Pay-Off in Blood ms-41

by Brett Halliday

  It was just about the layout he had expected to find in this building, and he knew it must rent for about $75.00 per month.

  There was one overstuffed chair and two straight chairs and a cardtable against the wall. A coffee-cup and a jar of instant coffee stood on the cardtable. Two pairs of stockings and a brassiere were draped over the back of the big chair. Belle Jackson picked them up and dropped them on the bed and said, “Won’t you sit down? I was just having a cup of coffee.” She waved toward the table. “There’s hot water on the stove and I can get another cup…”

  Shayne grimaced at the thought of instant coffee and said, “No, thanks. I’ve had my coffee this morning.” He sat down and smiled at her. “You go right ahead. I just came from the office where I thought I’d find you this morning.”

  She sat in a straight chair in front of the coffee cup with her profile to him. “There’s no need for my being there. Doctor’s dead.”

  She spoke the two words thoughtfully, as though she needed to keep on saying them aloud, and listening to the sound of them, to make the fact real to her.

  Shayne said, “There must be the telephone to answer… appointments to cancel.”

  “The answering service will transfer all calls to Dr. Transom, who always covers for Doctor.” She lifted the coffee cup and drank from it as though she enjoyed the stuff.

  Shayne glanced at the half-packed suitcase on the bed, and asked, “Are you going on a trip?”

  “No. Just out to Doctor’s house for a few days. I telephoned Mrs. Ambrose this morning and insisted that I would stay with her for a little. My salary is paid through the week,” she went on placidly, “and I thought that was the least I could do for Doctor.” She put down her empty coffee cup and turned a tortured face toward him. “Have they found anything about who did it? That policeman seemed awfully stupid last night, but Mr. Rourke told me you’d be handling the case, and that you never failed to get your man. Have you got him yet?”

  “Not quite yet. I hoped you might help me.”

  “How?”

  “You’ve been with him many years,” Shayne said gently. “You probably know more about him than anyone else… including his wife.”

  “Celia?” she said simply. “She’s a child.”

  Shayne lit a cigarette and leaned forward. “What enemies did he have, Belle? Who wanted him dead?”

  “Doctor?” she said wonderingly. “Enemies?”

  Shayne said, “Someone shot him last night.”

  “It was those gamblers who were forever after him for money.” She sighed and placed the palms of her hands flat on the table in front of her, turning her profile to Shayne again. “It was his only weakness. He did think he could beat the races. He was always on the verge of making a big killing… and never did.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “For years. Ever since I’ve been with him. But it hasn’t got real bad until these last few months. They’re the ones that did it. They’ve been threatening him, and he’s been so worried.”

  Shayne asked, “Did you know he was being blackmailed, Belle?”

  “Blackmailed? Doctor?” She swung her head to look at him with absolute incredulity on her face. Then she began to laugh. Softly at first, gurgling and chuckling from deep inside, and the laughter grew until it took possession of her, shaking her heavy body and coming out gaspingly which slowly grew to the proportion of hysterics.

  Shayne got up and stood behind her and put both his hands on her shoulders and shook her ungently. “What’s so funny about it, Belle? Tell me what’s funny and maybe I’ll laugh, too.”

  “Doctor? Blackmailed?” She lolled her head from side to side and tried to stifle her laughter. “What on earth for? If you only knew…”

  Shayne said, “I know. He was kind and gentle and ethical and everything in the book that a doctor should be. But he was paying blackmail, Belle. Why?”

  “I don’t believe it,” she said flatly. She had stopped laughing and had control of herself now.

  “Nevertheless, he was.” Shayne took his hands away from her shoulders and went back to his chair. “They were sucking him dry, and last night was the big pay-off. He admitted to me last night that he had explained the drain on his income to his wife by pretending to her that he had been losing heavily on the horses. He evidently told you that, too.”

