excellent prescriber for headaches, Mrs. Meredith.”
She said, “Thank you,” simply, as though accepting his statement not as flattery but as praise to which she was entitled. “Have you any idea who gave you the headache?”
“Does that mean you decided to believe my story?”
“I certainly don’t believe you knocked yourself out in Joel Cross’s room. Whether you searched the room or someone else did the job seems immaterial to me. I’m quite sure neither of you found the diary there.”
“Why are you sure?”
“Joel told me so, for one thing. But I was already certain by the way he acted when he first came in. He wasn’t worried about the diary at all.”
“Did he tell you where it is?”
“No.” She leaned back against the cushion and crossed her nice legs, taking a long drink and regarding him soberly over the rim of the glass.
“Or what was in it?” Shayne persisted.
“He refused to discuss the diary with me. I found Mr. Cross an insufferable young man.”
“Did you explain your interest in the diary? Tell him why the exact date of Albert Hawley’s death is important to you?”
“Certainly not. The fewer people who know that, the better.”
“Did you get any impression that he may guess or know the importance of the diary to you?”
“It’s difficult to get any sort of impression from him,” she parried coolly. “Do you think he knows?”
“Probably not. Assuming that the terms of Ezra Hawley’s will are not general knowledge. And even then,” added Shayne thoughtfully, “I don’t suppose many people know that you are still Albert Hawley’s heir even though you divorced the guy just before he went into the army.”
“Probably not,” Matie Meredith agreed indifferently.
“It certainly isn’t normal procedure,” mused Shayne. “In fact it’s one of the angles that’s bothered hell out of me from the beginning of this screwed-up affair. It just didn’t make sense… now it’s beginning to.”
She said, “Oh?”
He took another long drink. “I mean, I’m beginning to realize how a woman like you could have a man like Hawley wrapped around your little finger.”
“Albert loved me,” she said softly.
“That’s what I mean. Enough to change his will so you’d inherit all his money after you divorced him and remarried.”
“Albert was generous,” she said calmly. “And he had no one else he cared to leave it to. He hated his family,” she added in the same flat tone.
“What did he think of Leon Wallace?”
She leaned forward carefully to set her glass down on the table and, watching closely, Shayne detected a tremor in her hand. She remained leaning forward and her eyes were very wide and direct on him as she asked slowly, “What do you know about Leon Wallace?”
“I know this much, Matie. He was working as a gardener at the Hawley estate when you decided to go to Reno and divorce your husband. I know he disappeared soon afterward after writing a curious letter to his wife enclosing ten grand in cash and instructing her not to worry or attempt to trace him. In addition, she has received another thousand quarterly since then with no message whatever, mailed to her in a plain envelope from Miami.”
She held his gaze steadily with an interested expression on her face. She said, “You do get around, don’t you, Michael?”
“I’m a detective,” he reminded her, as he had reminded Cunningham the previous evening.
“So you are,” she murmured.
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Which one?”
“What do you know about Leon Wallace?”
“A great deal more right now than I did two minutes ago,” she told him evenly. “I knew nothing about his strange disappearance.”
“Perhaps not. But I have a strong hunch that your divorced husband knew all about it.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because Jasper Groat telephoned Mrs. Wallace long distance last night and told her that if she would come to Miami this morning he would tell her about her husband.”
“I see. You’re assuming that Albert told him about Leon Wallace while he was dying on the life raft.”
“And that Groat was murdered last night to prevent him from meeting Mrs. Wallace this morning and telling her the truth,” said Shayne sharply.
She frowned and closed her eyes slowly. She opened them with a little shake of her head and said, “I’ve been assuming he was killed by some of the Hawleys… or someone hired by them… to conceal the real date of Albert’s death.”
“Who knew that date was important last night?” Shayne pressed her. “They supposedly didn’t know the terms of Ezra’s will until Hastings read it to them this morning. You knew, of course,” he added quietly. “Else you wouldn’t have hurried to Miami to claim your inheritance.”
“I think they must have known, too. After all, Mr. Hastings is their family lawyer.”
“We’ve gotten off the subject of Leon Wallace,” Shayne reminded her. “How well did you know him while you were married to Albert and living there?”
She shrugged. “I’ve been racking my brain to remember and I simply can’t. I know there was a gardener around the place, but that’s about all.”
Shayne knew she was lying. He asked abruptly, “Is Mr. Meredith in town with you?”
She was obviously disturbed by the sudden question. “No.”
“Where do you live?” probed Shayne.
“How can that possibly concern you?”
“What’s your husband’s business? His first name? When and where did you meet him? What sort of man is he?” The questions came swiftly and angrily.
She didn’t answer any of them. She sat forward stiffly and lifted her glass to bury her face in the mint leaves while she drew liquid from the shaved ice.
“I want some answers.” Shayne spread out his big hands and scowled bleakly. “One man has been murdered. If I stick my neck out any further, I’m going to know what I’m sticking it into.”
Matie took a cigarette from a box on the table and lit it with steady fingers. She blew out a plume of smoke, stretched back languorously with ankles crossed and regarded Shayne through half-closed eyes. “How are you sticking your neck out?”
Shayne emptied his glass and set it down hard on the table beside his chair. He got to his feet and began striding up and down the room. “By taking you on as a client. By trying to help you prove that your ex-husband was still alive when his uncle died.”
“What have my private affairs to do with that?”
“I don’t know yet. But I can’t dismiss the coincidence of Leon Wallace’s mysterious disappearance at the same time you took off for Reno to get a divorce.”
She said coldly, “My husband’s name is Meredith, not Wallace, Mr. Shayne. His first name is Theodore, not Leon. He is not a gardener, I assure you. Does that satisfy you?”
“No,” Shayne said with blunt impatience. “Men have been known to disappear and change their names before this… marry and raise families under assumed names.”
“Really though!” She stiffened erect and her eyes opened wide and there was withering scorn in her voice. “A gardener!”
“I never met Wallace,” growled Shayne. “I understand he was a graduate horticulturist. Maybe he reeked of sex appeal. Women have been known to fall in love with their husband’s gardeners before this… and chauffeurs and houseboys.”
“And I suppose you think I gave him the ten thousand dollars he sent his wife to keep her quiet. Or perhaps you think Albert furnished the money so I could divorce him and elope with the gardener.” Her voice was icy.
