Phyllis had a fresh linen cloth on the table in the breakfast nook. Sunshine streamed through the windows onto a platter of scrambled eggs. She was anxiously bending over an electric waffle iron when he passed her to sit down.
“Damn this thing,” she raged, “it’s overheating again. It’s all stuck on both sides.” Her voice was throaty with a suggestion of tears.
Shayne patted her shoulder and slid onto the built-in seat. He said, “Chuck it out the window and I’ll buy you a new one.”
She scraped out the remnants of a burned waffle and spread fresh batter on the grill. Shayne finished his sherry while she poured him a mug of coffee and silently set it before him.
He sat with elbows hunched on the table, staring fixedly at the opposite wall. Phyllis fussed with the waffle iron and the silence between them, continued until the pressure of unsaid things became more than Phyllis could endure. She said:
“A Mr. Gaston called just before you came in. He said you needn’t bother to keep your appointment with him today.”
Shayne said, “U-m-m.” He lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the stream of sunshine.
With a little gasp of triumph Phyllis slid a crisp brown waffle on a plate in front of Michael. “He was-Isn’t he the man who had that important assignment he wanted you to take?”
“U-m-m.” He spread butter on the hot waffle and watched it melt with outward symptoms of pleasure. He said, “I’ve had breakfast, angel, but I can’t resist this waffle. It’s perfect.” He dished fluffy scrambled eggs onto his plate. “It’s damned swell being married to you.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. She turned to the sink and wiped viciously at the wetness with a tea towel. A second waffle was ruined when she got back to look at the iron. She swore at it under her breath and unplugged the iron. Long black lashes trembled down over her eyes.
Shayne laughed suddenly, and it was real laughter. He set his plate over for her, caught her and pulled her down on the bench opposite him.
“How can you laugh, Michael? Do you know what they’re saying about you in the morning paper?”
“I imagine I’m thoroughly drawn and quartered, tossed to the wolves, as it were. Does it make any difference to you, Phyl?”
“Mike! You know it doesn’t!” She spilled coffee on the white cloth.
“You’re not ashamed of a husband who is a murderer to all intents and purposes?”
“Don’t, Michael.” Tears glistened in her wide dark eyes but she met his gaze frankly. “I called up the Herald and told them what I thought about their nasty, lying insinuations.”
Shayne chuckled, then soberly reminded her, “There’s always that log cabin waiting for us in Colorado if I get run out of town.”
“You won’t,” she cried intensely. “You’ll stay right here and clear yourself.”
“It looks bad for the shock troops. I did send Joe Darnell out there, you know.”
“Then he didn’t do what you told him to do-not if he killed Mrs. Thrip.”
“What makes you so positive?”
“Because I know you. You’re not-Oh, Michael! you don’t think he assaulted Mrs. Thrip, do you?”
“Of course not, angel. I know that Darnell didn’t for the same reason you know that I wouldn’t have sent a killer out there.” He paused to empty his coffee mug, then told her about Joe and Dora while she refilled it.
“Joe was on the level,” he went on with a grimace. “He played outside the law but I would trust him further than many men who hide behind legal technicalities instead of using a gun to take what they want. Any man who honestly plans to marry a girl like Dora doesn’t go out and deliberately attack a middle-aged woman.”
“I knew it.” Gladness radiated from Phyllis. “Now all you have to do is prove how wrong they are about Joe.”
“That’s all,” Shayne agreed grimly. “The worst hurdle is explaining why Joe was in the room masked at that ungodly hour of the morning.”
“I wondered about that.”
“I know why he was there,” Shayne told her. “But only one other man knows and I can’t expect Arnold Thrip to back up my story by admitting he was planning an insurance fraud.”
When Phyllis wrinkled her smooth brow in perplexity Shayne told her about his interview with the realtor the previous afternoon.
“He no doubt plans to use those threatening notes as his sole reason for asking me to assign a man to his house,” Shayne concluded. “Even his wife thought that’s what it was all about. He probably first got the idea from her insistence that she turn it over to a private detective. Now things have gone wrong and he has a perfect out.”
“Do you think he killed Joe?”
“I have no doubt of it, In perfect sincerity, probably. I’m willing to accept his story as the truth until it’s proved otherwise, but I question the conclusion he drew when he turned on the light and saw his wife strangled and Joe near her bed.”
“You think someone else killed her?”
“That’s the way it has to be. I know why Joe climbed in a window and sneaked up there masked. He must have heard something that made him suspicious-something that drew him into the bedroom-we’ll never know what. A dying moan, maybe, a convulsive movement of stiffening muscles. At any rate, Joe must have made the fatal mistake of stepping aside to investigate-which drew a bullet from the husband who sees his wife lying in bed murdered.”
“It’s horrible.” Phyllis shuddered. “With everybody thinking Joe did it they won’t look any further. And if Mr. Thrip doesn’t tell why Joe was upstairs no one will ever believe he didn’t break in expressly to attack poor Mrs. Thrip.”
“We might as well take it for granted that Thrip isn’t going to tell the truth. When his plan miscarried he even took the precaution of ditching the jewel box and the incriminating thousand-dollar bill inside of it. For which we can’t blame him,” he went on calmly. “Why should he admit the truth? He won’t have to pull the fake theft now. Coming into his wife’s fortune will put him beyond such a necessity in the future. His two youngsters can stop hating their stepmother and start spending her money.”
“What about Carl Meldrum?” Phyllis asked sharply. “Where was he last night?”
“Dorothy Thrip says he left nearly a half-hour before the murder took place.”
“Which murder?” Phyllis asked sharply. “If your version is right, Mrs. Thrip might have been killed any time before the moment that Mr. Thrip caught Joe Darnell in her bedroom and shot him.”
“Good for you, angel. That’s putting your finger on what the newspapers would call the crux of the affair. With the present setup no one has bothered to check the times of death closely. Painter and his crew are assuming that they died practically simultaneously and that assumption suits Peter Painter right down to his little number seven boots. He’s got a ready-made victim unable to tell his own story-and it has the added virtue of putting me on the spot. I can’t expect any official help in proving that her death occurred before Joe’s.”
“But can’t you prove at least that Joe wasn’t working for you when it happened? That you just tipped him off about the money in the jewel box?” She paused reflectively, then added, “And there’s Dora-I feel terribly sorry for her-maybe her testimony about them needing the money so badly to get married-and the baby and all.”
“We’d better leave Dora out of it. She’d probably ball everything up if a lawyer got hold of her. I can tell my story,” he explained patiently, “but I haven’t an iota of proof to back it up.” His mouth tightened grimly; his eyes were sober. “Unless I can make Thrip admit his reason for calling me in yesterday,” he ended harshly.
He stood up, shaking his head while his wife scanned his face anxiously.
“You didn’t mean that about running away, did you, Michael? You’ll stay here and clear it up, won’t you? You always have.”
Shayne grinned down at her. “I meant it for your sake, angel, I didn’t know how you were going to take it. If I can’t clear Joe it’s going to be all up with me as a private detective. I’ll have my license revoked and I’ll be on the black list of every state in the Union.”
“Then you’ll have to clear Joe.” Mrs. Michael Shayne summed the thing up simply and firmly.
“With every card in the deck stacked against me,” Shayne muttered. He turned into the living-room and Phyllis followed him, saying excitedly:
