Never Kill a Client

by Brett Halliday

  The whole caper had been planned thoroughly and carefully. There was no question about that. But why? And by whom?

  Who was the dead man in his office?

  And where was Lucy Hamilton?

  Elsa rejoined him and they went out together and found the bellboy had a taxi waiting. He gave the boy a dollar and got in beside Elsa, and told the driver, “The airport. We’re catching a nine-forty plane.”

  The driver said cheerfully, “Plenty of time… just about,” and Shayne sat back in his corner of the seat and lighted a cigarette.

  Elsa sat stiffly, well-removed from him, without speaking for several blocks. Then she sighed audibly and opened her bag, took a cigarette from her case and put it between her lips. “Will you light it for me, please?”

  Shayne said, “Sure,” and struck a match and held it for her and asked banteringly, “Don’t I get a tip this time… something like the torn half of a thousand-buck bill?” She leaned her head back against the seat, inhaled deeply and expelled smoke. “Tell me about the dead man in your office, Mike. Was he murdered?”

  “Aside from the fact that I have a hunch you know a hell of a lot more about it than I do, I don’t mind telling you the damn little I know about it. Yeh. I told you back in the hotel that the police think my secretary did it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re a bunch of incompetent damned fools,” he growled. “They can’t find Lucy and their first assumption is that she must have murdered the guy and taken it on the lam. He was stabbed in the heart with a filing spindle off her desk,” he added gruffly.

  “Who is the man?”

  “They haven’t identified him yet. Why don’t you tell me? You know the truth is bound to come out.”

  “But I don’t know what the truth is,” she told him evenly. “I’m as anxious to know as you are, Mike. I had no thought of getting mixed up in… murder.” She brought the word out shudderingly.

  “Then why don’t you tell me the whole story?”

  “No. You wouldn’t believe me. I have already told you how I was hired…”

  “I know. By a guy named Joe Morrison. But we’ve already kicked that story full of half a dozen holes. I’ve got an airplane ticket in my pocket that proves you flew in from Miami two days ago… just in time to mail that phony letter to me. You paid a hotel bill tonight for two days at the Perriepont. Good God, woman, how long do you think you can keep this up?”

  “You have a ticket in your pocket,” she told him evenly, “that proves some woman named Elsa Cornell flew to Los Angeles from Miami two days ago. Can you prove my name is Elsa Cornell?”

  “At this point, no. What the hell is your name?” he demanded suddenly.

  “Perhaps you will find out in Miami… where you are the great detective.” She drew back into her own corner of the seat and told him with finality, “I will not talk about it any more. I am not ashamed of anything I have done except that you made me feel like a cheap whore when you refused me in my hotel room tonight. I know nothing about any murdered men in your office, and less about your secretary.”

  And that was that, Shayne realized, for the time being at least. She didn’t seem to mind returning to Miami with him. Maybe there was some innocent explanation for her part in the affair, but he was certain he hadn’t got it from her yet.

  At the United Terminal he checked their three bags together and exchanged the two return tickets for gate passes while Elsa stood calmly beside him without speaking. They still had a few minutes before departure, and Shayne utilized those to dispatch a telegram to Will Gentry, chief of the Miami police force.

  He said: “Arriving Miami United Flight Seventeen six tomorrow morning with possible homicide witness.” Then they went out through the departure gate together to board their plane.

  9

  The sun was a red ball of fire over the Atlantic ocean when the huge jet-liner settled down smoothly on the runway at Miami and taxied in to the terminal. Elsa had slept in the window seat beside Shayne most of the trip, or had pretended to sleep, turned partially on her side away from him with two pillows underneath her blonde head, and she had not spoken a single word during the entire trip.

  Now she stirred and sat up, peering out the window at the airport, glistening and clean in the early morning sunlight, and she opened her bag and got out her comb and the compact with a small mirror.

  She peered into the mirror with a slight frown, shook her honey-colored hair and ran the comb through it with a few practiced strokes, and without looking at Shayne, said, “So we’re here. What now?”

