trip to New York and the wedding angle. If I can come up with the name of Kelly I’ll feel I’m on the right trail.”
Shayne put money on the table and got up. Rourke got up also, asking, “Anything I can do at the moment?”
“Just keep in touch with Painter and let me know fast if anything breaks. I’ll do the same.”
“How about my going around to get an exclusive interview with the widow?” suggested Rourke eagerly.
Shayne shook his head. “She’s dynamite right now… until Painter gets around to her. If she did spill anything to you, you’d have to take it to him before you printed a word of it. No, Tim. Goddamn it, I’m trusting you to be surprised when you hear all this from Painter eventually.”
12
Back in his own apartment for the first time that day since Lucy Hamilton’s early morning call had taken him away, Shayne shrugged off his jacket and loosened his tie, poured a small drink of cognac and set a glass of ice water beside it on the center table, and settled himself comfortably beside the telephone.
He had to think for a moment to remember the name, but then it came to him. Angelo Fermi, fingerprint expert for the New York police department who eagerly hoped Shayne could help him get a television series on the air.
It was Saturday, but he hoped Fermi would be on duty. He put in a person-to-person telephone call for the New York detective, and sipped his drink and waited a couple of minutes while persons at police headquarters in New York shunted the call around, and finally got Fermi’s voice over the wire.
“Mike Shayne in Miami, Angelo. Did Brett Halliday contact you about your television series while he was in town last year?”
“He did that.” Fermi’s voice sounded enthusiastic “He is a nice fellow. It is difficult to sell the networks a new idea, but I now have an option. Can I help you here?”
“If you’ve got a pipeline into City Hall. I know it’s Saturday, but this may be important.”
“We have pipelines, Saturday or not,” Fermi assured him.
“This should be relatively simple. I want all the dope on a wedding performed on…” He checked the date on the menu to be sure. “… November nineteenth, nineteen sixty-one. I don’t know the names of either bride or groom, but one of the witnesses was a man named Jerome Fitzgilpin. Do you think you can get that for me fast?”
“It shouldn’t be more than fifteen or twenty minutes,” Fermi told him. “Shall I call you back?”
“Please. Collect, of course.” Shayne gave him the number. “Everything from the record on that particular wedding.” He hung up and settled back comfortably to wait for the detective to call him back.
The telephone rang much sooner than he expected it to. He answered it, but instead of Fermi’s voice, it was Lucy Hamilton on the wire.
“Michael.” Her voice sounded worried and strained. “Are you getting anywhere on the Fitzgilpin case?”
“I’m beginning to move. Right now I’m waiting for a phone call from New York which may help. What gives with you?”
“I’m dreadfully worried about Linda. I brought the children home from the park a little while ago and she’s… well, she’s lying on her bed fully-dressed and passed out cold, Michael. She seems all right,” Lucy went on doubtfully. “I guess it’s just liquor because her breath reeks of it, but I never knew her to drink too much before, and I know she does take sleeping pills…” Lucy’s voice trailed off doubtfully.
“I think I’d just let her sleep it off,” Shayne advised. “She was well on her way to passing out when I saw her a little before noon. Another drink or two would have done it.”
“Poor woman,” said Lucy disconsolately. “It’s such a terrible thing. Have you found out anything important?”
“Quite a lot. Where are the children?”
“I brought them downstairs with me. I told them their mother was sick and couldn’t be disturbed and they accepted that explanation without question. They’re such darling kids, Michael.”
“Yeh,” he said gruffly. “Hang onto them for a time, Lucy. Do you know any other friends of hers whom you might call on to help out?”
“Well, I don’t know really.”
“There’s a couple down the street whom she mentioned to me. Let’s see. Cahill. Ernie and Emily Cahill. Do you know them?”
“Of course. I have met Emily Cahill. She’s very nice. Has a little boy of her own.”
“You might call her to help if the kids get restless.”
“All right. And, Michael… keep on trying.”
“I will. Hold the fort.” Shayne hung up and sat back to sip his drink and tug at his earlobe while his somber gaze kept going back to the menu and the rosebud in front of him.
When his phone rang again five minutes later, it was Detective Fermi in New York. “I’ve got the information you wanted, Shayne. Ready to take it down?”
Shayne said, “Sure,” and reached for a pencil.
“The bridegroom was Rutherford G. Rodman, thirty. Address: The Commodore Hotel, New York City. Bride: Rose McNally, three-two-six West 89th Street, City. Twenty-six. It was the first marriage for both of them. Witnesses, Jerome Fitzgilpin, also the Commodore Hotel, and Blanche Carson, same address as the bride. Have you got all that?”
“Got it,” Shayne said. “Thanks a million, Angelo.”
“I hope it’s what you wanted. If there’s anything else…?”
“If there is I’ll call you. If not… be seeing you on television, huh?”
“Well, I don’t know how soon. I’ve got this option from a Hollywood producer, but you know how they are.”
“I certainly do know,” Shayne agreed emphatically. “Thanks again.”
He hung up and frowned at the information he had jotted down on a scratch pad. Three names and a wedding date a year and a half ago. He glanced from the names to the photograph of the happy newly-weds. Now he had names for them. Rutherford G. Rodman and Rose McNally. How and why were they important in Jerome Fitzgilpin’s life?
Maybe they weren’t, of course. He had damned little to go on. But the nagging hunch persisted. If only one of them were named Kelly.
A young couple whom Fitzgilpin had met once in New York by the merest chance and had bought a wedding dinner. Had he been in contact with them since, or had that been the end of it? Would he have mentioned it to his secretary if he had? Possibly, and quite possibly not.
Shayne frowned and drummed fingertips impatiently on the desk. Was this a dead-end? He hated to think so. Impulsively, he lifted the telephone, got the operator and said, “Will you please check with New York Information and see if they have a telephone listed under the name of Rutherford G. Rodman. I don’t know the address. Not even which borough it might be in, but it’s vitally important.”
She said, “Certainly,” and he listened in while she got New York Information and he was finally informed they had no such listing in any of the boroughs.
He got up to refill his cognac glass, came back and reseated himself, still deep in thought. He finally decided that having gone thus far he might as well go on to the end of the line, and he again lifted the phone to ask the operator if there were a New York number for Blanche Carson at the West side address Fermi had furnished.
This time he had more luck. He wrote the number down as New York gave it, and asked his operator to connect him with it.
The telephone rang in New York four times before a woman’s voice answered.
He asked, “Is this Miss Blanche Carson?”
“No. This is Doris Young. Who’s calling?”
“This is long distance from Miami, Florida,” Shayne said carefully. “Do you expect Miss Carson in soon?”
“Yes. She should be back about six o’clock. Who in Miami?”
“I’m a detective. Perhaps you could help me with some information, Miss Young. It’s in reference to a girl
