s chair and leaned down to open the middle drawer of her desk on that side. He picked up a ten-cent-store ruled tablet with a blue cover, opened it and glanced inside. Then he turned with it in his hand and told Rourke
