elbow and turned her toward the door.
“How about an invitation to Vicky’s wedding this afternoon?”
“Oh, yes, Mike. Do come by all means. I’ll have her call you and give you a formal invitation as soon as she wakes up in the morning.”
He said, “That will be nice,” and held the door open for her to go out. He took her arm and led her down the hall past the elevator, explaining, “We can walk down one flight and go out a side door to my car.”
He opened the car door for her and helped her in, then went around and got under the wheel beside her, made a U-Turn and started in the direction of the Encanto Hotel.
She snuggled against him and sighed. “I’ll never be able to thank you properly. But I hope you’ll let me try… after Vicky’s off on her honeymoon, perhaps?”
Shayne said, “I’ve got a feeling you could make a good try, all right. We’ll keep that date open, huh?”
She murmured, “Oh, yes,” and then sat up straight beside him suddenly. “Mike! I forgot. What about Al? You said his body was still locked in the trunk of his brother-in-law’s car and if it was found there that the police would know you moved it. What about that?”
“I took care of that, too,” Shayne told her. “It’s not locked in the car any more. It’s in a perfectly safe place where the police can’t possibly connect me with it.”
“Oh, I’m glad. Then you won’t get in any trouble for helping me?”
“I’m absolutely in the clear… I hope,” he told her cheerfully.
He turned into the block in front of the Encanto Hotel, and slowed down in front of the canopied entrance. The doorman still wasn’t on duty, but Shayne saw the gangling figure of Timothy Rourke leaning against the wall inside the foyer just beyond the outer doors.
He leaped out to go around and open the door for her, helped her out and opened the hotel door, avoiding looking at Rourke. He said, “You’d better go up alone. No use us being seen here together,” and she smiled gratefully at him and went into the lobby toward the elevators.
Shayne stepped close to the reporter and asked, “Everything all set?”
“Yep. Couple of dicks inside. Was that…?”
Shayne said swiftly, “Go on in and the three of you follow her up to number Eight-Ten. Be right behind her when she walks into the room, and you can take it from there.”
“What about you, Mike. Where’ll you be?”
“In bed,” said Shayne emphatically. “This is your show, Tim. I don’t know one damned thing about anything that’s happened tonight.”
He went out fast and got in his car, drove to the Boulevard and north to the next hotel on the bay front, where he went in and registered as J. D. Brewster from Sarasota. He got a room-key from the clerk and went up and piled into bed.
He fell into dreamless sleep almost at once.
16
For many years Michael Shayne had had a standing invitation to have Sunday morning breakfast with his brown-eyed secretary in her Miami apartment.
On this Sunday morning when he turned up at ten o’clock, Lucy Hamilton seemed surprised to see him, and greeted him with a frown and an anxious question that was almost wifely:
“Where have you been all night, Michael? I’ve been worried and wondering what on earth had happened.”
He yawned and dropped a light kiss on the top of her head. “I’ve been sleeping. Is that any crime?”
“But where have you been sleeping? Not in your own bed. That’s certain.”
“Hey, now,” he protested good-naturedly. “Have you started checking up on my sleeping habits, Lucy?”
She stepped back from him, biting her underlip. “Chief Will Gentry woke me up from a sound sleep about four o’clock,” she informed him coldly, “to ask if I knew where you were. He sounded angry and very disturbed when I assured him I had no idea. He made me promise that, if you did contact me, I would let him know at once. Then Tim Rourke called again about seven o’clock to ask the same question. He said your hotel reported you had gone out about midnight and hadn’t returned, and that all hell was popping. What sort of hell, Michael?”
He shrugged and countered lightly, “How should I know? I was sound asleep and know nothing about such Saturday night goings-on. Is the coffee hot?”
“Of course. Even though I didn’t know whether you were in town or not.” She turned toward her kitchenette with pursed lips. “With or without?”
“With… on the first one, Angel.” He yawned mightily again and dropped down on one end of the sofa. He lit a cigarette and sniffed happily when she brought him a mug of strong black coffee heavily laced with cognac.
Her buzzer sounded from the downstairs door of the apartment as she set the coffee royal in front of him, and she murmured, “Who on earth can that be?”
She went to the speaking tube at the door, and in a moment he heard her say, “Of course, Tim. He just showed up and he’s sitting here swilling brandy and coffee.” She pressed the button that released the catch below, opened her own door wide and came back to tell her employer unnecessarily, “That’s Tim. He’s coming up.”
Shayne said, “I wonder what’s bugging him so early this morning,” and took a sip of the hot liquid.
Timothy Rourke came in a moment later, looking dishevelled and sleepy, but with an expression on his face like that of a cat that has swallowed the canary. “Where the devil have you been hiding out, Mike?”
“I haven’t been hiding out. I just thought I’d get a better night’s sleep if I weren’t available for questioning. Sit down, Tim. You look as though you could stand a cup of Lucy’s excellent coffee.”
“My God, can I? With a good slug of bourbon in it, honey?” he appealed to Lucy. “Damn you, Mike. I haven’t been to bed yet. I had to cover up all over the place…”
Shayne shook his head warningly at him as Lucy came back with another mug of steaming coffee for the reporter.
“Neither Lucy nor I have the faintest idea what all this furor is about, except Will Gentry woke her up at four o’clock trying to locate me. What for, Tim? What am I supposed to have done?”
Rourke shook his head helplessly, took a sip of hot coffee and sputtered over it. “It’s the damnedest story. I guess we’ll never get the whole straight of it.”
“Relax and tell us all about it,” Shayne urged him. “You have my curiosity aroused.”
Rourke said, “Yeh,” and lit a cigarette while he composed his thoughts. “It began about three o’clock this morning when I got a tip there was a dead man in a room at the Encanto Hotel. I called a couple of homicide cops and we went up to room eight-ten. There was a woman having hysterics all over the place and there was a corpse on the floor. Very dead from five small caliber bullets. Stiff as a board. He’d been dead for hours. I recognized his ugly face right away from a newspaper picture. Name of Al Newman. Wanted for bank robbery and murder in Alabama a couple of days ago. You know,” he said to Shayne, raised his eyebrows. “That Eureka bank job. Shot one of the bank officials in cold blood and got away with forty grand… only the woman get-away driver snatched the loot and drove off leaving her two male companions behind.”
Shayne said thoughtfully, “I remember reading something about it. Didn’t she drive off with a hostage who was later released? One of the bank tellers?”
“That’s right. So here was this Al Newman dead in the woman’s hotel room, and her in a tizzy swearing she had no idea how he’d got there and that she’d been out drinking with Mike Shayne all evening, and to get him and ask him about it.”
“I’ll be damned!” said Shayne in great surprise. “Who was she?”
“She was registered at the hotel under the name of Mrs. Rose Hughes. Turned out her name is actually Vergie Powers. An actress. Used to do bit parts in Hollywood movies. In fact, she played in some of your shows, Mike. We figured later that’s how she knew your name and used it in a pinch.”
“Such is fame,” marveled Shayne. “You tell Lucy I wasn’t out drinking with an actress all evening, Tim. You can vouch for me until at least two o’clock.”
“That’s right. Well, it appeared later that she was just making up the first wild story that came into her mind.