  “Yes. Yes, he did.” Belle nodded emphatically. “I never dreamed…” She paused and became silent, then arose from her chair and turned briskly toward her suitcase. “Goodness! Celia will be wondering what on earth has happened to me. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Shayne…”

  He got up and said, “Sure. I’ll step outside while you finish packing your bag. Then I’ll drive you out to the doctor’s house, if you like. I’d like to talk to Mrs. Ambrose for a moment… while she’s still sober,” he added, tossing out the bait and waiting expectantly in the doorway.

  Belle ignored it. She said placidly, “That will be nice. I’ll be ready in just a few minutes.”

  He walked slowly out to the sidewalk and waited for her, wondering again about her choice of living quarters, mentally comparing the one-room layout with Lucy Hamilton’s pleasant three-room apartment in Miami. Yet the two girls earned about the same salary. Well, he told himself, some people liked to spend their money on one thing, and others on another, and reminded himself again that he had no idea what sort of private drains Belle Jackson might have on her income.

  He watched with pleasure as she came toward him from her room, erect and statuesque, swinging the suitcase along in her right hand as though it were filled with feathers. She had a free-swinging stride and a lightness of step that minimized her bulk and weight and betokened an inner vitality that was good to see.

  He opened the back door of his car and took the suitcase from her, and opened the front door while he put it inside.

  As he drove away, he said, “One thing I wanted to ask you. About the doctor’s pistol. Did he take it with him last night?”

  She didn’t answer for a moment and he glanced aside at her curiously. She was looking straight ahead and appeared to be frowning.

  She said, “His pistol? I didn’t know he had one.”

  “Mrs. Ambrose said last night that he had owned one for a long time. She also said he usually kept it at the office or in the glove compartment of his car.”

  “I don’t know anything about it. He certainly never kept one at the office. Wait a minute, though. I do believe he said something once, a long time ago, sort of jokingly, I guess, about having some sort of gun at home, and he hoped his wife wouldn’t get jealous of him making late calls on some of his women patients and decide to use it on him.

  “I know he was just joking about that,” she went on quickly. “I remember now that we both had a good laugh about Celia either being jealous or being able to shoot a pistol, if she were.”

  She paused and then asked, in a queerly strained tone, “Was that what they used to do it with? Doctor’s own pistol?”

  “I haven’t got the official report yet. A thirty-two automatic was found lying beside his body with one shot fired. I don’t even know if it was his own gun.”

  They drove on a short distance further in silence, and then Belle Jackson asked hesitantly, “Where was Celia when it happened?”

  “In the house. Passed out cold in the bedroom, I guess. With about a quart of straight vodka inside her, according to the police doctor. Do you know if that was habitual with her?”

  “I don’t know much about her personal habits. Doctor wasn’t one to gossip about his home-life. Sometimes he did say little things that… that indicated he… was worried about her.”

  “Was he popular with his women patients?”

  “He was popular with all his patients.” She made this statement with a note of finality which seemed to rule out further discussion of the doctor’s private life and personal habits, and Shayne found himself wondering again about the past relationship between Dr. Ambrose a
nd his full-bodied nurse.

  Given a wife like Celia, sipping on her vodka bottle at home, and thrown into close, day-by-day intimacy with a woman like the one who sat beside him, you couldn’t rule out the possibility of an adulterous triangle.

  Could that have been the basis for blackmail? If it were true, how far would the good doctor have gone to conceal the knowledge from his wife? What incriminating proof could have been contained in the white envelope for which he had been willing to pay twenty thousand dollars?

  This was a question that Shayne kept coming back to in his own mind. Since the very beginning, last evening, he had wondered why the doctor had been so certain he was buying back complete immunity from further blackmail. Any document can easily be duplicated… as he had tried to point out to the doctor.

  He turned onto the quiet side street and slowed to a stop in front of the modest house where Dr. Ambrose had met his death.

  He turned off the ignition and said, “I’ll carry your bag inside. If Mrs. Ambrose is up to it, there are a few questions I would like to ask.”

