around her hair. Nobody would give her a second look. A couple of passes at the bench with a dust cloth. Check the wastebasket. See that the judge has fresh water.”
Gentry nodded. “See if you can dig up any witnesses,” he told his men.
Two other detectives came through the swinging doors, bringing a husky young man in a light blue sports shirt, a 35 millimeter camera over his shoulder. He was clean-shaven, but as he approached the wooden barrier, Shayne saw that his forehead and nose had had more exposure to the weather than the rest of his face.
One of the city detectives opened the gate. Shayne came out of his chair as the burly young man came through and met him with a hard rising right to the point of his jaw.
He went backward, collided with the end of a bench and slid slowly into the aisle.
“Mike, what the hell?” Gentry protested.
“Just paying a small debt,” Shayne remarked, loosening his shoulder muscles.
“Who is it, Hank Sims?” Rourke said. “But what’s this debt stuff? Maybe I wasn’t listening, but didn’t you say you had the field glasses on him when somebody skulled you in the tree house?”
“Yeah.” Bending down, Shayne unclenched the unconscious man’s grease-smeared right hand. “What he did do was loosen the lugs on the wheel of my Volkswagen. I lived through that, but he didn’t care whether I did or not.”
He looked around for the bailiff, who was swallowing more aspirin. “Was this man in the courtroom this morning?”
The bailiff looked down doubtfully. “I couldn’t say, Mr. Shayne. They’re all reading morning papers at that hour. I just don’t think I could say.”
Sims sat up, waggled his jaw to see if anything was broken, and came to his feet with a roar. He was grabbed by three detectives and made to hold still.
“Where’s your wife?” Shayne demanded.
Sims looked around and began to do some thinking. “You’re Mike Shayne, aren’t you? No point in asking me. We’re separated. I haven’t laid eyes on the bitch in weeks.”
“You’re a liar,” Shayne told him. “And that’s not the only thing you’ve been lying about lately. You were out in that boat last night, weren’t you, Sims? Didn’t anybody ever tell you there’s a law against shooting at lighted windows with a carbine? You wanted Barbara to think it was Shanahan. And that’s why you faked those affidavits, to make her think her fiance had changed sides and gone in with Kitty. And then you couldn’t resist making a play for her, could you, on the off chance that she’d turn out to be the survivor?”
“You’ve got the wrong idea about me,” Sims said. “I do things on the spur of the moment.”
“Will, have somebody develop the film in his camera.”
Sims took a backward step. “Like hell! Didn’t you ever hear about Amendments One to Ten in the United States Constitution? Let’s see your warrant.”
Shayne grinned. “There’s no shortage of judges in this building. It won’t be hard to get a warrant.”
Sims’s hand went to the snap of his camera case. Shayne took a stride forward and clamped his wrist before he could open it.
“Hell with the warrant,” Sims said in disgust. Slipping the camera off his shoulder he handed it to Gentry. “Let’s have a receipt.”
For a moment longer he looked at Shayne, then he said softly, “What’s it take to stop you, anyway?”
Another cop came in hurriedly with a yellow sheet. “Chief, a call from the morgue about the Lemoyne woman.”
“The morgue!” Shayne swung toward him savagely. “Another one.”
“No, she’s alive, or she was at ten o’clock. She was just identifying Tuttle and picking up his stuff. The call on her hadn’t filtered down that far yet.”
“That’s what I mean, Mike,” Gentry said. “Just be patient. We’ll get everybody for you.”
Shayne felt absently for a cigarette. “How close to ten was she there?” he asked the detective.
The man consulted his slip. “They signed her in at two minutes after.”
“Then she couldn’t have put the slug on Shanahan,” Shayne said. “Nobody gets around as fast as that in this town. But on a day like today, why would she go to the morgue? It couldn’t be out of respect for the dead. Nobody had much respect for Brad Tuttle.”
His eyes rested on Hank Sims’s face without really seeing him.
“Don’t ask me,” Sims said. “I’m only the guy who gets shot when the cops aim at the hold-up man.”
Shayne pushed off from the table. “O.K., Will. If she didn’t go there to see what Brad looked like dead, she went to get something he was carrying when he was killed. One of the things he was carrying was the key to Kitty’s apartment. I may be wrong, but let’s check.”
chapter 19
On the way out of the courthouse they passed a hatless white-haired man who had just got out of a Cadillac on West Flagler. Shayne, walking behind Hank Sims, saw the young man’s start of recognition.
“Is your name Quarrels?” Shayne asked the white-haired man.
“Yes. You’re Mike Shayne, of course.” He glanced at the others. “Can you spare a moment or two in private? You may not be surprised to hear that I have some questions.”
“Tim,” Shayne called. “Ride with Mr. Quarrels and give him the background. Tell him about Shanahan and anything else he wants to know.”
“I’m not the expert, Mike. You are.”
Shayne made a brusque gesture. Rourke and the real-estate man returned to the Cadillac. Shayne went in the police car with Gentry, the police driver and Hank Sims. Gentry sat in front listening as the reports he had called for came in over the radio. These were uniformly negative.
Presently the little two-car convoy drew up in front of Kitty Sims’s apartment house on 28th Street.
“She has a gun,” Shayne said. “If she’s here she’ll be all cranked up and ready to fly. So I’d better handle it myself. Our casualty list is long enough as it is.”
He strode into the building. The downstairs door only held him up a moment. He took the elevator to Kitty’s floor.
If Barbara had actually used Brad Tuttle’s key and was waiting in Kitty’s apartment, Shayne knew that she had heard the elevator. He pressed another button to send it on its way, and then he let a minute or two pass to give her time to relax. He went quietly to the door. Standing to one side, out of range of the peephole, he slid a strip of celluloid between the door and the jamb and forced the latch. He turned the doorknob silently and let the door swing open,
“Barbara,” he said in a quiet tone. “It’s Mike Shayne. I’m alone here, but there’s a carload of cops downstairs. So let’s not do any shooting, is that O.K. with you? It’s a little late for that now.”
He stepped into the doorway and lit a cigarette. While he was breathing out his first mouthful of smoke, Barbara Lemoyne appeared from the bedroom. She was wearing a low-cut black dress and pearls and her face was pale. Eda Lou’s little automatic was pointed at Shayne’s chest.
“You’ve interfered in my affairs for the last time.”
“Frank’s dead,” Shayne told her. “There’s no gold. There never was any gold. You’ve been fooled, all five of you. Your million-buck deal is cooling off fast.”
Slowly the muzzle of the little automatic came down until it pointed at the floor. “Frank’s dead?”
Shayne took the gun out of her unresisting fingers and kicked the door shut. Barbara looked up at him, the pupils of her eyes enormous. Her lip fluttered and she began to sag. Shayne slapped her hard. She spun around and caught the door frame. Shayne dropped the gun in his pocket. She whirled and flew at him, trying to get the gun. He caught her in his arms.
“That’s better,” he said. “Adrenalin always helps. Don’t break up over Frank. Think about your own problems. You’re in serious trouble, and it’s going to get worse unless you answer a few questions. I want truthful answers this time. Get this fact in your head and you’ll see that the time has come to cut your losses. This whole buried treasure thing was Cal’s idea.”