  Shayne said, “I suspect we’ll be met by an official delegation.”

  “I mean… what about me after we get off? Do I have to… do you expect me just to trail along with you while you solve a murder case and go hunting for your precious secretary?”

  “That will depend a whole lot on what’s happened here since I talked to Tim Rourke. If we’re lucky, the case will already be solved and Lucy will be waiting to greet me at the gate. If not…?” He shrugged. “It will be up to Will Gentry to decide about you after I tell him how you got me out of town yesterday. Consider yourself under arrest at this point,” he added casually as the plane came to a stop and the unloading platform came out to meet it.

  “Under arrest?” Now she did look at him, long and searchingly. “Are you kidding?”

  “Not at all. Come on.” He moved out into the aisle and waited politely for her to precede him off the plane.

  “But what for?” She seemed utterly perplexed. “What right have you got to arrest me?”

  “I’m a licensed private detective… authorized to make arrests just as any police officer.”

  “What charge have you got against me?” They were moving slowly to the front of the plane behind other passengers and she spoke back to him over her shoulder.

  “Material witness in a murder case will do for the time being,” he told her. “If you decide to come clean and tell Will Gentry a story he believes, and one that clears you of any complicity in a crime… then he’ll release you.” They were off the plane and going down the steps, and he took her firmly by the arm and led her forward, searching anxiously for someone he recognized among those waiting to greet the passengers from United Flight Seventeen.

  He expected Timothy Rourke to be there, and desperately hoped to find Lucy Hamilton beside the reporter, but he saw neither of them as he pushed a way through the milling crowd. Then a stocky, pleasant-faced man confronted them and said, “Mr. Shayne. The chief sent me to pick you up.”

  He was a sergeant of the homicide squad whom Shayne knew slightly, named Ed Corby. Shayne stopped and said, “Sergeant Corby, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. This is my partner, Jim Greene.” He indicated a tall, unsmiling young man, also in plain clothes, who had moved in close beside Elsa.

  Shayne nodded and asked, “What gives, Ed? Have they turned up my secretary yet?”

  “Not up to half an hour ago. This your witness, Mike?”

  Shayne muttered, “Yeh. Miss Cornell, until she decides to tell us her real name. What is the story, Ed?”

  “I think the chief is saving that to tell you himself, Mike. My orders are to bring you both straight from the airport to the morgue where Gentry’s waiting. You got luggage to pick up?”

  Shayne nodded, “Three pieces.” He added formally, “I’m turning Miss Cornell over to you, Ed. She returned to Miami with me voluntarily, but I want her held as a material witness until this thing is straightened out.”

  The sergeant nodded and said to his partner, “Bring her along, Jim, and we’ll pick up their bags.” The four of them moved into the terminal and went to the Incoming Baggage counter where Shayne claimed their bags a few minutes later. Corby took Elsa’s suitcase and hatbox and said gruffly, “We’ve got a car right outside, Mike. This way.”

  “My car’s in the parking lot where I left it yesterday,” objected Shayne, lifting his briefcase and starting to turn away. �
�Take her along and I’ll meet you at the morgue.”

  “I’m sorry, Mike.” Corby kept his voice pleasant, but he dropped the hatbox and caught Shayne by the arm to turn him back. “I’ve got orders to pick you two up and bring you to the morgue. You know how Gentry is about orders.”

  “What the hell do you mean, Ed? I’ll follow you down.”

  “I’m taking you, Mike. You can pick your car up later. What the hell’s the difference? You get a free ride…”

  Shayne’s eyes blazed and he struck the detective sergeant’s restraining hand from his arm. “Is this a pinch? “

  “Not unless you make it one.” Corby looked acutely uncomfortable, but went on doggedly, “I got my orders to bring you in with your witness.”