  Actually, what he wanted more than anything else was to witness this meeting between the two women on the morning after the doctor’s death. On the surface, everything appeared placid and proper, with the widow requesting the doctor’s nurse to come and stay with her for a few days, but, inwardly, Shayne wasn’t so sure.

  He carried Belle’s suitcase in his left hand and took long strides to stay abreast of Belle up the walk, and he stood close to her when she rang the doorbell.

  The door opened immediately, and Shayne was completely unprepared for the appearance of the widow this morning.

  Her platinum curls were carefully arranged as though she had just come from a hairdresser, and the flesh of her rounded cheeks was as smooth and firm as a young girl’s, and her mouth was like a rosebud. She was effectively attired in a black, silk skirt that clung caressingly to her hips and thighs, and a short-sleeved blouse of dull bronze which reflected a metallic sheen in the sunlight. She was wearing tiny, bronze pumps with very high heels which gave her a look of poised youthfulness utterly at variance with the spectacle she had presented the previous night.

  She put out both her hands to the nurse and said too sweetly, “Oh, Belle, honey. I know you loved him, too.”

  Belle took Celia’s small hands in her big ones and said throatily, “I just can’t make myself believe it yet. I couldn’t go near the office anyhow… with it being empty and all.”

  Celia Ambrose looked past her at the redhead, and a small, puzzled frown marred the smoothness of her forehead. Her blue eyes rounded inquiringly, and Shayne was positive she didn’t remember him at all from the night before.

  He said, “I’m Michael Shayne, Mrs. Ambrose. A private detective whom the doctor consulted last evening.”

  “A private detective? But how absurd! Why should Philip consult a private detective?”

  “Because he was being blackmailed, Mrs. Ambrose. Don’t you remember being told last night…”

  “I remember some sort of vicious innuendo being made,” she told him calmly. “I think you had better go away now. Do come in, Belle.” She drew the larger woman inside composedly.

  “Mr. Shayne is working on the case, and wants to help find Doctor’s murderer,” the nurse told her. “He’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “Oh, very well.” Celia appeared completely indifferent. She nodded to Shayne. “You may bring her bag in, if you wish.”

  She turned away from the open door, holding Belle’s arm lightly, and led her across the room, saying, “You’ll have the blue room at the back. I’ve closed up Philip’s room, of course, and, later on, I hope you’ll help me go through his things.”

  The two women disappeared down a hallway to the left without a backward glance from either of them toward Shayne, and he carried Belle’s bag into the living room and closed the front door.

  He stood there, flat-footed, looking about the basically feminine room and reinforcing the first impression he had received last night.

  It was not a room designed for a man to relax in comfortably after a hard day at the office. He tried to imagine Dr. Ambrose and Celia inhabiting it happily together over the years past, and the picture refused to focus clearly.

  He heard the light clack of high heels returning from the rear, and he moved forward to one of the overstuffed chairs, noting that there wasn’t an ashtray in sight, and putting aside his desire for a cigarette.

  The doorbell rang behind him as Celia reentered the carpeted room, and she made a little moue at the sound and went past him to open the door.

  He sat down on the edge of the chair, and his body stiffened as he heard a familiar voice say brightly,

  “Good morning, Madam. I represent the Women’s Civic Betterment Association, and I would appreciate just a few minutes of your valuable time to get some statistical information for a survey we’re making that is of vital importance to every homeowner in Miami Beach.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  With her back toward him, Celia Ambrose blocked his view of the speaker, and he listened with absorbed interest as the widow replied, “Not this morning, I’m afraid. I’m very busy and…”

  “But it will take just a moment and it’s vitally important that I contact every person in the block. Just one or two questions, Madam.”

  Shayne rose slowly to his feet as Mrs. Ambrose backed away reluctantly from the doorway. Lucy Hamilton pushed forward vivaciously with a notebook and a pencil in her hand, and she stopped suddenly when she saw her employer standing in the middle of the room, looking at her with amused tolerance.

