She still looked dazed, but Shayne was glad to see that her pupils were back to their ordinary size.
“You’re out of your mind,” she said.
“Not quite, Barbara. A little fed up, that’s all. Where’s Eda Lou?”
“I don’t know.”
Shayne tightened his grip on her arms. “Where is she?”
“I don’t! I only talked to her on the phone. We’re all meeting at Larue’s for lunch, Kitty and Eda Lou and I.”
“Kitty went to New York.”
“I know that. But Eda Lou heard you tell somebody what hotel she’s staying at. She called and told Kitty to come back on the first plane. But I know Kitty. She won’t go to a fancy place like Larue’s straight from the airport. She’ll come here to change.”
“Listen to me, Barbara. Eda Lou knows you took her gun. She knows you figured out that Hank and Kitty are still working together, and those St. Albans affidavits are phonier than your treasure map. Eda Lou doesn’t want you killing anybody. She knew you’d come here and stay out of her way.”
“Mike, I honestly don’t know where she is. You’re hurting me.”
“Think about it! Right here is where the killing stops. If you don’t know how many kinds of trouble I can make for you, you’re dumber than I think. If Eda Lou wanted a quiet conversation with somebody, one of those confidential little chats that sometimes end with a gun going off, where would she go? A car would be fine, but neither she nor Kitty has a car here. She wouldn’t rent one. She wouldn’t go to a hotel.”
Barbara shook her head. “I can’t even guess!”
Shayne gave an exclamation of annoyance. “Let’s see if they’ve heard anything new downstairs. Keep thinking.”
He pulled her to the elevator.
“Mike, won’t you explain just one of those things you said? We always knew there was a chance there wasn’t any gold. I don’t see-”
He gave her a look which silenced her. The lines of concentration around his eyes were deeply etched.
He said suddenly, “Are you the one who told me she takes flowers to the cemetery?”
“Eda Lou? Mike, let go of my arm. Flowers? Yes. I don’t know how often, but she did once, on his birthday. It surprised me. She’s not at all religious. Long-stem roses. I thought it was touching, in a way. She was furious that I saw her.”
Shayne gave a bark of relieved laughter. “Touching is right. Long-stem roses? Not the dame I met. Where’s he buried?”
“Out beyond Miami Springs, in the big new mausoleum. Really-”
The elevator arrived. They went down in silence and he hurried her across the lobby to the street, where he put her in the back seat of the police car.
“What happened to you?” she exclaimed, seeing Hank Sims.
He rubbed his clean-shaven chin. “For you, dear. I’m turning over a new leaf.”
“Miami Springs,” Shayne told the driver. “There’s a cemetery out there somewhere. She’ll give you directions. Use your siren.”
He looked out the back window as they began to move. Hilary Quarrels’ Cadillac was still behind them.
“Any late news, Will?” he said to Gentry.
“I have the lab report on the water in Shanahan’s carafe. It’s one of those coal-tar derivatives with the long names. Enough to knock off the whole Court of Appeals.”
“Frank was poisoned?” Barbara said quietly.
“Hank can tell you who did it,” Shayne said. “He was there with his camera. Clean-shaven, so none of his friends would notice him if they had other things on their minds.”
“It does look as though I was there to take a picture, don’t it?” Sims said. “But maybe the picture didn’t come out, have you thought of that? I used fast film, but the conditions weren’t too good.”
Barbara turned to Shayne, but one look at the expression around his mouth told her not to pursue the subject. Narrow gaps kept appearing in the traffic ahead. The police driver widened them with his siren and plunged through, the Cadillac following before the gaps could close. At 22nd Avenue they picked up the expressway. They shot off the entrance ramp and in a moment they were doing ninety.
“I think I was wrong about one thing, Will,” Shayne said. “Maybe there’s going to turn out to be some buried treasure after all.”
“Fine,” Gentry said. “A cemetery’s a good place for it-all that digging equipment.”
They left the expressway after crossing the big bridge over the Miami River, skirted the airport on 36th Street and went north on the Palmetto Expressway.
“Next exit,” Barbara said.
The driver slowed. Off to the right Shayne saw Whispering Glades, the huge new cemetery, surely large enough to house all of Southern Florida’s dead for decades to come. They turned in through elaborate wrought-iron gates. The graves were laid out on a right-angle grid, like Miami itself, with streets, terraces and alleys running east and west, avenues, places and courts running north and south. The headstones were set flush with the ground, to be cleared more easily by the wheels of the power mowers.
The police driver dropped his speed to thirty, out of respect for the surroundings. Shayne snapped his fingers. He speeded up, swung around a slow-moving back-hoe and in a moment halted in front of a great brick mausoleum.
“What’s this all about, do you know?” Sims asked Barbara.
“No, and I’ve stopped trying to guess.”
“Will,” Shayne said. “The rest of you wait here.”
He and Gentry took the broad steps two at a time. They passed between two tall marble pillars and found themselves in a high central hall with organ music coming at them from concealed outlets. The floor was covered with wall-to-wall carpet. A commitment ceremony was taking place in a chapel at the far end. In spite of the air conditioning, there was a heavy smell of flowers.
“Mike, would you mind telling me what the hell we’re doing here?” Gentry said in a hushed voice.
“Playing a long shot,” Shayne said briefly.
An attendant approached, wearing the sober garb and smug look of all members of his profession. Shayne told him they were looking for the final resting place of Calvin Tuttle. The attendant consulted a directory and offered to take them, but Shayne asked for directions and said they would like to find it by themselves.
The crypts were arranged on three levels, like the stacks of a large library. Shayne and Gentry took an elevator to the middle level. A railed balcony ran around three sides of the hall. They turned into the third aisle. Crypts were stacked on both sides to a height of ten feet. Some had been sold but were not yet in use; these were faced with wood instead of stone, and held in place by four ornamental brass screws. Cal Tuttle’s headstone gave his name and dates, and the inscription, “Amid Turmoil, Peace.”
“Somebody had a sense of humor,” Shayne said.
The space above his had been reserved for Barbara; the space above that for Eda Lou.
“Keep an eye out,” Shayne said. “We don’t want to get picked up for robbing graves.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Gentry said fervently as Shayne took out a pocket knife, selected a blade with a blunt end and went to work on the screws holding Eda Lou’s wooden headplate in place.
“Mike!” Gentry said suddenly from the railing overlooking the central hall.
Shayne joined him. Tim Rourke, below, was mugging furiously, pointing at the front entrance and mouthing the same word over and over. The attendant who had greeted Shayne and Gentry watched gravely and then stepped out to the middle of the hall to look up at the balcony. Rourke turned abruptly and joined the group of mourners around the coffin in the chapel.
“I think our long shot came in,” Shayne said.
“Yeah, they generally do for you.”
Two women came in the front entrance. Both were blondes, Eda Lou’s improbably white hair more conspicuous than Kitty’s at that distance. The attendant approached with his obsequious murmur. Eda Lou spoke to him and the two women turned toward the elevator.
“That makes everybody,” Gentry said. “I told you it was a matter of time.”
