“Wait a minute. He thought it might have something to do with his antisegregation opinions, and that worried Crowther because he’d argued some of those cases for the government. Oddly enough, Jenkinson denied the last application for a stay of execution in the Steele case. Here’s Crowther’s notion. Maybe this madwoman plans to eliminate, one by one, everybody who had a part in her husband’s death. Unquote. He feels it’s his duty to force her hand and possibly forestall a number of other killings. So he’s coming. No change in plans.”
He drank angrily. “That sabotaged rope was like the anonymous letters-playful. Alpinists are careful people. Jenkinson tests everything very carefully before he starts up a mountain, and whoever weakened that rope probably knew it. It’s as though she wants to do something to notify her old enemies that she’s still around, still thinking about them. What if Sparrow’s eyewitness was actually Camilla? A mild hoax, and of course we all panicked. I don’t know. I expect she’ll be hard to find. That would be part of the joke. But find her, Mike. If Teddy can identify her we’ll get her committed.”
“I always thought she was quite a woman,” Shayne said. “So did I when I met her. What difference does that make?”
CHAPTER 9
Camilla Steele lived in a garden apartment in Buena Vista.
Michael Shayne and a city detective named Squires approached the building. Squires rang the bell. Getting no answer, he opened the door with a skeleton key. Entering, they turned on all the lights and carefully searched the empty apartment.
The air-conditioning was on high. A double bed in the bedroom was unmade. The condition of the sheets showed that whoever had slept there last had done considerable tossing and turning. In addition to being a restless sleeper, Camilla was a compulsively untidy housekeepeer. A container of cream had been left out in the messy kitchen. Numerous empty liquor bottles, torn pill containers and partially smoked cigarettes were scattered about. Shayne made a careful inventory of the medicine cabinet. There were several kinds of headache remedies, different brands of prescription tranquillizers. Amphetamine and barbiturate prescriptions had been written by different doctors. Her birth-control pills were dated in sequence so she wouldn’t lose track; she was currently three days behind.
There were more barbiturates in the bedroom, again from different drugstores, with different prescription numbers. The bureau was littered with unopened bills, loose change and a checkbook. She hadn’t added up the checkbook for three months. One of the bills was from a doctor named Irving Miller. Shayne tore this open. Dr. Miller was a psychiatrist, with a Miami Beach office, and Camilla Steele owed him for professional services which the doctor valued at $950.
Squires phoned headquarters and read a list of numbers he found scrawled on the card at the beginning of her phone book. Gentry, at the other end of the connection, asked to speak to Shayne.
After taking the phone, Shayne said, slowly, “I think we’d better get out an all-precinct call, Will. Her car’s not in the garage. She’s forgotten to take her birth-control pill for three days running. From the looks of the apartment she hasn’t been paying much attention to routine lately. There are enough pills in the place to kill three people. A week’s newspapers scattered around. There’s a picture of Crowther on the front page of today’s
“Hold on, Mike.” He told somebody in his office to get on another phone and find out the make and license number of Camilla Steele’s car. Coming back to Shayne, he said, “Does it look as though she was home today?”
“Yeah. She left out some cream and it hasn’t turned sour. I hope the photo morgues can find a recent picture, because from all the medicine lying around I doubt if she’s as good-looking as she used to be. Another thing-there are four different hair colors in the bathroom, from ash-blond to black. I’ve seen two wigs, one black and one platinum. She was blond once. That doesn’t mean she’s still blond.”
“What kind of feel does the place have, Mike? You know what I mean. Does it look as though she’s planning to put bullets in Crowther tomorrow instead of pins?”
“God knows,” Shayne said, looking around. “She’s certainly been thinking about him. Berger kept talking about playfulness. Sticking pins in a photograph is a playful way to kill somebody, and collecting three times too many sleeping pills is a playful way to commit suicide. No sign of a gun.”
Squires had picked out something else while Shayne was talking-a photograph of a man standing beside a car.
“It was at the bottom of a bureau drawer,” he said. “Underneath everything. A funny place for a snapshot.”
“This lady is not in the best of mental health.”
“You know it.”
It had been decided that they would leave the apartment dark, and that Squires would wait outside in his unmarked car. Shayne returned to his Buick and started south on Biscayne Boulevard, heading for the Julia Tuttle Causeway to the Beach.
An open convertible came up behind him rapidly and pulled out as though to pass, honking. In his side mirror Shayne saw that the driver was waving him over. He braked and slid in against the curb.
The other car passed him and parked. When the driver came into Shayne’s headlights, Shayne saw a well- built young man, getting bald too early. He had had more hair in the photograph Camilla Steele had squirreled away at the bottom of a bureau drawer.
“You’re Mike Shayne, aren’t you? I thought it was you. Can I get in?”
Shayne cut his headlights. Leaning over, he unlatched the front door. As he straightened, he activated his tape recorder.
“Look, I’m Paul London,” the young man said quickly. “I’m a friend of Mrs. Steele’s. I know she’s in some kind of a jam, and I want to find out if there’s anything I can do.”
“What kind of jam do you think she’s in?”
London hesitated. “I don’t want to answer that. It might turn out to be something you didn’t already know. The other guy’s a cop, isn’t he? I can’t go up to a cop and ask him why he’s searching somebody’s apartment. They don’t give out that kind of information. But I thought you might be halfway human.”
“Mr. London, are you or Camilla Steele affiliated with any group that’s working for the forcible overthrow of any Latin government?”
Shayne put a cigarette in his mouth and waited. After a moment, London said, “I’m not, certainly. I guess I really don’t know about Camilla. She works for a foundation that gives research fellowships to Latin American scientists, but she doesn’t talk much about it. All that stuff in the papers. Is that why you’re-”
He stopped. Shayne’s lighter flared.
“How well do you know her?”
“We were in high school together. We dated for a couple of years until-well, you know the story.”
“Are you married?”
“Not any more. If you’re wondering about my interest in this, I want her to marry me. She’s turned me down. Nevertheless-” He drew a deep breath. “I’m on vacation. I went away for a couple of days, but I couldn’t relax. I finally decided to come back. I’m-damn it, I’m afraid she’s going to try to kill herself or something equally stupid. If she can get through this weekend I think she may be all right.”
Shayne smoked for a moment in silence. “She keeps a picture of you at the bottom of one of her bureau drawers.”
“You’re mistaken,” London told him seriously. “She doesn’t care that much about-” He swung around. “You mean you found one?”
“Yeah. I’d judge it was taken about three years ago. What were you doing parked outside her house?”
“Waiting for her. She specifically said she didn’t want me hanging around, and she really meant it. But the way she drove off tonight-”
“What time?”