  She said, “Oh…” and then managed a gay little laugh. “I didn’t know the man of the house was in. That’s just dandy. It’s so seldom I do find the husband at home…”

  “My husband is dead,” said Mrs. Ambrose woodenly. “This is a private detective.”

  “A detective?” Lucy sobered at once and pursed her lips. “He doesn’t look like one,” she told Celia. “Are you sure…?”

  “I’m just going,” Shayne said hastily. “Good day, Mrs. Ambrose. Perhaps I can see you this afternoon.” He strode forward and past his brown-haired secretary, giving her a simulated glare in passing. Behind him, he heard Celia Ambrose say composedly, “I don’t like that man’s manners at all. Now, what was it you wanted?”

  He went down the walk toward his car parked in front, and wondered how the devil Lucy had failed to recognize it and realize that he must be inside. He wasn’t at all sure she hadn’t. It would be just like her to put on an act like that in full knowledge that he was listening to her inside the room.

  A wry smile twisted his lips as he got in and drove away. You had to hand it to Lucy. She did pull that sort of thing off well. He hoped Nurse Jackson would come out and join them while Lucy conducted her interview. He would be exceedingly interested to know how she reacted to Belle.

  At the Miami Beach Police Headquarters, Shayne had no difficulty this morning getting into Chief Painter’s private office.

  The head of the detective division sat rigidly upright behind a wide expanse of clean-surfaced desk and regarded the redhead with snapping black eyes that managed to appear accusing. “You’ve been long enough coming in, Shayne.”

  Shayne said, “I was checking a couple of things.” He pulled a straight chair closer to Painter’s desk and sat down. “What can you do for me?”

  “What can you do for me?” Painter challenged. “I want to know more about Dr. Ambrose’s blackmail payoff last night.”

  “I’d like to know more about it myself.” Shayne unconsciously touched the twin lumps on his head and winced. “Have you heard anything about the possibility that he handed his money over to the wrong man?”

  “What’s that? Don’t hold out on me, Shayne!”

  “Why should I hold out? I was the Patsy in the deal.” Shayne hesitated and then said carefully, “Tim Rourke tells me you checked the Seacliff and got some kind of confir
mation that Ambrose met his blackmailer there at nine-thirty… as I assumed.”

  “Yes. That is… it’s all pretty vague. I couldn’t get a definite identification of the doctor, but the description is close enough. What do you know about a flashlight picture being taken of the transaction?”

  “Rourke mentioned that.” Shayne frowned thoughtfully and lit a cigarette. “Ambrose certainly didn’t tell me he had anything like that in mind.”

  “You think Ambrose arranged it?”

  “Who else?” argued Shayne. “Remember, I told you he claimed he didn’t know who was blackmailing him. It looks to me as though he wanted some proof the pay-off had been made, and hired a man to take a picture.”

  “What’s that got to do with your suggestion that he paid off the wrong man?”

  “A lot, maybe. I don’t know. Here’s how it went.” He proceeded to give Painter a straightforward account of his encounter in the hotel lobby with Jud and Phil, and his interview with the Boss at the Bayside Hotel. “You figure it out,” he urged when he ended. “Seems to me that picture of the man receiving the money from Ambrose might be damned important.”

  “I still don’t see who killed the doctor… or why,” exploded Painter.

  “I don’t either,” Shayne agreed mildly. “That’s your problem. What’s this thing Tim Rourke told me about the doctor’s office last night?”

  “You mean the nurse and the empty strongbox?” Painter asked reluctantly.

  Shayne nodded. “What do you make of it?”

  “It just gets screwier and screwier,” muttered Painter. “According to the woman’s story, he had some private papers in the box which he had asked her to destroy if anything happened to him. But someone beat her to it. When she searched the office, after learning the doctor had been murdered, she found the box open and empty.”

  “Not forced open?” Shayne asked urgently.

  “No. Unlocked with a key, from all indications. The office door, too.”

  “Was there a key-ring in the doctor’s pockets when you checked his body?”