“Let’s fade,” Shayne said.
They walked along the balcony, stopping when they were above the chapel. A single overhead spot bathed the coffin in brilliant light, but the mourners around it, and Shayne and Gentry above, were in semidarkness. A woman’s voice could be heard sobbing.
“I think I’m finally beginning to get the idea,” Gentry said. “Slow but sure.”
“It makes sense when you think about it,” Shayne said. “That crypt is better than a safe-deposit box and not so conspicuous. The headplate won’t come off till they put her in.”
The two women came out of the elevator and turned into the aisle Shayne and Gentry had just left.
“How much time do we give them?” Gentry asked.
“She can use some help. When she tightened those screws she really tightened them.”
Shayne hissed at Rourke and made a rounding-up gesture. He and Gentry went back along the balcony, the thick carpet deadening their footsteps. Both women whirled guiltily when they came into the aisle.
“We’ve been looking all over,” Shayne said.
Eda Lou, looking at Shayne malevolently, dropped her hand to her side to conceal the screwdriver. Kitty cried, “Mike! The most fantastic thing has happened! Do you know what she’s been telling me?”
“Up to a point,” Shayne said. “I don’t think you know Will Gentry, Chief of Miami Police. He’s a sucker for stories about buried treasure. Mrs. Sims, Mrs. Parchman.”
Eda Lou whirled and threw the screwdriver at him. It flew over the railing to drop almost noiselessly in the central hall.
“You son of a bitch,” she said. “I should have put something stronger than seconal in that coffee.”
“Things were already out of hand,” Shayne told her. “You should have taken a couple of sleeping pills yourself and let Shanahan alone. That’s the one we’re going to get you on. You’re going to spend the rest of your life in jail.”
“You try to put me in jail, buster. You’ll know you’ve been in a fight.”
“I know that already,” Shayne said wryly.
He snapped open the screwdriver blade of his knife and went back to work on the screws. The attendant appeared at the entrance of the aisle with the screwdriver Eda Lou had thrown at Shayne.
“You people have to remember where you are,” he admonished them. “One of you dropped this, and it didn’t miss me by more than a foot.” He gaped. “What are you doing? You can’t open a crypt without an order from the managing director!”
“Police business,” Gentry said gruffly, showing him his shield. “I’ll see that nothing’s damaged.”
“I should certainly hope so.”
Shayne pulled the plate off, unblocking the crypt just as a little group arrived, consisting of Tim Rourke, Quarrels, Barbara, Hank Sims and two detectives.
“Mr. Quarrels!” the attendant exclaimed. “It’s all right-they’re police officers.”
Shayne looked at Quarrels questioningly, and the white-haired man nodded.
“Whispering Glades is one of our subsidiaries.”
“And I’m sure it’s a gold mine,” Shayne said, “in more ways than one.”
He thumbed his lighter and held it in front of the crypt’s dark opening. The others crowded around to see what the little flame would reveal.
“A fiasco!” Rourke said. “There’s nothing there.”
“Look again,” Shayne told him. “How did you get it that far back,” he asked Eda Lou, “climb in after it?”
He tugged at a cord running the length of the seven-foot space, and slowly a long cardboard box slid into view.
It was a florist’s box, long and narrow. Shayne lifted it out. He broke the string, stripping off the thin cardboard, and exposed a wooden box underneath, the same size and shape.
“You couldn’t carry a brassbound treasure chest into a mausoleum,” he said. “You’d have to keep coming back. With long stem roses you’d only have to make one trip.”
He set the box on the floor. Eda Lou made a small anguished sound as he raised the hinged lid.
There were two golden candlesticks on top. He lifted them out. There was a jeweled dagger, a golden chain, a goblet, then something long and angular wrapped in wash-leather. Beneath this layer the box was filled with loose coins, oddly-shaped silver pieces-of-eight, gold doubloons the size of a silver dollar, a cross on one face, a shield on the other. Each coin had been lovingly polished before being put away, and they glowed warmly in the dim light.
“It’s mine,” Eda Lou said. “Cal gave it to me instead of leaving me a share in the Key.”
“When?” Shayne asked.
“Two years before he died, and I have a paper to prove it.”
“He gave you something else too, didn’t he?”
He unwrapped the object in the washleather, and took out a long ugly Luger equipped with a silencer.
chapter 20
He snapped back the slide.
“It’s loaded. The safety’s off. I can see the scene, can’t you, Kitty? Soft music. The smell of flowers. Corpses stacked up five deep all around.” He picked up a handful of coins and let them clink one by one back into the box. “It looks a lot more authentic than a check for the same amount. You wouldn’t be able to take your eyes off it. Maybe she’d let you dig your fingers in to see how deep it went. And meanwhile, she’d be unwrapping the Luger.”
A light shiver passed over Kitty. “What a terrible way to die, with your hands in money.”
“Mike, be serious!” Rourke said. “There are people all over the place. How would she get rid of the body? Wait a minute. You don’t mean-”
Shayne stood up and handed the Luger to Gentry. “Why not? Simply unscrew another face plate and slide the body in. It’s true that after a few days-” He looked at the attendant. “Would the air conditioning take care of it? You couldn’t open up every crypt on this level to see who’d done the bad embalming job.”
“How morbid can you get?” the attendant exclaimed.
Shayne turned back to Kitty. “What did she say when she called you in New York?”
“Kitty baby,” Eda Lou warned her. “There are three or four cops here. It’s time we all talk to a lawyer.”
“I haven’t killed anybody,” Kitty responded. “Speak for yourself.”
Barbara said, “I don’t suppose you set Ev’s mattress on fire? Oh, no. Certainly not.”
“Babs!” Eda Lou said sharply. “Don’t you see what Shayne’s trying to do? Shut your flytrap and keep it shut.”
Shayne continued, watching Barbara, “Eda Lou set that mattress on fire.”
The old lady gave a laugh like a parrot. “I thought you said I killed Shanahan. Make up your mind.”
“You killed them both,” Shayne said coldly. “And it’s a bum rap, in a way, because here’s the real killer.” He kicked Tuttle’s headstone. “He’s been pulling the strings all the way. Calvin Charles Tuttle, Amid Turmoil, Peace. If we all keep quiet a minute, maybe we can hear him laughing.”
He paused, and they actually heard the sound of ironic laughter. It came from Eda Lou.
“You’ve been smoking the wrong kind of cigarette, Mike. You’re hallucinating.”
“Am I?” Shayne said. “I don’t think so. This has been a strange set-up. Everybody kept telling me that everybody else treated Cal like a dog, but Cal always forgave them. Like hell he forgave them!” He swung savagely on Barbara. “Did he forgive you for the way you treated him after he got out of jail?”
“Of course. We had a very warm relationship at the end.”
Shayne snorted. “And Brad. All Brad did was tip off the cops to save his own neck, and Cal spent the prime of his life in jail. Cal forgave him. Shanahan? When I first heard about Cal’s will I couldn’t make out what Shanahan was doing in it. People like Cal never get too fond of lawyers, who make a living out of crime without running any risks. Then I was told that the minute Cal was locked away, Shanahan hit the sack with Cal’s girl. But Cal forgave him! I don’t know what Cal had against Ev, maybe just having to keep him in drinking money all those years. Have I left out anybody? Kitty.”