  Shayne said angrily. “You’ll have to put the cuffs on me, Corby, to make me leave my car here. I’m going to be needing transportation, goddamnit, if you nitwits haven’t been able to find Lucy Hamilton in twelve hours, and I’m not going to waste time driving back out here for my car.” He turned and strode toward the parking lot, and a moment later Corby came panting after him and fell into stride, muttering, “Take it easy for Christ’s sake. I’ll ride down with you. Gentry can’t kick about that.”

  Shayne continued to stride ahead, his jaw set. He said, “You’re welcome to ride along, and if Will Gentry doesn’t like the way I get to the morgue he can damn well lump it.”

  When he had found his car and got free of the airport parking lot and was headed down town with Corby in the front seat beside him, he relaxed and threw a rueful grin at his companion.

  “Sorry I threw my weight around, but you know damned well I want to clear this up as much as Will does. I’ve been in Los Angeles, damn it. I didn’t kill that guy they found in my office. They know who he is yet?”

  “I don’t know from nothing, Mike,” Corby told him uncomfortably. “I suppose the reason Gentry wants you at the morgue is to see can you identify him. I didn’t come on duty until midnight, and I don’t know anything about the case except what I picked up from the boys. All sorts of rumors flying around, but damn few facts.”

  “What sort of rumors?”

  “You know how it is. There’s this guy dead in your office with your secretary’s filing spindle in his heart, and it looks like both of you have taken a run-out powder. What’s the natural thing to think under the circumstances?”

  “Yeh,” Shayne agreed with a sour grunt, and made a left-hand turn to draw up in front of the County Morgue where Detective Jim Greene was just getting out of the driver’s seat of a dark sedan. Shayne pulled in behind the police car and he and Corby got out and the four of them went in together so it wasn’t necessary for Corby to admit to his superior that they had driven in different cars from the airport.

  Chief Will Gentry and Timothy Rourke were waiting together in the outer room. Neither man looked as though he had been to sleep that night. There were pouches under Gentry’s eyes, and his eyelids looked heavier and more rumpled than usual. Rourke’s eyes glittered feverishly in his emaciated face, and he stopped his pacing and came forward jerkily as the quartet entered.

  “Mike! Has Lucy contacted you?”

  Shayne shook his red head and refrained from asking the question which Rourke had already answered so obviously. He looked past the gangling reporter at Will Gentry who was getting up heavily from a wooden chair, and asked, “Have you identified the body yet?”

  “We’re waiting for you to do that, Mike.” Gentry came forward stolidly sucking the soggy butt of a cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, rolling his rumpled lids upward to peer at the blonde who stood stiffly beside the redhead.

  “This your witness?”

  Shayne nodded. “You can call her Elsa Cornell until she decides to give us her real monicker. I don’t know how she fits into all this, Will, but she’s been giving me one hell of a runaround.”

  Gentry nodded and rumbled, “Come on back, the two of you. You and Greene wait here, Ed,” he added to the two detectives, then turned and led the way through a plain door into a white-walled corridor leading to the cold room.

  Rourke fell into step beside Shayne, with Elsa on the other side, and muttered enviously out of the side of his mouth, “You can still pick ’em, Mike.”

  “She picked me,” Shayne said with a tired grin. “They still got nothing on Lucy?”

  Timothy Rourke shook his head lugubriously and sighed, seemed on the point of saying something, but checked himself.

  Silently, they followed Gentry through a side door into a thick-walled room with a temperature well below freezing. There were built-in metal drawers along one wall, like oversized filing cabinets, and a white-coated attendant stepped briskly to one of them at a nod from Gentry, and pulled out a bottom drawer.

  Elsa was pressed close against Shayne, and he felt her hesitate and stiffen. He took her arm and drew her forward, muttering, “Whoever he is, he can’t hurt you now.” He was looking down at her lovely face, watching her expression very carefully as she looked down at the waxen pallor of the corpse’s face.

  If there was any expression at all, he thought it was one of relief, but he couldn’t be sure of that.

  “Look at him, Mike,” Gentry ordered gruffly. “Take a long, hard look.”

  Shayne did, releasing Elsa’s arm and allowing her to step back a pace. The man looked middle-aged, with thin, pinched features. He was clean-shaven and had sparse, brown hair. A sheet covered his body up to his neck. Shayne shook his head and said flatly, “I never saw him in my life before.”

  He heard Rourke shuffle his feet uneasily just behind him, and Gentry took the cigar butt from between his lips and frowned down at it as though it suddenly tasted bad. “Don’t go off half-cocked, Mike. Take another good look and see if it doesn’t refresh your memory.” Shayne thought he detected a note of warning in the chief’s voice. They had been friends a long time, and Gentry always played it square with him.

  To be absolutely positive, he took another long look and could find nothing familiar in the flaccid face. He shook his head more definitely this time and stated more flatly, “Sorry, Will. I can’t help you.”

  “How about you, Miss?” Gentry put the cigar back into his mouth and nodded to the attendant who pushed the drawer shut.

  She shook her honey-colored head just as decidedly as Shayne had shaken his red one, and said just as positively, “I have no idea in the world who he is. May I go now?”

  Gentry gave an ambiguous grunt, and they all went out of the cold room and back up the corridor to a side door on the right which Gentry opened to reveal a small office, containing a desk with a swivel chair behind it and three other straight chairs.

  Gentry went behind the desk and sat down. He said, “Close the door, Tim. Now then, Mike. Stop stalling and tell me the truth. This is murder and you and Lucy are into it right up to your necks. Where have you got her hidden?”

  10

  “Where have I got her hidden?” Michael Shayne looked as though he would choke over the words. “I haven’t seen Lucy or heard a word from her since eleven o’clock yesterday morning. Can’t you get it through your thick head that I caught a noon plane to Los Angeles and just got back?”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “Do I have to?” Shayne’s eyes were hot. “I’ve never lied to you, Will.”

  “Yes, you have,” Gentry told him coldly. “When you felt the end justified the means… and were pretty sure you could get away with it. Yeh. I think you’d better try to prove where you were yesterday afternoon.”

  Shayne drew in a deep breath and fought back his anger. “I reached L.A. about two o’clock… their time. I had an appointment with Miss Cornell here between two-thirty and three. She didn’t show up for it. Let her tell you why. Actually, it was a little after five o’clock when we finally made contact at a restaurant named the Cock and Bull in Hollywood. That’s eight o’clock here, Will. About the time you were finding a corpse in my office.”

&nbs
p; “Is that true, Miss Cornell?”

  She had not seated herself, but still stood near the door. She shook her head and said, “I will not answer any questions. I demand that I be allowed to see a lawyer.”

  Shayne said angrily, “Come off your high horse, Elsa. All you have to do is tell the man you finally met me at five o’clock… after keeping me chasing my tail around town for a couple of hours.”

  The expression on her lovely face hardened. She repeated, “I demand that I be allowed to see a lawyer. I have a right to counsel before I answer any questions.”

  Gentry said curtly to Rourke, “Go outside and ask Ed Corby to come in.” When the reporter went out, he studied the blonde appraisingly and said, “So you won’t verify Mr. Shayne’s story? Any of it?”

  She clamped her lips together and lifted her chin in reply.

  Rourke came back, followed by the detective sergeant. “You and Greene take this woman to headquarters. Hold her for questioning without booking her.”

  He waited until the door was closed behind them, then settled back and said, “Now there’s just the three of us, Mike. Suppose you start out by telling us what the dead man was doing in your office yesterday.”

  “How do I know?” Shayne began bitterly. “I’ve told you…”

  “I know what you’ve told us, and I happen to know it’s not the truth. Not the full truth, at least. He was a client of yours, Mike. Stop denying it.”

  “He was no client of mine, Will. You know that Lucy and I practically never kill a client.”

  His attempt at levity didn’t get a smile from Gentry. He demanded, “And you still deny you ever saw him before?”

  “Sure, I deny it. That is, not to my knowledge. I may have passed him on the street some time.”

  “You visited him in the penitentiary twice in the last three months.”

  “I didn’t. I haven’t been to the pen for a year.”